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  WRITINGS OF MARCUS DODS
  by Marcus Dods
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by Marcus Dods,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 54

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 01.01. How to become like Christ
    2. 01.03.     HOW TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST.
    3. 01.04.     THE TRANSFIGURATION.
    4. 01.05.     INDISCREET IMPORTUNITY
    5. 01.06.     SHAME ON ACCOUNT OF GOD'S DISPLEASURE
    6. 01.07.     NAAMAN CURED
    7. 01.08.     THE LAME MAN AT THE TEMPLE GATE.
    8. 02.00.     ISAAC, JACOB AND JOSEPH
    9. 02.01.     LECTURE I: ISHMAELL AND ISAAC
   10. 02.02.     LECTURE II: ISAAC’S MARRIAGE
   11. 02.03.     LECTURE III: ESAU AND JACOB
   12. 02.04.     LECTURE IV: JACOB’S FRAUD
   13. 02.05.     LECTURE V: JACOB’S FLIGHT AND DREAM
   14. 02.06.     LECTURE VI: JACOB AT PENIEL
   15. 02.07.     LECTURE VII: JACOB’S RETURN
   16. 02.08.     LECTURE VIII: JOSEPH’S DREAMS
   17. 02.09.     LECTURE IX: JOSEPH IN PRISON
   18. 02.10.     LECTURE X: PHARAOH’S DREAMS
   19. 02.11.     LECTURE XI: JOSEPH’S ADMINISTRATION
   20. 02.12.     LECTURE XII: VISITS OF JOSEPH’S BRETHREN
   21. 02.13.     LECTURE XIII: THE RECONCILIATION
   22. 03.00. THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD
   23. 03.01.     THE SOWER
   24. 03.02.     THE TARES
   25. 03.03.     THE MUSTARD SEED
   26. 03.04.     THE LEAVEN
   27. 03.05.     THE HID TREASURE AND THE PEARL OF PRICE
   28. 03.06.     THE NET
   29. 03.07.     THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT OR THE UNFORGIVING DEBTOR
   30. 03.08.     LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. FIRST LAST AND LAST FIRST
   31. 03.09.     THE TWO SONS
   32. 03.10.     THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN
   33. 03.11.     THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON
   34. 03.12.     THE TEN VIRGINS
   35. 03.13.     THE TALENTS
   36. 03.14.     PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS
   37. 03.15.     THE GOOD SAMARITAN
   38. 03.16.     THE RICH FOOL
   39. 03.17.     THE BARREN FIG-TREE
   40. 03.18.     THE GREAT SUPPER
   41. 03.19.     THE LOST SHEEP AND THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY
   42. 03.20.     THE PRODIGAL SON AND HIS ELDER BROTHER
   43. 03.21.     THE UNJUST STEWARD
   44. 03.22.     DIVES AND LAZARUS
   45. 03.23.     THE UNJUST JUDGE
   46. 03.24.     THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN
   47. 04.00. The Prayer That Teaches us To Pray
   48. 04.01.     After manner therefore pray ye: Our Father
   49. 04.02.     Hallowed be thy name
   50. 04.03.     Thy Kingdom come
   51. 04.04.     Thy Will be done in Earth,  in heaven
   52. 04.05.     Give us this day our daily bread
   53. 04.06.     And Forgive  our debts,  forgive  debtors
   54. 04.07.     And Lead  into temptation, but deliver evil

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  CHAPTER 1: 01.01. HOW TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST
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How to become like Christ by

Marcus Dods


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  CHAPTER 2: 01.03.     HOW TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST.
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HOW TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST.

"But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of
the Lord."-- 2 Corinthians 3:18 (Revised Version).

I suppose there is almost no one who would deny, if it were put to him, that the
greatest possible attainment a man can make in this world is likeness to The
Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly no one would deny that there is nothing but
character that we can carry out of life with us, and that our prospect of good
in any future life will certainly vary with the resemblance of our character to
that of Jesus Christ, which is to rule the whole future. We all admit that; but
almost every one of us offers to himself some apology for not being like Christ,
and has scarcely any clear reality of aim of becoming like Him. Why, we say to
ourselves, or we say in our practice, it is really impossible in a world such as
ours is to become perfectly holy. One or two men in a century may become great
saints; given a certain natural disposition and given exceptionally favouring
circumstances, men may become saintly; but surely the ordinary run of men, men
such as we know ourselves to be, with secular disposition and with many strong,
vigorous passions--surely we can really not be expected to become like Christ,
or, if it is expected of us, we know that it is impossible. On the contrary,
Paul says, "We all," "we all." Every Christian has that for a destiny: to be
changed into the image of his Lord. And he not only says so, but in this one
verse he reveals to us the mode of becoming like Christ, and a mode, as we shall
find, so simple and so infallible in its working that a man cannot understand it
without renewing his hope that even he may one day become like Christ. In order
to understand this simplest mode of sanctification we must look back at the
incident that we read in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 34:29-35). Paul had been
reading how when Moses came down from the mount where he had been speaking with
God his face shone, so as to dazzle and alarm those who were near him.

They at once recognised that that was the glory of God reflected from him; and
just as it is almost as difficult for us to look at the sun reflected from a
mirror as to look directly at the sun, so these men felt it almost as difficult
to look straight at the face of Moses as to look straight at the face of God.
But Moses was a wise man, and he showed his wisdom in this instance as well as
elsewhere. He knew that that glory was only on the skin of his face, and that of
course it would pass away. It was a superficial shining. And accordingly he put
a veil over his face, that the children of Israel might not see it dying out
from minute to minute and from hour to hour, because he knew these Israelites
thoroughly, and he knew that when they saw the glory dying out they would say,
"God has forsaken Moses. We need not attend to him any more. His authority is
gone, and the glory of God’s presence has passed from him." So Moses wore the
veil that they might not see the glory dying out. But whenever he was called
back to the presence of God he took off the veil and received a new access of
glory on his face, and thus went "from glory to glory."

"That," says Paul, "is precisely the process through which we Christian men
become like Christ." We go back to the presence of Christ with unveiled face;
and as often as we stand in His presence, as often as we deal in our spirit with
the living Christ, so often do we take on a little of His glory. The glory of
Christ is His character; and as often as we stand before Christ, and think of
Him, and realise what He was, our heart goes out and reflects some of His
character. And that reflection, that glory, is not any longer merely on the skin
of the face; as Paul wishes us to recognise, it is a spiritual glory, it is
wrought by the spirit of Christ upon our spirit, and it is we ourselves that are
changed from glory to glory into the very image of the Lord.

Now obviously this mode of sanctification has extraordinary recommendations. In
the first place, it is absolutely simple. If you go to some priest or spiritual
director, or minister of the Gospel, or friend, and ask what you are to do if
you wish to become a holy man, why, even the best of them will almost certainly
tell you to read certain books, to spend so much time in prayer and reading your
Bible, to go regularly to church, to engage in this and that good work. If you
had applied to a spiritual director of the middle ages of this world’s history
and of the history of Christianity, he would have told you that you must retire
from the world altogether in order to become holy. Paul says, "Away with all
that nonsense!" We are living in a real world; Christ lived in a real world:
Christ did not retire from men. And He says all that you have to do in order to
be like Christ is to carry His image with you in your heart. That is all. To be
with Him, to let Him stand before you and command your love, that will
infallibly change you into His image. I do not know that we sufficiently
recognise the simplicity of Christian methods. We do not understand what Paul
meant by proclaiming it as the religion of the spirit, as a religion superior to
everything mechanical and external. Think of the deliverance it was for him who
had grown up under a religion which commanded him to go a journey three times a
year, to take the best of his goods and offer them in the Temple, to comply with
a multitude of oppressive observances and ordinances. Think of the emancipation
when he found a spiritual religion. Why, in those times a man must have
despaired of becoming a holy man; But now Paul says you will infallibly become
holy if you learn this easy lesson of carrying the Lord Jesus with you in your
heart.

Another recommendation of this method is that it is so obviously grounded on our
own nature. No sooner are we told by Paul that we must act as mirrors of Christ
than we recognise that nature has made us to be mirrors, that we cannot but
reflect what is passing before us. You are walking along the street, and, a
little child runs before a carriage; you shrink back as if you were in danger.
You see a man fall from a scaffolding, crushed; your face takes on an expression
of pain, reflecting what is passing in him. You go and spend an evening with a
man much stronger, much purer, much saner, than yourself, and you come away
knowing yourself a stronger and a better man. Why? Because you are a mirror,
because in your inmost nature you have responded to and reflected the good that
was in him.

Look into any family, and what do you see? You see the boy, not imitating
consciously, but taking on, his father’s looks and attitudes and ways; and as
the boy grows up these become his own looks and attitudes and ways. He has
reflected his father from one degree of proficiency unto another, from one
intimacy, from one day’s observation of his father to another, until he is the
image of the old man over again.

"Similarly," says Paul, "live with Christ; learn to carry His image with you,
learn to adore Him, learn to love Him, and infallibly, whether you will or not,
by this simple method you will become, Christ over again; you will become
conformed, as God means you to become conformed, to the image of His Son." This
has been tested by the experience of thousands; and it has been found to be a
true method. Every one who spends but two minutes in the morning in the
observation of Christ, every one who will be at the pains to let the image of
Christ rise before him and to remember the purity, the unworldliness, the
heavenliness, the godliness of Jesus Christ, that man is the better for this
exercise. And how utterly useless is it to offer any other method of
sanctification to thousands of our fellow-citizens. How can many of our
fellow-citizens secrete themselves for prayer? If you ask them to go and pray as
you pray in your comfortable home, if you ask them to read the Bible before they
go out at five or six o’clock in the morning, do you expect that your word will
be followed? Why, the thing is impossible. But ask a man to carry Christ with
him in his mind, that is a thing he can do; and if he does it once, if only once
the man sees Christ before him, realises that this living Person is with him,
and remembers the character of Christ as it is written for us in the Gospels,
that man knows that he has made a step in advance, knows that he is the better
for it, knows that he does reflect, for a little, even though it be but for a
little, the very image of the Lord Jesus Christ; and other people know it also.

Now, if that is so, there are obviously three things that we must do. We must in
the first place, learn to associate with Christ. I say that even one reflection
does something, but we need to reflect Christ constantly, continually, if we are
to become like Him. When you pass away from before a mirror the reflection also
.goes. In the case of Moses the reflection stayed for a little, and that is
perhaps a truer figure of what happens to the Christian who sets Christ before
him and reflects him. But very often as soon as Christ is not consciously
remembered you fall back to other remembrances and reflect other things. You go
out in the morning with your associates, and they carry you away; you have not
as yet sufficiently impressed upon yourself the image of Christ. Therefore we
must learn to carry Christ with us always, as a constant Companion. Some one may
say that is impossible. No one will say it is impossible who is living in
absence from anyone he loves. What happens when we are living separated from
some one we love? This happens: that his image is continually in our minds. At
the most unexpected times that image rises, and especially, if we are proposing
to ourselves to do what that person would not approve. At once his image rises
to rebuke us and to hold us back. So that it is not only possible to carry with
us the image of Christ: it is absolutely certain that we shall carry that image
with us if only we give Him that love and reverence which is due from every
human being. Who has done for us what Christ has done? Who commands our
reverence as He does? If once He gets hold of our affection, it is impossible
that He should not live constantly in our hearts. And if we say that persons
deeply immersed in business cannot carry Christ with them thus, remember what He
Himself says: "If any man love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love
him, and we will come unto him." So that He is most present with the busiest and
with those who strive as best they can to keep His commandments. But we must not
only associate with Christ and make Him our constant company: we must, in the
second place, set ourselves square with Christ. You know that if you look into a
mirror obliquely, if a mirror is not set square with you, you do not see
yourself, but what is at the opposite angle, something that is pleasant or
something that is disagreeable to you; it matters not--you cannot see yourself.
And unless we as mirrors set ourselves perfectly square with Christ, we do not
reflect Him, but perhaps things that are in His sight monstrous. And, in point
of fact, that is what happens with most of us, because it is here that we are
chiefly tried. All persons brought up within the Christian Church pay some
attention to Christ. We too well understand His excellence and we too well
understand the advantages of being Christian men not to pay some attention to
Christ. But that will not make us conform to His image. In order to be conformed
to the image of Christ we must be wholly His. Suppose you enter a studio where a
sculptor is working, will he hand you his hammer and chisel to finish the most
difficult piece of his work or to do any part of it? Assuredly not. It is his
own idea that he is working out, and none but his own hand can work it out. So
with us who are to be moulded by Christ. Christ cannot mould us into His image
unless we are wholly His. Every stroke that is made upon us by the chisel and
mallet of the world is lost to His ideal. As often as we reflect what is not
purely Christian, so often do we mar the I image of Christ.

Now how is it with us? Need we ask? When we go along the street, what is it that
we reflect? Do we not reflect a thousand things that Christ disapproves? What is
it that our heart responds to when we are engaged in business? Is it to appeals
that this world makes to us? Is it the appeal that a prospect of gain makes to
us that we respond to eagerly? That is what is making us; that is what is
moulding and making us the men that we are destined to be. We are moulded into
the character that we are destined to live with for ever and ever, by our
likings and dislikings, by the actual response that we are now giving day by day
to the things that we have to do with in this world. We may loathe the character
of the sensualist; no language is too strong for us when we speak of him: but if
we, in point of fact, respond to appeals made to the flesh rather than appeals
made to the spirit, we are becoming sensual. We may loathe and despise the
character of the avaricious worldly man; we may see its littleness, and
pettiness, and greed, and selfishness: but do our own hearts go out in response
to any offer of gain more eagerly than they go out to Christian work or to the
interests of Christ’s kingdom? Then we are becoming worldly and avaricious; we
are becoming the very kind of men that we despise. Of course we know this. We
Know that we are being made by what we respond to, and the older we grow we know
it the more clearly; we see it written on our own character that we have become
the kind of men that we little thought one day we should become, and we know
that we have become such men by responding to certain things which are not the
things of the Spirit. Never was a truer word said than that he that Soweth to
the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, and he only that soweth to the
Spirit shall reap life. That is what in other terms Paul here says. He says, "If
you set yourselves square with Christ, you will become like Him; that is to say,
if you find your all in Him, if you can be absolutely frank and honest with Him,
if you can say, ’Mould and fashion me according to Thy will; lead me according
to Thy will; make me in this world what Thou wilt; do with me what Thou wilt: I
put myself wholly at Thy disposal; I do not wish to crane to see past Christ’s
figure to some better thing beyond; I give myself wholly and freely to him’--the
man that says this, the man that does this, he will certainly become like to
Him. But the man who even when he prays knows that he has desires in his heart
that Christ cannot gratify, the man that never goes out from his own home or
never goes into his own home without knowing that he has responded to things
that Christ disapproves--how can that man hope to be like Him?"

We must then associate with Christ, and we must set ourselves squarely; we must.
be absolutely true in our entire and absolute devotion. Surely no man thinks
that this is a hardship; that his nature and life will be restricted by giving
himself wholly to Christ? It is only, as every Christian will tell you--it is
only when you give yourself entirely to Christ that you know what freedom means;
that you know what it is to live in this world afraid of nothing. Superior to
things that before you were afraid of and anxious about, you at length learn
what it is to be a child of God. Let no man think that he lames his nature and
makes his life poorer by becoming entirely the possession of Christ.

But, thirdly, we must set Christ before us and live before Him with unveiled
face. "We all _with unveiled face_ reflecting as a mirror." Throw a napkin over
a mirror, and it reflects nothing. Perfect beauty may stand before it, but the
mirror gives no sign. And this is why in a dispensation like ours, the Christian
dispensation, with everything contrived to reflect Christ, to exhibit Christ,
the whole thing set a-going for this purpose of exhibiting Christ, we so little
see Him. How is it that two men can sit at a Communion table together, and the
one be lifted to the seventh heaven and see the King in His beauty, while the
other only envies his neighbour his vision? Why is it that in the same household
two persons will pass through identically the same domestic circumstances, the
same events, from year to year, and the one see Christ everywhere, while the
other grows sullen, sour, indifferent? Why is it? Because the one wears a veil
that prevents him from seeing Christ; the other lives with unveiled face. How
was it that the Psalmist, in the changes of the seasons even, in the mountain,
in the sea, in everything that he had to do, found God? How was it that he knew
that even though he made his bed in hell he would find God? Because he had an
unveiled face; he was prepared to find God. How is it that many of us can come
into church and be much more taken up with the presence of some friend than with
the presence of Christ? The same reason still: we wear a veil; we do not come
with unveiled face prepared to see Him. And When we ask ourselves, "What, in
point of fact, is the veil that I wear? What is it that has kept me from
responding to the perfect beauty of Christ’s character? I know that that
character is perfect; I know that I ought to respond to it; I know that I ought
to go out eagerly towards Christ and strive to become like Him; why do I not do
it?" we find that the veil that keeps us from responding thus to Christ and
reflecting Him is not like the mere dimness on a mirror which the bright and
warm presence of Christ Himself would dry off; it is like an incrustation that
has been growing out from our hearts all our life long, and that now is
impervious, so far as we can see, to the image of Christ. How can hearts steeped
in worldliness reflect this absolutely unworldly, this heavenly Person? When we
look into our hearts, what do we find in point of fact? We find a thousand
,things that we know have no right there; that we know to be wrong. How can such
hearts reflect this perfect purity of Christ? Well, we must see to it that these
hearts be cleansed; we must hold ourselves before Christ until from very shame
these passions of ours are subdued, until His purity works its way into our
hearts through all obstructions; and we must keep our hearts, we must keep the
mirror free from dust, free from incrustations, once we have cleansed it. In
some circumstances you might be tempted to say that really it is not so much
that there is a veil on the mirror as that there is no quicksilver at all
behind. You meet in life characters so thin, so shallow, that every good thought
seems to go through and out of them at the other side; they hear with one ear,
and it goes out at the other. You can make no impression upon them. There is
nothing to impress, no character there to work upon. They are utterly
indifferent to spiritual things, and never give a thought to their own
character. What is to be done with such persons? God is the great Teacher of us
all; God, in His providence, has made many a man who has begun life as shallow
and superficial as man can be, deep enough before He has done with him.

Two particulars in which the perfectness of this method appears may be pointed
out. First of all, it is perfect in this: that anyone who begins it is bound to
go on to the end. The very nature of the case leads him to go on and on from
glory to glory, back and back to Christ, until the process is, actually
completed, and he is like Christ. The reason is this: that the Christian
conscience is never much taken up with attainment made, but always with
attainment that is yet to be made. It is the difference not the likeness that
touches the conscience. A friend has been away in Australia for ten years, and
he sends you his likeness, and you take it out eagerly, and you say, "Yes, the
eyes are the very eyes; the brow, the hair are exactly like," but there is
something about the mouth that you do not like, and you thrust it away in a
drawer and never look at it again. Why? Because the one point of unlikeness
destroys the whole to you. Just so when any Christian presents himself before
Christ it is not the points of likeness, supposing there are any, which strike
his conscience--it is the remaining points of difference that inevitably strike
him, and so he is urged on and on from one degree of proficiency to another
until the process is completed, because there is no point at which a man has
made a sufficient attainment in the likeness of Christ. There is no point at
which Christ draws a line and says, "You will do well if you reach this height,
and you need not strive further." Why, we should be dissatisfied, we should
throw up our allegiance to Christ if He treated us so. He is our ideal, and it
is resemblance to Him that draws us and makes us strive forward; and so a man is
bound, to go on, and on, and on, still drawn on to his ideal, still rebuked by
his shortcomings until he perfectly resembles Christ. And this character of
Christ that is our ideal is not assumed by Him for the nonce. He did not change
His nature when He came to this earth; He did not put on this character to set
us an example. The things that He did, He did because it was His nature to do
them. He came to this world because His love would not let Him stay away from
us. It was His nature that brought Him here, and it is His nature to be what He
is, and so his character is to become our nature; it is to be so wrought in us
that we cannot give it up. It is our eternal character, and therefore any amount
of pains is worth spending on the achievement of it. The second point of
perfectness lies here. You know that in painting a likeness or cutting out a
bust one feature often may be almost finished while the rest are scarcely
touched, but in standing before a mirror the whole comes out at once. Now we
often in the Christian life deal with ourselves as if we were painters and
sculptors, not as if we were mirrors: we hammer and chisel away at ourselves to
bring out some resemblance to Christ in some particulars, thinking that we can
do it piecemeal; we might as well try to feed up our body piecemeal; we might as
well try to make our eye bright without giving our cheek colour and our hands
strength. The body is a whole, and we must feed the whole and nourish the whole
if any one part of it is to be vigorous. So it is with character. The character
is a whole, and you can only deal with your character as a whole. What has
resulted when we have tried the other process? Sometimes we set ourselves to
subdue a sin or cultivate a grace. Well, candidly say what has come of this.
Judging from my own experience, I would say that this comes of it: that in three
or four days you forget what sin it was that you were trying to subdue. The
temptation is away, and the sin is not there, and you forget all about it. That
is the very snare of sin. Or you become a little better in a point that you were
trying to cultivate. In that grace you are a shade improved. But that only
brings out more astoundingly your frightful shortcoming in other particulars.
Now, adopting Paul’s method, this happens: Christ acts on our character just as
a person acts upon a mirror. The whole image is reflected at once. How is it
that society moulds a man? How can you tell in what class in society a man has
been brought up? Not by one thing, not by his accent, not by his bearing, not by
his conduct, but the whole man. And why? Because a man does not consciously
imitate this or that feature of the society in which he is brought up, does not
do it consciously at all; he is merely reflecting it as a mirror, and society
acts on him as a whole, and makes him the man he is. "Just so," says Paul. "Live
with Christ, and He will make you the man that you are destined to be."

One word in conclusion. I suppose there is no one who at one time or other has
not earnestly desired to be of some use in the world. Perhaps there are few who
have not even definitely desired to be of some use in the kingdom of Christ. As
soon as we recognise the uniqueness of Christ’s purpose and the uniqueness of
His power in the world, as soon as we recognise that all good influence and all
superlatively dominant influence proceeds from Him, and that really the hope of
our race lies in Jesus Christ--as soon as we realise that, as soon as we see
that with our reason, and not as a thing that we have been taught to believe, as
soon as we lay hold on it for ourselves, we cannot but wish to do something to
forward His purposes in the world. But as soon as we form the wish we say, "What
can we do? We have not been born with great gifts; we have not been born in
superior positions; we have not wealth; we are shut off from the common ways of
doing good; we cannot teach in the Sabbath school; we cannot go and preach; we
cannot go and speak to the sick; we cannot speak even to our fellow at the desk.
What can we do?" We can do the best thing of all, as of course all the best
things are open to every man. Love, faith, joy, hope, all these things, all the
best things, are open to all men; and so here it is open to all of us to forward
the cause of Christ in the most influential way possible, if not in the most
prominent way. What happens when a person is looking into a shop window where
there is a mirror, and some one comes up behind--some one he knows? He does not
look any longer at the image; he turns to look at the person whose image is
reflected. Or if he sees reflected on the mirror something very striking: he
does not content himself with looking at the image; he turns and looks at the
thing itself. So it is always with the persons that you have to do with. If you
become a mirror to Christ your friends will detect it in a very few days; they
will see appearing in you, the mirror, an image which they know has not been
originated in you, and they will turn to look straight at the Person that you
are reflecting. It is in that way that Christianity passes from man to man.


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  CHAPTER 3: 01.04.     THE TRANSFIGURATION.
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THE TRANSFIGURATION.

"And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, He took Peter and
John and James and went up into the mountain to pray."-- Luke 9:28-36. The
public life or our Lord falls into two parts; and the incident here recorded is
the turning point between them. In order that He might leave behind Him when He
died a sure foundation for His Church, it was necessary that His intimate
companions should at all events know that He was the Christ, and that the Christ
must enter into glory by suffering death. Only then, when they understood .
this, could He die and leave them on earth behind. Now it is just at this point
in His life that it has become quite clear that the first article of the
Christian creed--that Jesus is the Christ--had been at last definitely accepted
by the disciples. Very solemnly our Lord has put it to them: "Who say ye that I
am ?" No doubt it was a trying moment for Him as for them. What was He to do if
it had not now become plain at least to a few steadfast souls that He was the
Christ--the Messenger of God to men? Happily the impulsiveness of Peter gives
Him little space for anxiety; for he, with that generous outburst of
affectionate trust which should ring through every creed, said, "Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God." You see the intensified relief which this
brought to our Lord, the keen satisfaction He felt as He heard it distinctly and
solemnly uttered as the creed of the Twelve; as He heard what hitherto He could
only have gathered from casual expressions, from wistful awe-struck looks, from
overheard questionings and debatings with one another. You see how at once, He
steps on to a new footing with them, as He cordially, and with intense
gratitude, says to Peter, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona." In this
Divinely-wrought confession of Peter’s, He finds at last the foundation stone of
the earthly building the beginning of that intelligent and hearty reception of
Himself which was to make earth the recipient of all heaven’s fulness. But as
yet only half the work is done. Men believe that He is the King, but as yet they
have very little idea of what the kingdom is to consist. They think Him worthy
of all glory, but the kind of glory, and the way to it they are ignorant of.
From, that time forth, therefore, began Jesus to show unto them how He must go
unto Jerusalem and suffer many things, even of the men who ought chiefly to have
recognised Him, and to be raised again the third day.

Once before our Lord had been tempted in another way to the throne of the
universal dominion of men; again this temptation is pressed upon Him by the very
men who should have helped Him to resist it; His closest, His warmest, His most
enlightened friends, those who stand on quite a different plane from the world
at large, are His tempters. Satan found in them an adequate mouthpiece. They,
who should have cheered and heartened Him to face the terrible prospect, were
hindrances, were an additional burden and anxiety to Him.

Now, it is to this conversation that the incident known as the transfiguration
is linked by all the evangelists who relate it--the first three. It was six days
after (or, as Luke says, eight days after) this conversation that Jesus went up
Mount Hermon for the sake of retirement and prayer. Plainly He was aware that
the great crisis of His life had come. The time had come when He must cease
teaching, and face His destiny. He had made upon His disciples an impression
which would be indelible. With deliberation they had accepted Him as the
Messiah; the Church was founded; His work, so far as His teaching went, was
accomplished. It remained that He should die. To consecrate Himself to this hard
necessity, He retired to the solitude of Mount Hermon. We start, then, from the
wrong point of view, if we suppose that Jesus climbed Hermon in order to enjoy
spiritual ecstasy, or exhibit His glory to those three men. Ecstasy of this kind
must come unsought; and the way to it lies through conflict, humiliation,
self-mastery. It was not simply to pray that Jesus retired; it was to engage in
the great conflict of His life. And because He felt, Himself so much in need of
kindness and support, He took with Him the three companions He could most depend
upon. They were loyal friends; and their very presence was a strength to Him. So
human was Jesus, and now so heavily burdened, that the devotedness of these
three plain men--the sound of their voices, the touch of their hands as they
clambered the hill together, gave Him strength and courage. Let no one be
ashamed to lean upon the affection of his fellow-men. Let us, also, reverently,
and with sympathy, accompany our Lord and witness, and endeavour to understand,
the conflict in which He now engaged. It has been suggested that the
transfiguration may best be understood as a temptation. Undoubtedly there must
have been temptation in the experience of Jesus at this crisis. It was for the
purpose of finally consecrating Himself to death, with all its painful
accompaniments, that He now retired. But the very difficulty of this act of
consecration consisted just in this: that He might, if He pleased, avoid death.
It was because Peter’s words, "This be far from Thee," touched a deep chord in
His own spirit, and strengthened that within Himself which made Him tremble and
wish that God’s will could in any other wise be accomplished--it was this which
caused Him so sharply and suddenly to rebuke Peter. Peter’s words penetrated to
what was lurking near at hand as His normal temptation. We may very readily
underrate the trial and temptation of Christ, and thus have only a formal, not a
real, esteem for His manhood. We always underrate it when we do not fully
apprehend His human nature, and believe that He was tempted in all points as we
are. But, on the other hand, we underrate it if we forget that His position was
wholly different from ours. That Jesus had abundant nerve and courage no reader
of the Gospels can, of course, doubt. He was calm in the midst of a storm which
terrified experienced boat-men; in riots that threatened His life, in the hands
of soldiers striving to torment Him and break Him down, in the presence of
judges and enemies, He maintained a dignity which only the highest courage could
maintain. That such a Person should have quailed at the prospect of physical
suffering, which thousands of men and women have voluntarily and calmly faced,
is simply impossible to believe. Neither was it entirely His perception of the
spiritual significance of death which made it to Him a far more painful prospect
than to any other. Certainly this clear perception of the meaning of death did
add immensely to its terrors; but if we are even to begin to understand His
trial, and begin is all we can do--we must bear in mind what Peter had just
confessed, and what Jesus Himself knew--that He was the Christ. It was this
which made the difference. Socrates could toss off the poison as unmoved as if
it had been a sleeping-draught, because he was dying for himself alone. Jesus
could only with trembling take into His hand the fatal cup, because He knew that
He was standing for all men. If He failed, all failed. Everything hung upon Him.
The general who spends the whole night pacing his tent, debating the chances of
battle on the morrow, is not tormented with the thought of his own private fate,
but with the possibilities of disaster to his men and to his country, if his
design or his skill should at any moment of the battle fail. Jesus was human;
and we deny His humanity, and fail to give Him the honour due to it, if we do
not recognise the difficulty which He must always have felt in believing that
His single act could save the world, and the burden of responsibility which must
have weighed upon Him when He realised that it was by the Spirit He maintained
in life and in death, that God meant to bless all men. It was because He knew
Himself to be the Christ, and because every man depended upon Him as the Christ,
and because, therefore, the whole blessing God meant for the world depended upon
His maintaining faith in God through the most trying circumstances--it was
because of this that He trembled lest all should end in failure. It was this
which drove Him, again, and again, and again to the hills to spend all night in
prayer, in laying His burden upon the only Strength that could bear it. But in
retiring in order, with deliberation, finally to dedicate Himself to death, this
temptation must of necessity appear in all its strength. It is only in presence
of all that can induce Him to another course that He can resolve upon the
God-appointed way. As He prays two figures necessarily rise before Him, and
intensify the temptation. Moses and Elias were God’s greatest servants in the
past, and neither of them had passed to glory through so severe an ordeal.
Moses, with eye undimmed and strength unabated, was taken from earth by a
departure so easy that it was said to be "by the kiss of God." Elijah, instead
of removal by death, ascended to his rest in a chariot of fire. Was it not
possible that as easy an exodus might befit Him? Might not this ignominious
death He looked forward to make it impossible for the people to believe in Him?
How could they rank Him with those old prophets whom God had dealt with so
differently and so plainly honoured? Would people not almost necessarily accept
the death of the cross as proof that He was abandoned? Nay, did not their sacred
books justify them in considering Him accursed of God? Was He correct in His
interpretation of the Scriptures--an interpretation which led Him to believe
that the Messiah must suffer and die, but which none of His friends admitted,
and none of the authorities and skilled interpreters in His country admitted?
Was it not, after all, possible that His kingdom might be established by other
means? We can see but a small part of the force of these temptations, but If the
presence of those august figures intensified the normal temptation of this
period, their presence was also a very effectual aid against this temptation. In
their presence His anticipated end could no longer be called death; rather the
departure, or, as the narrative says, the Exodus. The eternal will and mighty
hand which had guided and upheld Moses when he bore the responsibility and toil
of emancipating a host of slaves from the most powerful of rulers would uphold
Jesus in the infinitely weightier responsibilities which now lay upon Him.
Elijah, also, at a crisis of his people’s history, had stood alone against all
the might and malignity of Jezebel and the priests of Baal; alone, and with
death staring him in the face, he confessed God, and, by his single-handed
victory, wrought deliverance for the whole people. Their combined voice,
therefore, says to Jesus, "Banish all fear; look forward to your decease at
Jerusalem as about to effect an immeasurably grander deliverance than that which
gave freedom to your people. Do not shrink from trusting that the sacrifice of
One can open up a source of blessing to all. Steadfast submission to God’s will
is ever the path to glory." But not only must our Lord have been encouraged and
heartened by recalling the individual experiences of these men, but their
presence reminds Him of His relation to them in God’s purposes; for Moses and
Elijah represent the whole Old Testament Church. By the Law and the Prophets had
God up to this time dealt with men; through these He had revealed Himself. But
Jesus had long since recognised that neither Moses nor Elias, neither Law nor
Prophets, were sufficient. The Christ must come to effect a real mediation
between God and man; and Jesus knew that He Himself was the Christ. On Him lay
the task of making the salvation of the Jews the salvation of the whole world;
of bringing all men to Jehovah. It was under pressure of this responsibility
that He had searched the Scriptures, and found in the Scriptures what those had
not found--that it was necessary that Christ should suffer and so enter into
glory.

Probably it was not so much any one passage of Scripture which had carried home
to the mind of Jesus that the Christ must die. We may seek for that in vain; it
was His perception of the real needs of men, and of what the Law and the
Prophets had done to satisfy these needs, that showed Him what remained for the
final Revealer and Mediator to accomplish. The Law and the Prophets had told men
that God is holy, and men’s blessedness, even as God’s blessedness, lies in
holiness. But this very teaching seemed to widen the breach between men and God,
and to make union between them truly hopeless. By the law came not union with
God, but the knowledge of sin. To put it shortly, fellowship or union with God,
which is the beginning and end of all religion, is but another name for
holiness. Holiness is union with God, and holiness can better be secured by
revealing the holy God as a God of love than by law or by prophets. It is this
holy love and lovingness that the cross of Christ brings home to every heart.
This revelation of the Father, no document and no officials could possibly make;
only the Beloved Son, only one who stood in a personal relation to the Father,
and was of the same nature, as truly divine as human. Therefore the voice goes
forth annulling all previous utterances, and turning all eyes to Jesus--"Hear
Him!" Therefore, as often as the mind of Christ was employed on this subject, so
often did He see the necessity of death. It was only by dying that men’s sins
could be expiated, and only by dying the fulness of God’s love could be
exhibited. The Law and the Prophets spoke to Him always, and now once more of
the decease He must accomplish at Jerusalem. They spoke of His death, because it
was His death that was presupposed by every sacrifice of the Law; by every
prophecy that foretold good to man. The Law found its highest fulfilment in the
most lawless of transgressions; prophecy found its richest in that which seemed
to crush out hope itself.

Nothing, then, could have been more opportune than this for the encouragement of
our Lord. On earth He had found incredulity among His best friends; incapacity
to see why He should die; indifference to His object here. He now meets with
those who, with breathless interest, await His death as if it were the one only
future event. In their persons He sees, at one view, all who had put their trust
in God from the foundation of the world; all who had put faith in a sacrifice
for sin, knowing it was God’s appointment, and that He would vindicate His own
wisdom and truth by finding a real propitiation; all who, through dark and
troublous times, had strained to see the consolation of Israel; all who, in the
misery of their own thought, had still believed that there was a true glory for
men somewhere to be attained; all who through the darkness and storm and fear of
earth had trusted in God, scarcely daring to think what would become of their
trust, but assured that God had spoken, nay, had covenanted with His people, and
finding true rest in Him. When all these now stand before our Lord in the
persons of Moses and Elias, the hitherto mediators between God and man, must not
their waiting eyes, their longing, trustful expectation, have confirmed His
resolve that their hope should not be put to shame? The whole anxiety of guilty
consciences, the whole hope of men awakened, the whole longing sigh for a God
revealed, that had breathed from the ancient Church, at once became audible to
His ear. At once He felt the dependence of all who had died in faith in the
promise. He meets the eager, questioning gaze of all who had hoped for salvation
concentrated on Himself. Is this He who can save the lost, He who can bear the
weight of a world’s dependence? What an appeal there is here to His compassion!
How steadfastly now does He set His face towards Jerusalem, feeling straitened
till the world’s salvation is secured, and all possibility of failure for ever
at an end.

This, then, was for Jesus an appeal that was irresistible. As the full meaning
of all that God had done for His people through Law and Prophets was borne in
upon Him, He saw that He must die. Now, for the last time, He put aside all His
hesitations, and as He prays, He yields Himself to the will of the Father. Those
are the supreme moments in human life when man, through sore conflict and at
great cost, gives himself up to the will of God. Never was there so sore a
conflict, and never so much joy as here. His face was transfigured; it beamed
with the light and peace of heaven that shone from within. The eyes of the
disciples closed on a face, every line of which they knew and loved--a face full
of wisdom and resolve and deep-founded peace, showing marks of trouble, of
trial, of endurance, of premature age; their eyes opened upon a face that shines
with a preternatural radiance--a face expressing, more than ever face had done,
the dignity and glory and joy of perfect harmony with God. He was God-possessed,
and the Divine glory shone from His face. It was at the moment of his yielding
all to God that Jesus attained His highest glory. Man’s life is transformed when
he allows God’s will to fill it and shine through it; his person is transformed
when he divests himself of self-will, and allows God wholly to possess it.

How easy was it for the disciples at that hour to hear Him; to listen now when
He spoke of the cross, which, for Him and for all His disciples, is the path
leading from earth to heaven, from what is selfishly human to true human glory!
It is on the cross that Jesus is truly enthroned. It is because He became the
Servant of all that He is greatest of all. If anyone could rival Him in the
service he would rival Him in the glory. It is because He gave Himself for us,
willing to do all to save us in our direst need, that He takes a place in our
confidence and in our heart that belongs to no other. He becomes the one
absolute need of every man, because He is that which brings us to God, and gives
God to us.

Hear Him, therefore, when, through His Providence, He preaches to you this
difficult lesson. If your difficulties and distresses are real; if you cannot
labour without thinking of them; if you cannot rest from labour through fear of
their possessing you; if your troubles have assumed so hard a form, so real a
place in your life, that all else has come to seem unreal and empty, then
remember that He whose end was to be eternal glory chose sorrow, that He might
break a way to glory through human suffering. If there is nothing in your lot in
life which crosses and humbles you; if there is nothing in your circumstances
which compels you to see that this life is not for self-indulgence and
self-gratification, then still you must win participation in your Lord’s glory
by accepting His lowliness and heavenliness of mind. It is not to outward
success that you are called in His kingdom, it is to inward victory. You are
called to meekness, and lowliness, and mercy; to the losing of your life in this
world, that you may have life everlasting.

Notice, in conclusion, the impression made on the disciples, as disclosed in
Peter’s words, "It is good to be here." Peter knew when he was in good company.
He was not very wise himself, but he had sense enough to recognise wisdom in
others. He was not himself a finished saint, but he had a hearty appreciation of
those who had attained saintliness. He had reverence, power to recognise, and
ungrudgingly to worship, what was good. He had an honest delight in seeing his
Master honoured, a delight which, perhaps, some of us envy. It was not a forced
expression, it was not a feigned delight. He was a man who always felt that
something should be said, and so here what was uppermost came out. Why did Peter
feel it was good for him to be there? Possibly it was in part because here was
glory without shame; recognition and homage without suffering; but no doubt
partly because he felt that in such company he was a better man than elsewhere.
Christ kept him right; seemed to understand him better than others; to consider
him more. There was no resentment on Peter’s part on account of the severe
answers he received from Christ. He knew these were just, and he had learned to
trust his Lord; and it suddenly flashes upon him that, if only he could live
quietly with Jesus in such retirement as they then enjoyed, he would be a better
man. We have the same consciousness as Peter, that if ever we are right-minded
and disposed for good, and able to make sacrifices and become a little heavenly;
if ever we hate sin cordially--it is when we are in the presence of Christ. If
we find it as impossible as Peter did to live retired from all conflict and
intercourse with all kinds of men; if, like Peter, we have to descend into a
valley ringing with demoniacs cries; if we are called upon to deal with the
world as it actually is--deformed, dehumanised by sin; is it nothing that we can
assure ourselves of the society and friendship of One who means to remove all
suffering and all sin, and who does so, not by a violent act of authority, but
by sympathy and patient love, so that we can be His proper instruments, and in
healing and helping others, help and heal ourselves!


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  CHAPTER 4: 01.05.     INDISCREET IMPORTUNITY
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INDISCREET IMPORTUNITY.

"I gave thee a king in mine anger." Hosea 13:11.

"Ye know not what ye ask." Matthew 20:22.

Psalms 78:27-31. That God sometimes suffers men to destroy themselves, giving
them their own way, although He knows it is ruinous, and even putting into their
hands the scorpion they have mistaken for a fish, is an indubitable and alarming
fact.

Perhaps no form of ruin covers a man with such shame or sinks him to such
hopelessness as when he finds that what he has persistently clamoured for and
refused to be content without, has proved the bitterest and most disastrous
element in his life. This particular form of ruin is nowhere described with more
careful, and significant detail than in the narrative of Israel’s determination
to have a king over them like other nations. Samuel, forseeing the evils which
would result from their choice, remonstrated with them and reminded them of
their past success, and pointed out the advantageous elements in their present
condition. But there is a point at which desire becomes deaf and blind, and the
evil of it can be recognised only after it is gratified. God therefore gave them
a king in His anger." The truth, then, which is embodied in this incident, and
which is liable to reappear in the experience of any individual, is this, that
sometimes God yields to importunity, and grants to men what He knows will be no
blessing to them. "It is a thing," says South, "partly worth our wonder, partly
our compassion, that what the greatest part of men most passionately desire,
that they are generally most unfit for; so that at a distance they court that as
an enjoyment, which upon experience they find a plague and a great calamity." It
is astonishing how many things we desire for the same reason as the Israelites
sought a king, merely that we may have what other people have. We may not
definitely covet our neighbour’s house or his wife or his position or anything
that is his; but deep within us remains the scarcely-conscious conviction that
we have not all we might and ought to have until our condition more resembles
his. We take our ideas of happiness from what we see in other people, and have
little originality to devise any special and more appropriate enjoyment or
success. Fashion or tradition or the necessity of one class in society has
promoted certain possessions and conditions to the rank of extremely desirable
or even necessary elements of happiness, and forthwith we desire them, without
duly considering our own individuality and what it is that must always
constitute happiness for us, or what it is that fits us for present usefulness.
Health, position, fame, a certain settlement in life, income, marriage; such
things are eagerly sought by thousands, and they are sought without sufficient
discrimination, or at any rate without a well-informed weighing of consequences.
We refuse, too, to see that already without those things our condition has much
advantage, and that we are actually happy. We may be dimly conscious that our
tastes are not precisely those of other men, and that if the ordinary ways of
society are the best men can devise for spending life satisfactorily, these are
scarcely the ways that will suit us. Yet, like petted children, we continue
persistently to cry for the thing we have not. Sometimes it is a mere question
of waiting. The thing we sigh for will come in time, but not yet. To wait is the
test of many persons; and if they are impatient, they fail in the one point that
determines the whole. Many young persons seem to think life will all be gone
before they taste any of its sweets. They must have everything at once, and
cannot postpone any of its enjoyments or advantages. No quality is more fatal to
success and lasting happiness than impatience. This being a common attitude of
mind towards fancied blessings, how does God deal with it? For a long time He
may in compassion withhold the fatal gift. He may in pity disregard our petulant
clamour. And He may in many ways bring home to our minds that the thing we crave
is in several respects unsuitable. We may become conscious under His discipline
that without it we are less entangled with the world and with temptation; that
we can live more holily and more freely as we are, and that to quench the desire
we have would be to choose the better part. God may make it plain to us that it
is childish to look upon this one thing as the supreme and only good.
Providential obstacles are thrown in our way, difficulties amounting almost to
impossibilities absolutely prevent us for a while from attaining our object, and
give us time to collect ourselves and take thought. And not only are we
prevented from attaining this one object, but in other respects our life is
enriched and gladdened, so that we might be expected to be content. If we cannot
have a king like other nations, we have the best of Judges in abundance. And
experience of this kind will convince the subject of it that a Providence shapes
our ends, even although the lesson it teaches may remain unlearnt. For man’s
will is never forced: and therefore if we continue to pin our happiness to this
one object, and refuse to find satisfaction and fruit in life without it, God
gives in anger what we have resolved to obtain. He gives it in its bare earthly
form, so that as soon as we receive it our soul sinks in shame. Instead of
expanding our nature and bringing us into a finished and satisfactory condition,
and setting our life in right relations with other men, we find the new gift to
be a curse to us, hampering us, cutting us off in unexpected ways from our
usefulness, thwarting and blighting our life round its whole circumference. For
a man is never very long in discovering the mischief he has done by setting his
own wisdom above God’s, by underrating God’s goodness and overriding God’s will.
When Samuel remonstrated with Israel and warned them that their king would
tyrannise over them, all the answer he got was: "Nay, but we will have a king to
rule over us." But, not many days after, they came to Samuel with a very
different petition: "Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die
not; for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king." So it is
always; we speedily recognise the difference between God’s wisdom and our own.
What seemed neglect on His part is now seen to be care, and what we murmured at
as niggardliness and needless harshness we now admire as tenderness. Those at
least are our second and wiser thoughts, even although at first we may be
tempted with Manoah when he saw his son blind and fettered in the Philistine
dungeon, to exclaim,

What thing good Pray’d for, but often proves our woe, our bane?

I prayed for children and thought barrenness In wedlock a reproach;

I gain’d a son And such a son as all men hail’d me happy. Who would be now a
father in my stead?

Oh, wherefore did God grant me my request, And as a blessing with such pomp
adorn’d Why are His gifts desirable, to tempt Our earnest prayers, then giv’n
with solemn hand As graces, draw a scorpion’s tail behind?

Such, I say, may be our first thoughts; but when the first bitterness and
bewilderment of disappointment are over, when reason and right feeling begin to
dominate, we own that the whole history of our prayer and its answer has been
most humiliating to us, indeed, but most honouring to God. We see as never
before how accurately our character has been understood, how patiently our evil
propensities have been resisted, how truly our life has been guided towards the
highest ends. The obvious lessons are:-

1. Be discreet in your importunity. Two parables are devoted to the inculcation
of importunity. And it is a duty to which our own intolerable cravings drive us.
But there is an importunity which offends God. There is a spiritual instinct
which warns us when we are transgressing the bounds of propriety; a perception
whereby Paul discerned, when he had prayed thrice for the removal of the thorn
in his flesh, that it would not be removed. There are things, about which a
heavenly-minded person feels it to be unbecoming to be over-solicitous; and
there are things regarding which it is somehow borne in upon us that we are not
to attain them. There are natural disabilities, physical or mental or social
weaknesses and embarrassments, regarding which we sometimes cannot but cry out
to God for relief, and yet as we cry we feel that they will not be removed, and
that we must learn to bear the burden cheerfully.

2. On the other hand, we must not be false in prayer. We must utter to God our
real desires in their actual intensity; while at the same time we must learn to
moderate desires which we see to be unpleasing to God. We must learn to say with
truth: Not what we wish but what we want Thy favouring grace supply; The good
unasked, in mercy grant, The ill, though asked, deny.

Learn why God does not make the coveted blessing accessible to you, and you will
learn to pray freely and wisely. Try to discover whether there is not some
peculiar advantage attaching to your present state--some more wholesome example
you can furnish, some more helpful attitude towards others; some healthier
exercise of the manlier graces of Christianity, which could not be maintained
were your request granted.

3. If your life is marred by the gift you have wrung by your importunity from a
reluctant God, be wise and humble in your dealing with that gift. If you have
suddenly and painfully learned that in the ordinary-looking circumstances of
your life God is touching you at every point, and if you clearly see that in
giving you the fruit of your desires He is punishing you, there is one only way
by which you can advance to a favourable settlement, and that is by a real
submission to God. Perhaps in no circumstances is a man more tempted to break
with God. At first he cannot reconcile himself to the idea that ruin should be
the result of prayer, and he is inclined to say, If this be the result of
waiting on God, the better course is to refuse His guidance. In his heart he
knows he is wrong, but there is an appearance of justice in what he says, and it
is so painful to have the heart broken, to admit we have been foolish and wrong,
and humbly to beseech God to repair the disasters our own self-will has wrought.


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  CHAPTER 5: 01.06.     SHAME ON ACCOUNT OF GOD'S DISPLEASURE
========================================================================

SHAME ON ACCOUNT OF GOD’S DISPLEASURE.

"And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should
she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and
after that let her be received in again."-- Numbers 12:14. The incident recorded
in this chapter is of a painful character. Petty jealousies discovered
themselves in the most distinguished family of Israel. Through the robes of the
anointed and sacred High Priest the throbbings of a heart stirred with evil
passion were discernible. Aaron and Miriam could not bear that even their own
brother should occupy a Position of exceptional dignity, and with ignorant
pretentiousness aspired to equality with him. It is to the punishment of this
sin that our attention is here called. This punishment fell directly on Miriam,
possibly because the person of the High Priest was sacred, and had he been
incapacitated all Israel would have suffered in their representative; possibly
because the sin, as it shows traces of a peculiarly feminine jealousy, was
primarily the sin of Miriam; and partly because, in her punishment, Aaron
suffered a sympathetic shame, as is apparent from his, impassioned appeal to
Moses in her behalf. The noteworthy feature of the incident and its most
impressive lesson are found in the fact that, although the healing and
forgiveness sought for Miriam were not refused, God is represented as resenting
the speedy oblivion of the offence on account of which the leprosy had been sent
and of the Divine displeasure incurred. There was cause to apprehend that the
whole matter might be too quickly wiped out and forgotten, and that the sinners,
reinstated in their old positions, should think too lightly of their offence.
This detrimental suddenness God takes measures to prevent. Had an earthly father
manifested his displeasure as emphatically as God had now shown His, Miriam
could not for a time have held up her head. God desires that the shame which
results from a sense of His displeasure should last at least as long. He
therefore enjoins something like a penance; He removes His stroke, but provides
for the moral effects of it being sufficiently impressed on the spirit to be
permanent.

Three points are involved in the words:

1. Our keener sense of man’s displeasure than of God’s.

2. The consequent possibility of accepting pardon with too light a heart.

3. The means of preventing such acceptance of pardon.

1. _We are much more sensitive to the displeasure of man than to that of God._
Men have several methods of expressing their opinion of us and their feeling
toward us; and these methods are quite effectual for their purpose. There is an
instinctive and exact correspondence between our feelings and every slightest
hint of disapprobation on the part of our acquaintances; and so readily and
completely does the mere carriage of any person convey to us his estimate of our
conduct that explicit denunciation is seldom required. The mode of expressing
opinion which is cited in the text is the most forcible Eastern mode of
expressing contempt. When one man spits in the face of another, no one, and
least of all the suffering party, can have the slightest doubt of the esteem in
which the one holds the other. If an insolent enemy were to spit in the face of
a slain foe, the dead man might almost be expected to blush or to rise and
avenge the insult. But comparing His methods with such a method as this, God
awards the palm to His own for explicitness and emphasis. He speaks of the most
emphatic and unambiguous of human methods with a "but," as if it could scarcely
be compared with His expressions of displeasure. "If her father had _but_ spit
in her face"--if that were all--but something immensely more expressive than
that has happened to her.

God, therefore, would have us ponder the punishments of sin, and find in them
the emphatic expressions of His judgment of our conduct and of ourselves. He
resents our shamelessness, and desires that we consider His judgments till our
callousness is removed. The case stands thus: God. is long-suffering, slow to
anger, not of a fault-finding, everchiding nature, but most loving and most
just; and this God has recorded against us the strongest possible condemnation.
This God, who cannot do what is not most just, and who cannot make mistakes,
this unfurious and holy God, whose opinion of us represents the very truth, has
pronounced us to be wicked and worthless; and we seem scarcely at all impressed
by the declaration. God’s judgment of us is not only absolutely true, but it
must also take effect; so that what He has pronounced against us will be seen
written in the facts bearing upon and entering into our life. But, although we
know this, we are for the most part as unmoved as if in hearing God’s judgment
pronounced against us we had heard but the sighing of the wind or any other
inarticulate, unintelligible sound. There is a climax of ignominy in having
excited in the Divine mind feelings of displeasure against us. One might suppose
a man would die of shame, and could not bear to live conscious of having merited
the condemnation and punishment of such a Being; one might suppose that the
breath of God’s disapproval would blast every blessing to us, and that so long
as we know ourselves displeasing to Him His sweetest gifts must be bitter to us;
but the coldness of a friend gives us more thought, and the contempt of men as
contemptible as ourselves affects us with a more genuine confusion.

God’s demand, then, is reasonable. He would have us feel before Him as much
shame as we feel before men, the same kind of shame--shame with the same blush
and burning in it, not shame of any sublimated, fictitious kind. He desires us
individually to take thought, and to say to ourselves: "Suppose a man had proved
against me even a small part of what is proved against me by God: Suppose some
wise, just, and honourable man had said of me and believed such things as God
has said: suppose he had said, and said truly, that I had robbed him, betrayed
trust, and was unworthy of his friendship, would the shame be no more poignant
than that which I feel when God denounces me?" How trifling are the causes which
make us blush before our fellows: a little awkwardness, the slightest accident
which makes us appear blundering, some scarcely perceptible incongruity of
dress, an infinitesimal error in manner or in accent--anything is enough to make
us uneasy in the company of those we esteem. It is God’s reasonable demand that
for those gross iniquities and bold transgressions of which we are conscious we
should manifest some heartfelt shame--a shame that does not wholly lack the
poignancy and agitation of the confusion we feel in presence of human judgment.

2. _The consequent possibility of accepting the pardon of sin with too light a
heart._ To ask for pardon Without real shame is to treat sin lightly; and to
treat sin lightly is to treat God lightly. Nothing more effectually deadens the
moral sense than: the habit of asking pardon without a due sense of the evil of
sin. We ask God to forgive us our debts, and we do so in so inconsiderate a
spirit that we go straightway and contract heavier debts. The friend who repays
the ten pounds we had lent him and asks for a new loan of twenty, does not
commend himself to our approval. He is no better who accepts pardon as if it
cost God nothing.

3. _The means of preventing a too light-hearted acceptance of pardon._ Under the
ceremonial prescriptions enjoined on Miriam lay some moral efficacy. A person
left for a full week without the camp must, in separation from accustomed
companionship, intercourse, and occupations, have been thrown upon his or her
own thoughts. No doubt it is often while engaged in our ordinary occupations
that the strongest light is flashed upon our true spiritual condition. It is
while in the company of other people that we catch hints which seem to interpret
to us our past and reveal to us our present state. But these glimpses and hints
often pass without result, because we do not find leisure to follow them up.
There must be some kind of separation from the camp if we are to know ourselves,
some leisure gained for quiet reflection. It is due to God that we be at some
pains to ascertain with precision our actual relation to His will. The very
feeling of being outcast, unworthy to mingle with former associates and friends,
must have been humbling and instructive. Miriam had been the foremost woman in
Israel; now she would gladly have changed places with the least known and be
lost among the throng from the eye of wonder, pity, contempt or cruel triumph.
All sin makes us unworthy of fellowship with the people of God. And the feeling
that we are thus unworthy, instead of being lightly and callously dismissed,
should be allowed to penetrate and stir the conscience.

If the leprosy departed from Miriam as soon as Moses prayed, yet the shock to
her physical system, and the revulsion of feeling consequent on being afflicted
with so loathsome a disease, would tell upon her throughout the week. All
consequences of sin, which are prolonged after pardon, have their proper effect
and use in begetting shame. We are not to evade what conscience tells us of the
connection between our sin and many of the difficulties of our life. We are not
to turn away from this as a morbid view of providence; still less are we to turn
away because in this light sin seems so real and so hideous. Miriam must have
thought, "If this disgusting condition of my body, this lassitude and nervous
trembling, this fear and shame to face my fellows, be the just consequence of my
envy and pride, how abominable must these sins be." And we are summoned to
similar thoughts. If this pursuing evil, this heavy clog that drags me down,
this insuperable difficulty, this disease, or this spiritual and moral weakness
be the fair natural consequence of my sin, if these things are in the natural
world what my sin is in the spiritual, then my sin must be a much greater evil
than I was taking it to be. But especially are we rebuked for all
light-heartedness in our estimate of sin by remembering Him who went without the
camp bearing our reproach. It is when we see Christ rejected of men, and outcast
for us and for our sin, that we feel true shame. To find one who so loves me and
enters into my position that He feels more keenly than myself the shame I have
incurred; to find one who so understands God’s holiness and is Himself so pure
that my sin affects Him with the profoundest shame--this is what pierces my
heart with an altogether new compunction, with an arrow that cannot be shaken
out. And this connection of Christ with our sin is actual. If Paul felt himself
so bound up with his fellow-Christians that he blushed for them when they erred,
and could say with truth, "Who is weak and I am not weak, who is offended and I
turn not?" much more truly may Christ say, Who sins and I am not ashamed? And if
He thus enters into a living sympathy with us, shall not we enter into sympathy
with Him, and go without the camp bearing His reproach, which, indeed, is ours;
striving, though it cost us much shame and self-denial, to enter heartily into
His feelings at our sins, and not letting our union to Him be a mere name or an
inoperative tie which effects no real assimilation in spirit between us and Him.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 6: 01.07.     NAAMAN CURED
========================================================================

NAAMAN CURED.

There is no Scripture story better known than that of Naaman, the Syrian. It is
memorable not only because artistically told, but because it is so full of human
feeling and rapid incident, and so fertile in significant ideas. The little
maid, whose touch set in motion this drama, is an instance of the adaptability
of the Jew. Nothing seemed less likely than that this captive girl should carry
with her into Syria anything of much value to anyone. Possessions she had none.
Friends she might have, only if she could make them. As a captive in a foreign
land she might reasonably have put aside all hope of obtaining any influence,
and might naturally have sought only to benefit herself. But she was a girl with
a heart. She at once took an interest in her new home, and saw with sorrowful
surprise that wealth could not purchase immunity from participation in the
ordinary human distresses, nor guarded gates forbid disease to pass in. Brooding
from day to day over the stories she had heard of Elisha’s power, and listening
to her mistress’s account of the failure of still another attempted cure, she
exclaims with childlike confidence and earnestness, "Would God my lord were with
the prophet that is in Samaria! then would he recover him of his leprosy." And
thus her natural interest in the troubles of other people, her cheerful and
spirited acceptance of her position, and the sense that taught her to make the
most of it, brought her this great opportunity of doing an important service. No
one can lay the blame of his uselessness and lack of good influence on his lack
of opportunity, if he is in contact with men at all, for wherever there are
human beings there are sorrows to be sympathised with, wants to be relieved,
characters to be fashioned. And while this Jewish maid was utilising her
captivity, her parents, if alive, would be eating their hearts out with anxiety
and anguish, imagining for their daughter the worst of destinies. Instead of the
horrors which usually follow such a captivity, she is cared for in a comfortable
home. Little did the parents, think that there was any work to be done in Syria,
which none could so well do as their little girl. The Lord had need of her, and
knew that when the parents heard all they would not resent that their daughter
had been thus employed. None of us see much further into the ways of Providence
than those parents saw. Now, as then, those who are bound up in one another are
separated, in order that ends even more important than the growth and
gratification of natural affections may be attained.

Significant, also, is the dismay of Joram, King of Israel, when he received the
letter bidding him find healing for Naaman. So little did he believe in Elisha’s
power that he concluded the King of Syria sought to pick a quarrel with him by
asking him for a favour he knew he could not grant. But while the king is
helplessly tearing his clothes in a passion of despair, Elisha sends him a
message which, at least for the present, gives him some calmness: "Why hast thou
rent thy clothes? Let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a
prophet in Israel." Elisha is ashamed that the King of Israel should have
exhibited such weakness before a foreign potentate. He feels that the honour of
Israel’s God is implicated, and boldly takes upon himself the responsibility of
the cure. Bold it certainly was, and tells of a confident faith that God will be
faithful to His servants. The king had no such faith. There was a power resident
in Israel of which he took no account. Like many other governments, this
Israelitish monarchy was unaware of its own resources, because it did not
condescend to reckon what was spiritual. Frequently in civil history you find
governments brought face to face with matters for which they are, with all their
resources, incompetent. In modern Europe, and as much in our own country as in
others, everything gives place to politics. Nothing stirs so much excitement.
Differences in religion do not sever men as differences in politics do. We
should, therefore, recognise what is here suggested, and should counter-balance
an undue regard for political movements and political power by the remembrance
that the hardest tasks of all are accomplished by quite another power, and by a
power which the politician often overlooks. What have we seen time after time in
our own Parliament, but the civil power rending its garments over evils which it
cannot cure? Are not the remedies which have been proposed for prevalent vices
absurdly incompetent? And it is the Church’s shame if she cannot step forward
and confidently say, You cannot deal with such things; hand them over to me.
There must always be "distempers of society" which rot the very life out of a
nation, and for which legislation and criminal law are wholly inadequate.
Honest-minded men who will not trifle with alarming abuses, who will not pretend
they have found a remedy, must simply rend their garments in their presence. And
it is well that in our day, as in others, there are men who, trusting in
personal effort and Divine aid, practically say to Government, "leave these
things to us." Christian charity and practical wisdom have, in our day effected
a good deal more than the healing of one leprous grandee, even if as yet the
spiritual force that resides in the community is only spasmodically and
partially applied to existing evil.

Elisha’s treatment of Naaman was intended to bring him into direct and conscious
dependence on God; or, in other words, to produce humility and faith. Some
persons are crushed and mastered by pain and sickness, and some gain in
spiritual worth what they lose in physical strength. But Naaman’s disease had as
yet done little to instruct him. He came as a great man, with his servants, and
chariots, and piles of money, to purchase a cure from a skilled man. He did not
see what Elisha plainly saw, that if this blessing came at all, it must come
from Israel’s God, and that with Jehovah no man Could barter or be on bargaining
terms, but must accept freely what was freely given. Therefore Elisha refuses
even to see him, that Naaman might understand it was with God he had to do; and
by refusing a single penny of payment he compelled the Syrian to humble himself
and accept his cure as a gift. And probably the incident finds a place in the
sacred history because it marked an important step in the knowledge of God. It
was an early instance of the Conquests which the God of Israel was to make among
the heathen, a distinct and legible proof that whoever from among the outlying
nations appealed to Him for help would receive the blessing he sought. But it
was more than this, it emphasized the freeness of all God’s gifts. Nothing could
be purchased from Jehovah; everything must be received as a gift. This was a new
idea to the heathen, and probably to many of the Israelites also. Certainly it
is an idea that is only dimly apprehended by ourselves. Our dealing with one
another is to so large an extent governed by the idea that nothing can be had
for nothing, that we carry this idea into our dealings with God, and expect only
what we can earn and claim. It is a wholesome pride that prompts us to work at
anything rather than be dependent on other men, but it is a most unwholesome and
ignorant pride that forbids us to acknowledge our dependence on God, and to
accept freely what He freely gives. Until we learn to live in God, to own Him as
alone having life in Himself, and to accept from Him life and all that sustains
it, both physical and spiritual, we are not recognising the truth and living in
it. Our good deeds and good feelings, our repentances and righteous intentions
and endeavours, are as much out of place as a means of procuring God’s favour
and help as Naaman’s talents of silver and pieces of gold. We have God’s favour
irrespective of our merit, and we must humble ourselves to accept it as His free
gift, which we could not earn and have not earned.

Naaman no sooner saw that Jehovah was a living and true God than he perceived
that certain practical difficulties would result from this belief. Sometimes men
do not connect their belief with their practice; they do not let their left hand
know what their right hand is doing. But Naaman . foresaw that, as hitherto, he
would still be expected to enter the temple of the god Rimmon when his master
went to worship. And he wished Elisha’s authority for this measure of
conformity. In our own country men have been severely tested by acts of
conformity. And nothing gives the conscience of the whole people so decided a
lift as when men prefer disgrace or death to a conformity which they believe to
be wrong. Had Naaman been as uncompromising as Daniel, who would not conform
even so far as to pray in a different corner of his room, or as the Christian
soldiers who suffered death rather than throw a pinch of incense on the altar
before the Emperor’s image, possibly Elisha would have given him greater
commendation than the mere acquiescence pronounced in the words, "Go in peace."
But in exculpation of Naaman it is to be said that he did not hide his new
conviction, but built an altar to Jehovah in Damascus. And especially it is to
be remarked that in his case these acts of conformity were not proposed as a
test of his adherence to the religion of the country; and this makes all the
difference. Had Naaman’s master commanded him to bow in the house of Rimmon as a
test of his acknowledgment of the Syrian god, Naaman would have refused; but so
long as it was a mere act or courtesy to his master, the formal act of a
courtier, from which no inferences could be drawn, he might reasonably continue
it. To receive the communion kneeling is customary in some churches, and so long
as one is allowed to put his own interpretation on the attitude, no harm can
come of it. But at one time this attitude was the test by which two great and
antagonistic parties in England were distinguished from one another; a meaning
was put upon the act which made it impossible to every man who could not accept
that meaning. Conformity then was sin, unless conviction went with the outward
act. In many points of conduct this is a distinction of importance. There are
many things which we may do so far as the thing itself is concerned, but which
we may not do when the public mind is agitated upon that point and will draw
certain inferences from our conduct. There are many things which to us have no
moral significance at all, any more than sitting at one side or other of our
table; but if a moral significance is attached to such things by other people,
and if they invite us to do them or to leave them undone as a test of our
attitude towards God or Christianity or of our moral bent, then we must beware
of misleading other people and defiling our own conscience. Bowing in the house
of Rimmon meant nothing new to Naaman; it was not worship; it was no more than
turning round a street corner when the king had hold of his arm. To him the idol
was now, as to Paul, "nothing in the world." But if the king had said, "You must
bow to show the people that you worship Syria’s god," then plainly the bowing
would have been unjustifiable. And similarly, if a matter which to us is of no
moral significance becomes a test of our disposition or attitude towards truth,
we must be guided in our conduct not solely by our own view of the indifference
of the matter, but also by the significance attached to it by other people.
There are other points of conduct regarding which we have no need to consult any
prophet; points in which we are asked to conform to a custom we know to be bad,
or to follow and countenance other men in what we know to be unwholesome for us.
To conform in such cases is to train ourselves in hypocrisy; it is to say Lord,
Lord, while we allow the world actually to rule our life.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: 01.08.     THE LAME MAN AT THE TEMPLE GATE.
========================================================================

THE LAME MAN AT THE TEMPLE GATE.

Acts 3:1-8.

Although this miracle was followed by consequences so serious as to make it a
landmark in the history of those early days of the Church, it was not itself the
result of deliberation or contrivance. Peter and John were, as usual, on their
way to evening prayer in the Temple. These two men had much to gain from one
another, and they kept much together. In study, in business, in Christian work,
in life generally everyone is the better of the friend who supplements his own
character. Happy he whose closest friend of all provokes only to love and good
works, and calls out only what is best in him. It is, if not essential to the
growth and health of the spiritual life, most desirable to have a friend with
whom intercourse is absolutely free and frank; one to whom it is the natural
thing to explain the actual state of the spirit, and utter our most sceptical or
our most devout thoughts, and who can be trusted to respond charitably,
confidentially, and wisely to all communications. The Church owes much to the
friendship of Peter and John, as well as to each individually. On how small a
contingency did this miracle hinge. Had Peter happened to have had a penny he
would have dropped it in the beggar’s palm and passed on, leaving him content
with the alms and unconscious of all he had missed. And it is sometimes well for
us, as for Peter, that we are baulked in our first intentions towards our
friends and our first attempts at being of use. It is well, for example, that we
cannot at once rescue every one out of sickness and poverty, for thereby our
love is compelled to a deeper consideration and to a thousand kindnesses which
find their way to the heart and leave for ever a treasure of happy memory. Our
inability to gratify the obvious and clamant want of our friend keeps our
thought hovering around him until, at last, we discern how we can confer a
better and more enduring, because a more difficult and thoughtful, gift.

Probably Peter had often passed this lame man before. To-day the two Apostles
have not together as much as the poor widow with her two mites, and they are
passing and thinking as little as we sometimes think of leaving the needy to the
charity of others, when suddenly it occurs to Peter that, after all, he has what
may be of more service to the beggar than silver or gold. "What I have, that
give I thee." The best help we can give is not that which we can give with the
hand, and which is current coin, which anyone else may give, and which is of the
same value, whoever gives it; but rather that which we communicate from our own
heart and soul, and which is our own peculiar treasure--the accumulation of a
life’s experience. To add a little to anyone’s outward comfort is always worth
doing; but to impart to another what becomes life and strength and encouragement
perennially within himself is surely better. Frequently the help we chiefly need
is nothing outward and material, but that which one bare human spirit can render
to another. But alas! when thrown back upon our inward resources, we are so
conscious of our poverty that we think sixpence or a shilling is probably of
greater value than anything which can come straight from our spirit. Of the lame
man little is told us which may give us a clue to his state of mind. He was one
of those who had been left unhealed by Christ. Often must Christ have passed
him, and yet He had never spoken nor laid healing hand upon him. Perhaps during
the long hours the lame man sometimes thought of this, and bewailed his own
negligence in not using opportunities now for ever gone. He could only look with
envy and self-reproach on those who had once been blind, or, like himself, lame,
and whom he now saw in perfect health. His feelings were akin to the remorse of
those who imagine that their day of grace is gone, and exclaim :

Thy saints are comforted, I know, And love Thy house of prayer;

I therefore go where others go, But find no comfort there.

There is no despair worth calling despair but despair of salvation. But what
Christ has not done, an Apostle may do. The lesser instrument may effect what
the more powerful has not effected. A feebler ministry may in some cases produce
results which the abler ministry has not produced.

Another feature of the beggar’s state of mind appears in listless, mechanical
way in which he asks an alms. He had not even troubled to look up. Too commonly
human prayer is the monotonous whine of the beggar that scarcely troubles to
consider to whom the petition is addressed. Had this man taken the trouble to
scan the appearance of those fishermen he would have seen that silver or gold
could not be expected. But he had fallen into one chant, uttered as soon as the
shadow of the passer-by fell upon him. It is a picture of the unreal and
indifferent spirit in which much prayer is offered. There is no harm in asking
for certain benefits every day of our life, and no harm in using the same words,
if we have chosen these words as the fittest. But there is harm in allowing a
form of words to engender monotony and lifelessness in the spirit, so that we
never consider carefully the object of our worship and what it is fit that He
should give. This cripple had come to be content with the few coppers which
would furnish his supper and bed; all the great world with its pleasures, its
enterprise, its high places lay quite beyond his hope; and thus does one find
his own soul dying to all that lies beyond daily needs, and forgetful of the
great and glorious things that are written of the heirs of God. It is surely a
great art to know "who it is that speaks to us, and what is the gift of God."

Peter’s first care was to arouse the man. "Look on us!" The man’s attention was
commanded. All his life he had been training to know faces, to know who would
give and who would not give, who would not give if others were looking, and who
would give at the gate of the Temple, dropping the coin as into an alms box,
without any regard to the want of the beggar. One glance at the frank face of
Peter tells him he is about to receive something. That is a man to be trusted.
This is a good beginning. Trust in Peter maybe the first step to trust in
Christ. But many rest at the earliest stage, believing the messenger, but not
coming into personal relations with Christ. Many persons wish to be better than
they are, and are prepared to do much and sacrifice much in order to attain to a
satisfactory spiritual state. What is lacking is personal appeal to Christ. They
must recognise, with a conviction wrought in their own mind, that Jesus Christ
is the source of spiritual power, and they must for themselves, appeal directly
to Him. The boldness with which Peter forms or, it might almost be said, forces
this personal relation to Christ in the case of this man is surprising. Without
a moment’s hesitation or inquiry as to whether the man’s faith is quickened,
Peter cries, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk," taking
him by the right hand and lifting him up. Peter could not confer health upon the
man in spite of his state of mind. If the man had so chosen he might have
continued to lie where he was, a cripple. But simultaneously with Peter’s faith
and authoritative command, the man’s own faith was quickened. He believed that
in this name, that is, at the command and in the strength of Christ, he could
get up; and he arose. It was the contagious confidence of Peter which begat
faith in the lame beggar’s spirit. And there could not be a more instructive
instance of the suddenness with which a human being can be brought into saving
relation to Christ. When Peter began his sentence the lame man had no faith, yet
he boldly said to him, "In the name of Jesus Christ arise and walk." Men may
always thus be summoned to believe on the spot and to act out the commands of
Christ. But in order that such a summons be effectual, two qualities in the
apostle are needful. He must not fear failure or rebuff. He must have that
humility which seeks the good of others regardless of its own reputation. So
long as we fear to expose our own feelings, and to show that we are deeply
concerned about the welfare of another person, we shall do little in the way of
inspiring faith. Our mouth is kept shut by the fear of fruitlessly exposing our
feelings. We are not sure how our advances will be received. We have not, the
loving humility which braves risks to self.

We must also ourselves have lively faith if we are to communicate faith to
others. It was Peter’s own faith which carried this man’s unbelief by storm. In
presence of Peter’s confidence he could not but believe. Most men are far more
moved by the contagion of others strong feeling and example than by arguments or
verbal appeals. For the diffusion of faith it is a man like Peter that is
wanted, who overleaps the obstacles which other men would stop to examine; a man
like Luther, erring perhaps in fine points of doctrine, but giving impetus and
force to the whole movement in Christ’s kingdom, and sweeping along with him a
host of weaker and dependent spirits. If we are not propagating faith in Christ,
it is mainly because our our faith is meagre and timorous. If we are not
producing Christians it is because we are not ourselves in the present
experience of His mighty power. And while this is so, our conduct betrays the
weakness of our faith, and we chill the kindling warmth in other souls instead
of fanning it into flame, and all that proceeds from us is as the frosty wind of
an untoward spring-time, that unseasonably marks every springing thing with
death.

Possessed of those qualities, any one may communicate that best of all gifts,
faith in Christ. The joy of Peter, in discovering that he could impart health
and brightness to those who were oppressed by various human ills, is a joy which
may be repeated, and was meant to be repeated, in the experience of every
Christian. We are not to look hopelessly on the world at large or on our own
friends.

We are not to think that the pleasure we have in being of substantial service to
a friend, we cannot have in the case of that which is most substantial. We are
to believe that Christ now has all power in heaven and on earth, and that those
who have experienced this power are expected to be the channel of its
communication to others. The faith which strengthens and elevates our own spirit
may be communicated, upon our effort and prayer, to the heart of others.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: 02.00.     ISAAC, JACOB AND JOSEPH
========================================================================

ISAAC, JACOB AND JOSEPH BY MARCUS DODS, D.D.

AUTHOR OF “THE PRAYER THAT TEACHES US TO PRAY,”

“ISRAEL’S IRON AGE,”

“THE PRAYER THAT TEACHES US TO PRAY,” etc.

LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 PATERNOSTER ROW


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: 02.01.     LECTURE I: ISHMAELL AND ISAAC
========================================================================

LECTURE I ISHMAEL AND ISAAC Genesis 21:1-34; Genesis 22:1-24 “My masters,
there’s an old book, you should con, For strange adventures, applicable yet.

Tis stuffed with.” (Browning)

“Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman …Which
things are an allegory.” Galatians 4:22 “Abraham stretched forth his hand, and
took the knife to slay his son.” Genesis 22:10

IN the birth of Isaac, Abraham at length sees the long-delayed fulfilment of the
promise. But his trials are by no means over. He has himself introduced into his
family the seeds of discord and disturbance, and speedily the fruit is borne.
Ishmael, at the birth of Isaac, was a lad of fourteen years, and, reckoning from
Eastern customs, he must have been over sixteen when the feast was made in
honour of the weaned child. Certainly he was quite old enough to understand the
important and not very welcome alteration in his prospects which the birth of
this new son effected. He had been brought up to count himself the heir of all
the wealth and influence of Abraham. There was no alienation of feeling between
father and son: no shadow had flitted over the bright prospect of the boy as he
grew up; when suddenly and unexpectedly there was interposed between him and his
expectation the effectual barrier of this child of Sarah’s. The importance of
this child to the family was in due course indicated in many ways offensive to
Ishmael; and when the feast was made, his spleen could no longer be repressed.
This weaning was the first step in the direction of an independent existence,
and this would be the point of the feast in celebration. The child was no longer
a mere part of the mother, but an individual, a member of the family. The hopes
of the parents were carried forward to the time when he should be quite
independent of them. But in all this there was great food for the ridicule of a
thoughtless lad. It was precisely the kind of thing which could easily be mocked
without any great expenditure of wit by a boy of Ishmael’s age. The too visible
pride of the aged mother, the incongruity of maternal duties with ninety years,
the concentration of attention and honours on so small an object, all this was,
doubtless, a temptation to a boy who had probably at no time too much reverence.
But the words and gestures which others might have disregarded as childish
frolic, or, at worst, as the unseemly and ill-natured impertinence of a boy who
knew no better, stung Sarah, and left a poison in her blood that infuriated her.
“Cast out that bondwoman and her son,” she demanded of Abraham. Evidently she
feared the rivalry of this second household of Abraham, and was resolved it
should come to an end. The mocking of Ishmael is but the violent concussion that
at last produces the explosion, for which material has long been laid in train.
She had seen on Abraham’s part a clinging to Ishmael, which she was unable to
appreciate. And though her harsh decision was nothing more than the dictate of
maternal jealousy, it did prevent things from running on as they were until even
a more painful family quarrel must have been the issue. The act of expulsion was
itself unaccountably harsh. There was nothing to prevent Abraham sending his son
and his mother under an escort to some safe place; nothing to prevent him from
giving the lad some share of his possessions sufficient to provide for him.
Nothing of this kind was done. The woman and the boy were simply put to the
door; and this, although Ishmael had for years been counted Abraham’s heir, and
though he was a member of the covenant made with Abraham. There may have been
some law giving Sarah absolute power over her maid; but if any law gave her
power to do what was now done, it was a thoroughly barbarous one, and she was a
barbarous woman who used it. It is one of those painful cases in which one poor
creature, clothed with a little brief authority, stretches it to the utmost in
vindictive maltreatment of another. Sarah happened to be mistress, and, instead
of using her position to make those under her happy, she used it for her own
convenience, for the gratification of her own spite, and to make those beneath
her conscious of her power by their suffering. She happened to be a mother, and
instead of bringing her into sympathy with all women and their children, this
concentrated her affection with a fierce jealousy on her own child. She breathed
freely when Hagar and Ishmael were fairly out of sight. A smile of satisfied
malice betrayed her bitter spirit. No thought of the sufferings to which she had
committed a woman who had served her well for years, who had yielded everything
to her will, and who had no other natural protector but her, no glimpses of
Abraham’s saddened face, visited her with any relentings. It mattered not to her
what came of the woman and the boy to whom she really owed a more loving and
careful regard than to any except Abraham and Isaac. It is a story often
repeated. One who has been a member of the household for many years is at last
dismissed at the dictate of some petty pique or spite as remorselessly and
inhumanly as a piece of old furniture might be parted with. Some thoroughly good
servant, who has made sacrifices to forward his employer’s interest, is at last,
through no offence of his own, found to be in his employer’s way, and at once
all old services are forgotten, all old ties broken, and the authority of the
employer, legal but inhuman, is exercised. It is often those who can least
defend themselves who are thus treated; no resistance is possible, and also,
alas! the party is too weak to face the wilderness on which she is thrown out,
and if any cares to follow her history, we may find her at the last gasp under a
bush. Still, both for Abraham and for Ishmael it was better this severance
should take place. It was grievous to Abraham; and Sarah saw that for this very
reason it was necessary. Ishmael was his first-born, and for many years had
received the whole of his parental affection: and, looking on the little Isaac,
he might feel the desirableness of keeping another son in reserve, lest this
strangely-given child might as strangely pass away. Coming to him in a way so
unusual, and having perhaps in his appearance some indication of his peculiar
birth, he might seem scarcely fit for the rough life Abraham himself had led. On
the other hand, it was plain that in Ishmael were the very qualities which Isaac
was already showing that he lacked. Already Abraham was observing that with all
his insolence and turbulence there was a natural force and independence of
character which might come to be most useful in the patriarchal household. The
man who had pursued and routed the allied kings could not but be drawn to a
youth who already gave promise of capacity for similar enterprises – and this
youth his own son. But can Abraham have failed to let his fancy picture the
deeds this lad might one day do at the head of his armed slaves? And may he not
have dreamt of a glory in the land not altogether such as the promise of God
encouraged him to look for, but such as the tribes around would acknowledge and
fear? All the hopes Abraham had of Ishmael had gained firm hold of his mind
before Isaac was born; and before Isaac grew up, Ishmael must have taken the
most influential place in the house and plans of Abraham. His mind would thus
have received a strong bias towards conquest and forcible modes of advance. He
might have been led to neglect, and, perhaps, finally despise, the
unostentatious blessings of heaven. If, then, Abraham was to become the founder,
not of one new warlike power in addition to the already too numerous warlike
powers of the East, but of a religion which should finally develop into the most
elevating and purifying influence among men, it is obvious that Ishmael was not
at all a desirable heir. Whatever pain it gave to Abraham to part with him,
separation in some form had become necessary. It was impossible that the father
should continue to enjoy the filial affection of Ishmael, his lively talk, and
warm enthusiasm, and adventurous exploits, and at the same time concentrate his
hope and his care on Isaac. He had, therefore, to give up, with something of the
sorrow and self-control he afterwards underwent in connection with the sacrifice
of Isaac, the lad whose bright face had for so many years shone in all his
paths. And in some such way are we often called to part with prospects which
have wrought themselves very deep into our spirit, and which, indeed, just
because they are very promising and seductive, have become dangerous to us,
upsetting the balance of our life, and throwing into the shade objects and
purposes which ought to be as outstanding. And when we are thus required to give
up what we were looking to for comfort, for applause, and for profit, the voice
of God in its first admonition sometimes seems to us little better than the
jealousy of a woman. Like Sarah’s demand, that none should share with her son,
does the requirement seem which indicates to us that we must set nothing on a
level with God’s direct gifts to us. We refuse to see why we may not have all
the pleasures and enjoyments, all the display and brilliance, that the world can
give. We feel as if we were needlessly restricted. But this instance shows us
that, when circumstances compel us to give up something of this kind which we
have been cherishing, room is given for a better thing than itself to grow. For
Ishmael himself, too, wronged as he was in the mode of his expulsion, it was yet
far better that he should go. Isaac was the true heir. No jeering allusions to
his late birth or to his appearance could alter that fact. And to a temper like
Ishmael’s it was impossible to occupy a subordinate, dependent position. All he
required to call out his latent powers was to be thrown thus on his own
resources. The daring, and high spirit, and quickness to take offence and use
violence, which would have wrought untold mischief in a pastoral camp, were the
very qualities which found fit exercise in the desert, and seemed there only in
keeping with the life he had to lead. And his hard experience at first would at
his age do him no harm, but good only. To be compelled to face life
single-handed at the age of sixteen is by no means a fate to be pitied. It was
the making of Ishmael, and is the making of many a lad in every generation. But
the two fugitives are soon reminded that, though expelled from Abraham’s tents
and protection, they are not expelled from his God. Ishmael finds it true that
when father and mother forsake him, the Lord takes him up. At the very outset of
his desert life he is made conscious that God is still his God, mindful of his
wants, responsive to his cry of distress. It was not through Ishmael the
promised seed was to come, but the descendants of Ishmael had every inducement
to retain faith in the God of Abraham, who listened to their father’s cry. The
fact of being excluded from certain privileges did not involve that they were to
be excluded from all privileges. God still “heard the voice of the lad, and the
angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven.” It is this voice of God to Hagar
that so speedily, and apparently once for all, lifts her out of despair to
cheerful hope. It would appear as if her despair had been needless; at least
from the words addressed to her, “What aileth thee, Hagar?” it would appear as
if she might herself have found the water that was close at hand, if only she
had been disposed to look for it. But she had lost heart, and perhaps with her
despair was mingled some resentment, not only at Sarah, but at the whole Hebrew
connection, including the God of the Hebrews, who had before encouraged her.
Here was the end of the magnificent promise which that God had made her before
her child was born – a helpless human form gasping its life away without a drop
of water to moisten the parched tongue and bring light to the glazing eyes, and
with no easier couch than the burning sand. Was it for this, the bitterest drop
that, apart from sin, can be given to any parent to drink, she had been brought
from Egypt and led through all her past? Had her hopes been nursed by means so
extraordinary only that they might be so bitterly blighted? Thus she leapt to
her conclusions, and judged that because her skin of water had failed God had
failed her too. No one can blame her, with her boy dying before her, and herself
helpless to relieve one pang of his suffering. Hitherto in the well-furnished
tents of Abraham she had been able to respond to his slightest desire. Thirst he
had never known, save as the relish to some boyish adventure. But now, when his
eyes appeal to her in dying anguish, she can but turn away in helpless despair.
She cannot relieve his simplest want. Not for her own fate has she any tears,
but to see her pride, her life and joy, perishing thus miserably, is more than
she can bear. No one can blame, but every one may learn from her. When angry
resentment and unbelieving despair fill the mind, we may perish of thirst in the
midst of springs. When God’s promises produce no faith, but seem to us so much
waste paper, we are necessarily in danger of missing their fulfilment. When we
ascribe to God the harshness and wickedness of those who represent Him in the
world, we commit moral suicide. So far from the promises given to Hagar being
now at the point of extinction, this the first considerable step towards their
fulfilment. When Ishmael turned his back on the familiar tents, and flung his
last gibe at Sarah, he was really setting out to a far richer inheritance, so
far as this world goes, than ever fell to Isaac and his sons. But the chief use
Paul makes of this entire episode in the history is to see in it an allegory, a
kind of picture made up of real persons and events, representing the
impossibility of law and gospel living harmoniously together, the
incompatibility of a spirit of service with a spirit of sonship. Hagar, he says,
is in this picture the likeness of the law given from Sinai, which gendereth to
bondage. Hagar and her son, that is to say, stand for the law and the kind of
righteousness produced by the law, – not superficially a bad kind; on the
contrary, a righteousness with much dash and brilliance and strong manly force
about it, but at the root defective, faulty in its origin, springing from the
slavish spirit. And first Paul bids us notice how the free-born is persecuted
and mocked by the slave-born, that is, how the children of God who are trying to
live by love and faith in Christ are put to shame and made uneasy by the law.
They believe they are God’s dear children, that they are loved by Him, and may
go out and in freely in His house as their own home, using all that is His with
the freedom of His heirs; but the law mocks them, frightens them, tells them it
is God’s first-born, law lying far back in the dimness of eternity, coeval with
God Himself. It tells them they are puny and weak, scarcely out of their
mother’s arms, tottering, lisping creatures, doing much mischief, but none of
the house work, at best only getting some little thing to pretend to work at. In
contrast to their feeble, soft, unskilled weakness, it sets before them a
finely-moulded, athletic form, becoming disciplined to all work, and able to
take a place among the serviceable and able-bodied. But with all this there is
in that puny babe a life begun which will grow and make it the true heir,
dwelling in the house and possessing what it has not toiled for, while the
vigorous, likely-looking lad must go into the wilderness and make a possession
for himself with his own bow and spear. Now, of course, righteousness of life
and character, or perfect manhood, is the end at which all that we call
salvation aims, and that which can give us the purest, ripest character is
salvation for us; that which can make us, for all purposes, most serviceable and
strong. And when we are confronted with persons who might speak of service we
cannot render, of an upright, unfaltering carriage we cannot assume, of a
general human worthiness we can make no pretension to, we are justly perturbed,
and should regain our equanimity only under the influence of the most undoubted
truth and fact. If we can honestly say in our hearts, “Although we can show no
such work done, and no such masculine growth, yet we have a life in us which is
of God, and will grow;” if we are sure that we have the spirit of God’s
children, a spirit of love and dutifulness, we may take comfort from this
incident. We may remind ourselves that it is not he who has at the present
moment the best appearance who always abides in the father’s home, but he who is
by birth the heir. Have we or have we not the spirit of the Son? not feeling
that we must every evening make good our claim to another night’s lodging by
showing the task we have accomplished, but being conscious that the interests in
which we are called to work are our own interests, that we are heirs in the
father’s house, so that all we do for the house is really done for ourselves. Do
we go out and in with God, feeling no need of His commands, our own eye seeing
where help is required, and our own desires being wholly directed towards that
which engages all His attention and work? For Paul would have each of us apply,
allegorically, the words, Cast out the bondwoman and her son, that is, cast out
the legal mode of earning a standing in God’s house, and with this legal mode
cast out all the self-seeking, the servile fear of God, the self-righteousness,
and the hard-heartedness it engenders. Cast out wholly from yourself the spirit
of the slave, and cherish the spirit of the son and heir. The slave-born may
seem for a while to have a firm footing in the father’s house, but it cannot
last. The temper and tastes of Ishmael are radically different from those of
Abraham, and when the slave-born becomes mature, the wild Egyptian strain will
appear in his character. Moreover, he looks upon the goods of Abraham as
plunder; he cannot rid himself of the feeling of an alien, and this would, at
length, show itself in a want of frankness with Abraham – slowly, but surely,
the confidence between them would be worn out. Nothing but being a child of God,
being born of the Spirit, can give the feeling of intimacy, confidence, unity of
interest, which constitutes true religion. All we do as slaves goes for nothing;
that is to say, all we do, not because we see the good of it, but because we are
commanded; not because we have any liking for the thing done, but because we
wish to be paid for it. The day is coming when we shall attain our majority,
when it will be said to us by God, Now, do whatever you like, whatever you have
a mind to; no surveillance, no commands are now needed; I put all into your own
hand. What, in these circumstances, should we straightway do? Should we, for the
love of the thing, carry on the same work to which God’s commands had driven us;
should we, if left absolutely in charge, find nothing more attractive than just
to prosecute that idea of life and the world set before us by Christ? Or, should
we see that we had merely been keeping ourselves in check for a while, biding
our time, untamed as Ishmael, craving the rewards but not the life of the
children of God? The most serious of all questions these – questions that
determine the issues of our whole life, that determine whether our home is to be
where all the best interests of men and the highest blessings of God have their
seat, or in the pathless desert where life is an aimless wandering, dissociated
from all the forward movements men. The distinction between the servile spirit
and the spirit of sonship being thus radical, it could be by no mere formality,
or exhibition of his legal title, that Isaac became the heir of God’s heritage.
His sacrifice on Moriah was the requisite condition of his succession to
Abraham’s place; it was the only suitable celebration of his majority. Abraham
himself had been able to enter into covenant with God only by sacrifice; and
sacrifice not of a dead and external kind, but vivified by an actual surrender
of himself to God, and by so true a perception of God’s holiness and
requirements, that he was in a horror of great darkness. By no other process can
any of his heirs succeed to the inheritance. A true resignation of self, in
whatever outward form this resignation may appear, is required that we may
become one with God in His holy purposes and in His eternal blessedness. There
could be no doubt that Abraham had found a true heir, when Isaac laid himself on
the altar and steadied his heart to receive the knife. Dearer to God, and of
immeasurably greater value than any service, was this surrender of himself into
the hand of his Father and his God. In this was promise of all service and all
loving fellowship. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His
saints. O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, the son of Thine
handmaid: Thou hast loosed my bonds.” So incomparable with the most
distinguished service did this sacrifice of Isaac’s self appear, that the record
of his active life seems to have had no interest to his contemporaries or
successors. There was but this one tiling to say of him. No more seemed needful.
The sacrifice was indeed great, and worthy of commemoration. No act could so
conclusively have shown that Isaac was thoroughly at one with God. lie had much
to live for; from his birth there hovered around him interests and hopes of the
most exciting and flattering nature; a new kind of glory such as had not yet
been attained on earth was to be attained, or, at any rate, approached in him.
This glory was certain to be realized, being guaranteed by God’s promise, so
that his hopes might launch out in the boldest confidence and give him the
aspect and bearing of a king; while it was uncertain in the time and manner of
its realization, so that the most attractive mystery hung around his future.
Plainly his was a life worth entering on and living through; a life fit to
engage and absorb a man’s whole desire, interest, and effort; a life such as
might well make a man gird himself and resolve to play the man throughout, that
so each part of it might reveal its secret to him, and that none of its wonder
might be lost. It was a life which, above all others, seemed worth protecting
from all injury and risk, and for which, no doubt, not a few of the home-born
servants in the patriarchal encampment would have gladly ventured their own.
There have, indeed, been few, if any, lives of which it could so truly be said,
The world cannot do without this – at all hazards and costs this must be
cherished. And all this must have been even more obvious to its owner than to
any one else, and must have begotten in him an unquestioning assurance, that he
at least had a charmed life, and would live and see good days. Yet with whatever
shock the command of God came upon him, there is no word of doubt or
remonstrance or rebellion. He gave his life to Him who had first given it to
him. And thus yielding himself to God, he entered into the inheritance, and
became worthy to stand to all time the representative heir of God, as Abraham by
his faith had become the father of the faithful.


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  CHAPTER 10: 02.02.     LECTURE II: ISAAC’S MARRIAGE
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LECTURE II ISAAC’S MARRIAGE

Genesis 24:1-67 “Many birds fly hither and thither under the sun, but not all
are indications of the Divine will.”

“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she
shall be praised.” Proverbs 31:30

“WHEN a son has attained the age of twenty years, his father, if able, should
marry him, and then take his hand and say, I have disciplined thee, and taught
thee, and married thee; I now seek refuge with God from thy mischief in the
present world and the next.” This Mohammedan tradition expresses with tolerable
accuracy the idea of the Eastern world, that a father has not discharged his
responsibilities towards his son until he finds a wife for him. Abraham no doubt
fully recognised his duty in this respect, but he had allowed Isaac to pass the
usual age. He was thirty-seven at his mother’s death, forty when the events of
this chapter occurred. This delay was occasioned by two causes. The bond between
Isaac and his mother was an unusually strong one; and alongside of that
imperious woman a young wife would have found it even more difficult than usual
to take a becoming place. Besides, where was a wife to be found? No doubt some
of Abraham’s Hittite friends would have considered any daughter of theirs
exceptionally fortunate who should secure so good an alliance. The heir of
Abraham was no inconsiderable person even when measured by Hittite expectations.
And it may have taxed Abraham’s sagacity to find excuses for not forming an
alliance which seemed so natural, and which would have secured to him and his
heirs a settled place in the country. This was so obvious, common, easily
accomplished a means of gaining a footing for Isaac among somewhat dangerous
neighbours, that it stands to reason Abraham must often have weighed its
advantages. But as often as he weighed the advantages of this solution of his
difficulty, so often did he reject them. He was resolved that the race should be
of pure Hebrew blood. His own experience in connection with Hagar had given this
idea a settled prominence in his mind. And, accordingly, in his instructions to
the servant whom he sent to find a wife for Isaac, two things were insisted on
1st, that she should not be a Canaanite; and, 2nd, that on no pretext should
Isaac be allowed to leave the land of promise and visit Mesopotamia. The
steward, knowing something of men and women, foresaw that it was most unlikely
that a young woman would forsake her own land and preconceived hopes and go away
with a stranger to a foreign country. Abraham believes she will be persuaded.
But in any case, he says, one thing must be seen to; Isaac must on no account be
induced to leave the promised land even to visit Mesopotamia. God will furnish
Isaac with a wife without putting him into circumstances of great temptation,
without requiring him to go into societies in the slightest degree injurious to
his faith. In fact, Abraham refused to do what countless Christian mothers of
marriageable sons and daughters do without compunction. He had an insight into
the real influences that form action and determine careers which many of us
sadly lack. And his faith was rewarded. The tidings from his brother’s family
arrived in the nick of time. Light, he found, was sown for the upright. It
happened with him as it has doubtless often happened with yourselves, that
though you have been looking forward to a certain time with much anxiety, unable
even to form a plan of action, yet when the time actually came, things seemed to
arrange themselves, and the thing to do became quite obvious. Abraham was
persuaded God would send His angel to bring the affair to a happy issue. And
when we seem drifting towards some great upturning of our life, or when things
seem to come all of a sudden and in crowds upon us, so that we cannot judge what
we should do, it is an animating thought that another eye than ours is
penetrating the darkness, finding for us a way through all entanglement and
making crooked things straight for us. But the patience of Isaac was quite as
remarkable as the faith of Abraham. He was now forty years old, and if, as he
had been told, the great aim of his life, the great service he was to render to
the world, was bound up with the rearing of a family, he might with some reason
be wondering why circumstances were so adverse to the fulfilment of this
vocation. Must he not have been tempted, as his father had been, to take matters
into his own hand? Fathers are perhaps too scrupulous about telling their sons
instructive passages from their own experience; but when Abraham saw Isaac
exercised and discomposed about this matter, he can scarcely have failed to
strengthen his spirit by telling him something of his own mistakes in life.
Abraham must have seen that everything depended on Isaac’s conduct, and that he
had a very difficult part to play. He himself had been supernaturally encouraged
to leave his own land and sojourn in Canaan; on the other hand, by the time
Jacob grew up, the idea of the promised land had become traditional and fixed;
though even Jacob, had he found Laban a better master, might have permanently
renounced his expectations in Canaan. But Isaac enjoyed the advantages neither
of the first nor of the third generation. The coming into Canaan was not his
doing, and he saw how little of the land Abraham had gained. He was under strong
temptation to disbelieve. And when he measured his condition with that of other
young men, he. certainly required unusual self-control. And to every one who
would urge, Youth is passing, and I am not getting what I expected at God’s
hand; I have not received that providential leading I was led to expect, nor do
I find that my life is made simpler; it is very well to tell me to wait, but
life is slipping away, and we may wait too long – to every one whose heart urges
such murmurs. Abraham through Isaac would say: But if you wait for God you get
something, some positive good, and not some mere appearance of good; you at last
do get begun, you get into life at the right door; whereas if you follow some
other way than that which you believe God wishes to lead you in, you get
nothing. Isaac’s continence had its reward. In the suitableness of Rebekah to a
man of his nature, you see the suitableness of all such gifts of God as are
really waited for at His hand. God may keep you longer waiting than the world
does, but He gives you never the wrong thing. Isaac had no idea of Rebekah’s
character; he could only yield himself to God’s knowledge of what he needed; and
so there came to him, from a country he had never seen, a help-meet singularly
adapted to his own character. One cannot read of her lively, bustling, almost
forward, but obliging and generous conduct at the well, nor of her prompt,
impulsive departure to an unknown land, without seeing, as no doubt Eliezer very
quickly saw, that this was exactly the woman for Isaac. In this eager, ardent,
active, enterprising spirit, his own retiring and contemplative, if not sombre
disposition found its appropriate relief and stimulus. Hers was a spirit which
might indeed, with so mild a lord, take more of the management of affairs than
was befitting; and when the wear and tear of life had tamed down the girlish
vivacity with which she spoke to Eliezer at the well, and leapt from the camel
to meet her lord, her active-mindedness does appear in the disagreeable shape of
the clever scheming of the mother of a family. In her sons you see her qualities
exaggerated: from her, Esau derived his activity and open-handedness; and in
Jacob, you find that her self-reliant and unscrupulous management has become a
self-asserting craft which leads him into much trouble, if it also sometimes
gets him out of difficulties. But such as Rebekah was, she was quite the woman
to attract Isaac and supplement his character. So in other cases where you find
you must leave yourself very much in God’s hand, what He sends you will be found
more precisely adapted to your character than if you chose it for yourself. You
find your whole nature has been considered, – your aims, your hopes, your wants,
your position, whatever in you waits for something unattained. And as in giving
to Isaac the intended mother of the promised seed, God gave him a woman who
fitted in to all the peculiarities of his nature, and was a comfort and a joy to
him in his own life; so you will always find that God, in satisfying His own
requirements, satisfies at the same time your wants – that God carries forward
His work in the world by the satisfaction of the best and happiest feelings of
our nature, so that it is not only the result that is blessedness, but blessing
is created along its whole course. Abraham’s servant, though not very sanguine
of success, does all in his power to earn it. He sets out with an equipment
fitted to inspire respect and confidence. But as he draws nearer and nearer to
the city of Nahor, revolving the delicate nature of his errand, and feeling that
definite action must now be taken, he sees so much room for making an
irreparable mistake that he resolves to share his responsibility with the God of
his master. And the manner in which he avails himself of God’s guidance is
remarkable. He does not ask God to guide him to the house of Bethuel; indeed,
there was no occasion to do so, for any child could have pointed out the house
to him. But he was a cautious person, and he wished to make his own observations
on the appearance and conduct of the younger women of the household, before in
any way committing himself to them. He was free to make these observations at
the well; while he felt it must be very awkward to enter Laban’s house with the
possibility of leaving it dissatisfied. At the same time, he felt it was for God
rather than for him to choose a wife for Isaac. So he made an arrangement by
which the interposition of God was provided for. He meant to make his own
selection, guided necessarily by the comparative attractiveness of the women who
came for water, possibly also by some family likeness to Sarah or Isaac he might
expect to see in any women of Bethuel’s house; but knowing the deceitfulness of
appearances, he asked God to confirm and determine his own choice by moving the
girl he should address to give him a certain answer. Having arranged this,
“Behold! Rebekah came out with her pitcher upon her shoulder, and the damsel was
very fair to look upon.” In the Bible the beauty of women is frankly spoken of
without prudery or mawkishness as an influence in human affairs. The beauty of
Rebekah at once disposed Eliezer to address her, and his first impression in her
favour was confirmed by the obliging, cheerful alacrity with which she did very
much more than she was asked, and, indeed, took upon herself, through her
kindness of disposition, a task of some trouble and fatigue. It is important to
observe then in what sense and to what extent this capable servant asked a sign.
He did not ask for a bare, intrinsically insignificant sign. He might have done
so. He might have proposed as a test, Let her who stumbles on the first step of
the well be the designed wife of Isaac; or, Let her who comes with a
certain-coloured flower in her hand – or so forth. But the sign he chose was
significant, because dependent on the character of the girl herself; a sign
which must reveal her good heartedness and readiness to oblige and courteous
activity in the entertainment of strangers – in fact, the outstanding Eastern
virtue. So that he really acted very much as Isaac himself must have done. He
would make no approach to any one whose appearance repelled him; and when
satisfied in this particular, he would test her disposition. And of course it
was these qualities of Rebekah which afterwards caused Isaac to feel that this
was the wife God had designed for him. It was not by any arbitrary sign that he
or any man could come to know who was the suitable wife for him, but only by the
love she aroused within him. God has given this feeling to direct choice in
marriage; and where this is wanting, nothing else whatever, no matter how
astoundingly providential it seems, ought to persuade a man that such and such a
person is designed to be his wife. There are turning points in life at once so
momentous in their consequence, and affording so little material for choice,
that one is much tempted to ask for more than providential leading. Not only
among savages and heathen have omens been sought. Among Christians there has
been manifest a constant disposition to appeal to the lot, or to accept some
arbitrary way of determining which course we should follow. In very many
predicaments we should be greatly relieved were there someone who could at once
deliver us from all hesitation and mental conflict by one authoritative word.
There are, perhaps, few things more frequently and determinedly wished for, nor
regarding which we are so much tempted to feel that such a thing should be, as
some infallible guide before whom we could lay every difficulty; who would tell
us at once what ought to be done in each case, and whether we ought to continue
as we are or make some change. But only consider for a moment what would be the
consequence of having such a guide. At every important step of your progress you
would, of course, instantly turn to him; as soon as doubt entered your mind
regarding the moral quality of an action, or the propriety of a course you think
of adopting, you would be at your counsellor. And what would be the consequence?
The consequence would be, that instead of the various circumstances,
experiences, and temptations of this life being a training to you, your
conscience would every day become less able to guide you, and your will less
able to decide, until instead of being a mature son of God, who has learned to
conform his conscience and will to the will of God, you would be quite imbecile
as a moral creature. What God desires by our training here is, that we become
like to Him; that there be nurtured in us a power to discern between good and
evil; that by giving our own voluntary consent to His appointments, and that by
discovering in various and perplexing circumstances what is the right thing to
do, we may have our own moral natures as enlightened, strengthened, and fully
developed every way as possible. The object of God in declaring His will to us
is not to point out particular steps, but to bring our wills into conformity
with His, so that whether we err in any particular step or no, we shall still be
near to Him in intention. He does with us as we with children. We do not always
at once relieve them from their little difficulties, but watch with interest the
working of their own conscience regarding the matter, and will give them no sign
till they themselves have decided. Evidently, therefore, before we may dare to
ask a sign from God, the case must be a very special one. If you are at present
engaged in something that is to your own conscience doubtful, and if you are not
hiding this from God, but would very willingly, so far as you know your own
mind, do in the matter what He pleases – if no further light is coming to you,
and you feel a growing inclination to put it to God in this way: “Grant, O Lord,
that something may happen by which I may know Thy mind in this matter” – this is
asking from God a kind of help which He is very ready to give, often leading men
to clearer views of duty by events which happen within their knowledge, and
which having no special significance to persons whose minds are differently
occupied, are yet most instructive to those who are waiting for light on some
particular point. The danger is not here, but in fixing God down to the special
thing which shall happen as a sign between Him and you; which, when it happens,
gives no fresh light on the subject, leaves your mind still morally undecided,
but only binds you, by an arbitrary bargain of your own, to follow one course
rather than another. This matter that you would so summarily dispose of may be
the very thread of your life which God means to test you by; this state of
indecision which you would evade, God may mean to continue until your moral
character grows strong enough to rise above it to the right decision. No one
will suppose that Rebekah’s readiness to leave her home was due to mere
light-mindedness. Her motives were, no doubt, mixed. The worldly position
offered to her was good, and there was an attractive spice of romance about the
whole affair which would have its charm. She may also be credited with some
apprehension of the great future of Isaac’s family. In after life she certainly
showed a very keen sense of the value of the blessings peculiar to that
household. And, probably above all, she had an irresistible feeling that this
was her destiny. She saw the hand of God in her selection, and with a more or
less conscious faith in God she passed to her new life. Her first meeting with
her future husband is not the least picturesque passage in this most picturesque
narrative. Isaac had gone out on that side of the encampment by which he knew
his father’s messenger was most likely to approach. He had gone out “to meditate
at even-tide;” his meditation being necessarily directed and intensified by his
attitude of critical expectancy. The evening light, in our country hanging
dubiously between the glare of noon and the darkness of midnight, invites to
that condition of mind which lies between the intense alertness of day and the
deep oblivion of sleep, and which seems the most favourable for the meditation
of divine things. The dusk of evening seems interposed between day and night to
invite us to that reflection which should intervene betwixt our labour and our
rest from labour, that we may leave our work behind us satisfied that we have
done what we could, or, seeing its faultiness, may still lay us down to sleep
with God’s forgiveness. It is when the bright sunlight has gone, and no more
reproaches our inactivity, that friends can enjoy prolonged intercourse, and can
best unbosom to one another, as if the darkness gave opportunity for a
tenderness which would be ashamed to show itself during the twelve hours in
which a man shall work. And all that makes this hour so beloved by the family
circle, and so conducive to friendly intercourse, makes it suitable also for
such intercourse with God as each human soul can attempt. Most of us suppose we
have some little plot of time railed off for God morning and evening, but how
often does it get trodden down by the profane multitude of this world’s cares,
and quite occupied by encroaching secular engagements. But evening is the time
when many men are, and when all men ought to be, least hurried; when the mind is
placid, but not yet prostrate; when the body requires rest from its ordinary
labour, but is not yet so oppressed with fatigue as to make devotion a mockery;
when the din of this world’s business is silenced, and as a sleeper wakes to
consciousness when some accustomed noise is checked, so the soul now wakes up to
the thought of itself and of God. I know not whether those of us who have the
opportunity have also the resolution to sequester ourselves evening by evening,
as Isaac did; but this I do know, that he who does so will not fail of his
reward but will very speedily find that his Father who seeth in secret is
manifestly rewarding him. What we all need above all things is to let the mind
dwell on divine things – to be able to sit down knowing we have so much clear
time in which we shall not be disturbed, and during which we shall think
directly under God’s eye – to get quite rid of the feeling of getting through
with something, so that without distraction the soul may take a deliberate
survey of its own matters. And so shall often God’s gifts appear on our horizon
when we lift up our eyes, as Isaac “lifted up his eyes and saw the camels
coming” with his bride. Twilight, “nature’s vesper-bell,” of the light shaded at
evening by the hills of Palestine, seems, then, to have called Isaac to a
familiar occupation. This long-continued mourning for his mother, and his lonely
meditation in the fields, are both in harmony with what we know of his
character, and of his experience on Mount Moriah. Retiring and contemplative,
willing to conciliate by concession rather than to assert and maintain his
rights against opposition, glad to yield his own affairs to the strong guidance
of some other hand, tender and deep in his affections, to him this lonely
meditation seems singularly appropriate. His dwelling, too, was remote, on the
edge of the wilderness, by the well which Hagar had named Lahai-roi. Here he
dwelt as one consecrated to God, feeling little desire to enter deeper into the
world, and preferring the place where the presence of God was least disturbed by
the society of men. But at this time he had come from the south, and was
awaiting at his father’s encampment the result of Eliezer’s mission. And one can
conceive the thrill of keen expectancy that shot through him as he saw the
female figure alighting from the camel, the first eager exchange of greetings,
and the gladness with which he brought Rebekah into his mother Sarah’s tent and
was comforted after his mother’s death. The readiness with which he loved her
seems to be referred in the narrative to the grief he still felt for his mother;
for as a candle is never so easily lit as just after it has been put out, so the
affection of Isaac, still emitting the sad memorial of a past love, more quickly
caught at the new object presented. And thus was consummated a marriage which
shows us how thoroughly interwrought are the plans of God and the life of man,
each fulfilling the other. So that as the salvation God introduces into the
world is a practical, every-day salvation to deliver us from the sins which this
life tempts us to, so God introduced this salvation by means of the natural
affections and ordinary arrangements of human life. God would have us recognise
in our lives what He shows us in this chapter, that He has made provision for
our wants, and that if we wait upon Him He will bring us into the enjoyment of
all we really need. So that if we are to make any advance in appropriating to
ourselves God’s salvation, it can only be by submitting ourselves implicitly to
His providence, and taking care that in the commonest and most secular actions
of our lives we are having respect to His will with us, and that in those
actions in which our own feelings and desires seem sufficient to guide us, we
are having regard to His controlling wisdom and goodness. We are to find room
for God everywhere in our lives, not feeling embarrassed by the thought of His
claims even in our least constrained hours, but subordinating to His highest and
holiest ends everything that our life contains, and acknowledging as His gift
what may seem to be our own most proper conquest or earning.


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  CHAPTER 11: 02.03.     LECTURE III: ESAU AND JACOB
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LECTURE III

ESAU AND JACOB

“We cannot learn too soon that to give away some things is to lose them for
ever, and that there are some things that a man and a woman have no more right
to surrender than they have to commit suicide.”

“He goeth as an ox goeth to the slaughter, till a dart strike through his liver;
as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.”
Proverbs 7:22-23

THE character and career of Isaac would seem to tell us that it is possible to
have too great a father. Isaac was dwarfed and weakened by growing up under the
shadow of Abraham. Of his life there was little to record, and what was recorded
was very much a reproduction of some of the least glorious passages of his
father’s career. The digging of wells for his flocks was among the most notable
events in his common place life, and even in this he only re-opened the wells
his father had dug. In him we see the result of growing up under too strong and
dominant an external influence. The free and healthy play of his own capacities
and will was curbed. The sons of outstanding fathers are much tempted to follow
in the wake of their success, and be too much controlled and limited by the
example therein set to them. There is a great deal to induce a son to do so;
this calling has been successful in his father’s case, what better can he do
than follow? Also he may get the use of his wells those sources his father has
opened for the easier or more abundant maintenance of those dependent on him,
the business he has established, the practice he has made, the connections lie
has formed – these are useful if he follows in his father’s line of life. But
all this tends, as in Isaac’s case, to the stunting of the man himself. Life is
made too easy for him. Isaac has been called “the Wordsworth of the Old
Testament,” but his meditative disposition seems to have degenerated into mere
dreamy apathy, which, at last, made him the tool of the more active-minded
members of his family, and was also attended by its common accompaniment of
sensuality. It seems also to have brought him to a condition of almost entire
bodily prostration, for a comparison of dates shows that he must have spent
forty or fifty years in blindness and incapacity for all active duty. Neither
can this greatly surprise us, for it is abundantly open to our own observation
that men of the finest spiritual discernment, and of whose godliness in the main
one cannot doubt, are also frequently the prey of the most childish tastes, and
most useless even to the extent of doing harm in practical matters. They do not
see the evil that is growing in their own family; or, if they see it, they
cannot rouse themselves to check it. Isaac’s marriage, though so promising in
the outset, brought new trial into his life. Rebekah had to repeat the
experience of Sarah. The intended mother of the promised seed was left for
twenty years childless – to contend with the doubts, surmises, evil proposals,
proud challengings of God, and murmurings, which must undoubtedly have arisen
even in so bright and spirited a heart as Rebekah’s. It was thus she was taught
the seriousness of the position she had chosen for herself, and gradually led to
the implicit faith requisite for the discharge of its responsibilities. Many
young persons have a similar experience. They seem to themselves to have chosen
a wrong position, to have made a thorough mistake in life, and to have brought
themselves into circumstances in which they only retard, or quite prevent, the
prosperity of those with whom they are connected. In proportion as Rebekah loved
Isaac, and entered into his prospects, must she have been tempted to think she
had far better have remained in Padan-aram. It is a humbling thing to stand in
some other person’s way; but if it is by no fault of ours, but in obedience to
affection or conscience we are in this position, we must, in humility and
patience, wait upon Providence as Rebekah did, and resist all morbid
despondency. This second barrenness in the prospective mother of the promised
seed was as needful to all concerned as the first was; for the people of God, no
more than any others, can learn in one lesson. They must again be brought to a
real dependence on God as the Giver of the heir. The prayer with which Isaac
“intreated” the Lord for his wife “because she was barren” was a prayer of
deeper intensity than he could have uttered had he merely remembered the story
that had been told him of his own birth. God must be recognised again and again
and throughout as the Giver of life to the promised line. We are all apt to
suppose that when once we have got a thing in train and working we can get on
without God. How often do we pray for the bestowal of a blessing, and forget to
pray for its continuance? How often do we count it enough that God has conferred
some gift, and, not inviting Him to continue His agency, but trusting to
ourselves, we mar His gift in the use? Learn, therefore, that although God has
given you means of working out His salvation, your Rebekah will be barren
without His continued activity. On His own means you must re-invite His
blessing, for without the continuance of His aid you will make nothing of the
most beautiful and appropriate helps He has given you. It was by pain, anxiety,
and almost dismay, that Rebekah received intimation that her prayer was
answered. In this she is the type of many whom God hears. Inward strife,
miserable forebodings, deep dejection, are often the first intimations that God
is listening to our prayer and is beginning to work within us. You have prayed
that God would make you more a blessing to those about you, more useful in your
place, more answerable to His ends; and when your prayer has risen to its
highest point of confidence and expectation, you are thrown into what seems a
worse state than ever, your heart is broken within you, you say, Is this the
answer to my prayer, is this God’s blessing; if it be so, why am I thus? For
things that make a man serious, happen when God takes him in hand, and they that
yield themselves to His service will not find that that service is all honour
and enjoyment. Its first steps will often land us in a position we can make
nothing of, and our attempts to aid others will get us into difficulties with
them; and especially will our desire that Christ be formed in us, bring into
such lively action the evil nature that is in us, that we are torn by the
conflict, and our heart lies like the ground of a fierce struggle, seamed and
furrowed, tossed and confused. As soon as there is a movement within us in one
direction, immediately there is an opposing movement: as soon as one of the
natures says, Do this; the other says, Do it not. The better nature is gaining
slightly the upper hand, and by a long, steady strain, seems to be wearying out
the other, when suddenly there is one quick stroke and the evil nature conquers.
And every movement of the parties is with pain to ourselves; either conscience
is wronged, and gives out its cry of shame, or our natural desires are trodden
clown, and that also is pain. And so disconnected and connected are we, so
entirely one with both parties, and yet so able to contemplate both as they
were, that Rebekah’s distress seems aptly enough to symbolize our own. And
whether the symbol be apt or no, there can be no question that he who enquires
of the Lord as she did, will receive a similar assurance, that there are two
natures within him, and that “the elder shall serve the younger,” the nature
last formed, and that seems to give least promise of life, shall master the
original, eldest born child of the flesh. The children whose birth and destinies
were thus predicted, at once gave evidence of a difference even greater than
that which will often strike one as existing between two brothers, though rarely
between twins. The first was born, all over like a hairy garment, presenting the
appearance of being rolled up in a fur cloak or the skin of an animal – an
appearance which did not pass away in childhood, but so obstinately adhered to
him through life, that an imitation of his hands could be produced with the
hairy skin of a kid. This was by his parents considered ominous. The want of the
hairy covering which the lower animals have, is one of the signs marking out man
as destined for a higher and more refined life than they; and when their son
appeared in this guise, they could not but fear it prognosticated his sensual,
animal career. So they called him Esau. And so did the younger son from the
first show his nature, catching the heel of his brother, as if he were striving
to be first born; and so they called him Jacob, the heel-catcher or supplanter –
as Esau afterwards bitterly observed, a name which precisely suited his crafty,
plotting nature, shown in his twice over tripping up and over-throwing his elder
brother. The name which Esau handed down to his people was, however, not his
original name, but one derived from the colour of that for which he sold his
birthright. It was in that exclamation of his, “Feed me with that same red” that
he disclosed his character. So different in appearance at birth, they grew up of
very different character; and as was natural, he who had the quiet nature of his
father was beloved by the mother, and he who had the bold, practical skill of
the mother, was clung to by the father. It seems unlikely that Rebekah was
influenced in her affection by anything but natural motives, though the fact
that Jacob was to be the heir must have been much on her mind, and may have
produced the partiality which maternal pride sometimes begets. But before we
condemn Isaac, or think the historian has not given a full account of his love
for Esau, let us ask what we have noticed about the growth and decay of our own
affections. We are ashamed of Isaac; but have we not also been sometimes ashamed
of ourselves on seeing that our affections are powerfully influenced by the
gratification of tastes almost or quite as low as this of Isaac’s? He who
cunningly panders to our taste for applause, he who purveys for us some sweet
morsel of scandal, he who flatters or amuses us, straightway takes a place in
our affections which we do not accord to men of much finer parts, but who do not
so minister to our sordid appetites. The character of Jacob is easily
understood. It has frequently been remarked of him that he is thoroughly a Jew,
that in him you find the good and bad features of the Jewish character very
prominent and conspicuous. He has that mingling of craft and endurance which has
enabled his descendants to use for their own ends those who have wronged and
persecuted them. The Jew has, with some justice and some in justice, been
credited with an obstinate and unscrupulous resolution to forward his own
interests, and there can be no question that in this respect Jacob is the
typical Jew – ruthlessly taking advantage of his brother, watching and waiting
till he was sure of his victim; deceiving his blind father, and robbing him of
what he had intended for his favourite son; outwitting the grasping Laban, and
making at least his own out of all attempts to rob him; unable to meet his
brother without stratagem; not forgetting prudence even when the honour of his
family is stained; and not thrown off his guard even by his true and deep
affection for Joseph. Yet, while one recoils from this craftiness and
management, one cannot but admire the quiet force of character, the indomitable
tenacity, and, above all, the capacity for warm affection and lasting
attachments, that he showed throughout. But the quality which chiefly
distinguished Jacob from his hunting and marauding brother, was his desire for
the friendship of God and sensibility to spiritual influences. It may have been
Jacob’s consciousness of his own meanness that led him to crave connection with
some Being or with some prospect that might ennoble his nature and lift him
above his innate disposition. It is an old, old truth that not many noble are
called; and, seeing quite as plainly as others see their feebleness and
meanness, the ignoble conceive a self-loathing which is sometimes the beginning
of an unquenchable thirst for the high and holy God. The consciousness of your
bad, poor nature may revive within you day by day, as the remembrance of
physical weakness returns to the invalid with every morning’s light; but to what
else can God so effectively appeal when He offers you present fellowship with
Himself and eventual conformity to His own nature? It has been pointed out that
the weakness in Esau’s character which makes him so striking a contrast to his
brother is his inconstancy.

“That one error Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins.”

Constancy, persistence, dogged tenacity, is certainly the striking feature of
Jacob’s character. He could wait and bide his time; he could retain one purpose
year after year till it was accomplished. The very motto of his life was, “I
will not let thee go except thou bless me.” He watched for Esau’s weak moment,
and took advantage of it. He served fourteen years for the woman he loved, and
no hardship quenched his love. Nay, when a whole life-time intervened, and he
lay dying in Egypt, his constant heart still turned to Rachel, as if he had
parted with her but yesterday. In contrast with this tenacious, constant
character stands Esau, led by impulse, betrayed by appetite, everything by turns
and nothing long. To-day despising his birthright, to-morrow breaking his heart
for its loss; to-day vowing he will murder his brother, to-morrow falling on his
neck and kissing him; a man you cannot reckon upon, and of too shallow a nature
for anything to root itself deeply in. The event in which the contrasted
characters of the twin brothers were most decisively shown, so decisively shown
that their destinies were fixed by it, was an incident which, in its external
circumstances, was of the most ordinary and trivial kind. Esau came in hungry
from hunting; from dawn to dusk he had been taxing his strength to the utmost,
too eagerly absorbed to notice either his distance from home or his hunger; it
is only when he begins to return depressed by the ill-luck of the day, and with
nothing now to stimulate him, that he feels faint; and when at last he reaches
his father’s tents, and the savoury smell of Jacob’s lentiles greets him, his
ravenous appetite becomes an intolerable craving, and he begs Jacob to give him
some of his food. Had Jacob done so with brotherly feeling, there would have
been nothing to record. But Jacob had long been watching for an opportunity to
win his brother’s birthright, and though no one could have supposed that an heir
to even a little property would sell it in order to get a meal five minutes
sooner than he could otherwise get it, Jacob had taken his brother’s measure to
a nicety, and was confident that present appetite would in Esau completely
extinguish every other thought. It is perhaps worth noticing that the birthright
in Ishmael’s line, the guardianship of the temple at Mecca, passed from one
branch of the family to another in a precisely similar way. We read that when
the guardianship of the temple and the governorship of the town “fell into the
hands of Abu Gabshan, a weak and silly man, Cosa, one of Mohammed’s ancestors,
circumvented him while in a drunken humour, and bought of him the keys of the
temple, and with them the presidency of it, for a bottle of wine. But Abu
Gabshan being gotten out of his drunken fit, sufficiently repented of his
foolish bargain; from whence grew these proverbs among the Arabs: More vexed
with late repentance than Abu Gabshan; and, More silly than Abu Gabshan – which
are usually said of those who part with a thing of great moment for a small
matter.” Which brother presents the more repulsive spectacle of the two in this
selling of the birth right it is hard to say. Who does not feel contempt for the
great, strong man declaring he will die if he is required to wait five minutes
till his own supper is prepared; forgetting, in the craving of his appetite,
every consideration of a worthy kind; oblivious of everything but his hunger and
his food; crying, like a great baby, Feed me with that red? So it is always with
the man who has fallen under the power of sensual appetite. He is always going
to die if it is not immediately gratified. He must have his appetite satisfied.
No consideration of consequences can be listened to or thought of; the man is
helpless in the hands of his appetite – it rules and drives him on, and he is
utterly without self-control; nothing but physical compulsion can restrain him.
But the treacherous and self-seeking craft of the other brother is as repulsive:
the coldblooded, calculating spirit that can hold every appetite in check, that
can cleave to one purpose for a life-time, and, without scruple, take advantage
of a twin-brother’s weakness. Jacob knows his brother thoroughly, and all his
knowledge he uses to betray him. He knows he will speedily repent of his
bargain, so he makes him swear he will abide by it. It is a relentless purpose
he carries out – he deliberately and unhesitatingly sacrifices his brother to
himself. Still, in two respects, Jacob is the superior man. He can appreciate
the birthright in his father’s family, and he has constancy. Esau might be a
pleasant companion, far brighter and more vivacious than Jacob on a day’s
hunting; free and open-handed, and not implacable; and yet such people are not
satisfactory friends. Often the most attractive people have similar inconstancy;
they have a superficial vivacity, and brilliance, and charm, and good-nature,
which invites a friendship they do not deserve. Parents frequently make the
mistake of Isaac, and think more highly of the gay, sparkling, but shallow
child, than of the child who cannot be always smiling, but broods over what he
conceives to be his wrongs. Sulkiness is itself not a pleasing feature in a
child’s character, but it may only be the childish expression of constancy, and
of a depth of character which is slow to let go any impression made upon it. On
the other hand, frankness and a quick throwing aside of passion and resentment,
are pleasing features in a child, but often these are only the expressions of a
fickle character, rapidly changing from sun to shower like an April day, and not
to be trusted for retaining affection or good impressions any longer than it
retains resentment. But Esau’s despising of his birthright is that which stamps
the man and makes him interesting to each generation. No one can read the simple
account of his reckless act without feeling how justly we are called upon to
“look diligently lest there be among us any profane person as Esau, who, for one
morsel of meat, sold his birthright.” Had the birthright been something to eat,
Esau would not have sold it. What an exhibition of human nature! What an
exposure of our childish folly and the infatuation of appetite! For Esau has
company in his fall. We are all stricken by his shame. We are conscious that if
God had made provision for the flesh we should have listened to Him more
readily. “But what will this birthright profit us?” We don’t see the good it
does: were it something to keep us from disease, to give us long unsated days of
pleasure, to bring us the fruits of labour without the weariness of it, to make
money for us, where is the man who would not value it – where is the man who
would lightly give it up? But because it is only the favour of God that is
offered, His endless love, His holiness made ours, this we will imperil or
resign for every idle desire, for every lust that bids us serve it a little
longer. Born the sons of God, made in His image, introduced to a birthright
angels might covet, we yet prefer to rank with the beasts of the field, and let
our souls starve if only our bodies be well tended and cared for. There is in
Esau’s conduct and after-experience so much to stir serious thought, that one
always feels reluctant to pass from it, and as if much more ought to be made of
it. It reflects so many features of our own conduct, and so clearly shows us
what we are from day to day liable to, that we would wish to take it with us
through life as a perpetual admonition. Who does not know of those moments of
weakness, when we are fagged with work, and with our physical energy our moral
tone has become relaxed? Who does not know how, in hours of reaction from keen
and exciting engagements, sensual appetite asserts itself, and with what
petulance we inwardly cry, We shall die if we do not get this or that paltry
gratification? We are, for the most part, inconstant as Esau, full of good
resolves to-day, and to-morrow throwing them to the winds – to-day proud of the
arduousness of our calling, and girding ourselves to self-control and
self-denial, to-morrow sinking back to softness and self-indulgence. Not once,
as Esau, but again and again we barter peace of conscience and fellowship with
God and the hope of holiness, for what is, in simple fact, no more than a bowl
of pottage. Even after recognising our weakness and the lowness of our tastes,
and after repenting with self-loathing and misery, some slight pleasure is
enough to upset our steadfast mind, and make us as plastic as clay in the hand
of circumstances. It is with positive dismay one considers the weakness and
blindness of our hours of appetite and passion; how one goes then like an ox to
the slaughter, all unconscious of the pitfalls that betray and destroy men, and
how at any moment we ourselves may truly sell our birthright.


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  CHAPTER 12: 02.04.     LECTURE IV: JACOB’S FRAUD
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LECTURE IV JACOB’S FRAUD

Genesis 27:1-46

“Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of a mean spirit.
But that is our trial: – we must learn to see the good in the midst of much that
is unlovely.”

“The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever.” Psalms 33:11

THERE are some families whose miserable existence is almost entirely made up of
malicious plottings and counter-plottings, little mischievous designs, and
spiteful triumphs of one member or party in the family over the other. It is not
pleasant to have the veil withdrawn, and to see that where love and eager
self-sacrifice might be expected, their places are occupied by an eager
assertion of rights, and a cold, proud, and always petty and stupid, nursing of
some supposed injury. In the story told us so graphically in this page, we see
the family whom God has blessed sunk to this low level, and betrayed by family
jealousies into unseemly strife on the most sacred ground. Each member of the
family plans his own wicked device, and God by the evil of one defeats the evil
of another, and saves His own purpose to bless the race from being frittered
away and lost. And it is told us in order that, amidst all this mess of human
craft and selfishness, the righteousness and stability of God’s word of promise
may be more vividly seen. Let us look at the sin of each of the parties in
order, and the punishment of each. In the Epistle to the Hebrews Isaac is
commended for his faith in blessing his sons. It was commendable in him that, in
great bodily weakness, he still believed himself to be the guardian of God’s
blessing, and recognised that he had a great inheritance to bequeath to his
sons. But, in unaccountable and inconsistent contempt of God’s expressed
purpose, he proposes to hand over this blessing to Esau. Many things had
occurred to fix his attention upon the fact that Esau was not to be his heir.
Esau had sold his birthright, and had married Hittite women, and his whole
conduct was, no doubt, of a piece with this, and showed that, in his hands, any
spiritual inheritance would be both unsafe and unappreciated. That Isaac had
some notion he was doing wrong in giving to Esau what belonged to God, and what
God meant to give to Jacob, is shown from his precipitation in bestowing the
blessing. He has no feeling that he is authorized by God, and therefore he
cannot wait calmly till God should intimate, by unmistakable signs, that he is
near his end; but, seized with a panic, lest his favourite should somehow be
left unblessed, he feels, in his nervous alarm, as if he were at the point of
death, and, though destined to live for forty-three years longer, he calls Esau
that he may hand over to him his dying testament. How different is the nerve of
a man when he knows he is doing God’s will, and when he is but fulfilling his
own device. For the same reason, he has to stimulate his spirit by artificial
means. The prophetic ecstasy is not felt by him; he must be exhilarated by
venison and wine, that, strengthened and revived in body, and having his
gratitude aroused afresh towards Esau, he may bless him with all the greater
vigour. The final stimulus is given when he smells the garments of Esau on
Jacob, and when that fresh earthy smell which so revives us in spring, as if our
life were renewed with the year, and which hangs about one who has been in the
open air, entered into Isaac’s blood, and lent him fresh vigour. It is a strange
and, in some respects, perplexing spectacle that is here presented to us – the
organ of the Divine blessing represented by a blind old man, laid on a “couch of
skins,” stimulated by meat and wine, and trying to cheat God by bestowing the
family blessing on the son of his own choice to the exclusion of the divinely
appointed heir. Out of such beginnings had God to educate a people worthy of
Himself, and through such hazards had He to guide the spiritual blessing He
designed to convey to us all. Isaac laid a net for his own feet. By his
unrighteous and timorous haste he secured the defeat of his own long-cherished
scheme. It was his hasting to bless Esau which drove Rebekah to checkmate him by
winning the blessing for her favourite. The shock which Isaac felt when Esau
came in and the fraud was discovered is easily understood. The mortification of
the old man must have been extreme when he found that he had so completely taken
himself in. He was reclining in the satisfied reflection that for once he had
overreached his astute Rebekah and her astute son, and in the comfortable
feeling that, at last, he had accomplished his one remaining desire, when he
learns from the exceeding bitter cry of Esau that he has himself been duped. It
was enough to rouse the anger of the mildest and godliest of men, but Isaac does
not storm and protest – “he trembles exceedingly.” He recognises, by a spiritual
insight quite unknown to Esau, that this is God’s hand, and deliberately
confirms, with his eyes open, what he had done in blindness: “I have blessed
him: Yea, and he shall be blessed.” Had he wished to deny the validity of the
blessing, he had ground enough for doing so. He had not really given it: it had
been stolen from him. An act must be judged by its intention, and he had been
far from intending to bless Jacob. Was he to consider himself bound by what he
had done under a misapprehension? He had given a blessing to one person under
the impression that he was a different person; must not the blessing go to him
for whom it was designed? But Isaac unhesitatingly yielded. This clear
recognition of God’s hand in the matter, and quick submission to Him, reveals a
habit of reflection, and a spiritual thoughtfulness, which are the good
qualities in Isaac’s otherwise unsatisfactory character. Before he finished his
answer to Esau, he felt he was a poor feeble creature in the hand of a true and
just God, who had used even his infirmity and sin to forward righteous and
gracious ends. It was his sudden recognition of the frightful way in which he
had been tampering with God’s will, and of the grace with which God had
prevented him from accomplishing a wrong destination of the inheritance, that
made Isaac tremble very exceedingly. In this humble acceptance of the
disappointment of his life’s love and hope, Isaac shows us the manner in which
we ought to bear the consequences of our wrong-doing. The punishment of our sin
often comes through the persons with whom we have to do, unintentionally on
their part, and yet we are tempted to hate them because they pain and punish us,
father, mother, wife, child, or whoever else. Isaac and Esau were alike
disappointed. Esau only saw the supplanter, and vowed to be revenged. Isaac saw
God in the matter, and trembled. So when Shimei cursed David, and his loyal
retainers would have cut off his head for so doing, David said, “Let him alone,
and let him curse: it may be that the Lord hath bidden him.” We can bear the
pain inflicted on us by men when we see that they are merely the instruments of
a divine chastisement. The persons who thwart us and make our life bitter, the
persons who stand between us and our dearest hopes, the persons whom we are most
disposed to speak angrily and bitterly to, are often thorns planted in our path
by God to keep us on the right way. Isaac’s sin propagated itself with the rapid
multiplication of all sin. Rebekah overheard what passed between Isaac and Esau,
and although she might have been able to wait until by fair means Jacob received
the blessing, yet when she sees Isaac actually preparing to pass Jacob by and
bless Esau, her fears are so excited that she cannot any longer quietly leave
the matter in God’s hand, but must lend her own more skilful management. It may
have crossed her mind that she was justified in forwarding what she knew to be
God’s purpose. She saw no other way of saving God’s purpose and Jacob’s rights
than by her interference. The emergency might have unnerved many a woman, but
Rebekah is equal to the occasion She makes the threatened exclusion of Jacob the
very means for at last finally settling the inheritance upon him. She braves the
indignation of Isaac and the rage of Esau, and fearless herself, and confident
of success, she soon quiets the timorous and cautious objections of Jacob. She
knows that for straightforward lying and acting a part she was sure of good
support in Jacob. Luther says, “Had it been me, I’d have dropped the dish.” But
Jacob had no such tremors – could submit his hands and face to the touch of
Isaac, and repeat his lie as often as needful. An old man bedridden like Isaac
becomes the subject of a number of little deceptions which may seem, and which
may be, very unimportant in themselves, but which are seen to wear down the
reverence due to the father of a family, and which imperceptibly sap the guile
less sincerity and truthfulness of those who practise them. This overreaching of
Isaac by dressing Jacob in Esau’s clothes, might come in naturally as one of
those daily deceptions which Rebekah was accustomed to practise on the old man
whom she kept quite in her own hand, giving him as much or as little insight
into the doings of the family as seemed advisable to her. It would never occur
to her that she was taking God in hand; it would seem only as if she were making
such use of Isaac’s infirmity as she was in the daily practice of doing. But to
account for an act is not to excuse it. Underlying the conduct of Rebekah and
Jacob was the conviction that they would come better speed by a little deceit of
their own than by suffering God to further them in His own way – that though God
would certainly not practise deception Himself, He might not object to others
doing so that in this emergency holiness was a hampering thing which might just
for a little be laid aside that they might be more holy afterwards – that though
no doubt in ordinary circumstances, and as a normal habit, deceit is not to be
commended, yet in cases of difficulty, which call for ready wit, a prompt
seizure, and delicate handling, men must be allowed to secure their ends in
their own way. Their unbelief thus directly produced immorality – immorality of
a very revolting kind, the defrauding of their relatives, and repulsive also
because practised as if on God’s side, or, as we would now say, “in the
interests of religion.” To this day the method of Rebekah and Jacob is largely
adopted by religious persons. It is notorious that persons whose ends are good
frequently become thoroughly unscrupulous about the means they use to accomplish
them. They dare not say in so many words that they may do evil that good may
come, nor do they think it a tenable position in morals that the end sanctifies
the means; and yet their consciousness of a justifiable and desirable end
undoubtedly does blunt their sensitiveness regarding the legitimacy of the means
they employ. For example, Protestant controversialists, persuaded that vehement
opposition to Popery is good, and filled with the idea of accomplishing its
downfall, are often guilty of gross misrepresentation, because they do not
sufficiently inform themselves of the actual tenets and practices of the Church
of Rome. In all controversy, religious and political, it is the same. It is
always dishonest to circulate reports that you have no means of authenticating:
yet how freely are such reports circulated to blacken the character of an
opponent, and to prove his opinions to be dangerous. It is always dishonest to
condemn opinions we have not inquired into, merely because of some fancied
consequence which these opinions carry in them: yet how freely are opinions
condemned by men who have never been at the trouble carefully to inquire into
their truth. They do not feel the dishonesty of their position, because they
have a general consciousness that they are on the side of religion, and of what
has generally passed for truth. All keeping back of facts which are supposed to
have an unsettling effect, is but a repetition of this sin. There is no sin more
hateful. Under the appearance of serving God, and maintaining His cause in the
world, it insults Him by assuming that if the whole bare, undisguised truth were
spoken, His cause would suffer. The fate of all such attempts to manage God’s
matters by keeping things dark, and misrepresenting fact, is written for all who
care to understand in the results of this scheme of Rebekah’s and Jacob’s. They
gained nothing, and they lost a great deal by their wicked interference. They
gained nothing; for God had promised that the birthright would be Jacob’s, and
would have given it him in some way redounding to his credit and not to his
shame. And they lost a great deal. The mother lost her son; Jacob had to flee
for his life, and, for all we know, Rebekah never saw him more. And Jacob lost
all the comforts of home, and all those possessions his father had accumulated.
He had to flee with nothing but his staff, an outcast to begin the world for
himself. From this first false step onwards to his death, he was pursued by
misfortune, until his own verdict on his life was, “Few and evil have been the
days of the years of my life.” Thus severely was the sin of Rebekah and Jacob
punished. It coloured their whole after life with a dark, sombre hue. It was
marked thus, because it was a sin by all means to be avoided. It was virtually
the sin of blaming God for forgetting His promise, or of accusing Him of being
unable to perform it: so that they, Rebekah and Jacob, had, forsooth, to take
God’s work out of His hands, and show Him how it ought to be done. The
announcement of God’s purpose, instead of enabling them quietly to wait for a
blessing they knew to be certain, became in their unrighteous and impatient
hearts actually an inducement to sin. Abraham was so bold and confident in his
faith, at least latterly, that again and again he refused to take as a gift from
men, and on the most honourable terms, what God had promised to give him: his
grandson is so little sure of God’s truth, that he will rather trust his own
falsehood; and what he thinks God may forget to give him, he will steal from his
own father. Some persons have especial need to consider this sin – they are
tempted to play the part of Providence, to intermeddle where they ought to
refrain. Sometimes just a little thing is needed to make everything go to our
liking – the keeping back of one small fact, a slight variation in the way of
stating the matter, is enough – things want just a little push in the right
direction; it is wrong, but very slightly so. And so they are encouraged to
close for a moment their eyes and put to their hand. Of all the parties in this
transaction none is more to blame than Esau. He shows now how selfish and
untruthful the sensual man really is, and how worthless is the generosity which
is merely of impulse and not bottomed on principle. While he so furiously and
bitterly blamed Jacob for supplanting him, it might surely have occurred to him
that it was really he who was supplanting Jacob. He had no right, divine or
human, to the inheritance. God had never said that his possession should go to
the oldest, and had in this case said the express opposite. Besides, inconstant
as Esau was, he could scarcely have forgotten the bargain that so pleased him at
the time, and by which he had sold to his younger brother all title to his
father’s blessings. Jacob was to blame for seeking to win his own by craft, but
Esau was more to blame for endeavouring furtively to recover what he knew to be
no longer his. His bitter cry was the cry of a disappointed and enraged child,
what Hosea calls the “howl” of those who seem to seek the Lord, but are really
merely crying out, like animals, for corn and wine. Many that care very little
for God’s love will seek His favours; and every wicked wretch who has in his
prosperity spurned God’s offers, will, when he sees how he has cheated himself,
turn to God’s gifts, though not to God, with a cry. Esau would now very gladly
have given a mess of pottage for the blessing that secured to its receiver “the
dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.” Like many
another sinner, he wanted both to eat his cake and have it. He wanted to spend
his youth sowing to the flesh, and have the harvest which those only can have
who have sown to the spirit. He wished both of two irreconcilable things – both
the red pottage and the birthright. He is a type of those who think very lightly
of spiritual blessings while their appetites are strong, but afterwards bitterly
complain that their whole life is filled with the results of sowing to the flesh
and not to the spirit.

“We barter life for pottage; sell true bliss For wealth or power, for pleasure
or renown;

Thus, Esau-like, our Father’s blessing miss, Then wash with fruitless tears our
faded crown.”

The words of the New Testament, in which it is said that Esau “found no place
for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears,” are sometimes
misunderstood. They do not mean that he sought what we ordinarily call
repentance, a change of mind about the value of the birthright. He had that; it
was this that made him weep. What he sought now was some means of undoing what
he had done, of cancelling the deed of which he repented. His experience does
not tell us that a man once sinning as Esau sinned becomes a hardened reprobate
whom no good influence can impress or bring to repentance, but it says that the
sin so committed leaves irreparable consequences – that no man can live a youth
of folly and yet find as much in manhood and maturer years as if he had lived a
careful and God-fearing youth. Esau had irrecoverably lost that which he would
now have given all he had to possess; and in this, I suppose, he represents half
the men who pass through this world. He warns us that it is very possible, by
careless yielding to appetite and passing whim, to entangle ourselves
irrecoverably for this life, if not to weaken and maim ourselves for eternity.
At the time, your act may seem a very small and secular one, a mere bargain in
the ordinary course, a little transaction such as one would enter into
carelessly after the day’s work is over, in the quiet of a summer evening or in
the midst of the family circle; or it may seem so necessary that you never think
of its moral qualities, as little as you question whether you are justified in
breathing; but you are warned that if there be in that act a crushing out of
spiritual hopes to make way for the free enjoyment of the pleasures of sense –
if there be a deliberate preference of the good things of this life to the love
of God – if, knowingly, you make light of spiritual blessings, and count them
unreal when weighed against obvious worldly advantages – then the consequences
of that act will in this life bring to you great discomfort and uneasiness,
great loss and vexation, an agony of remorse, and a life-long repentance. You
are warned of this, and most touchingly, by the moving entreaties, the bitter
cries and tears of Esau. But even when our life is spoiled irreparably, a hope
remains for our character and ourselves – not certainly if our misfortunes
embitter us, not if resentment is the chief result of our suffering; but if,
subduing resentment, and taking blame to ourselves instead of trying to fix it
on others, we take revenge upon the real source of our undoing, and extirpate
from our own character the root of bitterness. Painful and difficult is such
schooling. It calls for simplicity, and humility, and truthfulness – qualities
not of frequent occurrence. It calls for abiding patience; for he who begins
thus to sow to the spirit late in life, must be content with inward fruits, with
peace of conscience, increase of righteousness and humility, and must learn to
live without much of what all men naturally desire. While each member of Isaac’s
family has thus his own plan, and is striving to fulfil his private intention,
the result is, that God’s purpose is fulfilled. In the human agency, such faith
in God as existed was overlaid with misunderstanding and distrust of God. But
notwithstanding the petty and mean devices, the short-sighted slyness, the
blundering unbelief, the profane worldliness of the human parties in the
transaction, the truth and mercy of God still find a way for themselves. Were
matters left in our hands, we should make shipwreck even of the salvation with
which we are provided. We carry into our dealings with it the same selfishness,
and inconstancy, and worldliness which made it necessary: and had not God
patience to bear with, as well as mercy to invite us; had He not wisdom to
govern us in the use of His grace, as well as wisdom to contrive its first
bestowal, we should perish with the water of life at our lips.


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  CHAPTER 13: 02.05.     LECTURE V: JACOB’S FLIGHT AND DREAM
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LECTURE V JACOB’S FLIGHT AND DREAM Genesis 27:41-46, Genesis 28:1-22
“Consequences are unpitying”

“So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before Thee. Nevertheless I am
continually with Thee.” Psalms 73:22

IT is so commonly observed as to be scarcely worth again remarking, that persons
who employ a great deal of craft in the management of their affairs are
invariably entrapped in their own net. Life is so complicated, and every matter
of conduct has so many issues, that no human brain can possibly foresee every
contingency. Rebekah was a clever woman, and quite competent to outwit men like
Isaac and Esau, but she had in her scheming neglected to take account of Laban,
a man true brother to herself in cunning. She had calculated on Esau’s
resentment, and knew it would last only a few days, and this brief period she
was prepared to utilize by sending Jacob out of Esau’s reach to her own kith and
kin, from among whom he might get a suitable wife. But she did not reckon on
Laban’s making her son serve fourteen years for his wife, nor upon Jacob’s
falling so deeply in love with Rachel as to make him apparently forget his
mother. In the first part of her scheme she feels herself at home. She is a
woman who knows exactly how much of her mind to disclose, so as effectually to
lead her husband to adopt her view and plan. She did not bluntly advise Isaac to
send Jacob to Padan-aram, but she sowed in his apprehensive mind fears which she
knew would make him send Jacob there; she suggested the possibility of Isaac’s
taking a wife of the daughters of Heth. She felt sure that Isaac, did not need
to be told where to send his son to find a suitable wife. So Isaac called Jacob,
and said, Go to Padan-aram, to the house of thy mother’s father, and take thee a
wife thence. And he gave him the family blessing: God Almighty give thee the
blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee – so constituting him
his heir, the representative of Abraham. The effect this had on Esau is very
noticeable. He sees, as the narrative tells us, a great many things, and his
dull mind tries to make some meaning out of all that is passing before him. The
historian seems intentionally to satirize Esau’s attempt at reasoning, and the
foolish simplicity of the device he fell upon. He had an idea that Jacob’s
obedience, in going to seek a wife of another stock than he had connected
himself with, would be pleasing to his parents; and, perhaps, he had an idea
that it would be possible to steal a march upon Jacob in his absence, and by a
more speedily effected obedience to his parents’ desire, win their preference,
and perhaps move Isaac to alter his will and reverse the blessing. Though living
in the chosen family, he seems to have had not the slightest idea that there was
any higher will than his father’s being fulfilled in their doings. He does not
yet see why he himself should not be as blessed as Jacob; he cannot grasp at all
the distinction that grace makes; cannot take in the idea that God has chosen a
people to Himself, and that no natural advantage or force or endowment can set a
man among that people but only God’s choice. Accordingly, he does not see any
difference between Ishmael’s family and the chosen family; they are both sprung
from Abraham, both are naturally the same, and the fact that God expressly gave
His in heritance past Ishmael is nothing to Esau – an act of God has no meaning
to him. He merely sees that he has not pleased his parents as well as he might
by his marriage, and his easy and yielding disposition prompts him to remedy
this. This is a fine specimen of the hazy views men have of what will bring them
to a level with God’s chosen. Through their crass insensibility to the high
righteousness of God, there still does penetrate a perception that if they are
to please Him there are certain means to be used for doing so. There are, they
see, certain occupations and ways pursued by Christians, and if by themselves
adopting these they can please God, they are quite willing to humour Him in
this. Like Esau, they do not see their way to drop their old connections, but if
by making some little additions to their habits, or forming some new connection,
they can quiet this controversy that has somehow grown up between God and His
children, – though, so far as they see, it is a very unmeaning controversy, –
they will very gladly enter into any little arrangement for the purpose. We
won’t, of course, divorce the world, won’t dismiss from our homes and hearts
what God hates and means to destroy, won’t accept God’s will as our sole and
absolute law, but we will so far meet God’s wishes as to add to what we have
adopted something that is almost as good as what God enjoins: we will make any
little alterations which will not quite upset our present ways. Much commoner
than hypocrisy is this dim-sighted, blundering stupidity of the really profane
worldly man, who thinks he can take rank with men whose natures God has changed,
by the mere imitation of some of their ways; who thinks, that as he cannot
without great labour, and without too seriously endangering his hold on the
world, do precisely what God requires, God may be expected to be satisfied with
a something like it. Are we not aware of endeavouring at times to cloak a sin
with some easy virtue, to adopt some new and apparently good habit, instead of
destroying the sin we know God hates; or to offer to God, and palm upon our own
conscience, a mere imitation of what God is pleased with? Do you attend church,
do you come and decorously submit to a service? That is not at all what God
enjoins, though it is like it. What He means is, that you worship Him, which is
a quite different employment. Do you render to God some outward respect, have
you adopted some habits in deference to Him, do you even attempt some private
devotion and discipline of the spirit? Still what He requires is something that
goes much deeper than all that; namely, that you love Him. To conform to one or
two habits of godly people is not what is required of us; but to be at heart
godly. As Jacob journeyed northwards, he came, on the second or third evening of
his flight, to the hills of Bethel. As the sun was sinking he found himself
toiling up the rough path which Abraham may have described to him as looking
like a great staircase of rock and crag reaching from earth to sky. Slabs of
rock, piled one upon another, form the whole hill-side, and to Jacob’s eye,
accustomed to the rolling pastures of Beersheba, they would appear almost like a
structure built for superhuman uses, well founded in the valley below, and
intended to reach to unknown heights. Overtaken by darkness on this rugged path,
he readily finds as soft a bed and as good shelter as his shepherd-habits
require, and with his head on a stone and a corner of his dress thrown over his
face to preserve him from the moon, he is soon fast asleep. But in his dreams
the massive staircase is still before his eyes, and it is no longer himself that
is toiling up it as it leads to an unexplored hill top above him, but the angels
of God are ascending and descending upon it, and at its top is Jehovah Himself.
Thus simply does God meet the thoughts of Jacob, and lead him to the
encouragement he needed. What was probably Jacob’s state of mind when he lay
down on that hill-side? In the first place, and as he would have said to any man
he chanced to meet, he wondered what he would see when he got to the top of this
hill; and still more, as he may have said to Rebekah, he wondered what reception
he would meet with from Laban, and whether he would ever again see his father’s
tents. This vision shows him that his path leads to God, that it is He who
occupies the future; and, in his dream, a voice comes to him: “I am with thee,
and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again
into this land.” He had, no doubt, wondered much whether the blessing of his
father was, after all, so valuable a possession, whether it might not have been
wiser to take a share with Esau than to be driven out homeless thus. God has
never spoken to him; he has heard his father speak of assurances coming to him
from God, but as for him, through all the long years of his life he has never
heard what he could speak of as a voice of God. But this night these doubts were
silenced – there came to his soul an assurance that never departed from it. He
could have affirmed he heard God saying to him: “I am the Lord God of thy father
Abraham, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give
it.” And lastly, all these thoughts probably centred in one deep feeling that he
was an outcast, a fugitive from justice. He was glad he was in so solitary a
place, he was glad he was so far from Esau and from every human eye; and yet –
what desolation of spirit accompanied this feeling: there was no one he could
bid good-night to, no one he could spend the evening hour with in quiet talk; he
was a banished man, whatever fine gloss Rebekah might put upon it, and deep down
in his conscience there was that which told him he was not banished without
cause. Might not God also forsake him – might not God banish him, and might he
not find a curse pursuing him, preventing man or woman from ever again looking
in his face with pleasure? Such fears are met by the vision. This desolate spot,
unvisited by sheep or bird, has become busy with life, angels thronging the
ample staircase. Here, where he thought himself lonely and outcast, he finds he
has come to the very gate of heaven. His fond mother might, at that hour, have
been visiting his silent tent, and shedding ineffectual tears on his abandoned
bed, but he finds himself in the very house of God, cared for by angels. As the
darkness had revealed to him the stars shining overhead, so when the deceptive
glare of waking life was dulled by sleep, he saw the actual realities which
before were hidden. No wonder that a vision which so graphically showed the open
communication between earth and heaven should have deeply impressed itself on
Jacob’s descendants. What more effectual consolation could any poor outcast, who
felt he had spoiled his life, require, than the memory of this staircase
reaching from the pillow of the lonely fugitive from justice up into the very
heart of heaven? How could any most desolate soul feel quite abandoned so long
as the memory retained the vision of the angels thronging up and down with swift
service to the needy? How could it be even in the darkest hour believed that all
hope was gone, and that men might but curse God and die, when the mind turned to
this bridging of the interval between earth and heaven? In the New Testament we
meet with an instance of the familiarity with this vision which true Israelites
enjoyed. Our Lord, in addressing Nathanael, makes use of it in a way that proves
this familiarity. Under his fig-tree, whose broad leaves were used in every
Jewish garden as a screen from observation, and whose branches were trained down
so as to form an open-air oratory, where secret prayer might be indulged in
undisturbed, Nathanael had been declaring to the Father his ways, his
weaknesses, his hopes. And scarcely more astonished was Jacob when he found
himself the object of this angelic ministry on the lonely hill side, than was
Nathanael when he found how one eye had penetrated the leafy screen, and had
read his thoughts and wishes. Apparently he had been encouraging himself with
this vision, for our Lord, reading his thoughts, says: “Because I said unto
thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee, believest thou? Thou shalt
see greater things than these – thou shalt see heaven open, and the angels of
God ascending and descending on the Son of man.” This, then, is a vision for us
even more than for Jacob. It has its fulfilment in the times after the
Incarnation more manifestly than in previous times. The true staircase by which
heavenly messengers ascend and descend is the Son of man. It is He who really
bridges the interval between heaven and earth, God and man. In His person these
two are united. You cannot tell whether Christ is more divine or human, more God
or man – solidly based on earth, as this massive staircase, by His real
humanity, by His thirty-three years engagement in all human functions and all
experiences of this life, He is yet familiar with eternity, His name is “He that
came down from heaven,” and if your eye follow step by step to the heights of
His person, it rests at last on what you recognise as Divine. His love it is
that is wide enough to embrace God on the one hand, and the lowest sinner on the
other. Truly He is the way, the stair, leading from the lowest depth of earth to
the highest height of heaven. In Him you find a love that embraces you as you
are, in whatever condition, however cast down and defeated, however embittered
and polluted – a love that stoops tenderly to you and hopefully, and gives you
once more a hold upon holiness and life, and in that very love unfolds to you
the highest glory of heaven and of God. When this comes home to a man in the
hour of his need, it becomes the most arousing revelation. He springs from the
troubled slumber we call life, and all earth wears a new glory and awe to him.
He exclaims with Jacob, “How dreadful is this place. Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I knew it not.” The world that had been so bleak and empty to him, is
filled with a majestic vital presence. Jacob is no longer a mere fugitive from
the results of his own sin, a shepherd in search of employment, a man setting
out in the world to try his fortune; he is the partner with God in the
fulfilment of a Divine purpose. And such is the change that passes on every man
who believes in the Incarnation, who feels himself to be connected with God by
Jesus Christ; he recognises the Divine intention, to uplift his life, and to
fill it with new hopes and purposes. He feels that humanity is consecrated by
the entrance of the Son of God into it: he feels that all human life is holy
ground since the Lord Himself has passed through it. Having once had this vision
of God and man united in Christ, life cannot any more be to him the poor,
dreary, commonplace, wretched round of secular duties and short-lived joys and
terribly punished sins, it was before: but it truly be comes the very gate of
heaven; from each part of it he knows there is a staircase rising to the
presence of God, and that out of the region of pure holiness and justice there
flow to him heavenly aids, tender guidance, and encouragement. Do you think the
idea of the Incarnation too aerial and speculative to carry with you for help in
rough, practical matters? The Incarnation is not a mere idea, but a fact as
substantial and solidly rooted in life as anything you have to do with. Even the
shadow of it Jacob saw carried in it so much of what was real that when he was
broad awake he trusted it and acted on it. It was not scattered by the chill of
the morning air, nor by that fixed staring reality which external nature assumes
in the gray dawn as one object after another shows itself in the same spot and
form in which night had fallen upon it. There were no angels visible when he
opened his eyes; the staircase was there, but it was of no heavenly substance,
and if it had any secret to tell, it coldly and darkly kept it. There was no
retreat for the runaway from the poor common facts of yesterday. The sky seemed
as far from earth as it did yesterday, his track over the hill as lonely, his
brother’s wrath as real; – but other things also had become real; and as he
looked back from the top of the hill on the stone he had set up, he felt the
words, “I am with thee in all places whither thou goest,” graven on his heart,
and giving him new courage; and he knew that every footfall of his was making a
Bethel, and that as he went he was carrying God through the world. The bleakest
rains that swept across the hills of Bethel could never wash out of his mind the
vision of bright-winged angels, as little as they could wash off the oil or wear
down the stone he had set up. The brightest glare of this world’s heyday of real
life could not outshine and cause them to disappear; and the vision on which we
hope is not one that vanishes at cock-crow, nor is He who connects us with God
shy of human handling, but substantial as ourselves He offered Himself to every
kind of test, so that those who knew Him for years could say, with the most
absolute confidence, “That which we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life
... declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our
fellowship is with the Father, and with his son Jesus Christ.” Jacob obeyed a
good instinct when he set up as a monumental stone that which had served as his
pillow while he dreamt and saw this inspiring vision. He felt that vivid as the
impression on his mind then was, it would tend to fade, and he erected this
stone that in after days he might have a witness that would testify to his
present assurance. One great secret in the growth of character is the art of
prolonging the quickening power of right ideas, of perpetuating just and
inspiring impressions. And he who despises the aid of all external helps for the
accomplishment of this object is not likely to succeed. Religion, some men say,
is an inward thing: it does not consist of public worship, ordinances, and so
forth, but it is a state of spirit. Very true; but he knows little of human
nature who fancies a state of spirit can be maintained without the aid of
external reminders, presentations to eye and ear of central religious truths and
facts. We have all of us had such views of truth, and such corresponding desires
and purposes, as would transform us were they only permanent. But what a night
has settled on our past, how little have we found skill to prolong the benefit
arising from particular events or occasions. Some parts of our life, indeed,
require no monument, there is nothing there we would ever again think of, if
possible; but, alas! these, for the most part, have erected monuments of their
own, to which, as with a sad fascination, our eyes are ever turning – persons we
have injured, or who, somehow, so remind us of sin, that we shrink from meeting
them – places to which sins of ours have attached a reproachful meaning. And
these natural monuments must be imitated in the life of grace. By fixed hours of
worship, by rules and habits of devotion, by public worship, and especially by
the monumental ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, must we cherish the memory of
known truth, and deepen former impressions. To the monument Jacob attached a
vow, so that when he returned to that spot the stone might remind him of the
dependence on God he now felt, of the precarious situation he was in when this
vision appeared, and of all the help God had afterwards given him. He seems to
have taken up the meaning of that endless chain of angels ceaselessly coming
down full of blessing, and going up empty of all but desires, requests,
aspirations. And if we are to live with clean conscience and with heart open to
God, we must so live that the messengers who bring God’s blessings to us shall
not have an evil report to take back of the manner in which we have received and
spent His bounty. This whole incident makes a special appeal to those who are
starting in life. Jacob was no longer a young man, but he was unmarried, and he
was going to seek employment with nothing to begin the world with but his
shepherd’s staff, the symbol of his knowledge of a profession. Many must see in
him a very exact reproduction of their own position. They have left home, and it
may be they have left it not altogether with pleasant memories, and they are now
launched on the world for themselves, with nothing but their staff, their
knowledge of some business. The spot they have reached may seem as desolate as
the rock where Jacob lay, their prospects as doubtful as his. For such an one
there is absolutely no security but that which is given in the vision of Jacob –
in the belief that God will be with you in all places, and that even now on that
life which you are perhaps already wishing to seclude from all holy influences,
the angels of God are descending to bless and restrain you from sin. Happy the
man who, at the outset, can heartily welcome such a connection of his life with
God: unhappy he who welcomes whatever blots out the thought of heaven, and who
separates himself from all that reminds him of the good influences that throng
his path. The desire of the young heart to see life and know the world is
natural and innocent, but how many fancy that in seeing the lowest and poorest
perversions of life they see life – how many forget that unless they keep their
hearts pure they can never enter into the best and richest and most enduring of
the uses and joys of human life. Even from a selfish motive and the mere desire
to succeed in the world, every one starting in life would do well to consider
whether he really has Jacob’s blessing and is making his vow. And certainly
every one who has any honour, who is governed by any of those sentiments that
lead men to noble and worthy actions, will frankly meet God’s offers and
joyfully accept a heavenly guidance and a permanent connection with God. Before
we dismiss this vision, it may be well to look at one instance of its
fulfilment, that we may understand the manner in which God fulfils His promises.
Jacob’s experience in Haran was not so brilliant and unexceptionable as he might
perhaps expect. He did, indeed, at once find a woman he could love, but he had
to purchase her with seven years toil, which ultimately became fourteen years.
He did not grudge this; because it was customary, because his affections were
strong, and because he was too independent to send to his father for money to
buy a wife. But the bitterest disappointment awaited him. With the burning
humiliation of one who has been cheated in so cruel a way, he finds himself
married to Leah. He protests, but he cannot insist on his protest, nor divorce
Leah; for, in point of fact, he is conscious that he is only being paid in his
own coin, foiled with his own weapons. In this veiled bride brought in to him on
false pretences, he sees the just retribution of his own disguise when with the
hands of Esau he went in and received his father’s blessing. His mouth is shut
by the remembrance of his own past. But submitting to this chastisement, and
recognising in it not only the craft of his uncle, but the stroke of God, that
which he at first thought of as a cruel curse became a blessing. It was Leah
much more than Rachel that built up the house of Israel. To this despised wife
six of the tribes traced their origin, and among these was the tribe of Judah.
Thus he learned the fruitfulness of God’s retribution – that to be humbled by
God is really to be built up, and to be punished by Him the richest blessing.
Through such an experience are many persons led: when we would embrace the fruit
of years of toil God thrusts into our arms something quite different from our
expectation – something that not only disappoints, but that at first repels us,
reminding us of acts of our own we had striven to forget. Is it with resentment
you still look back on some such experience, when the reward of years of toil
evaded your grasp, and you found yourself bound to what you would not have
worked a day to obtain? – do you find yourself disheartened and discouraged by
the way in which you seem regularly to miss the fruit of your labour? If so, no
doubt it were useless to assure you that the disappointment may be more fruitful
than the hope fulfilled, but it can scarcely be useless to ask you to consider
whether it is not the fact that in Jacob’s case what was thrust upon him was
more fruitful than what he strove to win.


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  CHAPTER 14: 02.06.     LECTURE VI: JACOB AT PENIEL
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LECTURE VI

JACOB AT PENIEL

Genesis 32:1-32 “Why, thou fool and blind It is the mercy-stroke that stops thy
fate, Hamstrings and holds thee to thy hurt, but how? On the edge o’ the
precipice.”

“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.” James
4:10

JACOB had a double reason for wishing to leave Padan-aram. He believed in the
promise of God to give him Canaan; and he saw that Laban was a man with whom he
could never be on a thoroughly good understanding. He saw plainly that Laban was
resolved to make what he could out of his skill at as cheap a rate as possible –
the characteristic of a selfish, greedy, ungrateful, and therefore, in the end,
ill-served master. Laban and Esau were the two men who had hitherto chiefly
influenced Jacob’s life. But they were very different in character. Esau could
never see that there was any important difference between himself and Jacob –
except that his brother was trickier. Esau was the type of those who honestly
think that there is not much in religion, and that saints are but white-washed
sinners. Laban, on the contrary, is almost superstitiously impressed by the
distinction between God’s people and others. But the chief practical issue of
this impression is, not that he seeks God’s friendship for himself, but that he
tries to make a profitable use of God’s friends. He seeks to get God’s blessing,
as it were, at second-hand. If men could be related to God indirectly, as if in
law and not by blood, that would suit Laban. If God would admit men to His
inheritance on any other terms than being sons in the direct line, if there were
some relationship once removed, a kind of sons-in-law, so that mere connection
with the godly, though not with God, would win His blessing, this would suit
Laban. Laban is the man who appreciates the social value of virtue,
truthfulness, fidelity, temperance, godliness, but wishes to enjoy their fruits
without the pain of cultivating the qualities themselves. He is scrupulous as to
the character of those he takes into his employment, and seeks to connect
himself in business with good men. In his domestic life, he acts on the idea
which his experience has suggested to him, that persons really godly will make
his home more peaceful, better regulated, safer than otherwise it might be. If
he holds a position of authority, he knows how to make use, for the preservation
of order and for the promotion of his own ends, of the voluntary efforts of
Christian societies, of the trustworthiness of Christian officials, and of the
support of the Christian community. But with all this recognition of the reality
and influence of godliness, he never for one moment entertains the idea of
himself becoming a godly man. In all ages there are Labans, who clearly
recognise the utility and worth of a connection with God, who have been much
mixed up with persons in whom that worth was very conspicuous, and who yet, at
the last, “depart and return unto their place,” like Jacob’s father-in-law,
without having themselves entered into any affectionate relations with God. From
Laban, then, Jacob was resolved to escape. And though to escape with large
droves of slow-moving sheep and cattle, as well as with many women and children,
seemed hopeless, the cleverness of Jacob did not fail him here. lie did not get
beyond reach of pursuit; he could never have expected to do so. But he stole
away to such a distance from Haran as made it much easier for him to come to
terms with Laban, and much more difficult for Laban to try any further device
for detaining him. But, delivered as he was from Laban, he had an even more
formidable person to deal with. As soon as Laban’s company disappear on the
northern horizon, Jacob sends messengers south to sound Esau. His message is so
contrived as to beget the idea in Esau’s mind that his younger brother is a
person of some importance and yet is prepared to show greater deference to
himself than formerly. But the answer brought back by the messengers is the curt
and haughty despatch of the man of war to the man of peace. No notice is taken
of Jacob’s vaunted wealth. No proposal of terms as if Esau had an equal to deal
with, is carried back. There is only the startling announcement: “Esau cometh to
meet thee, and four hundred men with him.” Jacob at once recognises the
significance of this armed advance on Esau’s part. Esau has not forgotten the
wrong he suffered at Jacob’s hands, and he means to show him that he is entirely
in his power. Therefore was Jacob “greatly afraid and distressed.” The joy with
which, a few days ago, he had greeted the host of God, was quite over cast by
the tidings brought him regarding the host of Esau. Things heavenly do always
look so like a mere show; visits of angels seem so delusive and fleeting; the
exhibition of the powers of heaven seems so often but as a tournament painted on
the sky, and so unavailable for the stern encounters that await us on earth,
that one seems, even after the most impressive of such displays, to be left to
fight on alone. No wonder Jacob is disturbed. His wives and dependents gather
round him in dismay; the children, catching the infectious panic, cower with
cries and weeping about their mothers; the whole camp is rudely shaken out of
its brief truce by the news of this rough Esau, whose impetuosity and warlike
ways they had all heard of and were now to experience. The accounts of the
messengers would no doubt grow in alarming descriptive detail as they saw how
much importance was attached to their words. Their accounts would also be
exaggerated by their own unwarlike natures, and by the indistinctness with which
they had made out the temper of Esau’s followers, and the novelty of the
equipments of war they had seen in his camp. Could we have been surprised had
Jacob turned and fled when thus he was made to picture the troops of Esau
sweeping from his grasp all he had so laboriously earned, and snatching the
promised inheritance from him when in the very act of entering on possession?
But though in fancy he already hears their rude shouts of triumph as they fall
upon his defenceless band, and already sees the merciless horde dividing the
spoil with shouts of derision and coarse triumph, and though all around him are
clamouring to be led into a safe retreat, Jacob sees stretched before him the
land that is his, and resolves that, by God’s help, he shall win it. What he
does is not the act of a man rendered incompetent through fear, but of one who
has recovered from the first shock of alarm and has all his wits about him. He
disposes his household and followers in two companies, so that each might
advance with the hope that it might be the one which should not meet Esau; and
having done all that his circumstances permit, he commends himself to God in
prayer. After Jacob had prayed to God, a happy thought strikes him, which he at
once puts in execution. Anticipating the experience of Solomon, that “a brother
offended is harder to be won than a strong city,” he, in the style of a skilled
tactician, lays siege to Esau’s wrath, and directs against it train after train
of gifts, which, like successive battalions pouring into a breach, might at
length quite win his brother. This disposition of his peaceful battering trains
having occupied him till sunset, he retires to the short rest of a general on
the eve of battle. As soon as he judges that the weaker members of the camp are
refreshed enough to begin their eventful march, he rises and goes from tent to
tent awaking the sleepers, and quickly forming them into their usual line of
march, sends them over the brook in the darkness, and himself is left alone, not
with the depression of a man who waits for the inevitable, but with the high
spirits of intense activity, and with the return of the old complacent
confidence of his own superiority to his powerful but sluggish-minded brother –
a confidence retrained now by the certainty he felt, at least for the time, that
Esau’s rage could not blaze through all the relays of gifts he had sent forward.
Having in this spirit seen all his camp across the brook, he himself pauses for
a moment, and looks with interest at the stream before him, and at the promised
land on its southern bank. This stream, too, has an interest for him as bearing
a name like his own – a name that signifies the “straggler,” and was given to
the mountain torrent from the pain and difficulty with which it seemed to find
its way through the hills. Sitting on the bank of the stream, he sees gleaming
through the darkness the foam that it churned as it writhed through the
obstructing rocks, or heard through the night the roar of its torrent as it
leapt downwards, tortuously finding its way towards Jordan; and Jacob says, So
will I, opposed though I be, win my way, by the circuitous routes of craft or by
the impetuous rush of courage, into the land whither that stream is going. With
compressed lips, and step as firm as when, twenty years before, he left the
land, – he rises to cross the brook and enter the land – he rises, and is seized
in a grasp that he at once owns as formidable. But surely this silent close, as
of two combatants who at once recognise one another’s strength, this protracted
strife, does not look like the act of a depressed man, but of one whose energies
have been strung to the highest pitch, and who would have borne down the
champion of Esau’s host had he at that hour opposed his entrance into the land
which Jacob claimed as his own, and into which, as his glove, pledging himself
to follow, he had thrown all that was dear to him in the world. It was no common
wrestler that would have been safe to meet him in that mood. Why, then, was
Jacob thus mysteriously held back while his household were quietly moving
forward in the darkness? What is the meaning, purpose, and use of this
opposition to his entrance? These are obvious from the state of mind Jacob was
in. He was going forward to meet Esau under the impression that there was no
other reason why he should not inherit the land but only his wrath, and pretty
confident that by his superior talent, his mother-wit, he could make a tool of
this stupid, generous brother of his. And the danger was, that if Jacob’s device
had succeeded, he would have been confirmed in these impressions, and have
believed that he had won the land from Esau, with God’s help certainly, but
still by his own indomitable pertinacity of purpose and skill in dealing with
men. Now, this was not the state of the case at all. Jacob had, by his own
deceit, become an exile from the land, had been, in fact, banished for fraud,
and though God had confirmed to him the covenant, and promised to him the land,
yet Jacob had apparently never come to any such thorough sense of his sin, and
own entire incompetency to win the birth-right for himself, as would have made
it possible for him to receive simply as God’s gift this land which as God’s
gift was alone valuable. Jacob does not yet seem to have taken up the difference
between inheriting a thing as God’s gift, and inheriting it as the meed of his
own prowess. To such a man God cannot give the land; Jacob cannot receive it. He
is thinking only of winning it, which is not at all what God means, and which
would, in fact, have annulled all the covenant, and lowered Jacob and his people
to the level simply of other nations who had to win and keep their territories
at their risk, and not as the blessed of God. If Jacob then is to get the land,
he must take it as a gift, which he is not prepared to do. During the last
twenty years he has got many a lesson which might have taught him to distrust
his own management, and he had, to a certain extent, acknowledged God; but his
Jacob-nature, his subtle, scheming nature, was not so easily made to stand
erect, and still he is for wriggling himself into the promised land. He is
coming back to the land under the impression that God needs to be managed, that
even though we have His promises it requires dexterity to get them fulfilled,
that a man will get into the inheritance all the readier for knowing what to
veil from God and what to exhibit, when to cleave to His word with great
profession of most humble and absolute reliance on Him, and when to take matters
into one’s own hand. Jacob, in short, was about to enter the land as Jacob, the
supplanter, and that would never do; he was going to win the land from Esau by
guile, or as he might; and not to receive it from God. And, therefore, just as
he is going to step into it, there lays hold of him, not an armed emissary of
his brother, but a far more formidable antagonist if Jacob will win the land, if
it is to be a mere trial of skill, a wrestling match, it must at least be with
the right person. Jacob is met with his own weapons. He has not chosen war, so
no armed opposition is made; but with the naked force of his own nature, he is
prepared for any man who will hold the land against him; with such tenacity,
toughness, quick presence of mind, elasticity, as nature has given him, he is
confident he can win and hold his own. So the real proprietor of the land strips
himself for the contest, and lets him feel, by the first hold he takes of him,
that if the question be one of mere strength he shall never enter the land. This
wrestling therefore was by no means actually or symbolically prayer. Jacob was
not aggressive, nor did he stay behind his company to spend the night in praying
for them. It was God who came and laid hold on Jacob to prevent him from
entering the land in the temper he was in, and as Jacob. He was to be taught
that it was not only Esau’s appeased wrath, or his own skilful smoothing down of
his brother’s ruffled temper, that gave him entrance; but that a nameless Being,
who came out upon him from the darkness, guarded the land, and that by His
passport only could he find entrance. And henceforth, as to every reader of this
history so much more to Jacob’s self, the meeting with Esau and the overcoming
of his opposition were quite secondary to, and eclipsed by his meeting and
prevailing with this unknown combatant. This struggle had, therefore, immense
significance for the history of Jacob. It is, in fact, a concrete representation
of the attitude he had maintained towards God throughout his previous history;
and it constitutes the turning point at which he assumes a new and satisfactory
attitude. Year after year Jacob had still retained confidence in himself; he had
never been thoroughly humbled, but had always felt himself able to regain the
land he had lost by his sin. And in this struggle he shows this same
determination and self-confidence. He wrestles on indomitably. As Kurtz, whom I
follow in his interpretation of this incident, says, “All along Jacob’s life had
been the struggle of a clever and strong, a pertinacious and enduring, a
self-confident and self-sufficient person, who was sure of the result only when
he helped himself – a contest with God, who wished to break his strength and
wisdom, in order to bestow upon him real strength in divine weakness, and real
wisdom in divine folly.” All this self-confidence culminates now, and in one
final and sensible struggle, his Jacob-nature, his natural propensity to wrest
what he desires and win what he aims at, from the most unwilling opponent, does
its very utmost and does it in vain. His steady straining, his dexterous feints,
his quick gusts of vehement assault, make no impression on this combatant and
move him not one foot off his ground. Time after time his crafty nature puts out
all its various resources, now letting his grasp relax and feigning defeat, and
then with gathered strength hurling himself on the stranger, but all in vain.
What Jacob had often surmised during the last twenty years, what had flashed
through him like a sudden gleam of light when he found himself married to Leah,
that he was in the hands of one against whom it is quite useless to struggle, he
now again begins to suspect. And as the first faint dawn appears, and he begins
dimly to make out the face, the quiet breathing of which he had felt on his own
during the contest, the man with whom he wrestles touches the strongest sinew in
Jacob’s body, and the muscle on which the wrestler most depends shrivels at the
touch and reveals to the falling Jacob how utterly futile had been all his skill
and obstinacy and how quickly the stranger might have thrown and mastered him.
All in a moment, as he falls, Jacob sees how it is with him, and Who it is that
has met him thus. As the hard, stiff, corded muscle shrivelled, so shrivelled
his obdurate, persistent self-confidence. And as he is thrown, yet cleaves with
the natural tenacity of a wrestler to his conqueror; so, utterly humbled before
this Mighty One whom now he recognises and owns, he yet cleaves to Him and
entreats His blessing. It is at this touch, which discovers the Almighty power
of Him with whom he has been contending, that the whole nature of Jacob goes
down before God. He sees how foolish and vain has been his obstinate persistence
in striving to trick God out of his blessing, or wrest it from Him, and now he
owns his utter incapacity to advance one step in this way, he admits to himself
that he is stopped, weakened in the way, thrown on his back, and can effect
nothing, simply nothing, by what he thought would effect all; and, therefore, he
passes from wrestling to praying, and with tears, as Hosea says, sobs out from
the broken heart of the strong man, “I will not let thee go except thou bless
me.” In making this transition from the boldness and persistence of
self-confidence to the boldness of faith and humility, Jacob becomes Israel the
supplanter, being baffled by his conqueror, rises a Prince. Disarmed of all
other weapons, he at last finds and uses the weapons wherewith God is conquered,
and with the simplicity and guilelessness now of an Israelite indeed, face to
face with God, hanging helpless with his arms around Him, he supplicates the
blessing he could not win. Thus, as Abraham had to become God’s heir in the
simplicity of humble dependence on God; as Isaac had to lay himself on God’s
altar with absolute resignation, and so become the heir of God, so Jacob enters
on the inheritance through the most thorough humbling. Abraham had to give up
all possessions and live on God’s promise; Isaac had to give up life itself;
Jacob had to yield his very self, and abandon all dependence on his own ability.
The new name he receives signalizes and interprets this crisis in his life. He
enters his land not as Jacob, but as Israel. The man who crossed the Jabbok was
not the same as he who had cheated Esau and outwitted Laban and determinedly
striven this morning with the angel. He was Israel, God’s prince, entering on
the land freely bestowed on him by an authority none could resist; a man who had
learned that in order to receive from God, one must ask. Very significant to
Jacob in his after life must have been the lameness consequent on this night’s
struggle. He, the wrestler, had to go halting all his days. He who had carried
all his weapons in his own person, in his intelligent watchful eye and tough
right arm, he who had felt sufficient for all emergencies and a match for all
men, had now to limp along as one who had been worsted and baffled and could not
hide his shame from men. So it sometimes happens that a man never recovers the
severe handling he has received at some turning point in his life. Often there
is never again the same elastic step, the same free and confident bearing, the
same apparent power, the same appearance to our fellow-men of completeness in
our life; but, instead of this, there is a humble decision which, if it does not
walk with so free a gait, yet knows better what ground it is treading and by
what right. To the end some men bear the marks of the heavy stroke by which God
first humbled them. It came in a sudden shock that broke their health, or in a
disappointment which nothing now given can ever quite obliterate the trace of,
or in circumstances painfully and permanently altered. And the man has to say
with Jacob, I shall never now be what I might have been; I was resolved to have
my own way, and though God in His mercy did not suffer me to destroy myself, yet
to drive me from my purpose He was forced to use a violence, under the effects
of which I go halting all my days, saved and whole, yet maimed to the end of
time. I am not ashamed of the mark, at least when I think of it as God’s
signature I am able to glory in it, but it never fails to remind me of a
perverse wilfulness I am ashamed of. With many men God is forced to such
treatment; if any of us are under it, God forbid we should mistake its meaning
and lie prostrate and despairing in the darkness instead of clinging to Him who
has smitten and will heal us. For the treatment which Jacob received at Peniel
must not be set aside as singular or exceptional. Sometimes God interposes
between us and a greatly-desired possession which we have been counting upon as
our right and as the fair and natural consequence of our past efforts and ways.
The expectation of this possession has indeed determined our movements and
shaped our life for some time past, and it would not only be assigned to us by
men as fairly ours, but God also has Himself seemed to encourage us to win it.
Yet when it is now within sight and when we are rising to pass the little stream
which seems alone to separate us from it, we are arrested by a strong, an
irresistible hand. The reason is, that God wishes us to be in such a state of
mind that we shall receive it as His gift, so that it becomes ours by an
indefeasible title. Similarly, when advancing to a spiritual possession, such
checks are not without their use. Many men look with longing to what is eternal
and spiritual, and they resolve to win this in heritance. And this resolve they
often make as if its accomplishment depended solely on their own endurance. They
leave almost wholly out of account that the possibility of their entering the
state they long for is not decided by their readiness to pass through any
ordeal, spiritual or physical, which may be required of them, but by God’s
willingness to give it. They act as if by taking advantage of God’s promises,
and by passing through certain states of mind and prescribed duties, they could,
irrespective of God’s present attitude towards them and constant love, win
eternal happiness. In the life of such persons there must therefore come a time
when their own spiritual energy seems all to collapse in that painful, utter way
in which, when the body is exhausted, the muscles are suddenly found to be
cramped and heavy and no longer responsive to the will. They are made to feel
that a spiritual dislocation has taken place, and that their eagerness to enter
life everlasting no longer stirs the active energies of the soul. In that hour
the man learns the most valuable truth he can learn, that it is God who is
wishing to save him, not he who must wrest a blessing from an unwilling God.
Instead of any longer looking on himself as against the world, he takes his
place as one who has the whole energy of God’s will at his back, to give him
rightful entrance into all blessedness. So long as Jacob was in doubt whether it
was not some kind of man that was opposing him, he wrestled on; and our foolish
ways of dealing with God terminate, when we recognise that He is not such an one
as ourselves. We naturally act as if God had some pleasure in thwarting us – as
if we could, and even ought to, maintain a kind of contest with God. We deal
with Him as if He were opposed to our best purposes and grudged to advance us in
all good, and as if He needed to be propitiated by penitence and cajoled by
forced feelings and sanctimonious demeanour. We act as if we could make more way
were God not in our way, as if our best prospects began in our own conception
and we had to win God over to our views. If God is unwilling, then there is an
end: no device nor force will get us past Him. If He is willing, why all this
unworthy dealing with Him, as if the whole idea and accomplishment of salvation
did not proceed from Him?


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  CHAPTER 15: 02.07.     LECTURE VII: JACOB’S RETURN
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LECTURE VII JACOB’S RETURN

Genesis 35:1-29

“When Death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we
repent of, but our severity.”

“Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart Thy hopes are gone before: from
all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!”

“As for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in
the way.” Genesis 48:7

THE words of the Wrestler at the brook Jabbok, “Let me go, for the day
breaketh,” express the truth that spiritual things will not submit themselves to
sensible tests. When we seek to let the full day-light, by which we discern
other objects, stream upon them, they elude our grasp. When we fancy we are on
the verge of having our doubts for ever scattered, and our suppositions changed
into certainties, the very approach of clear knowledge and demonstration seems
to drive those sensitive spiritual presences into darkness. As Pascal remarked,
and remarked as the mouth-piece of all souls that have earnestly sought for God,
The world only gives us indications of the presence of a God who conceals
Himself. It is, indeed, one of the most mysterious characteristics of our life
in this world, that the great Existence which originates and embraces all other
Beings, should Himself be so silent and concealed; that there should be need of
subtle arguments to prove His existence, and that no argument ever conceived has
been found sufficiently cogent to convince all men. One is always tempted to
say, How easy to end all doubt, how easy for God, so to reveal Himself as to
make unbelief impossible, and give to all men the glad consciousness that they
have a God. The reason of this “reserve” of God must lie in the nature of
things. The greatest forces in nature are silent and unobtrusive and
incomprehensible. Without the law of gravitation the universe would rush into
ruin, but who has ever seen this force? Its effects are everywhere visible, but
itself is shrouded in darkness and cannot be comprehended. So much more must the
Infinite Spirit remain unseen and baffling all comprehension. “No man hath seen
God at any time” must ever remain true. To ask for God’s name, therefore, as
Jacob did, is a mistake. For almost every one supposes that when he knows the
name of a thing he knows also its nature. The giving of a name, therefore, tends
to discourage inquiry, and to beget an unfounded satisfaction as if, when we
know what a thing is called, we know what it is. The craving, therefore, which
we all feel in common with Jacob – to have all mystery swept from between us and
God, and to see Him face to face, so that we may know Him as we know our friends
– is a craving which cannot be satisfied. You cannot ever know God as He is.
Your mind cannot comprehend a Being who is pure Spirit, inhabiting no body,
present with you here but present also hundreds of millions of miles away,
related to time and to space and to matter in ways utterly impossible for you to
comprehend. What is possible, God has done. He has made Himself known in Christ.
We are assured, on testimony that stands every kind of test, that in Him, if
nowhere else, we find God. And yet even by Christ this same law of reserve if
not concealment was observed. Not only did He forbid men and devils to proclaim
who He was, but when men, weary of their own doubts and debatings, impatiently
challenged him, “If Thou be the Christ tell us plainly,” He declined to do so.
For really men must grow to the knowledge of Him. Even a human face cannot be
known by once or twice seeing it; the practised artist often misses the
expression best loved by the intimate friend, or by the relative whose own
nature interprets to him the face in which he sees himself reflected. Much more
can the child of God only attain to the knowledge of His Father’s face, by first
of all being a child of God, and then by gradually growing up into His likeness.
But though God’s operation is in darkness the results of it are in the light.
“As Jacob passed over Peniel, the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his
thigh.” As Jacob’s company halted when they missed him, and as many anxious eyes
were turned back into the darkness, they were unable still to see him; and even
when the darkness began to scatter, and they saw dimly and far off a human
figure, the sharpest eyes among them declare it cannot be Jacob, for the gait
and walk; which alone they can judge by at that distance and in that light, are
not his. But when at last the first ray of sunlight streams on him from over the
hills of Gilead, all doubt is at an end; it is Jacob, but halting on his thigh.
And he himself finds it is not a strain which the walking of a few paces will
ease, nor a night cramp which will pass off, nor a mere dream which would vanish
in broad day, but a real permanent lameness which he must explain to his
company. Has he missed a step on the bank in the darkness, or stumbled or
slipped on the slippery stones of the ford? It is a far more real thing to him
than any such accident. So, however others may discredit the results of a work
on the soul which they have not seen – however they may say of the first and
most obvious results, “this is but a sickness of soul which the rising sun will
dispel; a feigned peculiarity of walk which will be for gotten in the bustle of
the day’s work” – it is not so, but every contact with real life makes it more
obvious that when God touches a man the result is real. And as Jacob’s household
and children in all generations counted that sinew which shrank sacred, and
would not eat of it, so surely should we be reverential towards God’s work in
the soul of our neighbour, and respect even those peculiarities which are often
the most obvious first-fruits of conversion, and which make it difficult for us
to walk in the same comfort with these persons, and keep step with them as
easily as once we did. A reluctance to live like other good people, an inability
to share their innocent amusements, a distaste for the very duties of this life,
a harsh or reserved bearing towards unconverted persons, an awkwardness in
speaking of their religious experience, as well as an awkwardness in applying it
to the ordinary circumstances of their life, – these and many other of the
results of God’s work on the soul should not be rudely dealt with, but
respected; for though not in themselves either seemly or beneficial, they are
evidence of God’s touch. After this contest with the angel, the meeting of Jacob
with Esau has no separate significance. Jacob succeeds with his brother because
already he has prevailed with God. He is on a satisfactory footing now with the
Sovereign who alone can bestow the land and judge betwixt him and his brother.
Jacob can no longer suppose that the chief obstacle to his advance, is the
resentment of Esau. He has felt and submitted to a stronger hand than Esau’s.
Such schooling we all need; and get, if we will take it. Like Jacob, we have to
make our way to our end through numberless human interferences and worldly
obstacles. Some of these we have to flee from, as Jacob from Laban; others we
must meet and overcome, as our Esaus. Our own sin or mistake has put us under
the power of some whose influence is disastrous; others, though we are not under
their power at all, yet, consciously or unconsciously to themselves, continually
cross our path and thwart us, keep us back and prevent us from effecting what we
desire, and from shaping things about us according to our own ideas. And there
will, from time to time, be present to our minds obvious ways in which we could
defeat the opposition of these persons, and by which we fancy we could triumph
over them. And what we are here taught is, that we need look for no triumph, and
it is a pity for us if we win a triumph over any human opposition, however
purely secular and unchristian, without first having prevailed with God in the
matter. He comes in between us and all men and things, and, laying His hand on
us, arrests us from further progress till we have to the very bottom and in
every part adjusted the affair with Him – and then, standing right with Him, we
can very easily, or at least we can, get right with all things. And it should be
a suggestive and fruitful thought to the most of us that, in all cases in which
we sin against our brother, God presents Himself as the champion of the wronged
party. One day or other we must meet not the strongest putting of all those
cases in which we have erred as the offended party could himself put them, but
we must meet them as put by the Eternal Advocate of justice and right, who saw
our spirit, our merely selfish calculating, our base motive, our impure desire,
our unrighteous deed. Gladly would Jacob have met the mightiest of Esau’s host
in place of this invincible opponent, and it is this same Mighty One, this same
watchful guardian of right who threw Himself in Jacob’s way, who has His eye on
us, who has tracked us through all our years, and who will certainly one time
appear in our path as the champion of every one we have wronged, of every one
whose soul we have put in jeopardy, of every one to whom we have not done what
God intended we should do, of every one whom we have attempted merely to make
use of; and in stating their case and showing us what justice and duty would
have required of us, He will make us feel, what we cannot feel till He Himself
convinces us, that, in all our dealings with men, wherein we have wronged them
we have wronged Him. The narrative now prepares to leave Jacob and make room for
Joseph. It brings him back to Bethel, thereby completing the history of his
triumph over the difficulties with which his life had been so thickly studded.
The interest and much of the significance of a man’s life come to an end when
position and success are achieved. The remaining notices of Jacob’s experience
are of a sorrowful kind; he lives under a cloud until at the close the sun
shines out again. We have seen him in his youth making experiments in life; in
his prime founding a family and winning his way by slow and painful steps to his
own place in the world; and now he enters on the last stage of his life, a stage
in which signs of breaking up appear almost as soon as he attains his aim and
place in life. After all that had happened to Jacob, we should have expected him
to make for Bethel as rapidly as his unwieldy company could be moved forwards.
But the pastures that had charmed the eye of his grandfather captivated Jacob as
well. He bought land at Shechem, and appeared willing to settle there. The vows
which he had uttered with such fervour when his future was precarious are
apparently quite forgotten, or more probably neglected, now that danger seems
past. To go to Bethel involved the abandonment of admirable pastures, and the
introduction of new religious views and habits into his family life. A man who
has large possessions, difficult and precarious relations to sustain with the
world, and a household unmanageable from its size, and from the variety of
dispositions included in it, requires great independence and determination to
carry out domestic reform on religious grounds. Even a slight change in our
habits is often delayed because we are shy of exposing to observation fresh and
deep convictions on religious subjects. Besides, we forget our fears and our
vows when the time of hardship passes away; and that which, as young men, we
considered almost hopeless, we at length accept as our right, and omit all
remembrance and gratitude. A spiritual experience that is separated from your
present by twenty years of active life, by a foreign residence, by marriage, by
the growing up of a family around you, by other and fresher spiritual
experiences, is apt to be very indistinctly remembered. The obligations you then
felt and owned have been overlaid and buried in the lapse of years. And so it
comes that a low tone is introduced into your life, and your homes cease to be
model homes. Out of this condition Jacob was roughly awakened. Sinning by
unfaithfulness and softness towards his family, he is, according to the usual
law, punished by family-disaster of the most painful kind. The conduct of Simeon
and Levi was apparently due quite as much to family pride and religious
fanaticism as to brotherly love or any high moral view. In them first we see how
the true religion, when held by coarse and ungodly men, becomes the root of all
evil. We see the first instance of that fanaticism which so often made the Jews
a curse rather than a blessing to other nations. Indeed, it is but an instance
of the injustice, cruelty, and violence that at all times result where men
suppose that they themselves are raised to quite peculiar privileges and to a
position superior to their fellows, without recognising also that this position
is held by the grace of a holy God and for the good of their fellows. Jacob is
now compelled to make a virtue of necessity. He flees to Bethel to escape the
vengeance of the Shechemites. To such serious calamities do men expose
themselves by arguing with conscience and by refusing to live up to their
engagements. How can men be saved from living merely for sheep-feeding and
cattle-breeding and trade and enjoyment? how can they be saved from gradually
expelling from their character all principle and all high sentiment that
conflicts with immediate advantage and present pleasure, save by such
irresistible blows as here compelled Jacob to shift his camp? He has spiritual
perception enough left to see what is meant. The order is at once issued: “Put
away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your
garments: and let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar
unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way
which I went.” Thus frankly does he acknowledge his error, and repair, so far as
he can, the evil he has done. Thus decidedly does he press God’s command on
those whom he had hitherto encouraged or connived at. Even from his favourite
Rachel he takes her gods and buries them. The fierce Simeon and Levi, proud of
the blood with which they had washed out their sister’s stain, are ordered to
cleanse their garments and show some seemly sorrow, if they can. If years go by
without any such incident occurring in our life as drives us to a recognition of
our moral laxity and deterioration, and to a frank and humble return to a closer
walk with God, we had need to strive to awaken ourselves and ascertain whether
we are living up to old vows and are really animated by thoroughly worthy
motives. It was when Jacob came back to the very spot where he had lain on the
open hill-side and pointed out to his wives and children the stone he had set up
to mark the spot, that he felt humbled as he cast his eye over the flocks and
tents he now owned. And if you can, like Jacob, go back to spots in your life
which were very woful and perplexed, years even when all continued dreary, dark,
and hopeless, when friendlessness and poverty, bereavement or disease, laid
their chilling, crushing hands upon you, times when you could not see what
possible good there was for you in the world; and if now all this is solved, and
your condition is in the most striking contrast to what you can remember, it
becomes you to make acknowledgment to God such as you may have made to your
friends, such acknowledgment as makes it plain that you are touched by His
kindness. The acknowledgment Jacob made was sensible and honest. He put away the
gods which had divided the worship of his family. In our life there is probably
that which constantly tends to usurp an undue place in our regard; something
which gives us more pleasure than the thought of God, or from which we really
expect a more palpable benefit than we expect from God, and which, therefore, we
cultivate with far greater assiduity. How easily, if we really wish to be on a
clear footing with God, can we discover what things should be cast revengefully
from us, buried and stamped upon and numbered with the things of the past. Are
there not in your life any objects for the sake of which you sacrifice that
nearness to God, and that sure hold of Him you once enjoyed? Are you not
conscious of any pursuits, or hopes, or pleasures, or employments which
practically have the effect of making you indifferent to spiritual advancement,
and which make you shy of Bethel – shy of all that sets clear before you your
indebtedness to God, and your own past vows and resolves? “But,” continues the
narrative, “but Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died;” that is, although Jacob and his
house were now living in the fear of God, that did not exempt them from the
ordinary distresses of family life. And among these, one that falls on us with a
chastening and mild sadness all its own, occurs when there passes from the
family one of its oldest members, and one who has by the delicate tact of love
gained influence over all, and has by the common consent become the arbiter and
mediator, the confidant and counsellor of the family. They, indeed, are the true
salt of the earth whose own peace is so deep and abiding, and whose purity is so
thorough and energetic, that into their car we can disburden the troubled heart
or the guilty conscience, as the wildest brook disturbs not and the most
polluted fouls not the settled depths of the all-cleansing ocean. Such must
Deborah have been, for the oak under which she was buried was afterwards known
as “the oak of weeping.” Specially must Jacob himself have mourned the death of
her whose face was the oldest in his remembrance, and with whom his mother and
his happy early days were associated. Very dear to Jacob. as to most men, were
those who had been connected with and could tell him of his parents, and remind
him of his early years. Deborah, by treating him still as a little boy, perhaps
the only one who now called him by the pet name of childhood, gave him the
pleasantest relief from the cares of manhood and the obsequious deportment of
the other members of his household towards him. So that when she went a great
blank was made to him: no longer was the wise and happy old face seen in her
tent door to greet him of an evening; no longer could he take refuge in the
peacefulness of her old age from the troubles of his lot: she being gone, a
whole generation was gone, and a new stage of life was entered on. But a heavier
blow, the heaviest that death could inflict, soon fell upon him. She who had
been as God’s gift and smile to him since ever he had left Bethel at the first
is taken from him now that he is restored to God’s house. The number of his sons
is completed, and the mother is removed. Suddenly and unexpectedly the blow
fell, as they were journeying and fearing no ill. Notwithstanding the confident
and cheering, though ambiguous, assurances of those about her, she had that
clear knowledge of her own state which, without contradicting, simply put aside
such assurances, and, as her soul was departing-, feebly named her son Benoni,
Son of my sorrow. She felt keenly, what was, to a nature like hers, the very
anguish of disappointment. She was never to feel the little creature stirring in
her arms with personal human life, nor see him growing up to manhood as the son
of his father’s right hand. It was this sad death of Rachel’s which made her the
typical mother in Israel. It was not an unclouded, merely prosperous life which
could fitly have fore shadowed the lives of those by whom the promised seed was
to come; and least of all of the virgin to whom it was said, “A sword shall
pierce through thine own soul also.” It was the wail of Rachel that poetical
minds among the Jews heard from time to time mourning their national disasters –
“Rachel weeping” for her children, when by captivity they were separated from
their mother country, or when, by the sword of Herod, the mothers of Bethlehem
were bereaved of their babes. But it was also observed that that which brought
this anguish on the mothers of Bethlehem was the birth there of the last son of
Israel, the blossom of this long-growing plant, suddenly born after a long and
barren period, the son of Israel’s right hand. Still another death is registered
in this chapter. It took place twelve years after Joseph went into Egypt, but is
set down here for convenience. Esau and Jacob are, for the last time, brought
together over their dead father – and for the last time, as they see that family
likeness which comes out so strikingly in the face of the dead, do they feel
drawn with brotherly affection to greet one another as sons of one father. In
the dead Isaac, too, they find an object of veneration more impressive than they
had found in the living father: the infirmities of age are exchanged for the
mystery and majesty of death; the man has passed out of reach of pity, of
contempt; the shrill, uncontrolled treble is no longer heard, there are no weak,
plaintive movements, no childishness; but a solemn, august silence, a silence
that seems to bid on lookers be still and refrain from disturbing the first
communings of the departed spirit with things unseen. The tenderness of these
two brothers towards one another and towards their father, was probably
quickened by remorse when they met at his deathbed. They could not, perhaps,
think that they had hastened his end by causing him anxieties which age has not
strength to throw off; but they could not miss the reflection that the life now
closed and finally sealed up might have been a much brighter life had they acted
the part of dutiful, loving sons. Scarcely can one of our number pass from among
us without leaving in our minds some self-reproach that we were not more kindly
towards him, and that now he is beyond our kindness; that our opportunity for
being brotherly towards him is for ever gone. And when we have very manifestly
erred in this respect, perhaps there are among all the stings of a guilty
conscience few more bitterly piercing than this. Many a son who has stood
unmoved by the tears of a living mother – his mother by whom he lives, who has
cherished him as her own soul, who has forgiven, and forgiven, and forgiven him,
who has toiled, and prayed, and watched for him – though he has hardened himself
against her looks of imploring love and turned carelessly from her entreaties
and burst through all the fond cords and snares by which she has sought to keep
him, has yet broken down before the calm, unsolicitous, resting face of the
dead. Hitherto he has not listened to her pleadings, and now she pleads no more.
Hitherto she has heard no word of pure love from him, and now she hears no more.
Hitherto he has done nothing for her of all that a son may do, and now there is
nothing he can do. All the goodness of her life gathers up and stands out at
once, and the time for gratitude is past. He sees suddenly, as by the withdrawal
of a veil, all that that worn body has passed through for him, and all the
goodness these features have expressed, and now they can never light up with
joyful acceptance of his love and duty. Such grief as this finds its one
alleviation in the knowledge that we may follow those who have gone before us;
that we may yet make reparation. And when we think how many we have let pass
without those frank, human, kindly offices we might have rendered, the knowledge
that we also shall be gathered to our people comes in as very cheering. It is a
grateful thought that there is a place where we shall be able to live rightly,
where selfishness will not intrude and spoil all, but will leave us free to be
to our neighbour all that we ought to be and all that we would be.


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  CHAPTER 16: 02.08.     LECTURE VIII: JOSEPH’S DREAMS
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LECTURE VIII JOSEPH’S DREAMS

Genesis 37:1-36 “That sad obscure sequestered state, Where God unmakes but to
re-make the soul He else made first in vain.”

“Envy might lead men to cast poor stones At heaven while it thunders; death
waits on it; On hatred still it feeds and hideous dreams, And, like a serpent,
tracks its victim’s heels. In meanness it begins; proceeds to blood; And dies of
sallow horror by itself.”

Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee.” Psalms 76:10

THE migration of Israel from Canaan to Egypt was a step of prime importance in
the history. Great difficulties surrounded it, and very extra ordinary means
were used to bring it about. The preparatory steps occupied about twenty years,
and nearly a fourth of the Book of Genesis is devoted to this period. This
migration was a new idea. So little was it the result of an accidental dearth,
or of any of those unforeseen calamities which cause families to emigrate from
our own country, that God had forewarned Abraham himself that it must be. But
only when it was becoming matter of actual experience and of history did God
make known the precise object to be accomplished by it. This He makes known to
Jacob as he passes from Canaan; and as, in abandoning the land he had so
painfully won, his heart sinks, he is sustained by the assurance, “Fear not to
go down into Egypt; I will there make thee a great nation.” The meaning of the
step and the suitableness of the time and of the place to which Israel migrated,
are apparent. For more than two hundred years now had Abraham and his
descendants been wandering as pilgrims, and as yet there were no signs of God’s
promise being kept to them. That promise had been of a land and of a seed. Great
fecundity had been promised to the race; but instead of that there had been a
remarkable and perplexing barrenness, so that after two centuries one tent could
contain the whole male population. In Jacob’s time the population began to
increase, but just in proportion as this part of the promise showed signs of
fulfilment did the other part seem precarious. For, in proportion to their
increase, the family became hostile to the Canaanites, and how should they ever
get past that critical point in their history at which they would be strong
enough to excite the suspicion, jealous}-, and hatred of the indigenous tribes,
and yet not strong enough to defend themselves against this enmity? Their
presence was tolerated, just as our countrymen tolerated the presence of French
refugees, on the score of their impotence to do harm. They were placed in a
quite anomalous position; a single family who had continued for two hundred
years in a land which they could only seem in jest to call theirs, dwelling as
guests amid the natives, maintaining peculiar forms of worship and customs.
Collision with the inhabitants seemed unavoidable as soon as their real
character and pretensions oozed out, and as soon as it seemed at all likely that
they really proposed to become owners and masters in the land. And, in case of
such collision, what could be the result, but that which has ever followed where
a few score men, brave enough to be cut down where they stood, have been exposed
to mass after mass of fierce and bloodthirsty barbarians? A small number of men
have often made good their entrance into lands where the inhabitants greatly
outnumbered them, but these have commonly been highly disciplined troops, as in
the case of the handful of Spaniards who seized Mexico and Peru; or they have
been backed by a power which could aid with vast resources, as when the Romans
held this country, or when the English lad in India left his pen on his desk and
headed his few resolute countrymen, and held his own against unnumbered
millions. It may be argued that if even Abraham with his own household swept
Canaan clear of invaders, it might now have been possible for his grandson to do
as much with increased means at his disposal. But, not to mention that every man
has not the native genius for command and military enterprise which Abraham had,
it must be taken into account that a force which is quite sufficient for a
marauding expedition or a night attack, is inadequate for the exigencies of a
campaign of several years duration. The war which Jacob must have waged had
hostilities been opened, must have been a war of extermination, and such a war
must have desolated the house of Israel if victorious, and more probably by far,
would have quite annihilated it. It is to obviate these dangers, and to secure
that Israel grow without let or hindrance, that Jacob’s household is removed to
a land where protection and seclusion would at once be secured to them. In the
land of Goshen, secured from molestation partly by the influence of Joseph, but
much more by the caste-prejudices of the Egyptians, and their hatred of all
foreigners and shepherds in particular, they enjoyed such prosperity and
attained so rapidly the magnitude of a nation that some, forgetful alike of the
promise of God and of the natural advantages of Israel’s position, have refused
to credit the accounts given us of the increase in their population. In a land
so roomy, so fertile, and so secluded as that in which they were now settled,
they had every advantage for making the transition from a family to a nation.
Here they were preserved from all temptation to mingle with neighbours of a
different race, and so lose their special place as a people called out by God to
stand alone. The Egyptians would have scorned the marriages which the Canaanites
passionately solicited. Here the very contempt in which they were held proved to
be their most valuable bulwark. And if Christians have any of the wisdom of the
serpent, they will often find in the contempt or exclusiveness of worldly men a
convenient barrier, preventing them, indeed, from enjoying some privileges, but
at the same time enabling them, without molestation, to pursue their own way. I
believe young people especially feel put about by the deprivations which they
have to suffer in order to save their religious scruples; they are shut off from
what their friends and associates enjoy, and they perceive that they are not so
well liked as they would be had they less desire to live by conscience and by
God’s will. They feel ostracized, banished, frowned upon, laid under
disabilities; but all this has its compensations: it forms for them a kind of
Goshen where they may worship and increase, it runs a fence around them which
keeps them apart from much that tempts and from much that enfeebles. The
residence of Israel in Egypt served another important purpose. By contact with
the most civilised people of antiquity they emerged from the semi-barbarous
condition in which they had previously been living. Going into Egypt mere
shepherds, as Jacob somewhat plaintively and deprecatingly says to Pharaoh; not
even possessed, so far as we know, of the fundamental arts on which civilisation
rests, unable to record in writing the revelations God made, or to read them if
recorded; having the most rudimentary ideas of law and justice, and having
nothing to keep them together and give them form and strength, save the one idea
that God meant to confer on them great distinction; they were transferred into a
land where government had been so long established and law had come to be so
thoroughly administered that life and property were as safe as among ourselves
to-day, where science had made such advances that even the weather-beaten and
time-stained relics of it seem to point to regions into which even the bold
enterprise of modern investigation has not penetrated, and where all the arts
needful for life were in familiar use, and even some practised which modern
times have as yet been unable to recover. To no better school could the
barbarous sons of Bilhah and Zilpah have been sent; to no more fitting
discipline could the lawless spirits of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi have been
subjected. In Egypt, where human life was sacred, where truth was worshipped as
a deity, and where law was invested with the sanctity which belonged to what was
supposed to have descended from heaven, they were brought under influences
similar to those which ancient Rome exerted over conquered races. The unwitting
pioneer of this great movement was a man in all respects fitted to initiate it
happily. In Joseph we meet a type of character rare in any race, and which,
though occasionally reproduced in Jewish history, we should certainly not have
expected to meet with at so early a period. For what chiefly strikes one in
Joseph is a combination of grace and power, which is commonly looked upon as the
peculiar result of civilising influences, knowledge of history, familiarity with
foreign races, and hereditary dignity. In David we find a similar flexibility
and grace of character, and a similar personal superiority. We find the same
bright and humorous disposition helping him to play the man in adverse
circumstances; but we miss in David Joseph’s self-control and incorruptible
purity, as we also miss something of his capacity for difficult affairs of
state. In Daniel this latter capacity is abundantly present, and a facility
equal to Joseph’s in dealing with foreigners, and there is also a certain grace
or nobility in the Jewish Vizier, but Joseph had a surplus of power which
enabled him to be cheerful and alert in doleful circumstances, which Daniel
would certainly have borne manfully but probably in a sterner and more passive
mood. Joseph, indeed, seemed to inherit and happily combine the highest
qualities of his ancestors. He had Abraham’s dignity and capacity, Isaac’s
purity and power of self-devotion, Jacob’s cleverness and buoyancy and tenacity.
From his mother’s family he had personal beauty, humour, and management. A young
man of such capabilities could not long remain insensible to his own powers or
indifferent to his own destiny. Indeed, the conduct of his father and brothers
towards him must have made him self-conscious, even though he had been wholly
innocent of introspection. The force of the impression he produced on his family
may be measured by the circumstance that the princely dress given him by his
father did not excite his brother’s ridicule but their envy and hatred. In this
dress there was a manifest suitableness to his person, and this excited them to
a keen resentment of the distinction. So too they felt that his dreams were not
the mere whimsicalities of a lively fancy, but were possessed of a
verisimilitude which gave them importance. In short, the dress and the dreams
were insufferably exasperating to the brothers, because they proclaimed and
marked in a definite way the feeling of Joseph’s superiority which had already
been vaguely rankling in their consciousness. And it is creditable to Joseph
that this superiority should first have emerged in connection with a point of
conduct. It was in moral stature that the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah felt that
they were outgrown by the stripling whom they carried with them as then drudge.
Neither are we obliged to suppose that Joseph was a gratuitous tale-bearer, or
that when he carried their evil report to his father he was actuated by a
prudish, censorious, or in any way unworthy spirit. That he very well knew how
to hold his tongue no man ever gave more adequate proof; but he that understands
that there is a time to keep silence, necessarily sees also that there is a time
to speak. And no one can tell what torture that pure young soul may have endured
in the remote pastures, when left alone to withstand day after day the outrage
of these coarse and unscrupulous men. An elder brother, if he will, can more
effectually guard the innocence of a younger brother than any other relative
can, but he can also inflict a more exquisite torture. Joseph, then, could not
but come to think of his future and of his destiny in this family. That his
father should make a pet of him rather than of Benjamin, he would refer to the
circumstance that he was the oldest son of the wife of his choice, of her whom
first he had loved, and who had no rival while he lived. To so charming a
companion as Joseph must always have been, Jacob would naturally impart all the
traditions and hopes of the family. In him he found a sympathetic and
appreciative listener, who wiled him on to endless narrative, and whose
imaginativeness quickened his own hopes and made the future seem grander and the
world more wide. And what Jacob had to tell could fall into no kindlier soil
than the opening mind of Joseph. No hint was lost, every promise was interpreted
by some waiting aspiration. And thus, like every youth of capacity, he came to
have his day-dreams. These day-dreams, though derided by those who cannot see
the Caesar in the careless trifler, and though often awkward and even offensive
in their expression, are not always the mere discontented cravings of youthful
vanity, but are frequently instinctive gropings towards the position which the
nature is fitted to fill. “Our wishes,” it has been said, “are the forefeeling
of our capabilities;” and certainly where there is any special gift or genius in
a man, the wish of his youth is predictive of the attainment of manhood. Whims,
no doubt, there are, passing phases through which natural growth carries us,
flutterings of the needle when too near some powerful influence; yet amidst all
variations the true direction will be discernible and ultimately will be
dominant. And it is a great art to discover what we are fit for, so that we may
settle down to our own work, or patiently wait for our own place without
enviously striving to rob every other man of his crown and so losing our own. It
is an art that saves us much fretting and disappointment and waste of time, to
understand early in life what it is we can accomplish, and what precisely we
mean to be at; “to recognise in our personal gifts or station, in the
circumstances and complications of our life, in our relations to others, or to
the world – the will of God teaching us what we are, and for what we ought to
live.” How much of life often is gone before its possessor sees the use he can
put it to, and ceases to beat the air. How much of life is an ill-considered but
passionate striving after what can never be attained, or a vain imitation of
persons who have quite different talents and opportunities from ourselves, and
who are therefore set to quite another work than ours. It was because Joseph’s
dreams embodied his waking ambition that they were of importance. Dreams become
significant when they are the concentrated essence of the main stream of the
waking thoughts and picturesquely exhibit the tendency of the character. “In a
dream,” says Elihu, “in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men,
in slumberings upon the bed; then He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their
instruction, that He may withdraw man from his purpose.” This is precisely the
use of dreams: our tendencies, unbridled by reason and fact, run on to results;
the purposes which the business and other good influences of the day have kept
down, act themselves out in our dreams, and we see the character unimpeded by
social checks, and as it would be were it unmodified by the restraints and
efforts and external considerations of our conscious hours. Our vanity, our
pride, our malice, our impurity, our deceit, our every evil passion, has free
play, and shows us its finished result, and in so vivid and true though
caricatured a form, that we are startled and withdrawn from our purpose. The
evil thought we have suffered to creep about our heart seems in our dreams to
become a deed, and we wake in horror and thank God we can yet refrain. Thus the
poor woman, who in utter destitution was beginning to find her child a burden,
dreamt she had drowned it, and woke in horror at the fancied sound of the plunge
– woke to clasp her little one to her breast with the thrill of a grateful
affection that never again gave way. So that while no man is so foolish as to
expect instruction from every dream any more than from every thought that visits
his waking mind, yet everyone who has been accumulating some knowledge of
himself is aware that he has drawn a large part of this from his unconscious
hours. As the naturalist would know but a small part of the animal kingdom by
studying the creatures that show themselves in the daylight, so there are moles
and bats of the spirit that exhibit themselves most freely in the darkness; and
there are jungles and waste places in the character which, if you look on them
only in the sunshine, may seem safe and lovely, but which at night show
themselves to be full of all loathsome and savage beasts. With the simplicity of
a guileless mind, and with the natural proneness of members of one family to
tell in the morning the dreams they have had, Joseph tells to the rest what
seems to himself interesting, if not very suggestive. Possibly he thought very
little of his dream till he saw how much importance his brothers attached to it.
Possibly there might be discernible in his tone and look some mixture of
youthful arrogance. And in his relation of the second dream, there was
discernible at least a confidence that it would be realised, which was
peculiarly intolerable to his brothers, and to his father seemed a dangerous
symptom that called for rebuke. And yet “his father observed the saying;” as a
parent has sometimes occasion to check his child, and yet, having done so, feels
that that does not end the matter; that his boy and he are in somewhat different
spheres, so that while he was certainly justified in punishing such and such a
manifestation of his character, there is yet something behind that he does not
quite understand, and for which possibly punishment may not be exactly the
suitable award. We fall into Jacob’s mistake when we refuse to acknowledge as
genuine and God-inspired any religious experience which we ourselves have not
passed through, and which appears in a guise that is not only unfamiliar, but
that is in some particulars objectionable. Up to the measure of our own
religious experience, we recognise as genuine, and sympathise with, the parallel
experience of others; but when they rise above us and get beyond us, we begin to
speak of them as visionaries, enthusiasts, dreamers. We content ourselves with
pointing again and again to the blots in their manner, and refuse to read the
future through the ideas they add to our knowledge. But the future necessarily
lies, not in the definite and finished attainment, but in the indefinite and
hazy and dream-like germs that have yet growth in them. The future is not with
Jacob, the rebuker, but with the dreaming, and, possibly, somewhat offensive
Joseph. It was certainly a new element Joseph introduced into the experience of
God’s people. He saw, obscurely indeed, but with sufficient clearness to make
him thoughtful, that the man whom God chooses and makes a blessing to others is
so far advanced above his fellows that they lean upon him and pay him homage as
if he were in the place of God to them. He saw that his higher powers were to be
used for his brethren, and that the high destiny he somehow felt to be his was
to be won by doing service so essential that his family would bow before him and
give themselves into his hand. Me saw this, as every man whose love keeps pace
with his talent sees it, and he so far anticipated the dignity of Him who, in
the deepest self-sacrifice, assumed a position and asserted claims which enraged
his brethren and made even his believing mother marvel. Joseph knew that the
welfare of his family rested not with the Esau-like good-nature of Reuben, still
less with the fanatical ferocity of Simeon and Levi, not with the servile
patience of Issachar, nor with the natural force and dignity of Judah, but with
some deeper qualities which, if he himself did not yet possess, he at least
valued and aspired to. Whatever Joseph thought of the path by which he was to
reach the high dignity which his dreams foreshadowed, he was soon to learn that
the path was neither easy nor short. Each man thinks that, for himself at least,
an exceptional path will be broken out, and that without difficulties and
humiliations he will inherit the kingdom. But it cannot be so. And as the first
step a lad takes towards the attainment of his position often involves him in
trouble and covers him with confusion, and does so even although he ultimately
finds that it was the only path by which he could have reached his goal; so,
that which was really the first step towards Joseph’s high destiny, no doubt
seemed to him most calamitous and fatal. It certainly did so to his brothers,
who thought that they were effectually and for ever putting an end to Joseph’s
pretensions. “Behold, this dreamer cometh; come now therefore, and let us slay
him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” They were, however, so
far turned from their purpose by Reuben as to put him in a pit, meaning to leave
him to die; and, doubt less, they thought themselves lenient in doing so. The
less violent the death inflicted, the less of murder seems to be in it; so that
he who slowly kills the body by only wounding the affections often counts
himself no murderer at all, because he strikes no blood-shedding blow, and can
deceive himself into the idea that it is the working of his victim’s own spirit
that is doing the damage. The tank into which Joseph’s brethren cast him was
apparently one of those huge reservoirs excavated by shepherds in the East, that
they may have a supply of water for their flocks in the end of the dry season,
when the running waters fail them. Being so narrow at the mouth that they can be
covered by a single stone, they gradually widen and form a large subterranean
room; and the facility they thus afford for the confinement of prisoners was
from the first too obvious not to be commonly taken advantage of. In such a
place was Joseph left to die: under the ground, sinking in mire, his flesh
creeping at the touch of unseen slimy creatures, in darkness, alone; that is to
say, in a species of confinement which tames the most reckless and maddens the
best balanced spirits, which shakes the nerve of the calmest, and has sometimes
left the blankness of idiocy in masculine understandings. A few wild cries that
ring painfully round his prison show him he need expect no help from without, a
few wild and desperate beatings round the shelving walls of rock show him there
is no possibility of escape; he covers his face, or casts himself on the floor
of his dungeon to escape within himself, but only to find this also in vain, and
to rise and renew efforts he knows to be fruitless. Here, then, is what has come
of his fine dreams. With shame he now remembers the beaming confidence with
which he had related them; with bitterness he thinks of the bright life above
him, from which these few feet cut him so absolutely off, and of the quick
termination that has been put to all his hopes. Into such tanks do young persons
especially get cast; finding themselves suddenly dropped out of the lively
scenery and bright sunshine in which they have been living, down into roomy
graves where they seem left to die at leisure. They had conceived a way of being
useful in the world; they had found an aim or a hope; they had, like Joseph,
discerned their place and were making towards it, when suddenly they seem to be
thrown out and are left to learn that the world can do very well without them,
that the sun and moon and the eleven stars do not drop from their courses or
make wail because of their sad condition. High aims and commend able purposes
are not so easily fulfilled as they fancied. The faculty and desire in them to
be of service are not recognised. Men do not make room for them, and God seems
to disregard the hopes He has excited in them. The little attempt at living they
have made seems only to have got themselves and others into trouble. They begin
to think it a mistake their being in the world at all; they curse the day of
their birth. Others are enjoying this life, and seem to be making something of
it, having found work that suits and develops them; but, for their own part,
they cannot get fitted into life at any point, and are excluded from the onward
movement of the world. They are again and again flung back, until they fear they
are not to see the fulfilment of any one bright dream that has ever visited
them, and that they are never, never at all, to live out the life it is in them
to live, or find light and scope for maturing those germs of the rich human
nature that they feel within them. All this is in the way to attainment. This or
that check, this long burial for years, does not come upon you merely because
stoppage and hindrance have been useful to others, but because your advancement
lies through these experiences. Young persons naturally feel strongly that life
is all before them, that this life is, in the first place, their concern, and
that God must be proved sufficient for this life, able to bring them to their
ideal. And the first lesson they have to learn is, that mere youthful confidence
and energy are not the qualities that overcome the world. They have to learn
that humility, and the ambition that seeks great things, but not for ourselves,
are the qualities really indispensable. But do men become humble by being told
to become so, or by knowing they ought to be so? God must make us humble by the
actual experience we meet with in our ordinary life. Joseph, no doubt, knew very
well, what his aged grandfather must often have told him, that a man must die
before he begins to live. But what could an ambitious, happy youth make of this,
till he was thrown into the pit and left there? as truly passing through the
bitterness of death as Isaac had passed through it, and as keenly feeling the
pain of severance from the light of life. Then, no doubt, he thought of Isaac,
and of Isaac’s God, till between himself and the impenetrable dungeon-walls the
everlasting arms seemed to interpose, and through the darkness of his deathlike
solitude the face of Jacob’s God appeared to beam upon him, and he came to feel
what we must, by some extremity, all be made to feel, that it was not in this
world’s life but in God he lived, that nothing could befall him which God did
not will, and that what God had for him to do, God would enable him to do. The
heartless barbarity with which the brethren of Joseph sat down to eat and drink
the very dainties he had brought them from his father, while they left him, as
they thought, to starve, has been regarded by all later generations as the
height of hard-hearted indifference. Amos, at a loss to describe the
recklessness of his own generation, falls back upon this incident, and cries woe
upon those “that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief
ointment, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.” We reflect, if
we do not substantially reproduce, their sin when we are filled with animosity
against those who usher in some higher kind of life, effort, or worship, than we
ourselves as yet desire or are fit for, and which, therefore, reflects shame on
our incapacity; and when we would fain, without using violence, get rid of such
persons. There are often schemes set on foot by better men than ourselves,
against which somehow our spirit rises, yet which did we consider, we should at
the most say with the cautious Gamaliel, Let us beware of doing anything to
hinder this, let us see whether, perchance, it be not of God. Sometimes there
are in families individuals who do not get the encouragement in well-doing they
might expect in a Christian family, but are rather frowned upon and hindered by
the other members of it, because they seem to be inaugurating a higher style of
religion than the family is used to, and to be reflecting from their own conduct
a condemnation of what has hitherto been current. This treatment, who among us
has not extended to Him who in His whole experience so closely resembles Joseph?
So long as Christ is to us merely, as it were, the pet of the family, the
innocent, guileless, loving Being on whom we can heap pretty epithets, and in
whom we find play for our best affections, to whom it is easier to show
ourselves affectionate and well-disposed than to the brothers who mingle with us
in all our pursuits; so long as He remains to us as a child whose demands it is
a relaxation to fulfil, we fancy that we are giving Him our hearts, and that He,
if any, has our love. But when He declares to us His dreams, and claims to be
our Lord, to whom with most absolute homage we must bow, who has a right to rule
and means to rule over us, who will have His will done by us and not our own,
then the love we fancied seems to pass into something like aversion. His
purposes we would fain believe to be the idle fancies of a dreamer which He
Himself does not expect us to pay much heed to. And if we do not resent the
absolute surrender of ourselves to Him which He demands, if the bowing down of
our fullest sheaves and brightest glory to Him is too little understood by us to
be resented; if we think such dreams are not to come true, and that He does not
mean much by demanding our homage, and therefore do not resent the demand; yet
possibly we can remember with shame how we have “anointed ourselves with the
chief ointment,” lain listlessly enjoying some of those luxuries which our
Brother has brought us from the Father’s house, and yet let Himself and His
cause be buried out of sight – enjoyed the good name of Christian, the pleasant
social refinements of a Christian land, even the peace of conscience which the
knowledge of the Christian’s God produces, and yet turned away from the deeper
emotions which His personal entreaties stir, and from those self-sacrificing
efforts which His cause requires if it is to prosper. There are, too, unstable
Reubens still, whom something always draws aside, and who are ever out of the
way when most needed; who, like him, are on the other side of the hill when
Christ’s cause is being betrayed; who still count their own private business
that which must be done, and God’s work that which may be done – work for
themselves necessary, and God’s work only voluntary and in the second place. And
there are also those who, though they would be honestly shocked to be charged
with murdering Christ’s cause, can yet leave it to perish.


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  CHAPTER 17: 02.09.     LECTURE IX: JOSEPH IN PRISON
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LECTURE IX JOSEPH IN PRISON

Genesis 39:1-23 “Blame I can bear, though not blameworthiness.”

“More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to
endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress;

Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.”

“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall
receive the crown of life.” James 1:12

DRAMATISTS and novelists who make it their business to give accurate
representations of human life, proceed upon the understanding that there is a
plot in it, and that if you take the beginning or middle without the end, you
must fail to comprehend these prior parts. And a plot is pronounced good, in
proportion as, without violating truth to nature, it brings the leading
characters into situations of extreme danger or distress, from which there seems
no possible exit, and in which the characters themselves may have fullest
opportunity to display and ripen their individual excellencies. A life is judged
poor and without significance, certainly unworthy of any longer record than a
monumental epitaph may contain, if there be in it no critical passages, no
emergencies when all anticipation of the next step is baffled, or when ruin
seems certain. Though it has been brought to a successful issue, yet, to make it
worthy of our consideration, it must have been brought to this issue through
hazard, through opposition, contrary to many expectations that we plausibly
entertained at the several stages of its career. All men, in short, are agreed
that the value of a human life consists very much in the hazards and conflicts
through which it is carried; and yet we resent God’s dealing with us when it
comes to be our turn to play the hero, and by patient endurance and righteous
endeavour to bring our lives to a successful issue. How flat and tame would this
narrative have read had Joseph by easy steps come to the dignity he at last
reached through a series of misadventures that called out and ripened all that
was manly and strong and tender in his character. And take out of your own life
all your difficulties, all that ever pained, agitated, depressed you, all that
disappointed or postponed your expectations, all that suddenly called upon you
to act in trying situations, all that thoroughly put you to the proof – take all
this away, and what do you leave, but a blank insipid life that not even
yourself can see any interest in? And when we speak of Joseph’s life as typical,
we mean that it illustrates on a great scale and in picturesque and memorable
situations, principles which are obscurely operative in our own experience. It
pleases the fancy to trace the incidental analogies between the life of Joseph
and that of our Lord. As our Lord, so Joseph was the beloved of his father, sent
by him to visit his brethren, and see after their well-being, seized and sold by
them to strangers, and thus raised to be their Saviour and the Saviour of the
world. Joseph in prison pronouncing the doom of one of his fellow-prisoners and
the exaltation of the other, suggests the scene on Calvary where the one
fellow-sufferer was taken, the other left. Joseph’s contemporaries had of course
no idea that his life foreshadowed the life of the Redeemer, yet they must have
seen, or ought to have seen, that the deepest humiliation is often the path to
the highest exaltation, that the deliverer sent by God to save a people may come
in the guise of a slave, and that false accusations, imprisonment, years of
suffering, do not make it impossible nor even unlikely that he who endures all
these may be God’s chosen Son. In Joseph’s being lifted out of the pit only to
pass into slavery, many a man of Joseph’s years has seen a picture of what has
happened to himself. From a position in which they have been as if buried alive,
young men not uncommonly emerge into a position preferable certainly to that out
of which they have been brought, but in which they are compelled to work beyond
their strength, and that for some superior in whom they have no special
interest. Grinding toil, and often cruel insult, are their portion; and no
necklace heavy with tokens of honour that afterwards may be allotted them, can
ever quite hide the scars made by the iron collar of the slave. One need not
pity them over much, for they are young and have a whole life-time of energy and
power of resistance in their spirit. And yet they will often call themselves
slaves, and complain that all the fruit of their labour passes over to others
and away from themselves, and all prospect of the fulfilment of their former
dreams is quite cut off. That which haunts their heart by day and by night, that
which they seem destined and fit for, they never get time nor liberty to work
out and attain. They are never viewed as proprietors of themselves, who may
possibly have interests of their own and hopes of their own. In Joseph’s case
there were many aggravations of the soreness of such a condition. He had not one
friend in the country. He had no knowledge of the language, no knowledge of any
trade that could make him valuable in Egypt – nothing, in short, but his own man
hood and his faith in God. His introduction to Egypt was of the most dispiriting
kind. What could he expect from strangers, if his own brothers had found him so
obnoxious? Now when a man is thus galled and stung by injury, and has learned
how little he can depend upon finding good faith and common justice in the
world, his character will show itself in the attitude he assumes towards men and
towards life generally. A weak nature, when it finds itself thus deceived and
injured, will sullenly surrender all expectation of good, and will vent its
spleen on the world by angry denunciations of the heartless and ungrateful ways
of men. A proud nature will gather itself up from every blow, and determinedly
work its way to an adequate revenge. A mean nature will accept its fate, and
while it indulges in cynical and spiteful observations on human life, will
greedily accept the paltriest rewards it can secure. But the supreme healthiness
of Joseph’s nature resists all the infectious influences that emanate from the
world around him, and preserves him from every kind of morbid attitude towards
the world and life. So easily did he throw off all vain regrets and stifle all
vindictive and morbid feelings, so readily did he adjust himself to and so
heartily enter into life as it presented itself to him, that he speedily rose to
be overseer in the house of Potiphar. His capacity for business, his genial
power of devoting himself to other men’s interests, his clear integrity, were
such, that this officer of Pharaoh’s could find no more trust worthy servant in
all Egypt – “he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand: and lie knew not ought he
had, save the bread which he did eat.” Thus Joseph passed safely through a
critical period of his life the period during which men assume the attitude
towards life and their fellowmen which they commonly retain throughout. Too
often we accept the weapons with which the world challenges us, and seek to
force our way by means little more commendable than the injustice and coldness
we ourselves resent. Joseph gives the first great evidence of moral strength by
rising superior to this temptation, to which almost, all men in one degree or
other succumb. You can hear him saying, deep down in his heart and almost
unconsciously to himself: If the world is full of hatred, there is all the more
need that at least one man should forgive and love; if men’s hearts are black
with selfishness, ambition, and lust, all the more reason for me to be pure and
to do my best for all whom my service can reach; if cruelty, lying, and fraud
meet me at every step, all the more am I called to conquer these by integrity
and guilelessness. His capacity, then, and power of governing others, were no
longer dreams of his own, but qualities with which he was accredited by those
who judged dispassionately and from the bare actual results. But this
recognition and promotion brought with it serious temptation. So capable a
person was he that a year or two had brought him to the highest post he could
expect as a slave. His advancement, therefore, only brought his actual
attainment into more painful contrast with the attainment of his dreams. As this
sense of disappointment becomes more familiar to his heart, and threatens, under
the monotonous routine of his household work, to deepen into a habit, there
suddenly opens to him a new and unthought-of path to high position. An intrigue
with Potiphar’s wife might lead to the very advancement he sought. It might lift
him out of the condition of a slave. It may have been known to him that other
men had not scrupled so to promote their own interests. Besides, Joseph was
young, and a nature like his, lively and sympathetic, must have felt deeply that
in his position he was not likely to meet such a woman as could command his
cordial love. That the temptation was in any degree to the sensual side of his
nature there is no evidence whatever. For all that the narrative says,
Potiphar’s wife may not have been attractive in person. She may have been; and
as she used persistently, “day by day,” every art and wile by which she could
lure Joseph to her mind, in some of his moods and under such circumstances as
she would study to arrange he may have felt even this element of the temptation.
But it is too little observed, and especially by young men who have most need to
observe it, that in such temptations it is not only what is sensual that needs
to be guarded against, but also two much deeper-lying tendencies, the craving
for loving recognition and the desire to respond to the feminine love for
admiration and devotion. The latter tendency may not seem dangerous, but I am
sure that if an analysis could be made of the broken hearts and shame-crushed
lives around us, it would be found that a large proportion of misery is due to a
kind of uncontrolled and mistaken chivalry. Men of masculine make are prone to
show their regard for women. This regard, when genuine and manly, will show
itself in purity of sympathy and respectful attention. But when this regard is
debased by a desire to please and ingratiate oneself, men are precipitated into
the unseemly expressions of a spurious manhood. The other craving – the craving
for love – acts also in a somewhat latent way. It is this craving which drives
men to seek to satisfy themselves with the expressions of love, as if thus they
could secure love itself. They do not distinguish between the two; they do not
recognise that what they most deeply desire is love, rather than the expression
of it; and they awake to find that precisely in so far as they have accepted the
expression without the sentiment, in so far have they put love itself beyond
their reach. This temptation was, in Joseph’s case, aggravated by his being in a
foreign country, unrestrained by the expectations of his own family, or by the
eye of those he loved. He had, however, that which restrained him, and made the
sin seem to him an impossible wickedness, the thought of which he could not, for
a moment, entertain. “Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the
house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand; there is none greater
in this house than I; neither hath he kept back anything from me but thee,
because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin
against God?” Gratitude to the man who had pitied him in the slave-market, and
shown a generous confidence in a comparative stranger, was, with Joseph, a
stronger sentiment than any that Potiphar’s wife could stir in him. One can well
believe it. We know what enthusiastic devotedness a young man of any worth
delights to give to his superior who has treated him with justice, generosity,
and confidence; who himself occupies a station of importance in public life; and
who, by a dignified graciousness of demeanour, can make even the slave feel that
he too is a man, and that through his slave’s dress his proper man hood and
worth are recognised. There are few stronger sentiments than the enthusiasm or
quiet fidelity that can thus be kindled, and the influence such a superior
wields over the young mind is paramount. To disregard the rights of his master
seemed to Joseph a great wickedness and sin against God. The treachery of the
sin strikes him; his native discernment of the true rights of every party in the
case cannot, for a moment, be hoodwinked. He is not a man who can, even in the
excitement of temptation, overlook the consequences his sin may have on others.
Not unsteadied by the flattering solicitations of one so much above him in rank,
nor sullied by the contagion of her vehement passion; neither afraid to incur
the resentment of one who so regarded him, nor kindled to any impure desire by
contact with her blazing lust; neither scrupling thoroughly to disappoint her in
himself, nor to make her feel her own great guilt, he flung from him the strong
inducements that seemed to net him round and entangle him as his garment did,
and tore himself, shocked and grieved, from the beseeching hand of his temp
tress. The incident is related not because it was the most violent temptation to
which Joseph was ever exposed, but because it formed a necessary link in the
chain of circumstances that brought him before Pharaoh. And how ever strong this
temptation may have been, more men would be found who could thus have spoken to
Potiphar’s wife, than who could have kept silence when accused by Potiphar. For
his purity you will find his equal, one among a thousand; for his mercy scarcely
one. For there is nothing more intensely trying than to live under false and
painful accusations, which totally misrepresent and damage your character, which
effectually bar your advancement, and which yet you have it in your power to
disprove. Joseph, feeling his indebtedness to Potiphar, contents himself with
the simple averment that he himself is innocent. The word is on his tongue that
can put a very different face on the matter, but rather than utter that word,
Joseph will suffer the stroke that otherwise must fall on his master’s honour;
will pass from his high place and office of trust, through the jeering or
possibly compassionating slaves, branded as one who has betrayed the frankest
confidence, and is fitter for the dungeon than the steward ship of Potiphar. He
is content to lie under the cruel suspicion that he had in the foullest way
wronged the man whom most he should have regarded, and whom in point of fact he
did enthusiastically serve. There was one man in Egypt whose good-will he
prized, and this man now scorned and condemned him, and this for the very act by
which Joseph had proved most faithful and deserving. And even after a long
imprisonment, when he had now no reputation to maintain, and when such a little
bit of court scandal as he could have retailed would have been highly palatable
and possibly useful to some of those polished ruffians and adventurers who made
their dungeon ring with questionable tales, and with whom the free and levelling
intercourse of prison life had put him on the most familiar footing, and when
they twitted and taunted him with his supposed crime, and gave him the prison
sobriquet that would most pungently embody his villainy and failure, and when it
might plausibly have been pleaded by himself that such a woman should be
exposed, Joseph uttered no word of recrimination, but quietly endured, knowing
that God’s providence could allow him to be merciful; protesting, when needful,
that he himself was innocent, but seeking to entangle no one else in his
misfortune. It is this that has made the world seem so terrible a place to many
– that the innocent must so often suffer for the guilty, and that, without
appeal, the pure and loving must lie in chains and bitterness, while the wicked
live and see good days. It is this that has made men most despairingly question
whether there be indeed a God in heaven who knows who the real culprit is, and
yet suffers a terrible doom slowly to close around the innocent; who sees where
the guilt lies, and yet moves no finger nor speaks the word that would bring
justice to light, shaming the secure triumph of the wrong doer, and saving the
bleeding spirit from its agony. It was this that came as the last stroke of the
passion of our Lord, that He was numbered among the transgressors; it was this
that caused or materially increased the feeling that God had deserted Him; and
it was this that wrung from Him the cry which once was wrung from David, and may
well have been wrung from Joseph, when, cast into the dungeon as a mean and
treacherous villain, whose freedom was the peril of domestic peace and honour,
he found himself again helpless and forlorn, regarded now not as a mere
worthless lad, but as a criminal of the lowest type. And as there always recur
cases in which exculpation is impossible just in proportion as the party accused
is possessed of honourable feeling, and where silent acceptance of doom is the
result not of convicted guilt, but of the very triumph of self-sacrifice, we
must beware of over-suspicion and injustice. There is nothing in which we are
more frequently mistaken than in our suspicions and harsh judgments of others.
“But the Lord was with Joseph, and showed him mercy, and gave him favour in the
sight of the keeper of the prison.” As in Potiphar’s house, so in the king’s
house of detention Joseph’s fidelity and serviceableness made him seem
indispensable, and by sheer force of character he occupied the place rather of
governor than of prisoner. The discerning men he had to do with, accustomed to
deal with criminals and suspects of all shades, very quickly perceived that in
Joseph’s case justice was at fault, and that he was a mere scape-goat. Well
might Potiphar’s wife, like Pilate’s, have had warning dreams regarding the
innocent person who was being condemned; and probably Potiphar himself had
suspicion enough of the true state of matters to prevent him from going to
extremities with Joseph, and to imprison him more out of deference to the
opinion of his household, and for the sake of appearances, than because Joseph
alone was the object of his anger. At any rate, such was the vitality of
Joseph’s confidence in God, and such was the light-heartedness that sprang from
his integrity of conscience, that he was free from all absorbing anxiety about
himself, and had leisure to amuse and help his fellow-prisoners, so that such
promotion as a gaol could afford he won, from a dungeon to a chain, from a chain
to his word of honour. Thus even in the unlatticed dungeon the sun and moon look
in upon him and bow to him; and while his sheaf seems at its poorest, all rust
and mildew 7, the sheaves of his masters do homage. After the arrival of two
such notable criminals as the chief butler and baker of Pharaoh – the
chamberlain and steward of the royal household – Joseph, if sometimes pensive,
must yet have had sufficient entertainment at times in conversing with men who
stood by the king, and were familiar with the statesmen, courtiers, and military
men who frequented the house of Potiphar. He had now ample opportunity for
acquiring information which afterwards stood him in good stead for apprehending
the character of Pharaoh, and for making himself acquainted with many details of
his government, and with the general condition of the people. Officials in
disgrace would be found much more accessible and much more communicative of
important information than officials in court favour could have been to one in
Joseph’s position. It is not surprising that three nights before Pharaoh’s
birthday these functionaries of the court should have recalled in sleep such
scenes as that day was wont to bring round, nor that they should vividly have
seen the parts they themselves used to play in the festival. Neither is it
surprising that they should have had very anxious thoughts regarding their own
fate on a day which was chosen for deciding the fate of political or courtly
offenders. But it is remark able that they having dreamed these dreams. Joseph
should have been found willing to interpret them. One desires some evidence of
Joseph’s attitude towards God during this period when God’s attitude towards him
might seem doubtful, and especially one would like to know what Joseph by this
time thought of his juvenile dreams, and whether in the prison his face wore the
same beaming confidence in his own future which had smitten the hearts of his
brothers with impatient envy of the dreamer. We seek some evidence, and here we
find it. Joseph’s willingness to interpret the dreams of his fellow prisoners
proves that he still believed in his own, that among his other qualities he had
this characteristic also of a steadfast and profound soul, that he “reverenced
as a man the dreams of his youth.” Had he not done so, and had he not yet hoped
that somehow God would bring truth out of them, he would surely have said: Don’t
you believe in dreams; they will only get you into difficulties. He would have
said what some of us could dictate from our own thoughts: I won’t meddle with
dreams any more; I am not so young as I once was; doctrines and principles that
served for fervent romantic youth seem puerile now, when I have learned what
human life actually is; I can’t ask this man, who knows the world and has held
the cup for Pharaoh and is aware what a practical shape the king’s anger takes,
to cherish hopes similar to those which often seem so remote and doubtful to
myself. My religion has brought me into trouble: it has lost me my situation, it
has kept me poor, it has made me despised, it has debarred me from enjoyment.
Can I ask this man to trust to inward whisperings which seem to have so misled
me? No, no; let every man bear his own burden. If he wishes to become religious,
let not me bear the responsibility. If he will dream, let him find some other
interpreter. This casual conversation, then, with his fellow-prisoners was for
Joseph one of those perilous moments when a man holds his fate in his hand, and
yet does not know that he is specially on trial, but has for his guidance and
safe-conduct through the hazard only the ordinary safe guards and lights by the
aid of which he is framing his daily life. A man cannot be fore warned of trial,
if the trial is to be a fair test of his habitual life. He must not be called to
the lists by the herald’s trumpet warning him to mind his seat and grasp his
weapon; but must be suddenly set upon if his habit of steadiness and balance is
to be tested, and the warrior instinct to which the right weapon is ever at
hand. As Joseph, going the round of his morning duty and spreading what might
stir the appetite of these dainty courtiers, noted the gloom on their faces, had
he not been of a nature to take upon himself the sorrows of others, he might
have been glad to escape from their presence, fearful lest he should be infected
by their depression, or should become an object on which they might vent their
ill-humour. But he was girt with a healthy cheerfulness that could bear more
than his own burden; and his pondering of his own experience made him sensitive
to all that affected the destinies of other men. Thus Joseph in becoming the
interpreter of the dreams of other men became the fulfiller of his own. Had he
made light of the dreams of his fellow-prisoners because he had already made
light of his own, he would, for aught we can see, have died in the dungeon. And,
indeed, what hope is left for a man, and what deliverance is possible, when he
makes light of his own most sacred experience, and doubts whether after all
there was any Divine voice in that part of his life which once he felt to be
full of significance? Sadness, cynical worldliness, irritability, sour and
isolating selfishness, rapid deterioration in every part of the character –
these are the results which follow our repudiation of past experience and denial
of truth that once animated and purified us; when, at least, this repudiation
and denial are not themselves the results of our advance to a higher, more
animating, and more purifying truth. We cannot but leave behind us many
“childish things,” beliefs that we now recognise as mere superstitions, hopes
and fears which do not move the maturer mind; we cannot but seek always to be
stripping ourselves of modes of thinking which have served their purpose and are
out of date, but we do so only for the sake of attaining freer movement in all
serviceable and righteous conduct, and more adequate covering for the permanent
weaknesses of our own nature – “not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed
upon,” that truth partial and dawning may be swallowed up in the perfect light
of noon. And when a supposed advance in the knowledge of things spiritual robs
us of all that sustains true spiritual life in us, and begets an angry contempt
of our own past experience and a proud scorning of the dreams that agitate other
men; when it ministers not at all to the growth in us of what is tender and pure
and loving and progressive, but hardens us to a sullen or coarsely riotous or
coldly calculating character, we cannot but question whether it is not a
delusion rather than a truth that has taken possession of us. If it is fanciful,
it is yet almost inevitable, to compare Joseph at this stage of his career to
the great Interpreter who stands between God and us, and makes all His signs
intelligible. Those Egyptians could not forbear honouring Joseph, who was able
to solve to them the mysteries on the borders of which the Egyptian mind
continually hovered, and which it symbolized by its mysterious sphinxes, its
strange chambers of imagery, its unapproachable divinities. And we bow before
the Lord Jesus Christ, because He can read our fate and unriddle all our dim
anticipations of good and evil, and make intelligible to us the visions of our
own hearts. There is that in us, as in these men, from which a skilled eye could
already read our destiny. In the eye of One who sees the end from the beginning,
and can distinguish between the determining influences of character and the
insignificant manifestations of a passing mood, we are already designed to our
eternal places. And it is in Christ alone your future is explained. You cannot
understand your future without taking Him into your confidence. You go forward
blindly to meet you know not what, unless you listen to His interpretation of
the vague presentiments that visit you. Without Him what can we make of those
suspicions of a future judgment, or of those yearnings after God, that hang
about our hearts? Without Him what can we make of the idea and hope of a better
life than we are now living, or of the strange persuasion that all will yet be
well a persuasion that seems so groundless, and which yet will not be shaken
off, but finds its explanation in Christ? The excess of side light that falls
across our path from the present seems only to make the future more obscure and
doubtful, and from Him alone do we receive any interpretation of ourselves that
even seems to be satisfying. Our fellow-prisoners are often seen to be so
absorbed in their own affairs that it is vain to seek light from them; but He,
with patient, self-forgetting friendliness, is ever disengaged, and even
elicits, by the kindly and interrogating attitude He takes towards us, the
utterance of all our woes and perplexities. And it is because He has had dreams
Himself that He has become so skilled an interpreter of ours. It is because in
His own life He had His mind hard pressed for a solution of those very problems
which baffle us, because He had for Himself to adjust God’s promise to the
ordinary and apparently casual and untoward incidents of a human life, and
because He had to wait long before it became quite clear how one Scripture after
another was to be fulfilled by a course of simple confiding obedience – it is
because of this experience of His own, that He can now enter into and rightly
guide to its goal every longing we cherish.


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  CHAPTER 18: 02.10.     LECTURE X: PHARAOH’S DREAMS
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LECTURE X PHARAOH’S DREAMS

Genesis 41:1-57 “The Word of God Worketh its secret way, and needs no help, Like
to a jewel (hid in desert sands) Of wondrous lustre, as creation old, That finds
its way into a nation’s eye – A matchless excellence of priceless worth – So
precious truth doth jewel the fair world, Or, buried, sleeps unnoted but of
God.”

“Thus saith the Lord, that frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh
diviners mad; that confirmeth the word of His servant, and performeth the
counsel of His messengers: that saith of Cyrus, He is My shepherd, and shall
perform all My pleasure.” Isaiah 44:25; Isaiah 44:28

THE preceding act in this great drama – the act comprising the scenes of
Joseph’s temptation, unjust imprisonment, and interpretation of his
fellow-prisoners dreams – was written for the sake of explaining how Joseph came
to be introduced to Pharaoh. Other friendships may have been formed in the
prison, and other threads may have been spun which went to make up the life of
Joseph, but this only is pursued. For a time, however, there seemed very little
prospect that this would prove to be the thread on which his destiny hung.
Joseph made a touching appeal to the Chief Butler: “yet did not the Chief Butler
remember Joseph, but forgat him.” You can see him in the joy of his release
affectionately pressing Joseph’s hand as the king’s messengers knocked off his
fetters. You can see him assuring Joseph, by his farewell look, that he might
trust him; mistaking mere elation at his own release for warmth of feeling
towards Joseph, though perhaps even already feeling just the slightest touch of
awkwardness at being seen on such intimate terms with a Hebrew slave. How could
he, when in the palace of Pharaoh and decorated with the insignia of his office
and surrounded by courtiers, break through the formal etiquette of the place?
What with the pleasant congratulations of old friends, and the accumulation of
business since he had been imprisoned, and the excitement of restoration from so
low and hopeless to so high and busy a position, the promise to Joseph is
obliterated from his mind. If it once or twice recurs to his memory, he
persuades himself he is waiting for a good opening to mention Joseph. It would
perhaps be unwarrantable to say that he admits the idea that he is in no way
indebted to Joseph, since all that Joseph had done was to interpret, but by no
means to determine, his fate. The analogy which we could not help seeing between
Joseph’s relation to his fellow-prisoners, and our Lord’s relation to us,
pursues us here. For does not the bond between us and Him seem often very
slender, when once we have received from Him the knowledge of the king’s
good-will, and find ourselves set in a place of security? Is not Christ with
many a mere stepping-stone for their own advancement, and of interest only so
long as they are in anxiety about their own fate? Their regard for Him seems
abruptly to terminate as soon as they are ushered to freer air. Brought for a
while into contact with Him, the very peace and prosperity which that
intercourse has introduced them to, become opiates to dull their memory and
their gratitude. They have received all they at present desire, they have no
more dreams, their life has become so plain and simple and glad, that they need
no interpreter. They seem to regard Him no more than an official is regarded who
is set to discharge to all comers some duty for which he is paid; who mingles no
love with his work, and from whom they would receive the same benefits whether
he had any personal interest in them or no. But there is no Christianity where
there is no loving remembrance of Christ. If your contact with Him has not made
Him your Friend whom you can by no possibility forget, you have missed the best
result of your introduction to Him. It makes one think meanly of the Chief
Butler that such a personality as Joseph’s had not more deeply impressed him
that everything he heard and saw among the courtiers did not make him say to
himself: There is a friend of mine, in prison hard by, that for beauty, wisdom,
and vivacity would more than match the finest of you all. And it says very
little for us if we can have known anything of Christ without seeing that in Him
we have what is nowhere else, and without finding that He has become the
necessity of our life to whom we turn at every point. But, as things turned out,
it was perhaps as well for Joseph that his promising friend did forget him. For,
supposing the Chief Butler had overcome his natural reluctance to increase his
own indebtedness to Pharaoh by interceding for a friend, supposing he had been
willing to risk the friendship of the Captain of the Guard by interfering in so
delicate a matter, and supposing Pharaoh had been willing to listen to him, what
would have been the result? Probably that Joseph would have been sold away to
the quarries, for certainly he could not have been restored to Potiphar’s house;
or, at the most, he might have received his liberty, and a free pass out of
Egypt. That is to say, he would have obtained liberty to return to
sheep-shearing and cattle-dealing and checkmating his brother’s plots. In any
probable case his career would have tended rather towards obscurity than towards
the fulfilment of his dreams. There seems equal reason to congratulate Joseph on
his friend’s forgetfulness, when we consider its probable effects not on his
career, but on his character. When he was left in prison after so sudden and
exciting an incursion of the outer world as the king’s messengers would make,
his mind must have run chiefly in two lines of thought. Naturally he would feel
some envy of the man who was being restored, and when day after day passed and
more than the former monotony of prison routine palled on his spirit; when he
found how completely he was forgotten, and how friendless and lone a creature he
was in that strange land where things had gone so mysteriously against him; when
he saw before him no other fate than that which he had seen befall so many a
slave thrown into a dungeon at his master’s pleasure and never more heard of, he
must have been sorely tempted to hate the whole world, and especially those
brethren who had been the beginning of all his misfortunes. Had there been any
selfishness in solution in Joseph’s character, this is the point at which it
would have quickly crystallized into permanent forms. For nothing more certainly
elicits and confirms selfishness than bad treatment. But from his conduct on his
release, we see clearly enough that through all this trying time his heroism was
not only that of the strong man who vows that though the whole world is against
him the day will come when the world shall have need of him, but of the saint of
God in whom suffering and injustice leave no bitterness against his fellows, nor
even provoke one slightest morbid utterance. But another process must have been
going on in Joseph’s mind at the same time. He must have felt that it was a very
serious thing that he had been called upon to do in interpreting God’s will to
his fellow-prisoners. No doubt he fell into it quite naturally and aptly,
because it was liker his proper vocation, and more of his character could come
out in it than in anything he had yet done. Still, to be mixed up thus with
matters of life and death concerning other people, and to have men of practical
ability and experience and high position listening to him as to an oracle, and
to find that in very truth a great power was committed to him, was calculated to
have some considerable result one way or other on Joseph. And these two years of
unrelieved and sobering obscurity cannot but be considered most opportune. For
one of two things is apt to follow the world’s first recognition of a man’s
gifts. He is either induced to pander to the world’s wonder and become
artificial and strained in all he does, so losing the spontaneity and
naturalness and sincerity which characterise the best work; or he is awed and
steadied. And whether the one or the other result follow, will depend very much
on the other things that are happening to him. In Joseph’s case it was probably
well that after having made proof of his powers he was left in such
circumstances as would not only give him time for reflection, but also give a
humble and believing turn to his reflections. He was not at once exalted to the
priestly caste, nor enrolled among the wise men, nor put in any position in
which he would have been under constant temptation to display and trifle with
his power, and so he was led to the conviction that deeper even than the joy of
receiving the recognition and gratitude of men was the abiding satisfaction of
having done the thing God had given him to do. These two years, then, during
which Joseph’s active mind must necessarily have been forced to provide food for
itself, and have been thrown back upon his past experience, seem to have been of
eminent service in maturing his character. The self-possessed dignity and case
of command which appear in him from the moment when he is ushered into Pharaoh’s
presence have their roots in these two years of silence. As the bones of a
strong man are slowly, imperceptibly knit, and gradually take the shape and
texture they retain throughout; so during these years there was silently and
secretly consolidating a character of almost unparalleled calmness and power.
One has no words to express how tantalizing it must have been to Joseph to see
this Egyptian have his dreams so gladly and speedily fulfilled, while he
himself, who had so long waited on the true God, was left waiting still, and now
so utterly unbefriended that there seemed no possible way of ever again
connecting himself with the world outside the prison walls. Being pressed thus
for an answer to the question, What does God mean to make of my life? he was
brought to see and to hold as the most important truth for him, that the first
concern is, that God’s purposes be accomplished; the second, that his own dreams
be fulfilled. He was enabled, as we shall see in the sequel, to put God truly in
the first place, and to see that by forwarding the interests of other men, even
though they were but light-minded chief butlers at a foreign court, he might be
as serviceably furthering the purposes of God, as if he were forwarding his own
interests. He was compelled to seek for some principle that would sustain and
guide him in the midst of much disappointment and perplexity, and he found it in
the conviction that the essential thing to be accomplished in this world, and to
which every man must lay his shoulder, is God’s purpose. Let that go on, and all
else that should go on will go on. And he further saw that he best fulfils God’s
purpose who, without anxiety and impatience, does the duty of the day, and gives
himself without stint to the “charities that soothe and heal and bless.” His
perception of the breadth of God’s purpose, and his profound and sympathetic and
active submission to it, were qualities too rare not to be called into
influential exercise. After two years he is suddenly summoned to become God’s
interpreter to Pharaoh. The Egyptian king was in the unhappy though not uncommon
position of having a revelation from God which he could not read, intimations
and presentiments he could not interpret. To one man is given the revelation, to
another the interpretation. The official dignity of the king is respected, and
to him is given the revelation which concerns the welfare of the whole people.
But to read God’s meaning in a revelation requires a spiritual intelligence
trained to sympathy with His purposes, and such a spirit was found in Joseph
alone. The dreams of Pharaoh were thoroughly Egyptian. The marvel is, that a
symbolism so familiar to the Egyptian eye should not have been easily legible to
even the most slenderly gifted of Pharaoh’s wise men. “In my dream,” says the
king, “behold, I stood upon the bank of the river: and, behold, there came up
out of the river seven kine,” and so on. Every land or city is proud of its
river, but none has such cause to be so as Egypt of its Nile. The country is
accurately as well as poetically called “the gift of Nile.” Out of the river do
really come good or bad years, fat or lean kine. Wholly dependent on its annual
rise and overflow for the irrigating and enriching of the soil, the people
worship it and love it, and at the season of its overflow give way to the most
rapturous expressions of joy. The cow also was reverenced as the symbol of the
earth’s productive power. If then, as Joseph avers, God wished to show to
Pharaoh that seven years of plenty were approaching, this announcement could
hardly have been made plainer in the language of dreams than by showing to
Pharaoh seven well favoured kine coming up out of the bountiful river to feed on
the meadow made richly green by its waters. If the king had been sacrificing to
the river, such a sight, familiar as it was to the dwellers by the Nile, might
well have been accepted by him as a promise of plenty in the land. But what
agitated Pharaoh, and gave him the shuddering presentiment of evil which
accompanies some dreams, was the sequel. “Behold, seven other kine came up after
them, poor and very ill-favoured and lean-fleshed, such as I never saw in all
the land of Egypt for badness: and the lean and the ill-favoured kine did eat up
the first seven fat kine: and when they had eaten them up, it could not be known
that they had eaten them; but they were still ill-favoured, as at the
beginning,” – a picture which to the inspired dream-reader represented seven
years of famine so grievous, that the preceding plenty should be swallowed up
and not be known. A similar image occurred to a writer who, in describing a more
recent famine in the same land, says: “The year presented itself as a monster
whose wrath must annihilate all the resources of life and all the means of
subsistence.” It tells in favour of the court magicians and wise men that not
one of them offered an interpretation of dreams to which it would certainly not
have been difficult to attach some tolerably feasible interpretation. Probably
these men were as yet sincere devotees of astrology and occult science, and not
the mere jugglers and charlatans their successors seem to have become. When men
cannot make out the purpose of God regarding the future of the race, it is not
wonderful that they should endeavour to catch the faintest, most broken echo of
His voice to the world, wherever they can find it. Now there is a wide region, a
borderland between the two worlds of spirit and of matter, in which are found a
great many mysterious phenomena which cannot be explained by any known laws of
nature, and through which men fancy they get nearer to the spiritual world.
There are many singular and startling appearances, coincidences, forebodings,
premonitions which men have always been attracted towards, and which they have
considered as open ways of communication between God and man There are dreams,
visions, strange apprehensions, freaks of memory, and other mental phenomena,
which, when all classed together, assorted, and skilfully applied to the reading
of the future, once formed quite a science by itself. When men have no word from
God to depend upon, no knowledge at all of where either the race or individuals
are going to, they will eagerly grasp at anything that even seems to shed a ray
of light on their future. We for the most part make light of that whole category
of phenomena, because we have a more sure word of prophecy by which, as with a
light in a dark place, we can tell where our next step should be, and what the
end shall be. But invariably in heathen countries, where no guiding spirit of
God was believed in, and where the absence of His revealed will left numberless
points of duty doubtful and all the future dark, there existed in lieu of this a
class of persons who, under one name or other, undertook to satisfy the craving
of men to see into the future, to forewarn them of danger, and advise them
regarding matters of conduct and affairs of state. At various points of the
history of God’s revelation these professors of occult science appear. In each
case a profound impression is made by the superior wisdom or power displayed by
the “wise man” of God. But in reading the accounts we have of these collisions
between the wisdom of God and that of the magicians, a slight feeling of
uneasiness sometimes enters the mind. You may feel that these wonders of Joseph,
Moses, and Daniel have a romantic air about them, and you feel, perhaps, a
slight scruple in granting that God would lend Himself to such displays –
displays so completely out of date in our day. But we are to consider not only
that there is nothing of the kind more certain than that dreams do sometimes
even now impart most significant warning to men; but, also, that the time in
which Joseph lived was the childhood of the world, when God had neither spoken
much to men, nor could speak much, because as yet they had not learned His
language, but were only being slowly taught it by signs suited to their
capacity. If these men were to receive any knowledge beyond what their own
unaided efforts could attain, they must be taught in a language they understood.
They could not be dealt with as if they had already attained a knowledge and a
capacity which could only be theirs many centuries after; they must be dealt
with by signs and wonders which had perhaps little moral teaching in them, but
yet gave evidence of God’s nearness and power such as they could and did
understand. God thus stretched out His hand to men in the darkness, and let them
feel His strength before they could look on His face and understand His nature.
It is the existence at the court of Pharaoh of this highly respected class of
dream-interpreters and wise men, which lends significance to the conduct of
Joseph when summoned into the royal presence. Such wisdom as he displayed in
reading Pharaoh’s visions was looked upon as attainable by means within the
reach of any man who had sufficient faculty for the science. And the first idea
in the minds of the courtiers would probably have been, had Joseph not solemnly
protested against it, that he was an adept where they were apprentices and
bunglers, and that his success was due purely to professional skill. This was of
course perfectly well known to Joseph, who, for a number of years, had been
familiar with the ideas prevalent at the court of Pharaoh; and he might have
argued that there could be no great harm in at least effecting his deliverance
from an unjust imprisonment by allowing Pharaoh to suppose that it was to him he
was indebted for the interpretation of his dreams. But his first word to Pharaoh
is a self-renouncing exclamation: “Not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer
of peace.” Two years had elapsed since anything had occurred which looked the
least like the fulfilment of his own dreams, or gave him any hope of release
from prison; and now, when measuring himself with these courtiers and feeling
able to take his place with the best of them, getting again a breath of free air
and feeling once more the charm of life, and having an opening set before his
young ambition, being so suddenly transferred from a place where his very
existence seemed to be forgotten to a place where Pharaoh himself and all his
court eyed him with the intensest interest and anxiety, it is significant that
he should appear regardless of his own fate, but jealously careful of the glory
of God. Considering how jealous men commonly are of their own reputation, and
how impatiently eager to receive all the credit that is due to them for their
own share in any good that is doing, and considering of what essential
importance it seemed that Joseph should seize this opportunity of providing for
his own safety and advancement, and should use this as the tide in his affairs
that led to fortune, his words and bearing before Pharaoh undoubtedly disclose a
deeply inwrought fidelity to God, and a magnanimous patience regarding his own
personal interests. For it is extremely unlikely that in proposing to Pharaoh to
set a man over this important business of collecting corn to last through the
years of famine, it presented itself to Joseph as a conceivable result that he
should be the person appointed he a Hebrew, a slave, a prisoner, cleaned but for
the nonce, could not suppose that Pharaoh would pass over all these tried
officers and ministers of state around him and fix upon a youth who was wholly
untried, and who might, by his different race and religion, prove obnoxious to
the people. Joseph may have expected to make interest enough with Pharaoh to
secure his freedom, and possibly some subordinate berth where he could hope
fully begin the world again; but his only allusion to himself is of a
depreciatory kind, while his reference to God is marked with a profound
conviction that this is God’s doing, and that to Him is due whatever is due.
Well may the Hebrew race be proud of these men like Joseph and Daniel, who stood
in the presence of foreign monarchs in a spirit of perfect fidelity to God,
commanding the respect of all, and clothed with the dignity and simplicity which
that fidelity imparted. It matters not to Joseph that there may perhaps be none
in that land who can appreciate his fidelity to God or understand his motive. It
matters not what he may lose by it, or what he could gain by falling in with the
notions of those around him. He himself knows the real state of the case, and
will not act untruly to his God, even though for years he seems to have been
forgotten by Him. With Daniel he says in spirit, “Let thy gifts be to thyself,
and give thy rewards to another. As for me, this secret is not revealed to me
for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but that the interpretation may
be known to the king, and that thou mayest know the thoughts of thine heart, He
that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass.” There is
something particularly noble and worthy of admiration in a man thus standing
alone and maintaining the fullest allegiance to God, without ostentation, and
with a quiet dignity and naturalness that shows he has a great fund of strength
behind. That we do not misjudge Joseph’s character or ascribe to him qualities
which were invisible to his contemporaries, is apparent from the circumstance
that Pharaoh and his advisers, with little or no hesitation, agreed that to no
man could they more safely entrust their country in this emergency. The mere
personal charm of Joseph might have won over these experienced advisers of the
crown to make compensation for his imprisonment by an unusually handsome reward,
but no mere attractiveness of person and manner, nor even the unquestionable
guilelessness of his bearing, could have induced them to put such an affair as
this into his hands. Plainly they were impressed with Joseph; almost
supernaturally impressed, and felt God through him. He stood before them as one
mysteriously appearing in their emergency, sent out of unthought-of quarters to
warn and save them. Happily there was as yet no jealousy of the God of the
Hebrews, nor any exclusiveness on the part of the chosen people: Pharaoh and
Joseph alike felt that there was one God over all and through all. And it was
Joseph’s self-abnegating sympathy with the purposes of this Supreme God that
made him a transparent medium, so that in his presence the Egyptians felt
themselves in the presence of God. It is so always. Influence in the long run
belongs to those who rid their minds of all private aims, and get close to the
great centre in which all the race meets and is cared for. Men feel themselves
safe with the unselfish, with persons in whom they meet principle, justice,
truth, love, God. We are unattractive, useless, uninfluential, just because we
are still childishly craving a private and selfish good. We know that a life
which does not pour itself freely into the common stream of public good is lost
in dry and sterile sands. We know that a life spent upon self is contemptible,
barren, empty, yet how slowly do we come to the attitude of Joseph, who watched
for the fulfilment of God’s purposes and found his happiness in forwarding what
God designed for the people.


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  CHAPTER 19: 02.11.     LECTURE XI: JOSEPH’S ADMINISTRATION
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LECTURE XI JOSEPH’S ADMINISTRATION Genesis 41:37-57; Genesis 47:13-26 “And he
but filled his fortunes like a man Who did intend to honour them as much As they
could honour him”

“He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance: To bind his
princes at his pleasure; and teach his senators wisdom.” Psalms 105:21-22

“MANY a monument consecrated to the memory of some nobleman gone to his long
home, who during life had held high rank at the court of Pharaoh, is decorated
with the simple but laudatory inscription, ‘His ancestors were unknown people’”
– so we are told by our most accurate informant regarding Egyptian affairs.
Indeed, the tales we read of adventurers in the East, and the histories which
recount how some dynasties have been founded, are sufficient evidence that in
other countries besides Egypt, sudden elevation from the lowest to the highest
rank is not so unusual as amongst ourselves. Historians have recently made out
that in one period of the history of Egypt there are traces of a kind of Semitic
mania, a strong leaning towards Syrian and Arabian customs, phrases, and
persons. Such manias have occurred in most countries. There was a period in the
history of Rome when everything that had a Greek flavour was admired; an
Anglo-mania once affected a portion of the French population, and, reciprocally,
French manners and ideas have at times found a welcome among ourselves. It is
also clear that for a time lower Egypt was under the dominion of foreign rulers
who were in race more nearly allied to Joseph than to the native population. But
there is no need that so complicated a question as the exact date of this
foreign domination be debated here, for there was that in Joseph’s bearing which
would have commended him to any sagacious monarch. Not only did the court accept
him as a messenger from God, but they could not fail to recognise substantial
and serviceable human qualities alongside of what was mysterious in him. The
ready apprehension with which he appreciated the magnitude of the danger, the
clear-sighted promptitude with which he met it, the resource and quiet capacity
with which he handled a matter involving the entire property of Egypt, showed
them that they were in the presence of a true statesman. No doubt the confidence
with which he described the best method of dealing with the emergency was the
confidence of one who was convinced he was speaking for God. This was the great
distinction they perceived between Joseph and ordinary dream-interpreters. It
was not guess work with him. The same distinction is always apparent between
revelation and speculation. Revelation speaks with authority; speculation gropes
its way, and when wisest is most diffident. At the same time Pharaoh was
perfectly right in his inference: “Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this,
there is none so discreet and wise as thou art.” He believed that God had chosen
him to deal with this matter because he was wise in heart, and he believed his
wisdom would remain because God had chosen him. At length, then, Joseph saw the
fulfilment of his dreams within his reach. The coat of many colours with which
his father had paid a tribute to the princely person and ways of the boy, was
now replaced by the robe of state and the heavy gold necklace which marked him
out as second to Pharaoh. Whatever nerve and self-command and humble dependence
on God his varied experience had wrought in him were all needed when Pharaoh
took his hand and placed his own ring on it, thus transferring all his authority
to him, and when turning from the king he received the acclamations of the court
and the people, bowed to by his old masters, and acknowledged the superior of
all the dignitaries and potentates of Egypt. Only once besides, so far as the
Egyptian inscriptions have yet been deciphered, does it appear that any subject
was raised to be Regent or Viceroy with similar powers. Joseph is, as far as
possible, naturalised as an Egyptian. He receives a name easier of pronunciation
than his own, at least to Egyptian tongues – Zaphnath-Paaneah, which, however,
was perhaps only an official title meaning “Governor of the district of the
place of life,” the name by which one of the Egyptian counties or states was
known. The king crowned his liberality and completed the process of
naturalisation by providing him with a wife, Asenath, the daughter of
Potipherah, priest of On. This city was not far from Avaris or Haouar, where
Joseph’s Pharaoh, Ra-apepi II, at this time resided. The worship of the sun-god,
Ra, had its centre at On, (or Heliopolis, as it was called by the Greeks,) and
the priests of On took precedence of all Egyptian priests. Joseph was thus
connected with one of the most influential families in the land, and if he had
any scruples about marrying into an idolatrous family, they were too
insignificant to influence his conduct, or leave any trace in the narrative. His
attitude towards God and his own family was disclosed in the names which he gave
to his children. In giving names which had a meaning at all, and not merely a
taking sound, he showed that he understood, as well he might, that every human
life has a significance and expresses some principle or fact. And in giving
names which recorded his acknowledgment of God’s goodness lie showed that
prosperity had as little influence as adversity to move him from his allegiance
to the God of his fathers. His first son he called Manasseh, Making to forget,
“for God,” said he, “hath made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house”
– not as if he were now so abundantly satisfied in Egypt that the thought of his
father’s house was blotted from his mind, but only that in this child the keen
longings he had felt for kindred and home were somewhat alleviated. He again
found an object for his strong family affection. The void in his heart he had so
long felt was filled by the little babe. A new home was begun around him. But
this new affection would not weaken, though it would alter the character of, his
love for his father and brethren. The birth of this child would really be a new
tie to the land from which he had been stolen. For, however ready men are to
spend their own life in foreign service, you see them wishing that their
children should spend their days among the scenes with which their own childhood
was familiar. In the naming of his second son Ephraim he recognises that God had
made him fruitful in the most unlikely way. He does not leave it to us to
interpret his life, but records what he himself saw in it. It has been said: “To
get at the truth of any history is good; but a man’s own history – when he reads
that truly … and knows what he is about and has been about, it is a Bible to
him.” And now that Joseph, from the height he had reached, could look back on
the way by which he had been led to it, he cordially approved of all that God
had done. There was no resentment, no murmuring. He would often find himself
looking back and thinking, Had I found my brothers where I thought they were,
had the pit not been on the caravan-road, had the merchants not come up so
opportunely, had I not been sold at all or to some other master, had I not been
imprisoned or had I been put in another ward – had any one of the many slender
links in the chain of my career been absent, how different might my present
state have been. How plainly I now see that all those sad mishaps that crushed
my hopes and tortured my spirit where steps in the only conceivable path to my
present position. Many a man has added his signature to this acknowledgment of
Joseph’s, and confessed a providence guiding his life and working out good for
him through injuries and sorrows, as well as through honours, marriages, births.
As in the heat of summer it is difficult to recall the sensation of winter’s
bitter cold, so the fruitless and barren periods of a man’s life are sometimes
quite obliterated from his memory. God has it in His power to raise a man higher
above the level of ordinary happiness than ever he has sunk below it; and as
winter and spring-time, when the seed is sown, are stormy and bleak and gusty,
so in human life seed-time is not bright as summer nor cheerful as autumn; and
yet it is then, when all the earth lies bare and will yield us nothing, that the
precious seed is sown: and when we confidently commit our labour or patience of
to-day to God, the land of our affliction, now bare and desolate, will certainly
wave for us, as it has waved for others, with rich produce whitened to the
harvest. There is no doubt then that Joseph had learned to recognise the
providence of God as a most important factor in his life. And the man who does
so, gains for his character all the strength and resolution that come with a
capacity for waiting. He saw, most legibly written on his own life, that God is
never in a hurry. And for the resolute adherence to his seven years policy such
a belief was most necessary. Nothing, indeed, is said of opposition or
incredulity on the part of the Egyptians. But was there ever a policy of such
magnitude carried out in any country without opposition or without
evilly-disposed persons using it as a weapon against its promoter? No doubt
during these years he had need of all the personal determination as well as of
all the official authority he possessed. And if, on the whole, remarkable
success attended his efforts, we must ascribe this partly to the unchallengeable
justice of his arrangements, and partly to the impression of commanding genius
Joseph seems everywhere to have made. As with his father and brethren he was
felt to be superior, as in Potiphar’s house he was quickly recognised, as in the
prison no prison-garb or slave-brand could disguise him, as in the court his
superiority was instinctively felt, so in his administration the people seem to
have believed in him. And if, on the whole and in general, Joseph was reckoned a
wise and equitable ruler, and even adored as a kind of saviour of the world, it
would be idle in us to canvass the wisdom of his administration. When we have
not sufficient historical material to apprehend the full significance of any
policy, it is safe to accept the judgment of men who not only knew the facts but
were themselves so deeply involved in them that they would certainly have felt
and expressed discontent had there been ground for doing so. The policy of
Joseph was simply to economize during the seven years of abundance to such an
extent that provision might be made against the seven years of famine. He
calculated that one-fifth of the produce of years so extraordinarily plenteous
would serve for the seven scarce years. This fifth he seems to have bought in
the king’s name from the people, buying it, no doubt, at the cheap rates of
abundant years. When the years of famine came, the people were referred to
Joseph; and, till their money was gone, he sold corn to them probably not at
famine prices. Next he acquired their cattle, and finally, in exchange for food,
they yielded to him both their lands and their persons. So that the result of
the whole was, that the people who would otherwise have perished were preserved,
and in return for this preservation they paid a tax or rent on their farm-lands
to the amount of one-fifth of their produce. The people ceased to be proprietors
of their own farms, but they were not slaves with no interest in the soil, but
tenants sitting at easy rents – a fair enough exchange for being preserved in
life. This kind of taxation is eminently fair in principle, securing, as it
does, that the wealth of the king and government shall vary with the prosperity
of the whole land. The chief difficulty that has always been experienced in
working it, has arisen from the necessity of leaving a good deal of
discretionary power in the hands of the collectors, who have generally been
found not slow to abuse this power. The only semblance of despotism in Joseph’s
policy is found in the curious circumstance that he interfered with the people’s
choice of residence, and shifted them from one end of the land to another. This
may have been necessary not only as a kind of seal on the deed by which the
lands were conveyed to the king, and as a significant sign to them that they
were mere tenants, but also Joseph probably saw that for the interests of the
country, if not of agricultural prosperity, this shifting had become necessary
for the breaking up of illegal associations, nests of sedition, and sectional
prejudices and enmities which were endangering the community.* Modern experience
supplies us with instances in which, by such a policy, a country might be
regenerated and a seven years famine hailed as a blessing if, without famishing
the people, it put them unconditionally into the hands of an able, bold, and
beneficent ruler. And this was a policy which could be much better devised and
executed by a foreigner than by a native.

* “It happened very often that the inhabitants of one district threatened an
attack on the occupants of another on account of some dispute about divine or
human questions. The hostile feelings of the opponents not unfrequently broke
out into a hard struggle, and it required the whole armed power of the king to
extinguish at its first outburst the flaming torch of war, kindled by
domineering chiefs of nomes or ambitious priests.” Brugsch, History of Egypt, i.
16.

Egypt’s indebtedness to Joseph was, in fact, twofold. In the first place he
succeeded in doing what many strong governments have failed to do: he enabled a
large population to survive a long and severe famine. Even with all modern
facilities for transport and for making the abundance of remote countries
available for times of scarcity, it has not always been found possible to save
our own fellow-subjects from starvation. In a prolonged famine which occurred in
Egypt during the middle ages, the inhabitants, reduced to the unnatural habits
which are the most painful feature of such times, not only ate their own dead,
but kidnapped the living on the streets of Cairo and consumed them in secret.
One of the most touching memorials of the famine with which Joseph had to deal
is found in a sepulchral inscription in Arabia. A flood of rain laid bare a tomb
in which lay a woman having on her person a profusion of jewels which
represented a very large value. At her head stood a coffer filled with treasure,
and a tablet with this inscription: “In Thy name, O God, the God of Himyar, I,
Tayar, the daughter of Dzu Shefar, sent my steward to Joseph, and he delaying to
return to me, I sent my handmaid with a measure of silver to bring me back a
measure of flour; and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of
gold; and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of pearls; and
not being able to procure it, I commanded them to be ground; and finding no
profit in them, I am shut up here.” If this inscription is genuine – and there
seems no reason to call it in question – it shows that there is no exaggeration
in the statement of our narrator that the famine was very grievous in other
lands as well as in Egypt. And, whether genuine or not, one cannot but admire
the grim humour of the starving woman getting herself buried in the jewels which
had suddenly dropped to less than the value of a loaf of bread. But besides
being indebted to Joseph for their preservation, the Egyptians owed to him an
extension of their influence; for, as all the lands round about became dependent
on Egypt for provision, they must have contracted a respect for the Egyptian
administration. They must also have added greatly to Egypt’s wealth, and during
these years of constant traffic many commercial connections must have been
formed which in future years would be of untold value to Egypt. But above all,
the permanent alterations made by Joseph on their tenure of land, and on their
places of abode, may have convinced the most sagacious of the Egyptians that it
was well for them that their money had failed, and that they had been compelled
to yield themselves unconditionally into the hands of this remarkable ruler. It
is the mark of a competent statesman that he makes temporary distress the
occasion for permanent benefit; and from the confidence Joseph won with the
people, there seems every reason to believe that the permanent alterations he
introduced were considered as competent as certainly they were bold. And for our
own spiritual uses it is this point which seems chiefly important. In Joseph is
illustrated the principle that, in order to the attainment of certain blessings,
unconditional submission to God’s delegate is required. If we miss this, we miss
a large part of what his history exhibits, and it becomes a mere pretty story.
The prominent idea in his dreams was, that he was to be worshipped by his
brethren. In his exaltation by Pharaoh, the absolute authority given to him is
again conspicuous: “Without thee shall no man lift up hand or foot in all the
land of Egypt.” And still the same autocracy appears in the fact that not one
Egyptian who was helpful to him in this matter is mentioned; and no one has
received such exclusive possession of a considerable part of Scripture, so
personal and outstanding a place. All this leaves upon the mind the impression
that Joseph becomes a benefactor, and in his degree a saviour, to men by
becoming their absolute master. When this was hinted in his dreams at first, his
brothers fiercely resented it. But when they were put to the push by famine,
both they and the Egyptians recognised that he was appointed by God to be their
saviour, while at the same time they markedly and consciously submitted
themselves to him. Men may always be expected to recognise that he who can save
them alive in famine has a right to order the bounds of their habitation; and
also that in the hands of one who, from disinterested motives, has saved them,
they are likely to be quite as safe as in their own. And if we are all quite
sure of this, that men of great political sagacity can regulate our affairs with
tenfold the judgment and success that we ourselves could achieve, we cannot
wonder that in matters still higher, and for which we are notoriously
incompetent, there should be One into whose hands it is well to commit ourselves
– One whose judgment is not warped by the prejudices which blind all mere
natives of this world, but who, separate from sinners yet naturalised among us,
can both detect and rectify everything in our condition which is less than
perfect. If there are certainly many cases in which explanations are out of the
question, and in which the governed, if they are wise, will yield themselves to
a trusted authority, and leave it to time and results to justify his measures,
any one, I think, who anxiously considers our spiritual condition must see that
here too obedience is for us the greater part of wisdom, and that, after all
speculation and efforts at sufficing investigation, we can still do no better
than yield ourselves absolutely to Jesus Christ. He alone understands our whole
position; He alone speaks with the authority that commands confidence, because
it is felt to be the authority of the truth. We feel the present pressure of
famine; we have discernment enough, some of us, to know we are in danger, but we
cannot penetrate deeply either into the cause or the possible consequences of
our present state. But Christ – if we may continue the figure – legislates with
a breadth of administrative capacity which includes not only our present
distress but our future condition, and, with the boldness of one who is master
of the whole case, requires that we put ourselves wholly into His hand. He takes
the responsibility of all the changes we make in obedience to Him, and proposes
so to relieve us that the relief shall be permanent, and that the very emergency
which has thrown us upon His help shall be the occasion of our transference not
merely out of the present evil, but into the best possible form of human life.
From this chapter, then, in the history of Joseph, we may reasonably take
occasion to remind ourselves, 1st , that in all things pertaining to God
unconditional submission to Christ is necessarily required of us. Apart from
Christ we cannot tell what are the necessary elements of a permanently happy
state; nor, indeed, even whether there is any such state awaiting us. There is a
great deal of truth in what is urged by unbelievers to the effect that spiritual
matters are in great measure beyond our cognizance, and that many of our
religious phrases are but, as it were, thrown out in the direction of a truth
but do not perfectly represent it No doubt we are in a provisional state in
which we are not in direct contact with the absolute truth, nor in a final
attitude of mind towards it; and certain representations of things given in the
Word of God may seem to us not to cover the whole truth. But this only compels
the conclusion that for us Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. To probe
existence to the bottom is plainly not in our power. To say precisely what God
is, and how we are to carry ourselves towards Him, is possible only to Him who
has been with God and is God. To submit to the Spirit of Christ, and to live
under those influences and views which formed His life, is the only method that
promises deliverance from that moral condition which makes spiritual vision
impossible. We may remind ourselves, second, that this submission to Christ
should be consistently adhered to in connection with those outward occurrences
in our life which give us opportunity of enlarging our spiritual capacity. There
can be little doubt that there would be presented to Joseph many a plan for the
better administration of this whole matter, and many a petition from individuals
craving exemption from the seemingly arbitrary and certainly painful and
troublesome edict regulating change of residence. Many a man would think himself
much wiser than the minister of Pharaoh in whom was the Spirit of God. When we
react in a similar manner, and take upon us to specify with precision the
changes we should like to see in our condition, and the methods by which these
changes might best be accomplished, we commonly manifest our own incompetence.
The changes which the strong hand of Providence enforces, the dislocation which
our life suffers from some irresistible blow, the necessity laid upon us to
begin life again and on apparently disadvantageous terms, are naturally
resented; but these things being certainly the result of some unguardedness,
improvidence, or weakness in our past state, are necessarily the means most
appropriate for disclosing to us these elements of calamity and for securing our
permanent welfare. We rebel against such perilous and sweeping revolutions as
the basing of our life on a new foundation demands; we would disregard the
appointments of Providence if we could; but both our voluntary consent to the
authority of Christ and the impossibility a resisting His providential
arrangements, prevent us from refusing to fall in with them, however needless
and tyrannical they seem, and however little we perceive that they are intended
to accomplish our permanent well-being. And it is in after years, when the pain
of severance from old friends and habits is healed, and when the discomfort of
adapting ourselves to a new kind of life is replaced by peaceful and docile
resignation to new conditions, that we reach the clear perception that the
changes we resented have in point of fact rendered harmless the seeds of fresh
disaster, and rescued us from the results of long bad government. He who has
most keenly felt the hardship of being diverted from his original course in
life, will in after life tell you that had he been allowed to hold his own land,
and remain his own master in his old loved abode, he would have lapsed into a
condition from which no worthy harvest could be expected. If a man only wishes
that his own conceptions of prosperity be realised, then let him keep his land
in his own hand and work his material irrespective of God’s demands; for
certainly if he yields himself to God, his own ideas of prosperity will not be
realised. But if he suspects that God may have a more liberal conception of
prosperity and may understand better than he what is eternally beneficial, let
him commit himself and all his material of prosperity without doubting into
God’s hand, and let him greedily obey all God’s precepts; for in neglecting one
of these, he so far neglects and misses what God would have him enter into.


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  CHAPTER 20: 02.12.     LECTURE XII: VISITS OF JOSEPH’S BRETHREN
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LECTURE XII VISITS OF JOSEPH’S BRETHREN “Kneel not to me: The power that I have
on you is to spare you; The malice towards you to forgive you; live, And deal
with others better.”

Genesis 42:1-38; Genesis 43:1-34; Genesis 44:1-34

“Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against
me; but God meant it unto good.” Genesis 1:19-20

THE purpose of God to bring Israel into Egypt was accomplished by the
unconscious agency of Joseph’s natural affection for his kindred. Tenderness
towards home is usually increased by residence in a foreign land; for absence,
like a little death, sheds a halo round those separated from us. But Joseph
could not as yet either re-visit his old home or invite his father’s family into
Egypt. Even, indeed, when his brothers first appeared before him, he seems to
have had no immediate intention of inviting them as a family to settle in the
country of his adoption, or even to visit it. If he had cherished any such
purpose or desire he might have sent down waggons at once, as he at last did, to
bring his father’s household out of Canaan. Why, then, did he proceed so
cautiously? Whence this mystery, and disguise, and circuitous compassing of his
end? What intervened between the first and last visit of his brethren to make it
seem advisable to disclose himself and invite them? Manifestly there had
intervened enough to give Joseph insight into the state of mind his brethren
were in, enough to satisfy him they were not the men they had been, and that it
was safe to ask them and would be pleasant to have them with him in Egypt. Fully
alive to the elements of disorder and violence that once existed among them, and
having had no opportunity of ascertaining whether they were now altered, there
was no course open but that which he adopted of endeavouring in some unobserved
way to discover whether twenty years had wrought any change in them. For
effecting this object he fell on the expedient of imprisoning them, on pretence
of their being spies. This served the double purpose of detaining them until he
should have made up his mind as to the best means of dealing with them, and of
securing their retention under his eye until some display of character might
sufficiently certify him of their state of mind. Possibly he adopted this
expedient also because it was likely deeply to move them, so that they might be
expected to exhibit not such superficial feelings as might have been elicited
had he set them down to a banquet and entered into conversation with them over
their wine, but such as men are surprised to find in themselves, and know
nothing of in their lighter hours. Joseph was, of course, well aware that in the
analysis of character the most potent elements are only brought into clear view
when the test of severe trouble is applied, and when men are thrown out of all
conventional modes of thinking and speaking. The display of character which
Joseph awaited he speedily obtained. For so new an experience to these free
dwellers in tents as imprisonment under grim Egyptian guards worked wonders in
them. Men who have experienced such treatment aver that nothing more effectually
tames and breaks the spirit: it is not the being confined for a definite time
with the certainty of release in the end, but the being shut up at the caprice
of another on a false and absurd accusation; the being cooped up at the will of
a stranger in a foreign country, uncertain and hopeless of release. To Joseph’s
brethren so sudden and great a calamity seemed explicable only on the theory
that it was retribution for the great crime of their life. The uneasy fettling
which each of them had hidden in his own conscience, and which the lapse of
twenty years had not materially alleviated, finds expression: “And they said one
to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the
anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is
this distress come upon us.” The similarity of their position to that in which
they had placed their brother stimulates and assists their conscience. Joseph,
in the anguish of his soul, had protested his innocence, but they had not
listened; and now their own protestations are treated as idle wind by this
Egyptian. Their own feelings, representing to them what they had caused Joseph
to suffer, stir a keener sense of their guilt than they seem ever before to have
reached. Under this new light they see their sin more clearly, and are humbled
by the distress into which it has brought them. When Joseph sees this, his heart
warms to them. He may not yet be quite sure of them. A prison-repentance is
perhaps scarcely to be trusted. He sees they would for the moment deal
differently with him had they the opportunity, and would welcome no one more
heartily than himself, whose coming among them had once so exasperated them.
Himself keen in his affections, he is deeply moved, and his eyes fill with tears
as he witnesses their emotion and grief on his account. Fain would he relieve
them from their remorse and apprehension – why, then, does he forbear? Why does
he not at this juncture disclose himself? It has been satisfactorily proved that
his brethren counted their sale of him the great crime of their life. Their
imprisonment has elicited evidence that that crime had taken in their conscience
the capital place, the place which a man finds some one sin or series of sins
will take, to follow him with its appropriate curse, and hang over his future
like a cloud – a sin of which he thinks when any strange thing happens to him,
and to which he traces all disaster – a sin so iniquitous that it seems capable
of producing any results however grievous, and to which he has so given himself
that his life seems to be concentrated there, and he cannot but connect with it
all the greater ills that happen to him. Was not this, then, security enough
that they would never again perpetrate a crime of like atrocity? Every man who
has almost at all observed the history of sin in himself, will say that most
certainly it was quite insufficient security against their ever again doing the
like. Evidence that a man is conscious of his sin, and, while suffering from its
consequences, feels deeply its guilt, is not evidence that his character is
altered. And because we believe men so much more readily than God, and think
that they do not require, forsake, such needless pledges of a changed character
as God seems to demand, it is worth observing that Joseph, moved as he was even
to tears, felt that common prudence forbade him to commit himself to his
brethren without further evidence of their disposition. They had distinctly
acknowledged their guilt, and in his hearing had admitted that the great
calamity that had befallen them was no more than they deserved; yet Joseph,
judging merely as an intelligent man who had worldly interests depending on his
judgment, could not discern enough here to justify him in supposing that his
brethren were changed men. And it might sometimes serve to expose the
insufficiency of our repentance were clear-seeing men the judges of it, and did
they express their opinion of its trustworthiness. We may think that God is
needlessly exacting when He requires evidence not only of a changed mind about
past sin, but also of such a mind being now in us as will preserve us from
future sin; but the truth is, that no man whose common worldly interests were at
stake would commit himself to us on any less evidence. God, then, meaning to
bring the house of Israel into Egypt in order to make progress in the Divine
education He was giving to them, could not introduce them into that land in a
state of mind which would negative all the discipline they were there to
receive. These men then had to give evidence that they not only saw, and in some
sense repented of, their sin, but also that they had got rid of the evil passion
which had led to it. This is what God means by repentance. Our sins are in
general not so microscopic that it requires very keen spiritual discernment to
perceive them. But to be quite aware of our sin, and to acknowledge it, is not
to repent of it. Everything falls short of thorough repentance which does not
prevent us from committing the sin anew. We do not so much desire to be
accurately informed about our past sins, and to get right views of our past
selves; we wish to be no longer sinners, we wish to pass through some process by
which we may be separated from that in us which has led us into sin. Such a
process there is, for these men passed through it. The test which revealed the
thoroughness of his brothers repentance was unintentionally applied by Joseph.
When he hid his cup in Benjamin’s sack, all that he intended was to furnish a
pretext for detaining Benjamin, and so gratifying his own affection. But, to his
astonishment, his trick effected far more than he intended; for the brothers,
recognising now their brotherhood, circled round Benjamin, and, to a man,
resolved to go back with him to Egypt. We cannot argue from this that Joseph had
misapprehended the state of mind in which his brothers were, and in his judgment
of them had been either too timorous or too severe; nor need we suppose that he
was hampered by his relations to Pharaoh, and therefore unwilling to connect
himself too closely with men of whom he might be safer to be rid; because it was
this very peril of Benjamin’s that matured their brotherly affection. They
themselves could not have anticipated that they would make such a sacrifice for
Benjamin. But throughout their dealings with this mysterious Egyptian, they felt
themselves under a spell, and were being gradually, though perhaps
unconsciously, softened, and in order to complete the change passing upon them,
they but required some such incident as this of Benjamin’s arrest. This incident
seemed by some strange fatality to threaten them with a renewed perpetration of
the very crime they had committed against Rachel’s other son. It threatened to
force them to become again the instruments of bereaving their father of his
darling child, and bringing about that very calamity which they had pledged
themselves should never happen. It was an incident, therefore, which, more than
any other, was likely to call out their family love. The scene lives in every
one’s memory. They were going gladly back to their own country with corn enough
for their children, proud of their entertainment by the lord of Egypt;
anticipating their father’s exultation when he heard how generously they had
been treated and when he saw Benjamin safely restored, feeling that in bringing
him back they almost compensated for having bereaved him of Joseph. Simeon is
revelling in the free air that blew from Canaan and brought with it the scents
of his native land, and breaks into the old songs that the strait confinement of
his prison had so long silenced; all of them together rejoicing in a scarcely
hoped-for success, when suddenly, ere the first elation is spent, they are
startled to see the hasty approach of the Egyptian messenger, and to hear the
stern summons that brought them to a halt, and boded all ill. The few words of
the just Egyptian, and his calm, explicit judgment, “Ye have done evil in so
doing,” pierce them like a keen blade – that they should be suspected of robbing
one who had dealt so generously with them; that all Israel should be put to
shame in the sight of the stranger! But they begin to feel relief as one brother
after another steps forward with the boldness of innocence; and as sack after
sack is emptied, shaken, and flung aside, they already eye the steward with the
bright air of triumph; when, as the very last sack is emptied, and as all
breathlessly stand round, amid the quickrustle of the corn, the sharp rattle of
metal strikes on their ear, and the gleam of silver dazzles their eyes as the
cup rolls out in the sunshine. This, then, is the brother of whom their father
was so careful that he dared not suffer him out of his sight! This is the
precious youth whose life was of more value than the lives of all the brethren,
and to keep whom a few months longer in his father’s sight Simeon had been left
to rot in a dungeon! This is how he repays the anxiety of the family and their
love, and this is how he repays the extraordinary favour of Joseph! By one rash
childish act had this fondled youth, to all appearance, brought upon the house
of Israel irretrievable disgrace, if not complete extinction. Had these men been
of their old temper, their knives had very speedily proved that their contempt
for the deed was as great as the Egyptian s; by violence towards Benjamin they
might have cleared themselves of all suspicion of complicity; or, at the best,
they might have considered themselves to be acting in a fair and even lenient
manner if they had surrendered the culprit to the steward, and once again
carried back to their father a tale of blood. But they were under the spell of
their old sin. In all disaster, however innocent they now were, they saw the
retribution of their old iniquity; they seem scarcely to consider whether
Benjamin was innocent or guilty, but as humbled, God-smitten men, “they rent
their clothes, and laded every man his ass, and returned to the city.” Thus
Joseph in seeking to gain one brother found eleven – for now there could be no
doubt that they were very different men from those brethren who had so
heartlessly sold into slavery their father’s favourite – men now with really
brotherly feelings, by penitence and regard for their father so wrought together
into one family, that this calamity, intended to fall only on one of their
number, did in falling on him fall on them all. So far from wishing now to rid
themselves of Rachel’s son and their father’s favourite, who had been put by
their father in so prominent a place in his affection, they will not even give
him up to suffer what seemed the just punishment of his theft, do not even
reproach him with having brought them all into disgrace and difficulty, but, as
humbled men who knew they had greater sins of their own to answer for, went
quietly back to Egypt, determined to see their younger brother through his
misfortune or to share his bondage with him. Had these men not been thoroughly
changed, thoroughly convinced that at all costs upright dealing and brotherly
love should continue; had they not possessed that first and last of Christian
virtues, love to their brother, then nothing could so certainly have revealed
their want of it as this apparent theft of Benjamin’s. It seemed in itself a
very likely thing that a lad accustomed to plain modes of life, and whose
character it was to “ravin as a wolf,” should, when suddenly introduced to, the
gorgeous Egyptian banqueting house with all its sumptuous furnishings, have
coveted some choice specimen of Egyptian art, to carry home to his father as
proof that he could not only bring himself back in safety, but scorned to come
back from any expedition empty-handed. It was not unlikely either that, with his
mother’s own superstition, he might have conceived the bold design of robbing
this Egyptian, so mysterious and so powerful, according to his brothers account,
and of breaking that spell which he had thrown over them; he may thus have
conceived the idea of achieving for himself a reputation in the family, and of
once for all redeeming himself from the somewhat undignified, and to one of his
spirit somewhat uncongenial, position of the youngest of a family. If, as is
possible, he had let any such idea ooze out in talking with his brethren as they
went down to Egypt, and only abandoned it on their indignant and urgent
remonstrance, then when the cup, Joseph’s chief treasure according to his own
account, was discovered in Benjamin’s sack, the case must have looked sadly
against him even in the eyes of his brethren. No protestations of innocence in a
particular instance avail much when the character and general habits of the
accused point to guilt. It is quite possible, therefore, that the brethren,
though willing to believe Benjamin, were yet not so thoroughly convinced of his
innocence as they would have desired. The fact that they themselves had found
their money returned in their sacks, made for Benjamin; yet in most cases,
especially where circumstances corroborate it, an accusation even against the
innocent takes immediate hold and cannot be summarily and at once got rid of.
Thus was proof given that the house of Israel was now in truth one family. The
men who, on very slight instigation, had without compunction sold Joseph to a
life of slavery, cannot now find it in their heart to abandon a brother who, to
all appearance, was worthy of no better life than that of a slave, and who had
brought them all into disgrace and danger. Judah had no doubt pledged himself to
bring the lad back without scathe to his father, but he had done so without
contemplating the possibility of Benjamin becoming amenable to Egyptian law. And
no one can read the speech of Judah – one of the most pathetic on record – in
which he replies to Joseph’s judgment that Benjamin alone should remain in
Egypt, without perceiving that he speaks not as one who merely seeks to redeem a
pledge, but as a good son and a good brother. He speaks, too, as the mouth piece
of the rest, and as he had taken the lead in Joseph’s sale, so he does not
shrink from standing forward and accepting the heavy responsibility which may
now light upon the man who represents these brethren. His former faults are
redeemed by the courage, one may say heroism, he now shows. And as he spoke, so
the rest felt. They could not bring themselves to inflict a new sorrow on their
aged father; neither could they bear to leave their young brother in the hands
of strangers. The passions which had alienated them from one another, and had
threatened to break up the family, are subdued. There is now discernible a
common feeling that binds them together, and a common object for which they
willingly sacrifice themselves. They are, therefore, now prepared to pass into
that higher school to which God called them in Egypt. It mattered little what
strong and equitable laws they found in the land of their adoption, if they had
no taste for upright living; it mattered little what thorough national
organization they would be brought into contact with in Egypt, if in point of
fact they owned no common brotherhood, and were willing rather to live as units
and every man for himself than for any common interest. But now they were
prepared, open to teaching, and docile. To complete our apprehension of the
state of mind into which the brethren were brought by Joseph’s treatment of
them, we must take into account the assurance he gave them, when he made himself
known to them, that it was not they but God who had sent him into Egypt, and
that God had done this for the purpose of preserving the whole house of Israel.
At first sight this might seem to be an injudicious speech, calculated to make
the brethren think lightly of their guilt, and to remove the just impressions
they now entertained of the unbrotherliness of their conduct to Joseph. And it
might have been an injudicious speech to impenitent men; but no further view of
sin can lighten its heinousness to a really penitent sinner. Prove to him that
his sin has become the means of untold good, and you only humble him the more,
and more deeply convince him that while he was recklessly gratifying himself and
sacrificing others for his own pleasure, God has been mindful of others, and,
pardoning him, has blessed them. God does not need our sins to work out His good
intentions, but we give Him little other material; and the discovery that
through our evil purposes and injurious deeds God has worked out His beneficent
will, is certainly not calculated to make us think more lightly of our sin or
more highly of ourselves. Joseph in thus addressing his brethren did, in fact,
but add to their feelings the tenderness that is in all religious conviction,
and that springs out of the consciousness that in all our sin there has been
with us a holy and loving Father, mindful of His children. This is the final
stage of penitence. The knowledge that God has prevented our sin from doing the
harm it might have done, does relieve the bitterness and despair with which we
view our life, but at the same time it strengthens the most effectual bulwark
between us and sin – love to a holy, over-ruling God. This, therefore, may
always be safely said to penitents: Out of your worst sin God can bring good to
yourself or to others, and good of an apparently necessary kind; but good of a
permanent kind can result from your sin only when you have truly repented of it,
and sincerely wish you had never done it. Once this repentance is really wrought
in you, then, though your life can never be the same as it might have been had
you not sinned, it may be, in some respects, a more richly developed life, a
life fuller of humility and love. You can never have what you sold for your sin;
but the poverty your sin has brought may excite within you thoughts and energies
more valuable than what you have lost, as these men lost a brother but found a
Saviour. The wickedness that has often made you bow your head and mourn in
secret, and which is in itself unutterable shame and loss, may, in God’s hand,
become food against the day of famine. You cannot ever have the enjoyments which
are possible only to those whose conscience is laden with no evil remembrances,
and whose nature, uncontracted and unwithered by familiarity with sin, can give
itself to enjoyment with the abandonment and fearlessness reserved for the
innocent. No more at all will you have that fineness of feeling which only
ignorance of evil can preserve; no more that high and great conscientiousness
which, once broken, is never repaired; no more that respect from other men which
for ever and instinctively departs from those who have lost self-respect. But
you may have a more intelligent sympathy with other men, and a keener pity for
them; the experience you have gathered too late to save yourself may put it in
your power to be of essential service to others. You cannot win your way back to
the happy, useful, evenly-developed life of the comparatively innocent, but the
life of the true-hearted penitent is yet open to you. Every beat of your heart
now may be as if it throbbed against a poisoned dagger, every duty may shame
you, every day bring weariness and new humiliation, but let no pain or
discouragement avail to defraud you of the good fruits of true reconciliation to
God and submission to His lifelong discipline. See that you lose not both lives,
the life of the comparatively innocent and the life of the truly penitent.


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  CHAPTER 21: 02.13.     LECTURE XIII: THE RECONCILIATION
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LECTURE XIII THE RECONCILIATION

Genesis 45:1-28 “That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.”

“By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of
Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.” Hebrews 11:22

IT is generally by some circumstance or event which perplexes, troubles, or
gladdens us, that new thoughts regarding conduct are presented to us, and new
impulses communicated to our life. And the circumstances through which Joseph’s
brethren passed during the famine not only subdued and softened them to a
genuine family feeling, but elicited in Joseph himself a more tender affection
for them than he seems at first to have cherished. For the first time since his
entrance into Egypt did he feel, when Judah spoke so touchingly and effectively,
that the family of Israel was one; and that he himself would be reprehensible
did he make further breaches in it by carrying out his intention of detaining
Benjamin. Moved by Judah’s pathetic appeal, and yielding to the generous impulse
of the moment, and being led by a right state of feeling to a right judgment
regarding duty, he claimed his brethren as brethren, and proposed that the whole
family be brought into Egypt. The scene in which the sacred writer describes the
reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers is one of the most touching on record;
– the long estrangement so happily terminated; the caution, the doubts, the
hesitation on Joseph’s part, swept away at last by the resistless tide of long
pent-up emotion; the surprise and perplexity of the brethren as they dared now
to lift their eyes and scrutinize the face of the governor, and discerned the
lighter complexion of the Hebrew, the features of the family of Jacob, the
expression of their own brother; the anxiety with which they wait to know how he
means to repay their crime, and the relief with which they hear that he bears
them no ill-will – everything, in short, conduces to render this recognition of
the brethren interesting and affecting. That Joseph, who had controlled his
feeling in many a trying situation, should now have “wept aloud,” needs no
explanation. Tears always express a mingled feeling; at least the tears of a man
do. They may express grief, but it is grief with some remorse in it, or it is
grief passing into resignation. They may express joy, but it is joy born of long
sorrow, the joy of deliverance, joy that can now afford to let the heart weep
out the fears it has been holding down. It is as with a kind of breaking of the
heart, and apparent unmanning of the man, that the human soul takes possession
of its greatest treasures; unexpected success and unmerited joy humble a man;
and as laughter expresses the surprise of the intellect, so tears express the
amazement of the soul when it is stormed suddenly by a great joy. Joseph had
been hardening himself to lead a solitary life in Egypt, and it is with all this
strong self-sufficiency breaking down within him that he eyes his brethren. It
is his love for them making its way through all his ability to do without them,
and sweeping away as a flood the bulwarks he had built round his heart, – it is
this that breaks him down before them, a man conquered by his own love, and
unable to control it. It compels him to make himself known, and to possess
himself of its objects, these unconscious brethren. It is a signal instance of
the law by which love brings all the best and holiest beings into contact with
their inferiors, and, in a sense, puts them in their power, and thus eternally
provides that the superiority of those that are high in the scale of being shall
ever be at the service of those who in themselves are not so richly endowed. The
higher any being is, the more love is in him: that is to say, the higher he is,
the more surely is he bound to all who are beneath him. If God is highest of
all, it is because there is in Him sufficiency for all His creatures, and love
to make it universally available. It is one of our most familiar intellectual
pleasures to see in the experience of others, or to read, a lucid and moving
account of emotions identical with those which have once been our own. In
reading an account of what others have passed through, our pleasure is derived
mainly from two sources – either from our being brought, by sympathy with them
and in imagination, into circumstances we ourselves have never been placed in,
and thus artificially enlarging our sphere of life, and adding to our experience
feelings which could not have been derived from any thing we ourselves have met
with; or, from our living over again, by means of their experience, a part of
our life which had great interest and meaning to us. It may be excusable,
therefore, if we divert this narrative from its original historical
significance, and use it as the mirror in which we may see reflected an
important passage or crisis in our own spiritual history. For though some may
find in it little that reflects their own experience, others cannot fail to be
reminded of feelings with which they were very familiar when first they were
introduced to Christ, and acknowledged by Him. 1. The modes in which our Lord
makes Himself known to men are various as their lives and characters. But
frequently the fore-running choice of a sinner by Christ is discovered in such
gradual and ill-understood dealings as Joseph used with these brethren. It is
the closing of a net around them. They do not see what is driving them forward,
nor whither they are being driven; they are anxious and ill at ease; and not
comprehending what ails them, they make only ineffectual efforts for
deliverance. There is no recognition of the hand that is guiding all this
circuitous and mysterious preparatory work, nor of the eye that affectionately
watches their perplexity, nor are they aware of any friendly ear that catches
each sigh in which they seem hopelessly to resign themselves to the relentless
past from which they cannot escape. They feel that they are left alone to make
what they can now of the life they have chosen and made for themselves; that
there is floating behind and around them a cloud bearing the very essence
exhaled from their past, and ready to burst over them; a phantom that is yet
real, and that belongs both to the spiritual and material world, and can follow
them in either. They seem to be doomed men – men who are never at all to get
disentangled from their old sin. If anyone is in this baffled and heartless
condition, fearing even good lest it turn to evil in his hand; afraid to take
the money that lies in his sack’s mouth, because he feels there is a snare in
it; if anyone is sensible that life has become unmanageable in his hands, and
that he is being drawn on by an unseen power which he does not understand, then
let him consider in the scene before us how such a condition ends or may end. It
took many months of doubt, and fear, and mystery to bring these brethren to such
a state of mind as made it advisable for Joseph to disclose himself, to scatter
the mystery, and relieve them of the unaccountable uneasiness that possessed
their minds. And your perplexity will not be allowed to last longer than it is
needful. But it is often needful that we should first learn that in sinning we
have introduced into our life a baffling, perplexing element, have brought our
life into connection with inscrutable laws which we cannot control, and which we
feel may at any moment destroy us utterly. It is not from carelessness on
Christ’s part that His people are not always and from the first rejoicing in the
assurance and appreciation of His love. It is His carefulness which lays a
restraining hand on the ardour of His affection. We see that this burst of tears
on Joseph’s part was genuine, we have no suspicion that he was feigning an
emotion he did not feel; we believe that his affection at last could not be
restrained, that he was fairly overcome, – can we not trust Christ for as
genuine a love, and believe that His emotion is as deep? We are, in a word,
reminded by this scene, that there is always in Christ a greater love seeking
the friendship of the sinner than there is in the sinner seeking for Christ. The
search of the sinner for Christ is always a dubious, hesitating, uncertain
groping; while on Christ’s part there is a clear-seeing, affectionate solicitude
which lays joyful surprises along the sinner’s path, and enjoys by anticipation
the gladness and repose which are prepared for him in the final recognition and
reconcilement. 2. In finding their brother again, these sons of Jacob found also
their own better selves which they had long lost. They had been living in a lie,
unable to look the past in the face, and so becoming more and more false. Trying
to leave their sin behind them, they always found it rising in the path before
them, and again they had to resort to some new mode of laying this uneasy ghost.
They turned away from it, busied themselves among other people, refused to think
of it, assumed all kinds of disguise, professed to themselves that they had done
no great wrong; but nothing gave them deliverance – there was their old sin
quietly waiting for them in their tent door when they went home of an evening,
laying its hand on their shoulder in the most unlooked-for places, and
whispering in their ear at the most unwelcome seasons. A great part of their
mental energy had been spent in deleting this mark from their memory, and yet
day by day it resumed its supreme place in their life, holding them under arrest
as they secretly felt, and keeping them reserved to judgment. So, too, do many
of us live as if yet we had not found the life eternal, the kind of life that we
can always go on with – rather as those who are but making the best of a life
which can never be very valuable, nor ever perfect. There seem voices calling us
back, assuring us we must yet retrace our steps, that there are passages in our
past with which we are not done, that there is an inevitable humiliation and
penitence awaiting us. It is through that we can alone get back to the good we
once saw and hoped for; there were right desires and resolves in us once, views
of a well-spent life which have been forgotten and pressed out of remembrance,
but all these rise again in the presence of Christ. Reconciled to Him and
claimed by Him, all hope is renewed within us. If He makes Himself known to us,
if He claims connection with us, have we not here the promise of all good? If
He, after careful scrutiny, after full consideration of all the circumstances,
bids us claim as our brother Him to whom all power and glory are given, ought
not this to quicken within us everything that is hopeful, and ought it not to
strengthen us for all frank acknowledgment of the past, and true humiliation on
account of it? 3. A third suggestion is made by this narrative. Joseph commanded
from his presence all who might be merely curious spectators of his burst of
feeling, and might, themselves unmoved, criticise this new feature of the
governor’s character. In all love there is a similar reserve. The true friend of
Christ, the man who is profoundly conscious that between himself and Christ
there is a bond unique and eternal, longs for a time when he may enjoy greater
liberty in uttering what he feels towards his Lord and Redeemer, and when, too,
Christ Himself shall by telling and sufficient signs put it for ever beyond
doubt that this love is more than responded to. Words sufficiently impassioned
have indeed been put into our lips by men of profound spiritual feeling, but the
feeling continually weighs upon us that some more palpable mutual recognition is
desirable between persons so vitally and peculiarly knit together as Christ and
the Christian arc. Such recognition, indubitable and reciprocal, must one day
take place. And when Christ Himself shall have taken the initiative, and shall
have caused us to understand that we are “verily the objects of His love, and
shall have given such expression to His knowledge of us as we cannot now
receive, we on our part shall be able to reciprocate, or at least to accept,
this greatest of possessions, the brotherly love of the Son of God. Meanwhile
this passage in Joseph’s history may remind us that behind all sternness of
expression there may pulsate a tenderness that needs thus to disguise itself;
and that to those who have not yet recognised Christ, He is better than He
seems. These brethren no doubt wonder now that even twenty years alienation
should have so blinded them. The relaxation of the expression from the sternness
of an Egyptian governor to the fondness of family love, the voice heard now in
the familiar mother tongue, reveal the brother; and they who have shrunk from
Christ as if He were a cold official, and who have never lifted their eyes to
scrutinize His face, are reminded that He can so make Himself known to them that
not all the wealth of Egypt would purchase from them one of the assurances they
have received from Him. The same warm tide of feeling which carried away all
that separated Joseph from his brethren bore him on also to the decision to
invite his father’s entire household into Egypt. We are reminded that the
history of Joseph in Egypt is an episode, and that Jacob is still the head of
the house, maintaining its dignity and guiding its movements. The notices we get
of him in this latter part of his history are very characteristic. The
indomitable toughness of his youth remained with him in his old age. He was one
of those old men who maintain their vigour to the end, the energy of whose age
seems to shame and overtax the prime of common men; whose minds are still the
clearest, their advice the safest, their word waited for, their perception of
the actual state of affairs always in advance of their juniors, more modern and
fully abreast of the times in their ideas than the latest born of their
children. Such an old age we recognise in Jacob’s half-scornful chiding of the
helplessness of his sons even after they had heard that there was corn in Egypt.
“Why look ye one upon another? Behold! I have heard that there is corn in Egypt;
get ye down thither and buy for us from thence.” Jacob, the man who had wrestled
through life and bent all things to his will, cannot put up with the help less
dejection of this troop of strong men, who have no wit to devise an escape for
themselves, and no resolution to enforce upon the others any device that may
occur to them. Waiting still like children for someone else to help them, having
strength to endure but no strength to undertake the responsibility of advising
in an emergency, they are roused by their father who has been eyeing this
condition of theirs with some curiosity and with some contempt, and now breaks
in upon it with his “Why look ye one upon another?” It is the old Jacob, full of
resources, prompt and imperturbable, equal to every turn of fortune, and never
knowing how to yield. Even more clearly do we see the vigour of Jacob’s old age
when he comes in contact with Joseph. For many years Joseph had been accustomed
to command; he had unusual natural sagacity and a special gift of insight from
God, but he seems a child in comparison with Jacob. When he brings his two sons
to get their grandfather’s blessing, Jacob sees what Joseph has no inkling of,
and peremptorily declines to follow the advice of his wise son. With all
Joseph’s sagacity there were points in which his blind father saw more clearly
than he. Joseph, who could teach the Egyptian senators wisdom, standing thus at
a loss even to understand his father, and suggesting in his ignorance futile
corrections, is a picture of the incapacity of natural affection to rise to the
wisdom of God’s love, and of the finest natural discernment to anticipate God’s
purposes or supply the place of a lifelong experience. Jacob’s warm-heartedness
has also survived the chills and shocks of a long lifetime. He clings now to
Benjamin as once he clung to Joseph. And as he had wrought for Rachel fourteen
years, and the love he bare to her made them seem but a few days, so for twenty
years now had he remembered Joseph who had inherited this love, and he shows by
his frequent reference to him that he was keeping his word and going down to the
grave mourning for his son. To such a man it must have been a severe trial
indeed to be left alone in his tents, deprived of all his twelve sons; and we
hear his old faith in God steadying the voice that yet trembles with emotion as
he says, “If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.” It was a trial not,
indeed, so painful as that of Abraham when he lifted the knife over the life of
his only son; but it was so similar to it as inevitably to suggest it to the
mind. Jacob also had to yield up all his children, and to feel, as he sat
solitary in his tent, how utterly dependent upon God he was for their
restoration; that it was not he but God alone who could build the house of
Israel. The anxiety with which he gazed evening after evening towards the
setting sun, to descry the returning caravan, was at last relieved. But his joy
was not altogether unalloyed. His sons brought with them a summons to shift the
patriarchal encampment into Egypt – a summons which evidently nothing would have
induced Jacob to respond to had it not come from his long lost Joseph, and had
it not thus received what he felt to be a divine sanction. The extreme
reluctance which Jacob showed to the journey, we must be careful to refer to its
true source. The Asiatics, and especially shepherd tribes, move easily. One who
thoroughly knows the East says: “The Oriental is not afraid to go far, if he has
not to cross the sea; for, once uprooted, distance makes little difference to
him. He has no furniture to carry, for, except a carpet and a few brass pans, he
uses none. He has no trouble about meals, for he is content with parched grain,
which his wife can cook anywhere, or dried dates, or dried flesh, or anything
obtainable which will keep. He is, on a march, careless where he sleeps,
provided his family are around him – in a stable, under a porch, in the open
air. He never changes his clothes at night, and he is profoundly indifferent to
everything that the Western man understands by comfort. “But there was in
Jacob’s case a peculiarity. He was called upon to abandon, for an indefinite
period, the land which God had given him as the heir of His promise. With very
great toil and not a little danger had Jacob won his way back to Canaan from
Mesopotamia; on this return he had spent the best years of his life, and now he
was resting there in his old age, having seen his children’s children, and
expecting nothing but a peaceful departure to his fathers. But suddenly the
wagons of Pharaoh stand at his tent-door, and while the parched and bare
pastures bid him go to the plenty of Egypt, to which the voice of his long lost
son invites him, he hears a summons which, however trying, he cannot disregard.
Such an experience is perpetually reproduced. Many are they who having at length
received from God some long-expected good are quickly summoned to relinquish it
again. And while the waiting for what seems indispensable to us is trying, it is
tenfold more so to have to part with it when at last obtained, and obtained at
the cost of much besides. That particular arrangement of our worldly
circumstances which we have long sought, we are almost immediately thrown out
of. That position in life, or that object of desire, which God Himself seems in
many ways to have encouraged us to seek, is taken from us almost as soon as we
have tasted its sweetness. The cup is dashed from our lips at the very moment
when our thirst was to be fully slaked. In such distressing circumstances we
cannot see the end God is aiming at; but of this we may be certain, that He does
not wantonly annoy, or relish our discomfiture, and that when we are compelled
to resign what is partial, it is that we may one day enjoy what is complete, and
that if for the present we have to forego much comfort and delight, this is only
an absolutely necessary step towards our permanent establishment in all that can
bless and prosper us. It is this state of feeling which explains the words of
Jacob when introduced to Pharaoh. A recent writer who spent some years on the
banks of the Nile and on its waters, and who mixed freely with the inhabitants
of Egypt, says: “Old Jacob’s speech to Pharaoh really made me laugh because it
is so exactly like what a Fellah says to a Pasha, Few and evil have the days of
the years of my life been, Jacob being a most prosperous man, but it is manners
to say all that.” But Eastern manners need scarcely be called in to explain a
sentiment which we find repeated by one who is generally esteemed the most
self-sufficing of Europeans. “I have ever been esteemed,” Goethe says, “one of
Fortune’s chiefest favourites; nor will I complain or find fault with the course
my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has been nothing but toil and care; and I
may say that, in all my seventy-five years, I have never had a month of genuine
comfort. It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone, which I have always had
to raise anew.” Jacob’s life had been almost ceaseless disquiet and
disappointment. A man who had fled his country, who had been cheated into a
marriage, who had been compelled by his own relative to live like a slave, who
was only by flight able to save himself from a perpetual injustice, whose sons
made his life bitter, – one of them by the foulest outrage a father could
suffer, two of them by making him, as he himself said, to stink in the nostrils
of the inhabitants of the land he was trying to settle in, and all of them by
conspiring to deprive him of the child he most dearly loved – a man who at last,
when he seemed to have had experience of every form of human calamity, was
compelled by famine to relinquish the land for the sake of which he had endured
all and spent all, might surely be forgiven a little plaintiveness in looking
back upon his past. The wonder is to find Jacob to the end unbroken, dignified,
and clear-seeing, capable and commanding, loving and full of faith. Cordial as
the reconciliation between Joseph and his brethren seemed, it was not as
thorough as might have been desired. So long, indeed, as Jacob lived, all went
well; but “when Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead, they said,
Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil
which we did unto him.” No wonder Joseph wept when he received their message. He
wept because he saw that he was still misunderstood and distrusted by his
brethren; because he felt, too, that had they been more generous men themselves,
they would more easily have believed in his forgiveness; and because his pity
was stirred for these men, who recognised that they wore so completely in the
power of their younger brother. Joseph had passed through severe conflicts of
feeling about them, had been at great expense both of emotion and of outward
good on their account, had risked his position in order to be able to serve
them, and here is his reward! They supposed he had been but biding his time,
that his apparent forgetfulness of their injury had been the crafty restraint of
a deep-seated resentment; or at best, that he had been unconsciously influenced
by regard for his father, and now, when that influence was removed, the helpless
condition of his brethren might tempt him to retaliate. This exhibition of a
craven and suspicious spirit is unexpected, and must have been profoundly
saddening to Joseph. Yet here, as elsewhere, he is magnanimous. Pity for them
turns his thoughts from the injustice done to himself. He comforts them, and
speaks kindly to them, saying, Fear ye not; I will nourish you and your little
ones. Many painful thoughts must have been suggested to Joseph by this conduct.
If, after all he had done for his brethren, they had not yet learned to love
him, but met his kindness with suspicion, was it not probable that underneath
his apparent popularity with the Egyptians there might lie envy, or the cold
acknowledgment that falls far short of love? This sudden disclosure of the real
feeling of his brethren towards him must necessarily have made him uneasy about
his other friendships. Did every one merely make use of him, and did no one give
him pure love for his own sake? The people he had saved from famine, was there
one of them that regarded him with anything resembling personal affection?
Distrust seemed to pursue Joseph from first to last. First his own family
misunderstood and persecuted him. Then his Egyptian master had returned his
devoted service with suspicion and imprisonment. And now again, after sufficient
time for testing his character might seem to have elapsed, he was still looked
upon with distrust by those who of all others had best reason to believe in him.
But though Joseph had through all his life been thus conversant with suspicion,
cruelty, falsehood, ingratitude, and blindness, though he seemed doomed to be
always misread, and to have his best deeds made the ground of accusation against
him, he remained not merely unsoured, but equally ready as ever to be of service
to all. The finest natures may be disconcerted and deadened by universal
distrust; characters not naturally unamiable are sometimes embittered by
suspicion; and persons who are in the main high-minded, do stoop, when stung by
such treatment, to rail at the world, or to question all generous emotion,
steadfast friendship, or unimpeachable integrity. In Joseph there is nothing of
this. If ever man had a right to complain of being unappreciated, it was he; if
ever man was tempted to give up making sacrifices for his relatives, it was he.
But through all this he bore himself with manly generosity, with simple and
persistent faith, with a dignified respect for himself and for other men. In the
ingratitude and injustice he had to endure, he only found opportunity for a
deeper unselfishness, a more God-like forbearance. And that such may be the
outcome of the sorest parts of human experience we have one day or other need to
remember. When our good is evil spoken of, our motives suspected, our most
sincere sacrifices scrutinized by an ignorant and malicious spirit, our most
substantial and well-judged acts of kindness received with suspicion, and the
love that is in them quite rejected, it is then we have opportunity to show that
to us belongs the Christian temper that can pardon till seventy times seven, and
that can persist in loving where love meets no response, and benefits provoke no
gratitude. How Joseph spent the years which succeeded the famine, we have no
means of knowing; but the closing act of his life seemed to the narrator so
significant as to be worthy of record. “Joseph said unto his brethren, I die:
and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land
which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of
the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up
my bones from hence.” The Egyptians must have chiefly been struck by the
simplicity of character which this request betokened. To the great benefactors
of our country, the highest award is reserved to be given after death So long as
a man lives, some rude stroke of fortune or some disastrous error of his own may
blast his fame; but when his bones are laid with those who have served their
country best, a seal is set on his life, and a sentence pronounced which the
revision of posterity rarely revokes. Such honours were customary among the
Egyptians; it is from their tombs that their history can now be written. And to
none were such honours more accessible than to Joseph. But after a life in the
service of the state, he retains the simplicity of the Hebrew lad. With the
magnanimity of a great and pure soul, he passed uncontaminated through the
flatteries and temptations of court life; and, like Moses, “esteemed the
reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” He has not
indulged in any affectation of simplicity, nor has he, in the pride that apes
humility, declined the ordinary honours due to a man in his position. lie wears
the badges of office, the robe and the gold necklace, but these things do not
reach his spirit. He has lived in a region in which such honours make no deep
impression; and in his death he shows where his heart has been. The small voice
of God, spoken centuries ago to his forefathers, deafens him to the loud acclaim
with which the people do him homage. By later generations this dying request of
Joseph’s was looked upon as one of the most remarkable instances of faith. For
many years there had been no new revelation. The rising generations that had
seen no man with whom God had spoken, were little interested in the land which
was said to be theirs, but which they very well knew was infested by fierce
tribes who, on at least one occasion during this period, inflicted disastrous
defeat on one of the boldest of their own tribes. They were, besides, extremely
attached to the country of their adoption; they luxuriated in its fertile
meadows and teeming gardens, which kept them supplied at little cost of labour
with delicacies unknown on the hills of Canaan. This oath, therefore, which
Joseph made them swear, may have revived the drooping hopes of the small remnant
who had any of his own spirit. They saw that he, their most sagacious man, lived
and died in full assurance that God would visit His people. And through all the
terrible bondage they were destined to suffer, the bones of Joseph, or rather
his embalmed body, stood as the most eloquent advocate of God’s faithfulness,
ceaselessly reminding the despondent generations of the oath which God would yet
enable them to fulfil. As often as they felt inclined to give up all hope and
the last surviving Israelitish peculiarity, there was the unburied coffin
remonstrating; Joseph still, even when dead, refusing to let his dust mingle
with Egyptian earth. And thus, as Joseph had been their pioneer who broke out a
way for them into Egypt, so did he continue to hold open the gate and point the
way back to Canaan. The brethren had sold him into this foreign land, meaning to
bury him for ever; he retaliated by requiring that the tribes should restore him
to the land from whence he had been expelled. Few men have opportunity of
showing so noble a revenge; fewer still having the opportunity, would so have
used it. Jacob had been carried up to Canaan as soon as he was dead: Joseph
declines this exceptional treatment, and prefers to share the fortunes of his
brethren, and will then only enter on the promised land when all his people can
go with him. As in life so in death, he took a large view of things, and had no
feeling that the world ended in him. His career had taught him to consider
national interests; and now, on his deathbed, it is from the point of view of
his people that he looks at the future. Several passages in the life of Joseph
have shown us that where the Spirit of Christ is present, many parts of the
conduct will suggest, if they do not actually resemble, acts in the life of
Christ. The attitude towards the future in which Joseph sets his people as he
leaves them, can scarcely fail to suggest the attitude which Christians are
called to assume. The prospect which the Hebrews had of fulfilling their oath
grew increasingly faint, but the difficulties in the way of its performance must
only have made them more clearly see that they depended on God for entrance on
the promised inheritance. And so may the difficulty of our duties as Christ’s
followers measure for us the amount of grace God has provided for us. The
commands that make you sensible of your weakness, and bring to light more
clearly than ever how unfit for good you are, are witnesses to you that God will
visit you and enable you to fulfil the oath He has required you to take. The
children of Israel could not suppose that a man so wise as Joseph had ended his
life with a childish folly, when he made them swear this oath, and could not but
renew their hope that the day would come when his wisdom would be justified by
their ability to discharge it. Neither ought it to be beyond our belief that, in
requiring from us such and such conduct, our Lord has kept in view our actual
condition and its possibilities and that His commands are our best guide towards
a state of permanent felicity. He that aims always at the performance of the
oath he has taken, will assuredly find that God will not stultify Himself by
failing to support him.


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  CHAPTER 22: 03.00. THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD
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THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD BY MARCUS DODS, D.D.

AUTHOR OF “THE PRAYER THAT TEACHES US TO PRAY,”

“AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT,”

“ISRAEL’S IRON AGE,” ETC.

NEW YORK THOMAS WHITTAKER 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE


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  CHAPTER 23: 03.01.     THE SOWER
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THE SOWER Matthew 13:1-9; Matthew 13:18-23 ; Luke 7:4-15 This parable had to be
spoken. It gave expression to thoughts which burdened the mind of Jesus
throughout His ministry. On the day He uttered it, he had left the house and was
sitting by the sea-side, “and there were gathered unto Him great multitudes.” He
had no difficulty in finding an audience. It is one of the greatest pleasures to
listen to a good speaker. It is a pleasure which attracts young and old, rich
and poor, educated and uneducated. A good speaker is always sure of an audience,
and especially where he has not to encounter the rivalry of books. But as Jesus
watched the crowd assembling, and perceived the various dispositions with which
the people came. He could not but reflect how much of what He had to say must
certainly be lost on many. He knew He had that to tell men which, if received,
would change the face of society, and turn the wilderness into a garden. He was
conscious of that in His own mind which, could it only be conveyed into the
minds of those pressing around Him, would cause their lives to flourish with
righteousness, beauty, love, usefulness, and joy. He had “many things to say” to
them, things that never yet had fallen and never again could fall from human
lips; and yet who, of the thousands that listened, would believe? They came,
some out of curiosity, some saying within themselves, “What will this sower of
words say?” some out of hatred, seeking occasion against Him; but all thinking
themselves entitled to hold and express an opinion regarding the importance or
worthlessness of what He said. They needed to have their critical faculty
exercised upon themselves, and to be reminded that in order to benefit by what
He had to say, they must bring certain capacities. The parabolic form of
teaching is pleasant to listen to; it is easily retained in the memory; it
stimulates thought, each man being left to find an interpretation for himself;
and it avoids the offensiveness of direct rebuke. To the crowd Jesus speaks only
of the sower in the fields, and makes no explicit reference to Himself or to
them. The object of this parable, then, is to explain the causes of the failure
and success of the gospel. Apart from experience, it might have been supposed
that our Lord had only to proclaim His kingdom in order to gather all men to His
standard. If it were so that God desired all men to enter into everlasting joy,
did not this remove every difficulty, and secure the happiness of all? Could
such a messenger and such a message fail to move every one who came in contact
with them? Alas! even after so many centuries Christianity is not the one only
religion men believe in; and even where it is professed, it is most inadequately
understood and received. Why, then, is it so? why, to so lamentable an extent
does every agency for the extension of Christ’s kingdom fail? It fails, says our
Lord, not because the claims of the kingdom are doubtful, not because they are
inappropriately urged — these causes may no doubt sometimes operate — but the
kingdom fails to extend because the fructification of the seed of the word
depends upon the nature of the soil it falls upon, and because that soil is
often impervious, often shallow, often dirty. The seed is not in fault, the
sowing is not in fault, but the soil is faulty — a statement of the case as
little accepted by those in our own day who discuss Christ’s claims, as it was
by our Lord’s contemporaries.

1. The first faultiness of soil our Lord specifies in the words, “Some seeds
fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up;” and the
interpretation or spiritual analogue He gives in the words, “When any one
heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not then cometh the wicked
one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart.” The beaten footpath
that crosses the corn-field, and that is maintained year after year, or the
cart-track along the side of the field, may serve a very useful purpose, but
certainly it will grow no corn. The hard surface does not admit the seed: you
might as well scatter seed on a wooden table, or a pavement, or a mirror. The
seed may be of the finest quality, but for all the purposes of sowing you might
as well sprinkle pebbles or shot. It lies on the surface. This state of matters
then represents that hearing of the word which manages to keep the word entirely
outside. The word has been heard, but that is all. It has not even entered the
understanding. It has been heard as men listen to what is said in a foreign
language. The mind is not interested; it is roused to no inquiry, provoked to no
contradiction. You have sometimes occasion to suggest a different course of
action to a friend; and, in order to do so, you mention a fact which should be
sufficient to alter his purpose, but you find he has not apprehended its
significance, has not seen its bearing — it has not fructified in his mind as
you expected, and you say to yourself; “He does not take it in.” So says our
Lord: there are hearers who do not take in what is said; they do not see the
bearings of the word they hear; their understanding is impervious, impenetrable.
Are there such hearers? Surely there are. There are persons on whom the seed of
the word falls as by accident, and who have neither prepared themselves to hear
it, nor make any effort to retain it. They are members of a church-going family,
or they have formed a church-going habit of their own; they have perhaps their
reason for being found side by side with those who hear with profit, but they do
not come for the sake of hearing; they are not anxious to hear, thoughtful about
what they hear, careful to retain it. There are careless persons who hear the
word not as the result of a decision that it is to be heard; not as they would,
on beginning the study of chemistry or of philosophy, seek out certain teachers
and certain books; but as the hearing of the word happens to be the employment
of the hour, they submit to this social convention, and they allow the seed of
the kingdom to fall upon them with no more expectation than that with which they
hear the passing salutation of a friend on the street, knowing that whether he
says it is a fine day or not, it is equally without significance. This hearing
of the word has come to be one of the many employments with which men fill up
their time, and this hearer has never thought why, nor whether it does him any
good or no. He has never considered why he personally should listen to this
special kind of word, nor what he personally may expect as the result of it.

There are, in short, persons who, either from preoccupation with other thoughts
and hopes, have their minds beaten hard and rendered quite impervious to
thoughts of Christ’s kingdom, or from a natural slowness and hard frostiness of
nature, hear the word without admitting it even to work in their understanding.
They do not ponder what is heard, they do not check the statements they hear by
their own thought; they do not consider the bearings of the gospel on
themselves. When you propose to a farmer who is paying too high a rent to go to
some part of the country where rents are lower, the idea will probably find
entrance into his understanding. He may not ultimately adopt it, but it will
stir a great many hopes and thoughts of various kinds in him, and he will find
his mind dwelling on it day after day, and hour by hour, so that he can speak of
little else. But the proposals made to the wayside hearer suggest nothing at all
to him. His mind throws off Christ’s offers as a slated roof throws off hail.
You might as well expect seed to grow on a tightly-braced drum-head as the word
to profit such a hearer; it dances on the hard surface, and the slightest motion
shakes it off. The consequence is, it is forgotten. When seed is scattered on a
hard surface it is not allowed to lie long. The birds devour it up. Every hedge,
every tree, every roof contributes its eager few, and shortly not a corn
remains. So when not even the mind has been interested in Christ’s word, that
word is quickly forgotten; the conversation on the way home from church, the
thought of to-morrow’s occupations, the sight of some one on the street —
anything, is enough to take it clean away. In some persons the word is admitted
though it does not at once bring forth fruit. As in the old fable the words
spoken unheard in the Arctic circle were thawed into sound and became audible in
warmer latitudes; so when a man passes into new circumstances and a state of
life more congenial to the development of Christian discipleship, the word which
has apparently been lost for years begins to stir and make itself heard in his
soul. But it cannot be so with the wayside hearer, for in him the word has never
found any manner of lodgment.

2. The second faultiness of soil our Lord enumerates is shallowness. What we
commonly understand by “stony ground” is a field thickly strewn with small
stones; not the best kind of soil, but quite available for growing corn. This is
not the soil meant here. Our Lord speaks rather of rocky ground, where a thin
surface of mold overlies an impenetrable rock. There is a mere dusting of soil
on the surface; if you put a stick or a spade into it, you come upon the rock a
few inches below. On such ground the seed quickly springs, there being no
deepness of earth to allow of its spending time in rooting itself. And for the
same reason it quickly withers when exposed to the fierce heats which benefit
and mature strongly-rooted plants. Precocity and rapid growth are everywhere the
forerunners of rapid decay. The oak that is to stand a thousand years does not
shoot up like the hop or the creeper. Man whose age is seventy years has a
slowly growing infancy and youth, while the insect grows up in a day and dies at
night or at the week’s end. The shallow hearer our Lord distinguishes by two
characteristics; he straightway receives the word, and he receives it with joy.
The man of deeper character receives the word with deliberation, as one who has
many things to take into account and to weigh. He receives it with seriousness,
and reverence, and trembling, foreseeing the trials he will be subjected to, and
he cannot show a light-minded joy. The superficial character responds quickly
because there is no depth of inner life. Difficulties which deter men of greater
depth do not stagger the superficial. While other men are engaged in giving the
word entrance into all the secret places of their life, and are confronting it
with their most cherished feelings and ways, that they may clearly see the
extent of the changes it will work: while they are pondering it in the majesty
of its hope and the vastness of its revelation; while they are striving to
forecast all its results in them and upon them; while they are hesitating
because they are in earnest, and would receive the word for eternity or not at
all, and would give it entrance to the whole of their being, or exclude it
altogether, — while others are doing this, the superficial man has settled the
whole matter out of hand, and he who yesterday was a known scoffer is to-day a
loud-voiced child of the kingdom.

These men may often be mistaken for the most earnest Christians: indeed they are
almost certainly taken to be the most earnest; you cannot see the root, and what
is seen is shown in greatest luxuriance by the superficial. The earnest man has
much of his energy to spend beneath the soil, he cannot show anything till he is
sure of the root. He is often working away at the foundation while another is at
the copestone. But the test comes. The very influences which exercise and mature
the well-rooted character, wither the superficially rooted. The same shallowness
of nature which made them susceptible to the gospel and quickly responsive,
makes them susceptible to pain, suffering, hardship, and easily defeated. It is
so in all departments of life. The superficial are taken with every new thing.
The boy is delighted with a new study or a new game, but becomes proficient in
neither. The youth is charmed with volunteering, but one season of early rising
is more than he can stand: or he is fascinated with the idea that history is an
extremely profitable kind of reading; but you know quite well when he asks for
the loan of the first volume of Gibbon or Grote, that he will never come to you
for the last. The action of the shallow man is in every case hasty, not based on
a carefully considered and resolutely accepted plan: he is charmed with the
first appearances, and does not look into the matter, and forecast results and
consequences. Accordingly, when consequences have to be faced, he is not
prepared and gives way. But how, then, can the shallow man be saved? Is there no
provision in the gospel for those who are born with a thin, poor nature? This
question scarcely falls to be answered here, because the parable presents one
truth regarding shallow natures, which is verified in thousands of instances.
Men do thus deal with the word, and thus make shipwreck of faith, and that is
all we have here to do with. But passing beyond the parable, it may be right to
say that a man’s nature may be deepened by the events, and relationships, and
conflicts of life. Indeed, that much deepening of character is constantly
effected, you may gather from the fact that while many young persons are
shallow, the old persons whom you would characterize as shallow are
comparatively few.

3. The third faultiness of soil which causes failure in the crop is what is
technically known as dirt. The soil is not impenetrable, nor is it shallow; it
is deep, good land, but it has not been cleaned — there is seed in it already.
Sometimes you see a field of wheat brilliantly colored throughout with poppies;
or a field of oats which it is difficult to cut on account of the dense growth
of thistles, and of rank grass. But the soil can only feed a certain amount of
vegetation, and every living weed means a choked blade of corn. This is a worse
case than the others. No crop can be looked for on a beaten road, not much can
be expected from a mere peppering of soil upon rock; but here there is rich,
deep, loamy mould, that must be growing something, and would, if cared for,
yield a magnificent harvest, and yet there is little or nothing but thorns. This
is a picture of the preoccupied heart of the rich, vigorous nature, capable of
understanding, appreciating, and making much of the word of the kingdom, but
occupied with so many other interests, that only a small part of its energy is
available for giving effect to Christ’s ideas. These ideas are not excluded from
the thoughts, they are welcomed; the mind is full of intelligent interest in
Christian truth, and the heart has a real and profound sympathy with the work of
Christ in the world and with His spirit, and yet, after all, little practical
good proceeds from the man — Christian principle does not come to much in his
case— the life shows little result of a specially Christian kind. The reason is
that the man is occupied with a multitude of other views, and projects, and
cares, and desires, and the peculiarly Christian seed does not get fair play. It
influences him, but it is hindered and mixed up with so many other influences
that the result is scarcely discernible. The peculiarity of a good field of
wheat is not the density of the vegetation, but that the vegetation is all of
one kind, is all wheat. Leave the field to itself, you will in a short time have
quite as dense a vegetation, but it will be of a multifarious kind. That the
field bears wheat only, is the result of cultivation — not merely of sowing
wheat, but of preventing anything else from being sown. The first care of the
diligent farmer is to clean his land. And as there is generally some one kind of
weed to which the soil is congenial, and against which the farmer has to wage a
continual war, so our Lord here specifies as specially dangerous to us “the care
of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.” The care of this world has been
called the poor man’s species of the deceitfulness of riches, and the
deceitfulness of riches a variety of the care of this world. There are poor men
who have no anxiety, and rich men who are not misled by their riches either into
dependence on their wealth, or desire to make it more. But among rich men and
poor men alike you will find some or many who would be left without any subject
of thought, and any guiding principle in action, if you took from them anxiety
about their own position in life. It is this from which all the fruit they bear
springs. Take the actions of a year, the annual outcome or harvest of the man,
and how much of what he has produced you can trace to this seed — to a mere
anxiety about income and position. This is really the seed, this is all that is
required to account for a large part of many men’s actions. Our Lord therefore
warns us that if the word is to do its work in us, and produce all the good it
is meant to produce, it must have the field to itself. It will not do merely to
give attention to the word while it is preached: the mind may be clean on the
surface, while there remain great knots of roots below, which will inevitably
spring up, and by their more inveterate growth choke the word. This is the
mistake of many. It is proper, they know, to hear the word — proper to give it
fair play. They do make an effort to banish worldly and anxious thoughts, and to
give their attention to divine things, but even though they succeed in putting
aside for the time distracting thoughts, what of that if they have not the care
of the world up by the roots? Cutting down won’t do: still less, a mere holding
aside of the thorns till the seed be sown. What chance has the seed in a heart
from which these eager thoughts and hopes are merely held back for the hour? The
cares of the world will just swing over again and meet above the good seed, and
shut out the day and every maturing influence. You receive to-day good
impressions, you give the good seed entrance, and it begins to spring in you, it
prompts you to a reasonable generosity and self-denial. To-morrow morning the
tender blade of a desire to purify and prepare your spirit by some real and
devout converse with God has sprung up in you, but the habitual craving to be at
your work and lose no moment from business crushes and chokes the little blade,
and it can no more lift its head. Or the seed has produced even the green ear of
a growing habit of living under God’s eye, of walking with God and bringing all
your transactions before His judgment, — mature fruit seems on the point of
being produced by you, when suddenly the promise of a rich harvest is choked by
the old coarse thorn of a fondness for rapid profits, which leads you to
ambiguous language, and reservations, and unfair dealings, such as you feel
separate you from God, and dash your spiritual ardor, and make you feel like a
fool and a knave both, when you speak of your citizenship being in heaven. It is
vain, then, to hope for the only right harvest of a human life if your heart is
sown with worldly ambitions, a greedy hasting to be rich, an undue love of
comfort, a true earthliness of spirit. One seed only must be sown in and, you it
will produce all needed diligence in business, as well as all fervor of spirit.

These, then, are the three faulty soils to which our Lord chiefly ascribes the
failure of the sowing. The question arises, Does the result follow in the moral
sowing and in the world of men as uniformly and inevitably as it follows in the
sowing of corn in nature? In nature some soils are irreclaimable, vast tracts of
the earth’s surface are as useless as the sea for the purposes of growing grain.
They may indirectly contribute to the fruitfulness of corn lands by influencing
the climate, but no one thinks of cultivating these tracts themselves, of sowing
the sands of Sahara or the ice-fields of Siberia. But the gospel is to be
preached to every creature, because in man there is one important distinction
from material nature; he is possessed of free will, of the power of checking to
some extent natural tendencies, and preventing natural consequences.
Accordingly, we cannot just accept the bare teaching of the parable as the whole
truth regarding the operation of the gospel in man’s heart, but only as one part
of the truth, and that a most important part. The parable enters into no
consideration nor explanation of how men arrive at the spiritual conditions here
enumerated; but, given those conditions — and they are certainly common however
arrived at — given those conditions, the result is failure of the gospel. In
contrast, then, to these three faults of impenetrability, shallowness, and dirt,
we may be expected to do something towards bringing to the hearing of the word a
soft, deep, clean soil of heart, or, as Luke calls it, “an honest and good
heart.” There are differences in the crop even among those who bring good
hearts; one bears thirty-fold, one sixty, one an hundred-fold. One man has
natural advantages, opportunities of position, and so forth, which make his
yield greater. One man may have had a larger proportion of seed; in his early
days and all through his life he may have been in contact with the word, and in
favoring circumstances. But wherever the word is received, and held fast, and
patiently cared for, there the life will produce all that God cares to have from
it.

Honesty is a prime requisite in hearing the word, and a rare one. Men listen
honestly to a lecture on science or history, from which they expect information;
but where conduct is aimed at, or a vote is concerned, men commonly listen with
minds already made up. It is notorious that men vote as they meant to vote, no
matter what, is said. If a Liberal were found voting with Conservatives on any
important point, some mistake would be supposed. The last thing thought of would
be that his convictions had been altered by the speaking. But if we are to hear
the word as we ought, we must bring an honest heart, we must not listen with a
mind already made up against the gospel, with no intention whatever of being
persuaded, cherishing purposes and habits, alongside of which it is impossible
the word should grow. On the contrary, we should consider that this is the seed
proper to the human heart, and which can alone produce what human life should
produce — the word of God, which we must listen to gratefully, humbly,
sincerely, greedily, and with the firm purpose of giving it unlimited scope
within us. But where is the attentive, painstaking scrutiny of the heart which
this demands? Where is the careful husbandry of our souls, which would secure a
kindly reception for the word? Where is the jealous challenging of every
sentiment, habit, influence, association, that begs for a lodging within us? For
where this is, and not elsewhere, we may expect the fruit of the kingdom. But
even this is not enough. The fruitful hearer must not only bring an honest and
good heart, he must keep the word. The farmer’s work is not finished when he has
prepared the soil and sown the seed. If pains be not taken after the sowing, the
seed that has fallen on good soil may be taken away as utterly as that which has
fallen on the beaten path. The birds scatter over the whole field. We must
therefore set a watcher; we must send the harrow over to cover in the seed, and
the roller to give the plant a better hold on the soil. The word must not be
allowed to take its chance, once it has been heard. Mere hearing does not secure
fruit; it goes for nothing. Your labor is lost unless your mind goes back upon
what you hear, and you see that it gets hold of you. All of us have already
heard all that is necessary for life and godliness; it remains that we make it
our own, that it secure a living root and place in us and in our life. In order
to this we must keep the truth; we must bear it in mind, so that whatever else
comes before the mind throws new light on it, and gives it a further hold upon
us. We must not let the events of the world and the occurrences of our day
thrust it from our minds, but must confront it with these, and test it by these,
so that thus it may become more real to us, and have a vital influence. One
truth received thus, brings forth more fruit than all truth merely understood.
It is not the amount of knowledge you have, but the use you put it to — it is
not the number of good sayings you have heard and can repeat, that will profit
you, but the place in your hearts you have given them, and the connection they
have with the motives, and principles, and ruling ideas of your life.

And, therefore, meditation has always been, and must always be, reckoned among
the most indispensable means of grace. Since ever saints were, their saintliness
has been in great part due to a habit of meditation. Without it, the other means
of grace remain helplessly outside of us. The word does not profit except the
mind be actively appropriating God’s message and revolving it. Prayer is but a
deluding form, that means nothing, expects nothing, and receives nothing, if
meditation has not provided its material. Unless a man think upon his life and
try his ways, his confession can but remove the scum from the surface, leaving
the heart burdened and polluted; for the graver sins do not float, but sink
deep, and must be dragged for with patience and skill, if not descried through a
very rare natural clearness and simplicity of character. It is in the stillness
and quiet of our hours of reflection, when the gusts of worldly engagements and
desires have died down, that the seeds of grace are deposited in our souls. It
is then that our thoughts are free to recognize reasons of humility and causes
of thankfulness. It is then that the thought of God resumes its place in our
souls, and that the unseen world reasserts its hold upon us. It is then only
that the soul, taking a deliberate survey of its own matters, can discover its
position and necessities, can assert its claims and determine its future, can
begin the knowledge of all things by knowing itself. So that, “if there is a
person, of whatever age, or class, or station, who will not be thoughtful, who
will not seriously and honestly consider, there is no doing him any good.” But
there is probably no religious duty so distasteful as meditation to persons
whose habits are formed in a state of society like our own. We are, for the most
part, infected by the hastiness and overdone activity of the business world. The
rapidity and exactness of mechanical action rule and regulate all our personal
movements. We are learning to value only what gives us speedily and uniformly
achieved and easily appreciated results. We are civilized so nearly to one
common level, and are in possession of so many advantages which hitherto have
been the monopoly of one class, that competition is keener than ever before; and
all our time and energy are demanded for the one purpose of holding our own in
things secular. But the dissatisfaction with slow processes, and the desire to
get a great deal through our hands, must be checked when we come to the work of
meditation. There are processes in nature which you can’t hurry. You must let
your milk stand, if you wish cream. And meditation is a process of mind whose
necessary element is the absence of hurry. We must let the mind settle and
discharge itself of all irritating distractions and fevering remembrances or
hopes; we must reduce it to an equable state, from which it can look out
dispassionately upon things, and no longer see the one engrossing object, but
all that concerns us in due proportion and real position. The soul must learn to
turn a deaf ear to the importunate requirements of the daily life, and turn
leisurely and with an unpreoccupied mind to God. Were it only to keep the world
at bay, and teach the things of it their subordinate place, these meditative
pauses of the soul were of the richest use. A third and last requisite for the
fructification of the seed is, according to Luke, patience. The husbandman does
not expect to reap to-morrow what he sowed to-day. He does not incontinently
plow up his field again, and sow another crop, if he does not at once see the
ripe corn. He watches and waits, and through much that is disappointing and
unpromising, nurses his plants to fruitfulness. We also must learn with patience
to bring forth fruit; not despairing because we cannot at once do all we would;
not sinking under the hardships, sacrifices, failures, sorrows, through which we
must win our growth to true fruit-bearing, but animating and cheering our
spirits with the sure hope that the seed we have received is vital, and will
enable us to produce at last the sound and ripe fruit our lives were meant to
yield. We must have patience both to endure all the privations, all the
schooling, all the trial of various kinds which may be needful to bring the seed
of righteousness to maturity; and also to go on zealously yielding the perhaps
despised fruits which are alone possible to us now, and striving always to
strike our roots deeper and deeper into the true life.


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  CHAPTER 24: 03.02.     THE TARES
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THE TARES Matthew 13:24-30; Matthew 13:36-43 In this parable Christ warns His
servants against expecting to see in this world that unmixedly good condition of
society which will at length be brought about in the world to come. The kingdom
of heaven is to have universal sway, it is to stand without rival and without
mixture of evil, but the time is not yet. Those who are themselves within this
kingdom must beware of acting as if the final judgment were already passed. At
all times those who believe in God have been perplexed by the fact that this
world is so far from a condition of unmingled good. Is it not God’s world? He
could not sow bad seed. Whence then the tares? Sometimes this has pressed very
heavily on the faith of men. It seems so unaccountable a thing that the field of
God should not produce an unexceptionable harvest. We believe that God created
the world, and created it for a purpose, and originated whatever was needful for
the accomplishment of this purpose. Whatever has proceeded from Him can have
been only good. No degenerate or noxious grain can have escaped His hand. And
yet, look at the result. How difficult in some parts of the field to see any
fruit of God’s sowing; how mixed everywhere is the evidence that this is God’s
field. Is it not the ill-cultivated patch of a careless proprietor, of the
ill-conditioned, unworkable tract on which the wealthy owner has not wasted the
labor which might better be expended elsewhere! Has God mistaken the
capabilities of His field, or does He not care to develop them? or does He like
this mingled crop? Does He not sympathize with His servants when they grieve
over this sad waste? Has murder a horror only for us? does falsehood excite no
indignation but in us? are violence and lust, disease and wretchedness matters
of indifference to God? What do we see in the world? Centuries of folly,
passion, toil, and anguish; countries desolated by the vices of their
inhabitants; diseases which the most skilful cannot alleviate, nor the most
callous view without a shudder; sorrow and sin more bitter, more cruel, more
appalling than any disease. And this is the lot of God; here He delights to
dwell. On no field of all His possessions has He spent more. Well may we join
with the servants and say, “Sir, didst not Thou sow good seed in Thy field? From
whence then hath it tares?” But Christ comes and inaugurates a new order of
things, and all evil will disappear from earth. Man’s natural condition is but
the dark background on which the saving grace of God may display its brilliant
effects. God Himself comes and dwells with men, rolling back the heavy darkness
with the light of His presence and wisdom, infusing His own life into all. Now
will the earth yield her increase. Alas! the failure of the harvest of God is in
many respects even more conspicuous in the Church of Christ than in the
non-Christian world. The very method adopted to redeem the failure of the
original creation seems itself also to be in great part failure. We are
perplexed when we find wild and useless vegetation in the outlying wilderness,
but when we enter the garden of God, and within that redeemed enclosure still
find weeds and disorder, our perplexity deepens into dismay. Yet the fact is
that, with scarcely an exception, all the useless and pernicious plants found
outside Christendom are found also within. Where is there to be found a more
passionate greed of gain, or a more self-indulgent luxury, or a more
thoroughgoing worldliness than among the masses of the trading Christian races?
The gambling, the unscrupulous hasting to be rich, the cruel and heart-hardening
selfishness that abound in our own society are only made more deceptive and
dangerous by being crossed with plants of heavenly origin, and by disguising
their true nature under the flowers of Christian utterances, occasional
charities, seeming repentances, and ineffective purposing of better things. Lust
and villainy, fraud, malice, cruelty, — these noxious plants flourish within as
without the Christian pale. And it is within Christendom we must look, if we
would see some of the worst species of human iniquity. One is ashamed to read
the history of the Church. Beside the good corn whose full ear bends in humble
maturity of service, the deadly plant of delusive self-righteousness rears its
pretentious and empty head. Ignorance, fear, and self-seeking have imitated
every Christian grace, till the whole ground is covered with an overgrowth that
hides from the eye the healthy plants of Christ’s own sowing. Insincerity,
superstition, obscurantism, intolerance, pious fraud, the prostitution of the
highest interests of men to aims the most contemptible and vile, the disguising
of a rotten character under a professed faith and hope of the most elevating and
glorious kind, — these are the plants which flourish in the garden of God. All
that is double, all that is mean, all that is craven, all that is shallow and
earthly in human nature, seems to be stimulated by this cultivated soil. The
field which was to be the nursery of free souls who, with eyes unsealed to see
the true beauty of eternal goodness, should devote themselves with courage and
generosity to the common good, has become a paddock in which the timorous seek
refuge from a future they dread, and in which every low desire thinks it may
burrow with impunity. Looking at Christendom as it actually is, we may well ask,
Is this what Christ sowed? Is this what He has produced on earth? Is this the
kind of Christendom He intended? “Sir, did’st not Thou sow good seed in Thy
field? From whence then hath it tares?” The explanation of this disappointing
state of matters is given in the words, “An enemy hath done this.” It is not the
result of Christianity, but of agencies opposed to Christianity. To sow a
neighbor’s field with noxious seed is in some countries a common device for
venting spite or wreaking vengeance; and a more villainous injury can scarcely
be imagined. It blasts hope; it is a long grievance, daily meeting the eye and
wearing out the spirit till the harvest; it spoils the crop and injures the
soil. It seems to say that all this time, from day to day, I have an enemy who
hates me, so that there can be no truer joy to him than that which gives me
sorrow. He cannot be happy if I am. My happiness is his misery; my misery his
greatest happiness. This is his spirit, the spirit of the Evil One, by
whomsoever shown; a spirit not wholly absent from our relations with other men,
but betrayed even when we suppose ourselves to be animated with righteous
indignation or warrantable revenge.

There is something characteristically devilish too, in the deed being done “when
men slept;” when the sun has gone down and the wrath of man begins to quiet and
cool; when men of right mind are resolving not to act in heat, or be provoked to
unworthy and low-toned iniquities, but to think over their matters; when they
are perhaps dreaming that they are once again boys together, and walking folded
in one another’s arms; when the stillness and solemn grandeur of night rebuke
the loud clamor and petty wranglings of men; when, at least, a pause is given to
sin, this spirit’s malignity tires not, but like the beasts of prey is roused to
a livelier activity, and recognizes the darkness and quiet as his peculiar
season. In him there is no folding of his hands from evil, no wearying, no
hesitation in his course, no questioning whether, after all, this is not too
bad, no desire to mingle with it a little good, no desire of rest or
forgetfulness, but the grateful memory of past wickedness inciting him to new
iniquities.

Such being the state of the field, and such its cause, what are the servants to
do? “Wilt Thou that we go and gather out these tares?” Men are ever for prompt
measures. “Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and
consume them?” Few understand the sparing of profligate cities for the sake of
ten righteous men. We inwardly grudge that there should be so little difference
now manifested between God’s treatment of the righteous and the wicked; and that
it should only at intervals appear that the former are His peculiar possession.
Did our feelings rule the world, we should allow very few tares to appear. We
cannot wait, but must anticipate the harvest. This and that other effective
propagator of falsehood, would it not be well if he were out of the way? Would
not good men come to a quicker and more fruitful maturity, were they not
continually damaged by the blighting influences of skeptical literature, worldly
society, superficial religionists?

“Let both grow together until the harvest,” is the law of the Master. Again and
again the Church has, in the face of this parable, taken upon her to root out
infidels and heretics. The reasoning has been summary: We are Christ’s, these
men are Satan’s, let us destroy them. All such attempts violently to hasten the
consummation, and to make the field of the world appear uniform, have most
disastrously hindered the growth of true religion. The servants have wrought a
more frightful desolation and barrenness in the field than anything which could
have resulted from the existence of the tares.

It is, indeed, not always easy to know how far we should act upon the
acknowledged fact of a man’s ungodliness. In this country there is a strong
feeling against opinions which are believed to be dangerous; perhaps it may be
said that the animosity excited by a man’s profession of atheism is more
vehement and active than that which immorality excites. And though, happily, we
do not now go so far as to remove such persons from the world, we do not scruple
to visit them with serious social and civil disabilities. Now this parable emits
the law regarding such persons. It does not say the world is as it ought to be;
it does not say there is no distinction, or a very insignificant one, between
good and bad men, or between Christians and atheists; but it enjoins upon us the
necessity of refraining from acting upon this distinction to the injury of any.
Punishments must be inflicted by society on its injurious members, but not on
the score of their ungodliness or unprofitableness in Christ’s kingdom. The
distinction between a criminal and a benefactor of his country may not be so
great as between a ripe Christian and a full-blown atheist; but while we are
compelled to act upon the former distinction, and pluck up the criminal from his
place, and banish him from our society, the latter distinction is not fully
manifested, and must not be fully acted upon in this world. The man who
habitually swears, or leads a grossly immoral life, or propagates infidelity,
may do a great deal more harm than the starving boy who steals a loaf; but we
are called upon to punish the latter and not the former. And in so far as we
damage the prospects, or asperse the good name, of any man because we consider
him “tares,” and not wheat, in so far we fly in the face of this parable. The
reasonableness of this method of delay is sufficiently obvious. Within the
Church itself it is often impossible even to be as sure as the servants of the
parable were that there is darnel sown among the wheat, or at least to
discriminate between the wheat and the darnel. An opinion, or a practise, which
is at first sight condemned as scandalous or full of danger, may turn out to be
sound and wholesome. But if no time be allowed it to grow, if it be summarily
pronounced tares, and thrown over the hedge, the good fruit it might have borne
is thrown away with it. Truth may be in the minority — always is at first in the
minority; and if, as the servants view the field, they merely take a vote as to
what is wholesome and what poisonous, they are likely enough to do evil rather
than good. And even where it is certain that evil has sprung up in the Church,
it is a further question whether it should be summarily removed. This parable,
it is true, is not the guide for the action of the rulers of the Church towards
its members; but, indirectly, a warning against hasty action is given to those
in authority. False doctrine may sometimes be more easily got rid of, if it be
regarded in silence, or with a few words of convincing exposure, than if it be
signalized with assault. No man who had any regard for his field would carry a
seeding thistle through every part of it, and give it a shake in every corner.
But our Lord Himself in the parable assigns two reasons for this abstinence from
immediate action. First, you are not to root up tares, because you will
inevitably root up good corn with them. It is almost impossible to pull up a
single stalk of corn by the root; you may break it off, but if you take up its
root you are almost sure to bring away with it a number of other stalks and a
mass of soil. The one root refuses to be detached from the rest — a striking
representation f of what happens when injury is inflicted on any member of
society. You cannot injure one man and one only. In him you strike his children,
his friends, his followers if he be a man of influence. No man is so forlorn
that none will be made lonelier by his death, or be embittered or saddened by
his misfortune. We live for the most part in little circles, bound one to the
other by indissoluble relationships, nurtured from one soil, and matured by
common interests and feelings. And these circles are not separate from one
another, but some member of your circle belongs also to another; and so the
whole world is linked together, and you cannot put forth your hand and strike
any man whose pain shall not be felt by others, nor thrust him from you without
repelling all who are attached to him. And of those who are attached to him, are
you sure there are none who belong to the kingdom, no little blade springing up
by his root, which, did you let it grow, would abound in fruit? For, that a man
is evil himself, is no proof that all his connections are evil. On the contrary,
an ungodly man will often cling to those who belong to the kingdom, as if
somehow they must find entrance for him along with themselves. A father who
cannot change his own ways nor yield the opinions of his youth, seeks to protect
his children from the influences that destroyed himself, and to atone for his
own barrenness by their productiveness. Some who are held as by a terrible
fatality from winning the kingdom, will yet entreat others to use violence to
enter it. Even the most profligate have commonly some one ripe and living soul
devoted to them, who could wish that himself were accursed for their kinsmen
according to the flesh. But this first reason rests upon the second: and that
is, that the time is coming when the distinction between the wheat and the tares
is to be acted upon. Only let a man accept the account here given of the end of
the tares, and he will have very little desire to anticipate or hasten that end.
When God says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” we feel that the darkest
injustice and wrong-doing will be adequately taken account of. When we reflect
that what has roused our indignation has also been observed by God, and will be
dealt with by Him, not only is our indignation mitigated, but, in view of the
judgment of God, our pity is moved towards the transgressor. We were about to
punish as if we were the offended party, as if we saw the matter in all its
bearings and could justly judge it, and as if we had the right punishment at
hand; but when this final judgment looms in sight we see how different are God’s
judgments and God’s punishments from ours, and an awful pity possesses us.
Believe that the bar of God lies across the path of each of us, believe that a
veritable sifting of men is to be, and that all men are to be allotted to
suitable destinies, and compassion will extinguish every other feeling you may
have cherished towards the wicked. The position in which we in this life are is
full of awe, and fitted also to engender in us the tenderest feelings one
towards another — growing up as we are side by side, but with destinies perhaps
immeasurably wide asunder; here for a little united root to root, and yet, it
may be, severed to all eternity. Could any position be better calculated to
banish from our minds all indifference to one another’s prospects, all sullen
and revengeful feelings, all variance and hatred, and to quicken within us a
true affection and compassion, a considerate and helpful tenderness? The bearing
of this parable, then, on ourselves cannot be mistaken. Wheat and darnel, it
says, are almost identical in appearance, and are, in the meantime, treated as
if the one was as valuable as the other; but let them grow, and the fruit will
prove that the root principle of the one is different as possible from the
other; the one is good food, the other poison. And they will eventually be
treated accordingly. Everything must ultimately find its place according to its
nature; not according to its appearance, nor according to any pretensions put
forward in its behalf, but only and simply according to its own real character
and quality. Each of us is growing to something, and from some root. No one may
be able to say — perhaps you yourself are unable to say — to which kind and to
what root you belong; perhaps you cannot confidently affirm what it is to which
you are growing, but beneath all appearances there is in you a real character, a
root that determines what you shall grow to. As we grow up in society together,
one man is in the main very like another. Of two of your friends, it may be the
one who makes least profession of religion that you would go to in a difficulty
in which much generous help and toil are needed. Take a regiment of soldiers or
a ship’s crew, and you may find the ungodly as brave and self-sacrificing in
action, as observant of discipline as the others. There may be little to show
that there is a radical difference in character; sometimes, of course, this
difference is very rapidly manifested, but in general there is so much
similarity as to make it notorious that the Church is not distinctly marked off
from the world. Society does resemble a field in which the wheat and the darnel
are still in the blade, and can be discriminated only by a very careful
observer. So that, first, this is apt to make the darnel think itself as good as
the wheat. If we merely look at appearances we are apt to think that, take us
all round, there is not much to choose between the wheat and us. We see in truly
Christian people evil tempers, a revengeful, tyrannical, ungenerous spirit, we
detect bitterness and meanness in them, sometimes sensuality, and a keen eye for
worldly advantage, and we are encouraged to believe that really we stand
comparison with them very favorably. So no doubt you do. The world would be
insufferable if all men had the spirit which many Christians show. But that is
not the point. The question is not whether you are not at present, to all
appearance, as useful and pleasant a member of society as they; but the question
is, whether there is not that in them which will grow to good, and whether there
is not that in you which will grow to evil. Do you, that is to say, sufficiently
consider this parable, which most frankly admits that at present, so far as
things have yet grown, there may be no very marked difference between the
children of the kingdom and others, but at the same time emphatically declares
that the root is different, and that, therefore, the life is really of a
different quality, and will in the long run appear to be different? The question
is, what is your root? What is it that is producing the actual life you are
making, and the actual character you are growing into? What is the motive power?
Is it mere desire to get on, or craving for a good position among men? Is it
respect for your own good name? or are you a child of the kingdom? Are you the
result of the word of the kingdom? that is, is your conduct being more and more
animated and regulated, and is your character being more and more formed, by the
belief that God calls you to live for Him and for eternity? Do you like this
world really better than one in which you have a hope only of spiritual joys, of
true fellowship with God, and holiness of heart? Can you make good to your own
mind, that in some quite intelligible sense you are rooted in Christ, and grow
out of Him? It is the root you live from which will eventually show itself in
you, and determine your eternal position.

Again, the urgency of the call to Christ is deadened by the fact that we are not
treated differently at present. Men argue: we get on well enough now, and the
future will take care of itself. But this is to brush aside at a blow all that
we are told of the connection of the present with the future. This state bears
to a coming world the relation which seed-time bears to harvest. No violence
will be done to you at present to convince you that you are useless to God. No
judgment will be declared, no punishment inflicted — that were out of season,
for in this life we are left to choose freely and without compulsion, whether we
desire to be in God’s kingdom or not. In this life you must judge yourself and
do violence to yourself. But this argues nothing regarding the future life. It
is only then a beginning is made of treatment corresponding to character.

Lastly, not only is the darnel apt to think itself as good as the wheat, but the
wheat is apt to think itself no better than the darnel. You can never outstrip
others in good as you would like. You are troubled because they seem to be as
regular, as zealous, as successful in duty as you. Possibly, too, they are not
only as judicious in conduct, as generous, as true, of as good report as
yourselves, but, moreover, exercise a healthier influence than you do on those
they live with. Some natural infirmity of temper has fixed its indelible brand
on you, something which makes you less attractive and less influential than you
might otherwise be. Or perhaps you are choked by uncongenial surroundings, kept
down in growth by the tares around you, often betrayed into sins which better
company would have made impossible. Are you somehow continually kept back from
growing to all you feel you might grow to? Is there good in you that has never
yet been elicited? Look then to the end, when “the righteous shall shine forth
as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Be sure only that there is that in
you which will shine forth if the hindrances and blinds are removed. There is no
change to pass on the wheat; but only the tares shall be taken away, and it will
stand revealed, good corn. Bring forth your fruit in patience: maintain the real
distinction between good and evil, and at last it will be apparent.


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  CHAPTER 25: 03.03.     THE MUSTARD SEED
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THE MUSTARD SEED Matthew 13:31-32

Neither the parable of the Sower nor the parable of the Tares was calculated to
elate those who were interested in the kingdom of heaven. The hindrances and
disappointments incident to the establishment of that kingdom were too plainly
stated to be gratifying. It was not exhilarating to the hearers of these
parables to learn that the state of things to which they had eagerly looked
forward as the realization of their ideal, and the embodiment of all excellence,
could not be actually achieved on earth. In this parable of the mustard seed our
Lord turns the other side of the picture, and affirms that the little movement
already stirring society would grow to vast dimensions; that the influences He
was introducing so unobtrusively into human history were vital, and would one
day command attention and be productive of untold good. He does not anticipate
the parable of the leaven, and explain the precise mode of the spread of
Christianity, but merely predicts the fact of its growth. He invites us to
compare the visible cause with the visible result; he directs our thoughts to
the two facts of the small beginning and the ultimate grandeur of the kingdom of
heaven, and suggests that the reason of this growth is that the originating
principle of the kingdom has vitality in it.

It is the study of the laws of growth which in recent years, has given so great
an impulse to human knowledge and to the delight men find in nature. How this
world has come to be what it is; its rude and unpromising beginnings, and its
steady progress towards perfection; the development of an infinitely various and
complicated life from a few rudimentary forms; — these have been the commonest
subjects of scientific investigation. It has been shown that everything we are
ourselves now connected with has grown out of something which went before; that
nothing is self-originated. The growth of languages and religions, of customs
and forms of government, of races and nations, has been traced; and a new
interest has thus been imparted to all things, for everything is found to have a
history which carries us back to the most unlikely roots, and is full of
surprises. Creation excites wonder; but growth excites an intelligent admiration
and wonder as well. For, after all investigation and exposition of its laws,
growth remains marvelous. That the swift-flying bird, sensitive to the remotest
atmospheric changes, should grow out of the motionless, strictly encased egg, is
always an astonishment. That the wide-branching tree, hiding the sky with its
foliage, should be the product of a small, insignificantly shaped seed, never
ceases to excite wonder. Nothing could well be more unlike the bird than the
egg; nothing less like a tree than the seed it has grown out of; but by an
unseen and ultimately inscrutable force the egg becomes a bird, and the seed
grows into a tree. To see the stateliest pile of building filling the space
which before was empty, makes an appeal to the imagination: that kind of
increase we seem to understand; stone is added to stone by the will and toil of
man. But when we look at the deeply-rooted and wide-branching tree, and think of
the tiny seed from which all this sprang without human will or toil, but by an
internal vitality of its own, we are confronted by the most mysterious and
fascinating of all things, the life that lies unseen in nature. In the
difference, then, between the beginning and the maturity of our Lord’s kingdom
there was nothing exceptional. The same difference may be observed in the case
of almost every person or influence that has greatly helped mankind. Many of the
inventions to which we are hourly indebted entered the world like little seeds
casually blown to their resting-place; they floated on, unheeded, unobserved,
till at last, apparently by the merest chance, they caught somewhere, and became
productive. It is the very commonness of this career, from small to great, to
which our Lord appeals for the encouragement of His disciples. Here is the least
among seeds; it flies before your breath; it is not noticed in the balance; a
miser would scarce trouble himself to blow it from the scale; the hungry bird
will not pause in his flight to pick it up; but let a few years go by, and that
seed shall have become a tree, in which the birds of the air may lodge, and
which no force can uproot. The seed, as you now see it, is doing and can do
nothing that the tree does; it casts no shade, it shelters no birds, it yields
no fruit or timber, it does not fill the eye and complete the landscape; but
give it time, and it will do all these things, as nothing else will or can. In
this parable, then, our Lord gave expression to three of the ideas which
frequently recurred to His mind regarding the kingdom of heaven: — 1st. Its
present apparent insignificance; 2d. Its vitality; 3d. Its future grandeur.

1. Our Lord recognized that to the uninstructed, ordinary observer His kingdom
must in its origin appear insignificant, “the least of all seeds.” It might seem
less likely to prevail, and to become a universal benefit, than some other
contemporary systems or influences. In point of fact, so extravagant did
Christ’s claim to be a benefactor of the race appear, that those who wished to
mock Him could devise no more telling and bitter taunt than to bow before Him
and salute Him as a king. That such a tame-spirited, forsaken person should
attain a place among the strong-handed rulers of the world seemed altogether too
preposterous. The Roman magistrate, before whom He was arraigned on the charge
of rebellion against Caesar, found it difficult to treat the charge seriously.
Open the histories of His time, and your eyes are dazzled with the magnificence
of other monarchs, and the magnitude of their words, but He is barely named — so
little known, that He is sometimes misnamed through sheer ignorance. It was no
discredit to the most learned and accurate of historians to know nothing of
Jesus Christ. This obscurity and insignificance would not have been
disconcerting to the followers of a mere teacher, for the best teaching is
rarely appreciated in the first generation; but as our Lord claimed to be a
lawgiver and real king, it certainly did not bode well for His kingdom that
during His lifetime so few obeyed or even knew Him. The very circumstance that
He was a Jew might have seemed to those of His contemporaries who were best able
to judge, enough in itself to ensure the defeat of any purpose of universal
sway. The exclusive character of the religious and social ideas of the Jew, and
the hostility with which this exclusiveness was returned by other nations,
seemed to make it most improbable that all men should be brought into one common
brotherhood and community by a Jew. Moreover, Jesus Himself was no Hellenist,
whose Jewish ideas might have been modified by Greek learning and cosmopolitan
associations and customs; but He was a Jew of purest blood and upbringing,
educated in all Jewish customs and ideas, and subjected to the ordinary Jewish
influences, never visiting other lands, and rarely speaking to any but His own
countrymen. So far as we know. He made no inquiries into the state of other
countries, and read no books to inform Himself; He did not send emissaries to
Rome, inviting men to consider His claims; He made no overtures of any kind to
men at a distance; — that is to say. He did not present Himself as a grown tree
branching friendly outwards, to which might flock the birds of the air which had
been driven out by the winter of their own land, and had wandered far in search
of food, and were weary from their long flight.

Even among His own people, from whom He might have expected a hearty welcome and
loyal advocacy, He met with either contemptuous neglect or positive opposition.
He obtained no recognized standing, even among the Jews. Those who formed the
opinions of society pronounced Him an impostor, and the people were so
completely convinced by them, that they clamored for His death. The few who were
attached to Him, and who thoroughly believed in His sincerity and spiritual
greatness, persistently misunderstood the essential parts of His purpose and
teaching. They could not, even to the last, rid their minds of the natural
impression that His being crucified as a malefactor was the end of all their
hopes. And is it not probable that even Jesus Himself, as He was ignominiously
hurried to His death by a handful of Roman soldiers, may have been tempted to
think, What is there in this to regenerate a world? Will such an everyday
incident even be remembered next Passover? Certainly, so far as appearances
went, and in the judgment of all who saw and were interested, His kingdom was at
that time comparable to anything but a firmly-rooted and flourishing tree.

After the resurrection of Christ, His kingdom became slightly more visible, but
its prospects must still have seemed extremely doubtful. A handful of men, none
of them having much weight in the community, or being in any way remarkable,
compose the force which is to conquer the world. To win a single soul to an
unpopular cause is difficult, but these men were summoned to the task of
converting all nations. They had no ancient institutions, no well-tried methods,
no strong associations, no funds, no friends to back them. On the contrary,
everything seemed banded against them. Teachers, who disagreed in all else,
combined to scorn the folly of the cross; emperors, who would allow every other
form of religion, could not tolerate that of Jesus. Everywhere the world was
already preoccupied by ancient and jealously-guarded religions, by habits, and
ideas, and traditions adverse to the spirit of Christ. The instrument, too,
which was to convert the world seemed as powerless as the men who were to wield
it. They were to tell of Jesus, of His life, His death. His resurrection. Was it
not vain to expect that remote and barbarous races would become so attached to a
person they had never seen, that they would govern their passions and amend
their lives for His sake? Was it likely that, on the word of unknown men, the
person of an unknown man should become the center of the world, commanding the
adherence of all, and imparting to all the most powerful influences?

2. But at the very moment when our Lord was most conscious of the poor figure
His kingdom made in the eyes of men, He was absolutely confident of its final
greatness, because, small as it was, it was of the nature of seed. It had a
vital force in it that nothing could kill; a germinating and expansive power
which would only be quickened by opposition. His own death, the obscurity and
limitation to which His cause was at first subjected, were not, He knew, the
first symptoms of permanent oblivion, but were only the sowing of the seed. He
was no more anxious than the farmer is who, for the first week or two, sees no
appearance of his plants above ground. Our Lord knew that, could He only get His
kingdom accepted at even.one small point of earth, the growth would inevitably
and in good time follow.

There are certain human qualities, ideas, utterances, and acts which are vital
and must grow. They have in them an expansive, living energy; they sink into the
hearts and minds of men, and propagate a lasting influence. What, then, is the
vital element in Christianity? What is it that has given permanence and growth
to the kingdom of Christ? What did Christ plant that no one else has planted?
What is it that keeps Him in undying remembrance, and gathers from each new
generation fresh subjects for His kingdom? It is not the wisdom and beauty of
His teaching. That might have led us to immortalize His words by reprinting and
quoting them. Neither is it solely the holiness of His life, or the love He
showed. These might have kindled in us admiration, but could never have prompted
that real allegiance which is implied in a kingdom. But it is chiefly the
revelation of God in Him which draws men to Him. In His death and resurrection
we get assurance of Divine love and Divine power abiding in Him. It is God in
Him that draws us. We cleave to him, because through Him we are lifted to God
and to eternity. In His brief career He gives us a perception of the reality of
the spiritual world, the permanence of the individual, and the nearness and love
of God, which nothing else gives us. In Him men meet a God satisfying all their
expectations; so devoted to their interests, that He lives and dies with them,
and for them; so hopeful regarding them, that He proclaims pardon and newness of
life to sinners; so victorious over all the evils weighing upon man, that He
conquers death itself, and throws open to all the gates of life everlasting. The
seed is the highest product of the plant: the fruit is but the accompaniment of
the seed; it is into the seed that the plant each year puts its life. So in man,
the ripest product of the individual, the actions or words into which he gathers
up his whole character and strength, — it is these which are vital and
germinant. The vital element in the life of Christ cannot be mistaken: it was,
in a word, the Divine Son giving Himself for us; God expressing the fulness of
Divine Sympathy and sacrifice in our behalf — a seed, surely, from which great
things must spring.

3. Our Lord points to the eventual greatness of His kingdom. The despised seed,
ground into the soil under the heel of contempt and hatred, will become a tree,
whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations. The disciples do not seem
to have gathered from this parable the encouragement which was laid up for them
in it; but an instructed onlooker might have admonished the crucifiers of the
Lord that they were fulfilling His words — “That cross which you are setting up,
and which you will take down before the sun is set, shall stand in the thought
of countless millions as the point of earth most illuminated by the light of
heaven; that blood which you are shedding, as you would pour water out of your
way on the ground, is to be recognized by your fellow-men and by God as
precious, as that by which the souls of men are redeemed and purified.” The
kingdom of heaven has indeed become a tree. It would be difficult to count even
the greater branches of it; difficult to number the various twigs which depend
upon the central stem; impossible to count the leaves or to form an idea of the
fruit which, through past years, has gradually ripened and fallen from it. This
religion which emanated from a country so detested by the surrounding nations
that they might be expected to say of it, as the Jews themselves of Nazareth,
“Can any good thing come out of Judea?”— this religion propagated by Jews who
had become Christians, so that being excommunicated by their own countrymen, and
naturally hated by all other people, they seemed the most unlikely instruments
to commend new ideas; this religion which could offer no high posts or secular
rewards, and numbered few wise, wealthy, or noble among its adherents; which
would not tolerate other religions, and yet proclaimed doctrines which excited
the ridicule of the educated; which demanded from all alike, not only an
absolutely pure morality and a repulsive and humbling self-renunciation, but a
newness of spirit impossible to the natural man; this religion which seemed to
have everything against it, which seemed like a sickly child which it was
scarcely worth calling by a name to be remembered as a living thing, — this has
grown to be the greatest of all powers for good in the world. The seed
determines the character of all that springs from it; the quality of the fruit
and its abundance may vary with the nature of the soil and with the presence or
absence of careful cultivation and other advantages, but the tree will still be
recognizable as of that kind to which the seed belonged. And as the seed of the
kingdom of heaven was love and holiness and Divine power, so have similar fruits
been borne by men wherever the kingdom has come. The outmost branch, looking in
an opposite direction from the distant branches on the other side of the tree,
and apparently quite dissociated from these branches, is still identified with
them by the fruit it bears. Wherever in all these past ages, and in all the
scattered countries of Christendom, there has been a Christ-like life; wherever
sinners have been drawn to love God and hate their sin through the knowledge of
the cross; wherever in hope of a blessed immortality men have borne the sorrows
of time without bitterness, and committed their dead to the grave in expectation
of a life beyond, — there the seed Christ sowed has been showing its permanent
vitality. The figure of the tree inevitably suggests other considerations
regarding the Church, besides those which are directly taught in the parable.
The tree, with its single stem and countless branches, is only too true a
picture of the diverging belief and worship of those who own a common root in
Christ. Sometimes, indeed, one is tempted to compare the Church to one of those
trees in which the branches diverge as soon as they appear above ground, so that
you cannot tell whether the tree is really one or many. In some of its aspects,
again, the church resembles the huge tree that stands on the village green,
looking benignly down on the joys of the young, and giving shade and shelter to
the aged, seeing generation after generation drop away like its own leaves, but
itself living through all with the freshness of its early days; its lower bark
only marked by the ambition of those who have sought to identify their now
scarcely legible names with its undecaying life, but whose work has after all
not entered into the life of the tree, but only marred its external hull. Again,
we see that some of the lowest, earliest grown branches are quite dead or
drooping; that Christianity has passed from the people among whom it first found
root, and that satyrs dance where the praises of Christ were once sung. It would
almost seem as if there were a melancholy accuracy in the figure used in the
parable, and that the tree, having once attained its full dimensions, grows no
more. After some years the rapid growth which was so striking in the young tree
is no longer discernible. It maintains equal or perhaps stronger life, but
spring after spring you look in vain for any discernible increase in size. But
certain it is that this plant which Christ planted has shown vitality, drawing
nutriment from every soil in which it has been tried, and assimilating to its
own life and substance all that is good in the soil, using the faculties and
accomplishments, the literary or artistic or commercial leanings and gifts of
the various races so as to further the true welfare of men; gathering strength
from sunshine and storm alike, cherishing a hidden life through the long winters
when every branch seemed hopelessly dead, and drawing supplies of vitalizing
moisture from sources beyond the ken of man when the scorching heats threatened
to wither up every living leaf. The tree is growing now, gradually absorbing
into itself all the widening thoughts of men, and by the chemistry of its own
life extracting nutriment from criticism, from philosophy, from research, from
social and political movements, from everything that forms the great stirring
human world in which it is rooted; not afraid to stand out in the open and face
the day, but gaining vigor from every brisker air that tosses its branches. This
parable was spoken for the encouragement of the disciples: it is needed still
for the encouragement of all who are interested in the extension of Christ’s
kingdom. In many respects our outlook is even more hopeless than that of the
first disciples. The novelty, the first enthusiasm, the external signs, are all
gone; the solidarity of the Church is also gone, and in its place we have to
overcome the discrediting exhibitions of discord and internal conflict, as well
as the weakening influence of skepticism, and the slowly corroding materialism
that is destroying the very foundations of religion. The missionary enterprise
of the first disciples seems never to have extended very far from the
Mediterranean coasts. They were unaware of the vast multitudes beyond, and of
the solidity and attractiveness of some of the religions already in occupation;
whereas to the eye of the modern Church populations are disclosed, numbered by
hundreds of millions, and adhering to religions more ancient and more outwardly
impressive than our own. Our zeal, too, is slackened by the very fact that all
this yet remains to be done; that Christianity should have been growing for
nearly two thousand years, and that it has not yet convinced all men of its
superiority, and that in places where it has been most ardently received it has
borne fruit of which every man must feel ashamed. To all persons who are
disheartened, whether by the apparent fruitlessness of their own efforts or by
the slow growth of the Church at large, this parable says. You must measure
things not by their size, but by their vitality. What you can do may be very
little, and once it is done there may be no sign of results; but if you put
yourself into it, if it come from the heart — a heart whose earnestness and hope
are the result of contact with Christ — then fruit will one day be borne. You
must have some imagination. You must have some faith that will enable you to
wait patiently for fruit. Make sure that what you sow is good seed; that what
you teach your children is true; that what you strive to introduce into society
is sound and helpful; that the ideas you propagate, the charity you support, the
industry you seek to advance, are all such as belong to the kingdom of Christ,
and you may be sure your labor is not lost. You may not see the results of your
actions. You may not see full grown the trees of your planting, but your
children will lie under their shade, and dream of your sheltering forethought,
and strive to fulfil your best purposes. Do not be discouraged because all is
not yet done on earth, and much remains for you to do; do not be discouraged
because there is room for sacrifice and faith, devotedness, and wisdom, and
love, and skill. It is not hot-house results we seek to produce, nor, like the
Indian jugglers, to make a tree visibly shoot up by sleight of hand. What we
look for is the real growth of human good, and this can be accomplished by no
rapid and magical processes, but only by the patient nutrition of the soil by
all that is truest and deepest in human nature, and by all that is most real and
most testing in human effort. Honestly seek the growth of this tree, and be not
too greatly dismayed by the portentous difficulties of the task. “He that
observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not
reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, even so thou knowest
not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the
evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not whether shall prosper,
either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” In conclusion,
is it not relevant to ask whether we have joined the Christian Church, because
it is large, or because it is living? Simon in the temple held all Christendom
in his arms, and yet felt sure the redemption of the world was nigh. Is your
faith like his? Is it the Person of Christ and not what has grown round His
person that you cleave to? Do you find that in Christ which compels you to say
that, though you were the only Christian, yourself the Church visible, you must
abide by Him? Is there some independence in your choice, some individuality in
your experience? Can you say, with some significance, “I know Him in whom I have
believed”? or do you but adopt the fashion that prevails, and feel the propriety
and safety of going with the majority? In any case it is well that you recognize
that there is this tree planted by the Lord Himself, and still growing upon
earth. There is upon earth a society of men not always easy to find, but in true
sympathy with Him; a progress of human affairs to which He gave the initial
impulse. There is on earth a tree, the seed of which is His own life, whose
growing bulk embodies, from generation to generation, all that exists in the
world of His purpose and work. The good He intended for men He deposited in that
seed. He came to impart to men permanent blessings. He saw our condition,
recognized what we needed, and introduced into the world what He knew would
achieve the happiness of every one of us.


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  CHAPTER 26: 03.04.     THE LEAVEN
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THE LEAVEN

Matthew 13:33 This parable directs attention to two points connected with the
spread of Christianity. It illustrates —

1. First, the kind of change which Christianity works in the world; and 2.
Second, the method by which this change is wrought.

I. First, our Lord here teaches that the change which He meant to effect in the
world was a change, not so much of the outward form, as of the spirit and
character of all things. The propagation of His influence is illustrated not by
the figure of a woman taking a mass of dough and baking it up into new loaves of
a shape hitherto unseen; but by the figure of a woman putting that into the
dough which alters the character of the whole mass. She may set on the table
loaves that are to all appearance the same as the old, but no one will taste
them without perceiving the difference. The old shapes are retained, the
familiar marks appear still on the loaves, but it is a different bread. The
appearance remains the same, the reality is altered. The form is retained, but
the character is changed.

There are two ways in which you may revolutionize any country or society. You
may either pull down all the old forms of government, or you may fill them with
men of a different spirit. If an empire is going to ruin, you may either change
the empire into a republic, or you may put the right man in the office of
emperor. If any society or club or association has become effete and a nuisance,
doing harm instead of good, you may reform it either by revising its
constitution, making new laws and regulations, and so making it a new society,
or you may fill its official positions with men of a right spirit, leaving its
form of constitution untouched. A watch stops, and somebody tells you it needs
new works, but the watchmaker tells you it only needs cleaning. A machine
refuses to work, and people think the construction is wrong, but the skilled
mechanic pushes aside the ignorant crowd and puts all to rights with a few drops
of oil. “Your bread is unwholesome,” says the public to the baker, and he says,
“Well, I’ll send you loaves of a new shape;” but the woman of the parable
follows the wiser course of altering the quality of the bread.

Few distinctions are of wider application, few need more careful pondering by
all of us whether in our social, political, or religious capacity. Many of us
take a huge interest in the institutions of our country, and are ready to lay
our finger on this and that as needing reform. This parable should therefore
haunt the ear, and always suggest the question: Is this or that institution
radically bad? or, supposing good and wise men were working it, would it not
serve a good purpose? What is wanted in the world is not new forms, but a new
spirit in the present forms. New forms, new institutions, new regulations, new
occupations, new trades, new ways of occupying our time, new customs are really
as little to the purpose as putting the old make of bread into new shapes. What
our Lord by this parable warns us to aim at and to look for is rather the
possession which Christian feeling and views take of previously existing
customs, institutions, relationships, occupations, than the new facts and habits
to which Christian feeling gives birth. It is the regenerating rather than the
creative power of Christ’s Spirit that He dwells upon. His Spirit, He says, does
not require a new channel to be dug for it; its fuller stream may flood the old
banks, may wear out corners here and there, may break out in new directions, but
in the main, the channel remains the same. The man has the same arteries, but
now they are filled with health-giving blood. The lump is the same lump, and
done up into the same old shapes, but it is all leavened now. The coming of the
kingdom of heaven does not then consist in an entire alteration of human life,
as we now know it. The kingdom of heaven comes not with observation, but is
within you. It does not alter empires into republics, it does not abolish work
and give us all ease, it does not find fault with the universal frame of things,
or refuse to fit itself in with the world as it is; but it accepts things as it
finds them, and leavens all it touches. As the outward forms of the world’s
business, its offices and dignities, its need of work and ways of working, would
be little altered if all men were suddenly to become absolutely truthful or
absolutely sober, so the change which Christ proposed to effect was of an
inward, not of an outward kind. It was to be first in the individual, and only
through the individual on society at large. Our Lord in establishing a kingdom
on earth, did not intend to erect a vast organization over-against the world,
but He meant to introduce into the world itself a leaven which should rule and
subdue all to His own Spirit. The Church itself therefore may become too
visible, has become in many respects too visible, and has thus unfortunately
succeeded in at once separating itself from the world as a distinct and alien
institution, and becoming entirely “of the world,” by imitating the
institutions, the ambitions, the power, the show of the world. It has learned to
measure its success very largely by the bulk it occupies in the eyes of men, by
its well-ordered services, its creeds and laws and courts; and it has too much
forgotten that its function is of quite another kind, namely, to be hidden among
the flour.

2. Secondly, this parable pointedly directs attention to the precise method by
which the kingdom of heaven is to grow; or, as we should more naturally say, by
which the whole world is to be Christianized. To one who considers the probable
future of any new or young force in the world, to one who stands beside the
cradle of a new power and speculates on its future, there will occur several
ways in which it may possibly prevail and attain universality. It may so commend
itself to the common sense of men, or it may so appeal to their regard to their
own interests, as to win universal acceptance. Railways, banks, insurance
companies, do not need statutes compelling men to use them; they win their way
by their own intrinsic advantages. There have been governments so wisely
administered, that men not naturally subject to them have sought to be taken
under their protection for the sake of advantages accruing. Some kingdoms have
thus been largely extended; but more commonly they have been extended by the
sword, by the strong hand. Not by this latter method would Christ have His
religion propagated. Yet the idea that men can somehow be compelled to accept
the truth, seems never to be quite eradicated from the human mind. Very slowly
is it recognized that to support a religion by any kind of force instead of by
reason alone, is to admit that reason condemns it. The methods of compulsion
change; the coarser forms of compulsion, the sword and the stake, give place;
but more disguised and less startling forms of compulsion remain, equally
opposed to the spirit of Christ. The spread of Christianity, then, is
illustrated in this parable, not by the propagation of fruit trees, nor even by
the sowing of seed, but by the leavening of a mass of dough. Religion, that is
to say, spreads not by a fresh sowing in each case, but by contagion. No doubt
the e is a direct agency of God in each case, but God works through natural
means; and the natural means here pointed at is personal influence. And it is
not the agency of God in the matter which our Lord wishes here to illustrate,
and therefore He says nothing about it. He is not careful to guard Himself
against misrepresentation by completing in every utterance a full statement of
the whole truth, but presses one point at a time; and the point He here presses
is, that He depends upon personal influence for the spread of His Spirit. The
Church often trusts to massive and wealthy organizations, to methods which are
calculated to strike every eye; but according to the Head of the Church His
religion and spirit are to be propagated by an influence which operates like an
infectious disease, invisible, without apparatus and pompous equipment,
succeeding all the better where it is least observed. Our Lord bases His
expectation of the extension of His Spirit throughout the world not upon any
grand and powerful institutions, not on national establishments of religion or
any such means, but on the secret, unnoticed influence of man upon man. And
indeed there exists no mightier power for good or evil than personal influence.
Take even those who least intend to influence you and seem least capable of it.
The little child that cannot stand alone will work that tenderness in the heart
of a ruffian which no acts of parliament or prison discipline have availed to
work. The wail of the suffering infant will bring a new spirit into the man whom
the strongest police regulations have tended only to harden and make more
defiant and embittered. By his confidence in your word, the child is a more
effectual monitor of truthfulness than the keen or suspicious eye of the grown
man who distrusts you: the child’s recklessness of to-morrow, his short
sadnesses and soon recovered smiles, his ignorance of the world and the world’s
misery, are the proper balance of your anxiety, and insinuate into your heart
some measure of his own freshness and hope. Or what can reflect more light upon
God’s patience with ourselves than the unwearying love and repeated forgiveness
that a child demands, and the long doubting with which we wait for the fruit of
years of training? So that it is hard to say whether the parent has more
influence on the child, or the child on the parent? Or take those who have been
pushed aside from the busy world by ill-health or misfortune — have not their
unmurmuring patience, their Christian hope, their need of our compassion, done
much to mold our spirits to a sober and chastened habit? have they not imparted
to us the spirit of Christ, and cherished within us a true recognition of what
is essential and what accidental, what good and what evil in this world?

What, then, does the parable teach us regarding the operation of this influence?
It teaches us, first, that there must be a mixing; that is to say, there must be
contact of the closest kind between those who are and those who are not the
subjects of Christ. Manifestly, no good is done by the leaven while it lies by
itself; it might as well be chalk or anything else. It must be mixed with the
flour. So must Christians be kneaded up together with all kinds of annoying and
provoking and uncongenial people, that the spirit of Christ which they bear may
become universal. Had our Lord not eaten with publicans and sinners; had He
sensitively shrunk from the rough and irreverent handling He received among
coarse men who called Him “Samaritan,” “devil,” and “sot;” had He secluded
Himself in the appreciative household of Bethany; had He not made Himself the
most accessible Person, little of His Spirit would have passed into other men.
Other things being equal, the effect of Christian character varies with the
thoroughness of the mixing. It is so with all personal influence. The depth of
the love, the closeness of the intimacy, the frequency and thoroughness of the
intercourse, is the measure of the effect produced. In a country such as our
own, in which the population is dense, and in which an unobstructed
communication subsists between man and man, things constantly tend to equalize;
and what yesterday was the property of one person is today enjoyed by thousands.
And precisely as a fashion or a contagious disease passes from man to man, with
inconceivable and sometimes appalling rapidity, so does evil or good example
propagate itself with as certain and speedy an increase. And this it does all
the more effectually because insensibly; because we do not brace ourselves to
resist this subtle atmospheric influence, nor wash our hands with any
disinfectant provided against these imperceptible stains. There is no quarantine
for the moral leper, nor any desert in the moral world where a man can be evil
for himself alone. For this mixing is provided for in various ways. It is
provided for by nature which sets us in families and mixes us up in all the
familiarities and intimacies of domestic life; and by society which compels us,
in the prosecution of our ordinary callings, to come into contact with one
another of a close and influential kind. One part of the world is “mixed “with
other parts by commerce, by colonization, by conquest, so that there exists a
ceaseless giving and taking of good and evil. One generation is mixed with
others by reading their history and their literary remains, and by inheriting
their traditions and their long established usages. So that whether we will or
no this mixing goes on, and we can as little prevent certain results arising
from this intercourse as we can prevent our persons from giving off heat when we
enter an atmosphere colder than ourselves. We find it to be true that “The
world’s infectious: few bring back at eve Immaculate the manners of the morn.

Something we thought is blotted: we resolv’d, Is shaken: we renounced, returns
again.

Each salutation may slide in a sin Unthought before, or fix a former flaw.” But
beyond nature’s provision, beyond the unavoidable contact with our fellow-men to
which we are all compelled, there are voluntary friendships and associations
into which we enter, and casual meetings which we unawares are thrown into. Such
casual and passing acquaintanceships have very frequently illustrated the truth
of this parable, and have been the means of imparting the Spirit of Christ in
very unlikely quarters. And it would help us to use wisely such accidental
opportunities if we bore in mind that if there are to be any additions made to
the kingdom of Christ, these additions are chiefly to be made from among those
careless, worldly, antagonistic persons who do not at present respond to any
Christian sentiments. But besides the mingling which nature, and what may be
called accident, afford, there are connections we form of our own choice, and
companies we enter which we might, if we chose, avoid. There is a borderland of
amusements, occupations, duties, common to the godly, and the ungodly, and for
the regulation of our conduct, in respect to such intercourse, this parable
suffices. Can the occupation be leavened, and can it be leavened by us? Can it
be engaged in in a right spirit, and are we sure enough of our own stability to
engage in it with benefit? A man of strong physique may scathelessly enter a
room out of which a weaker constitution would inevitably carry infection. And it
is foolish to argue that because some other person is none the worse of going to
this or that company, or engaging in this or that pursuit, therefore you would
not be the worse of it. You would not so argue if your entrance into an infected
house was in question. But there is also a culpable refusal to mix, as well as
an inconsiderate eagerness to do so. Most of us shrink from the responsibility
of materially influencing the life of another person. Ask a man for advice about
any important matter, and you know what devices he will fall upon to avoid
advising you. Many of us are really afraid of incurring the hazardous
responsibility of making a man a Christian. Two opposite feelings dispose us to
shrink from mingling with all kinds of people. One is a feeling of hopelessness
about others. They seem so remote from the acknowledgment of Christ’s rule, that
we feel as if they could never be leavened. The parable reminds us, that while
no doubt it is impossible to leaven sand, so long as the meal remains meal it
may be leavened. The other feeling is one rather of despair about ourselves than
about others. We feel as if our influence could only do harm. We are afraid to
live out our inward life freely and strongly lest it injure others. This
feeling, however, should prompt us neither to seclude ourselves from society,
nor to behave in a constrained and artificial manner in society, but to renew
our own connection with the leaven till we feel sure our whole nature is
throughout renewed. If any one is exercising a healthy influence while we are
languid and incapable, it is simply because that other person is in connection
with Christ. That connection is open to us as well. The mixing being thus
accomplished, how is the process continued? Besides mingling with society and
joining freely in all the innocent ways of the world, what is a Christian to do
in order that his Christian feeling may be communicated to others? The answer
is, He is to be a Christian; not to be anxious to show himself a Christian, but
to be careful to be one. It has been wisely said that “the true philosophy or
method of doing good is, first of all and principally, to be good — to have a
character that will of itself communicate good.” This is the very teaching of
the parable, which says, “Be a Christian, and you must make Christians, or help
to make them. Be leaven, and you will leaven.” The leaven does not need to say,
I am leaven; nor to say that which lies next it, Be thou leavened. By the
inevitable communication of the properties of the leaven to that which lies
beside it, and by this again infecting what is beyond, the whole, gradually and
unseen, but naturally and certainly, is leavened. This illustration of the
leaven must, of course, not be too hard pressed, as if the parable meant that
only by the unconscious influence of character and not at all by the conscious
and voluntary influence of speech and action, the kingdom of Christ is to be
extended. Yet no one can fail to observe that the illustration of the parable is
more appropriate to the unconscious than to the intended influence which
Christians exercise on those around them. It is rather the all-pervading and
subtle extension of Christian principles than their declared and aggressive
advocacy that is brought before the mind by the figure of leaven. It reminds us
that men are most susceptible to the influence that flows from character. This
influence sheds itself off in a thousand ways too subtle to be resisted, and in
forms so fine as to insinuate themselves where words would find no entrance. A
man is in many circumstances more likely to do good by acting in a Christian
manner, than by drawing attention to the faults of others and exposing their
iniquity. The less ostentatious, the less conscious the influence exercised upon
us is, the more likely are we to admit it. And when we are compelled to reprove,
or to advise, or to entreat, this also must be in simplicity and as the natural
expression, not the formal and forced exhibition of Christian feeling. The words
uttered by a shallow-hearted and self-righteous Pharisee may by God’s grace turn
a sinner from the error of his ways; the lump of ice, itself chill and hard, may
be used as a lens to kindle and thaw other objects; but notwithstanding this, he
who does not speak with his whole character backing what he says, may expect to
fail. It is man that influences man; not the words or individual actions of a
man, but the complete character which his whole life silently reveals.

If then you sometimes reproach yourself for not exercising any perceptible
influence for good over some friend or child, if it disturbs you that you have
done less than you might have done by conversation or direct appeal, it may
indeed be quite true that you have thus fallen short of your duty; yet remember
that conduct often tells far more than talk, and that your conduct has certainly
told upon the secret thoughts of your friend, whereas were you to speak merely
for the sake of exonerating your conscience, the chances are, you would speak in
an awkward, artificial, and ineffective manner. That conversation is often the
most religious which in appearance is most secular; which concerns bills, and
cargoes, and investments, and contracts, and family arrangements, and
literature; and which, without any allusion to God, the soul, and eternity,
secretly impregnates the whole of human life with the Spirit of Christ. If that
only is to be reckoned religious conversation in which the topics of religion
are discussed, then religious conversation has commonly produced more heat and
bitterness and antagonism to Christ’s Spirit than any other.

While, then, direct address forms one great part of the means of leavening those
around you, it is to be borne in mind, that in the first place you must be what
you wish others to become. If not, then certainly nothing that you can say is at
all likely to compensate for the evil you may do by your character. It does not
need that you intend evil to any; it will be out whether you mean it or no. If
you are yourself evil, then most certainly you are making others evil. Can you
number the times that you have checked the utterance of Christian feeling in
those who knew they would find no response in you? Can you tell how many have
been confirmed in a sinful course by your winking at their faults, and have none
been led into sin by your removing the scruples of their innocence? Are you sure
that your example has never turned the balance the wrong way at some critical
hour of your neighbor’s life? Is there no one who can stand forward and charge
you with having left him in darkness about his duty, when you might have
enlightened him? with having made him easy in sin by your pleasant, affable,
unreproving demeanor towards him? Are there none who to all eternity will bear
the punishment of sins in which you were aiding and abetting; none whom you have
directly encouraged to evil, who would, but for you, have been clear of evil
thoughts, desires, and deeds of which they now are guilty; none in whose
punishment you might see the punishment of sins which were as much yours as
theirs, and the memory of which might seem sufficient, if that were possible, to
poison the very joys of heaven? Do not turn the warning of this parable aside by
the thought. Am I my brother’s keeper? Most assuredly you are responsible for
your own character, and for all its effects. If you are not doing good to
others, it is because there is something wrong in yourself. If you are not
leavening others, it is because you are yourself unleavened: for there is no
such thing as leaven that does not impart its qualities to that which is about
it. Can you confine the perfume to the flower, or restrict the light of the sun
to its own globe? Just as little can you restrain all Christian qualities within
your own person: something material, something essential to Christian character
is lacking if it be not influencing those about it.

It is a glorious consummation that this parable speaks of. It tells of a mixing
that is to go on till “the whole” is leavened. The Spirit of Christ is to
pervade all things. That Spirit is to take possession of all national
characteristics and all individual gifts. Every variety of quality, of human
faculty, temperament, and endowment, is to be Christianized, that all may serve
Christ. In His kingdom is to be gathered all that has ever served or gladdened
humanity: the freshness of childhood and its simplicity, the sagacity, gravity,
and self-command of age, the enterprise and capacity of manhood, the qualities
that suffering matures, and those that are nurtured by prosperity; all
occupations that have invited and stimulated and rewarded the energies of men,
all modes of human life, and all affections that conscience approves, all that
is the true work, joy, and glory, of our nature is to be pervaded with the
sanctifying, purifying, elevating leaven of Christ’s Spirit. And this is to be
achieved not otherwise than by personal influence. Is it possible that you
should have no desire to help in this? that you should be in the world of men
and not care to see it accomplishing this destiny? that you should know the
earnestness of Christ in this behalf, and never lift a finger or open your lips
to aid Him? Surely it will pain you to come to the end of life and have it to
reflect that not one soul has been effectually helped by you. Would you not save
many if by a wish you could lift them to the gate of heaven? Is it, then,
because of the little labor and sacrifice that are needed for this purpose that
you hold back from helping? Is there nothing you can do, is there nothing you
ought to do in the way of leavening some little bit of the great mass? Come back
yourselves to the leaven, cultivate diligently that fellowship with Christ
Himself, which is alone sufficient to equip you for this great calling. Make
sure of the reality of your own acceptance of His Spirit, and then whatever you
do, utter, touch, will all be leavened.


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  CHAPTER 27: 03.05.     THE HID TREASURE AND THE PEARL OF PRICE
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THE HID TREASURE AND THE PEARL OF PRICE Matthew 13:44-46

These two parables have one and the same object. They are meant to exhibit the
incomparable value of the kingdom of heaven. They exhibit this value not by
attempting to describe the kingdom or its various advantages, but by depicting
the eagerness with which he who finds it and recognizes its value, parts with
all to make it his own. This eagerness is not dependent on the previous
expectations or views or condition of the finder of the kingdom, but is alike
displayed whether the finder is lifted by his discovery out of acknowledged
poverty, or has his hands already filled with goodly pearls; whether he has no
outlook and hope at all, or is eagerly seeking for perfect happiness. The one
parable illustrates the eagerness of a poor man who lights upon the treasure
apparently by accident; the other illustrates the eagerness of a rich man whose
finding of the pearl of price is the result of carefully studied and long
sustained search. This difference in the two parables sets clearly before the
mind a distinction which is frequently apparent among those who become
Christians. Men naturally view life very differently, and take up from the first
very various attitudes towards the world into which we all have come. One person
is from the first quite at home in it, another slinks through it as if there
were nothing friendly or congenial to him here. One man seems to regard it as a
banqueting house which is to be made the most of ere the sun rise and dispel his
illusion, while another uses it as a battle-field where conquests are to be
made, and where all is to be done in grim earnest and strenuously with no
thought of pleasure. And as these parables indicate, there are men born with
placid and contented natures, others with eager, soaring, insatiable spirits;
some, in a word, are born merchants, others day-laborers. Some, that is, are
born with a noble instinct which never forsakes them, but prompts them to
believe that there is infinite joy and satisfaction to be found, and that it
shall be theirs: they cannot rest with small things, but are driven always
forward to more and higher. Others, again, never look beyond their present
attainment, cannot understand the restless ambition that weeps for more worlds,
have no speculation in them, no broad plan of life, nor much idea that any
purpose is to be served by it. They have the peaceful, happy industry which
makes the day’s labor easy, but not the enterprise which can plan a life’s work
and make every available material on earth subserve its plan. This difference,
when exhibited in connection with religion, becomes very marked. Looking upon
some men, you would say you don’t know how ever they are to be brought to
Christ, they are so thoroughly at home and at rest in their daily business, and
this seems to afford them so much interest, satisfaction, and reward that you
cannot fancy them so much as once reflecting whether something more is not
needed. They seem so peculiarly fitted for this world, you can fancy them going
on in the same sphere forever. Of others, again, you are perpetually wondering
how they have not long ago found what they have been so long seeking; you know
that, employ themselves as they will in this world, their inward thought is
writing vanity on all this world gives them — they crave a spiritual treasure.
In the first of these two parables, then, we see how the kingdom of heaven is
sometimes found by those who are not seeking it. The point of this part of the
parable and its distinction from the other seems to lie in this, that while the
man was giving a deeper furrow to his field, intent only on his team, his
plowshare suddenly grated on the slab that concealed or rung upon the chest that
contained the treasure, or turned up a glittering coin that had fallen out in
the hasty burial of the store. Or he may have been sauntering through a
neighbor’s field, when his eye is suddenly attracted by some sign which makes
his heart leap to his mouth and fixes him for the moment to the spot, because he
knows that treasure must be there. He went out in the morning thinking of
nothing less than that before nightfall his fortune would be made — suddenly,
without effort or expectation of his, he sees untold wealth within his grasp. He
knows nothing of the history of the treasure — does not know on whose feet these
bright anklets gleamed in the dance, knows none of the touching memories that
are associated with that signet ring, nothing of the long hard strife by which
these gold-pieces were acquired, nor of the disaster which tore them from the
reluctant hand of the possessor. It is not his blood that has dyed the gold on
that jewel-hilted scimitar. He can imagine the careworn man when trouble and war
overran the land, stealing out in the darkness and making his treasure secure,
and marking it by signs which, alas he was never again to note; but he knows
nothing of him, knew nothing of him. Ages before, this treasure had been hid;
for him it had been prepared without any intention or labor of his, and now
suddenly he lights upon it; out of poverty he to his own astonishment steps into
wealth, and his whole life is changed for him without hope or effort of his own.

So, says our Lord, is the kingdom of heaven. Suddenly, in the midst of other
thoughts a man is brought face to face with Christ, and while earning his daily
bread and seeking for no more than success in life can give him, unexpectedly
finds that eternal things are his. Christ is found of them that sought Him not.
Is it not often so? The man has begun life not thinking that any very great
thing can be made of it, as little as the plowman expects to be lord of the
manor, and to own the horses, lands, and comforts of the proprietor. He begins
with the idea that if he is careful, diligent, and favored by circumstances,
life may be pleasant. He has a prospect of a decent, comfortable livelihood, or,
at the best, of a good-going business, with margin of leisure for friendly
intercourse, the reading of pleasant literature, and so on. He is confident he
will marry happily, and live and see good days. In other words, he has extremely
modest expectations of what life can do for him: has no soaring anticipations of
“the ampler aether, the deviner air,” does not recognize his own capacity nor
the size he may grow to, but, like the child for whom the world can do no more
if he is promised some favorite toy, fancies that no better thing can come to
him than houses, lands, wife and children, friendships and prosperity. Or if he
once had visitings of a higher, ampler hope, and seemed to see that round and
beyond the successes of business and the common pleasures of life there lay a
limitless ocean of feeling and of thought, — worlds upon worlds, like the starry
unfathomable firmament, in which the soul might find expanse and joy forever, —
these visions have been wiped out by the coarse hand of some early sin, or have
been worn from the surface of the mind by the hard traffic of the world; and now
what the shriveled creature seeks is possibly but the accomplishment of a daily
routine, possibly the attainment of some poor ambition, or the wreaking of a low
revenge, or triumph over a rival who has defeated him, or possibly not even
anything so definite as that. He had a vision of a life which might fulfil high
aims, which might be ennobled and glorified throughout by true and pervading
fellowship with God, he once was confident that what the human imagination could
conceive of good, that, and far more than that, was possible to the human
nature, and to every man who had it; but that bright vision has passed as the
morning, all aglow with light and freshness, is quenched in rain and cloud and
gloomy wretchedness.

This, then, is in point of fact the condition of many a man as he passes through
life — he has no conception of the blessedness that awaits him, he has as little
hope of any supreme and complete felicity as the man of the parable had any
expectation of lighting upon a hid treasure. We only think of what we can make
of life, not of the wealth God has laid in our path. But suddenly our steps are
arrested; circumstances that seem purely accidental break down the partition
that has hemmed us in to time, and we see that eternity is ours. We thought we
had a house, 100 acres of land, £1000 well invested, and we find we have God. We
were comforting ourselves with the prospect of increased salary, of ampler
comforts and advantages, and a voice comes ringing through our soul, “all things
are yours, for ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” How it is that the eyes are
now opened to this treasure, we can as little tell as the plowman who has driven
his slow steers over that same field since first he could guide the plow but has
never till this day seen the treasure. A few words casually dropped, a sentence
read in an idle moment, some break in our prosperous course, some pause which
allows the mind to wander in unaccustomed directions, — one cannot say what is
insufficient to bring the wandering and empty soul to a settled possession of
the kingdom of heaven, for the treasure seems to be his before he looks for it,
before he feels his need of it, before has taken thought or steps about it. This
morning he was content with what a man can have outside of God’s kingdom: this
evening everything outside that kingdom has lost its value and is as nothing.
The man who is lost in mist on a wild hill thinks himself exceptionally well off
if he can find a sheepfold to give him shelter, and is thankful if he can see
two steps before him and can avoid the precipice; but suddenly the sun shines
out, the mist lifts, and he sees before him a boundless prospect, bright placid
dwellings of men, and his path leading down to the shining valley with all its
stir of life, and now what comforted and sufficed him before is all forgotten.

You will not fail in passing to draw the inference from this presentation of the
manner of finding the kingdom, that conversions which have taken place quite
unexpectedly and with great ease on the part of the converted person, need not
therefore be insufficient and hollow. We are very apt to think that because the
kingdom of heaven is so great a treasure a man should spend much labor in
attaining it — that as the acceptance of Christ is the most important attainment
a man can make, there ought to be some proportionate effort and expectancy on
his part — that so great a treasure is not to be made over to one who is not
caring for it or thinking of it. But this parable shows us that there may be a
finding without any previous seeking, and that the essential thing is, not
whether a man has been seeking, and how long, and how earnestly — no, but
whether a man has found. The man in the parable would not have found more in
that spot had he been seeking more and seeking it elsewhere all his days; the
buried money was not accumulating interest while he was spending years in the
search. The very same treasure may be found by the man who has grown gray in the
quest of treasure, and by the child who plays in the field; by the alchemist who
has spent his life in examining the boasted tests for finding treasure, and by
the laboring man who has never heard of such tests and does not dream of finding
sudden wealth. The question is, Does a man know the value of what has turned up
before him, and is he so in earnest as to sell all for it? Let us not hesitate
to believe that in one hour some heedless person has found what we have all our
life been seeking, if only he shows his appreciation of the treasure by parting
with all for it. The second parable introduces us to the other, the higher type
of man, the merchantman — the man who has not moderate expectations, who refuses
ever to be satisfied until he has all, who is always meditating new ventures,
and to whom his present possessions are only of value as the means of acquiring
what is yet beyond his reach. He sets out with the inborn conviction or instinct
that there is something worth seeking, worth the labor and the search of a life,
something which will abundantly repay us, and to which we can wholly, freely,
and eternally give ourselves up, and on which we shall delight to spend our
whole strength, capabilities, and life. He refuses to be satisfied with the
moderate, often interrupted and often quenched joys of this life. He considers
physical health, the respect of his fellow-men, a good education, good social
position, and so forth, as all goodly pearls, but he is not going to sit down
satisfied with these things if there is anything better to be had. He refuses to
have anything short of the best. He goes on from one acquirement to another.
Money is good, he at first thinks, but knowledge is better. He parts with the
one to get the other. Friendship is good, but love is better, and he cannot
satisfy himself with the one, but must also have the other. The respect of his
fellows is good, but self-respect and a pure conscience are better. Human love
is a goodly pearl, but this only quickens him to crave insatiably for the love
of God. He must always have what is beyond and best. He refuses to believe that
God has created us to be partially satisfied, happy at intervals, content with
effort, believing ourselves blessed, disguising the reality of our condition by
the aid of fancy, or fleeing from it on the wings of hope, but to be partakers
of His own blessedness, and to enjoy eternally the sufficiency of Him in whom
are all things. This spirit of expectation is encouraged by the parable. It
stems to say to us, Covet earnestly the best gifts. Never make up your mind
merely to endure or merely to be resigned. Test what you have, and if it do not
satisfy you wholly, seek for something better. It is not for you who have a God,
a God of infinite resource and of infinite love, to accustom yourselves to
merely negative blessings and doubtful, limited conditions. You are to start
with the belief that you are not made for final disappointment, nor to rest
content with something less than you once hoped for or can now conceive, but
that there is somewhere, and attainable by you, the most unchallengeable
felicity — that there does exist a perfect condition, a pearl of great price,
and that there is but a question of the way to it, a question of search. You are
to start with this belief, and you are to hold to it to the end. Under no
compulsion or enticement, in the face of no disappointment, give up this
persuasion that goodly pearls are to be had, and to be had by you, that into
your life and soul the full sense of ample possession is one day to enter. When
you come up from a breathless eager search like the pearl-diver, spent and
bleeding, and with your hands filled only with mud or worthless shells; or when,
like the merchant, you have ventured your all, and are reduced to beggary and
thrown back to the very beginning, the great hope of your life being taken from
you; when all your days seem to have been wasted in fruitless search; when every
feeling within you rises up in mutiny against you, and like an ignorant crew
scorns your adventure, and would put about and run with the wind back from the
new world you seek, put them down; you have certainty on your side, simple,
sheer certainty, for “he that seeketh, findeth. The important point in these
parables is that which is common to both. The teaching which our Lord desires to
convey by their means regards the incomparable value of the kingdom of heaven,
and the readiness with which one who perceives its value will give up all for
it. He wishes us to consider the alacrity, gladness, and assurance with which
one who apprehends the value of the kingdom will and should put aside everything
which prevents him from making it his own. It is the usual, universal,
mercantile feeling. The merchant does not part with his other possessions
reluctantly when he wishes to obtain some better possession; he longs to get rid
of them; he goes into the investment about which he has satisfied himself with
thorough good will; he clears out as fast as he can from every other investment,
and endeavors to realize wherever he can that he may have his means free for
this better and more productive venture. People who do not know its value may
think the man mad selling out at low prices, at unsuitable times, at a loss; but
he knows what he is doing. I don’t care what I lose, he says to himself, for if
I can only get that field I shall have infinite compensation for my losses. As
soon as he has made up his mind that there is a treasure in the field, he is
filled with tremulous, sleepless eagerness, till he makes it his own. Day and
night his heart is there and his thoughts. His dreams are full of visions of
possession, or of heart-breaking failure. His waking hours are nervously
agitated by fears and schemings. He always finds that his road home lies past
the longed-for property. He is jealous of the very birds that hover over it. The
world is full of stories, and every day adds to the stock of stories that
display the ingenuity, craft, perseverance, consuming zeal, spent in winning the
bit of ground that is coveted. No labor is grudged, no sacrifice is shrunk from,
no present poverty is a trial if it brings the coveted property nearer. But is
this a similitude for the kingdom of heaven? Is it not rather a picture of what
ought to be than of what is? What we commonly find is that the kingdom of heaven
is not so esteemed. We see men hesitating to part with anything for it, looking
at it as a sad alternative, as a resort to which they must perhaps betake
themselves when too old to enjoy life any longer, as what they may have to come
to when all the real joy and intensity of life are gone, but not as that on
which life itself can best be spent. Entrance into the kingdom of heaven is
looked upon much as entrance into the fortified town is viewed by the rural
population. It may be necessary in time of danger, but they will think with
longing of the fields and homesteads they must abandon; it is by constraint, not
from love, that they make the change. In short, it is plain that men generally
do not reckon the kingdom of heaven to be of such value that they sacrifice
everything else for its sake. And it is of supreme importance that we should
clearly see the grounds on which we base our confidence that we ourselves are
exceptions to the general rule, if we have such a confidence. Have we really
shown any of that mercantile eagerness which the parable speaks of? Have we in
any way shown that the kingdom of heaven is first in our thoughts? What meaning
has this “selling of all” in our life? For it is to be observed that there
always is this selling wherever the kingdom is won. We have it not at all unless
we have given all for it. It is like a choice between living in the town or in
the country. We know we cannot do both, and in order to secure the advantages of
the one kind of life we must give up those of the other. So, living for
ourselves prevents us from living for God, and we cannot do the one without
wholly giving up the other. If you value the kingdom of God more than all else,
you will eagerly give up everything that prevents your winning it; but no mere
pretended esteem for it will prompt you to make the needful sacrifices, or will
actually give you possession. If you do not really desire the kingdom more than
aught else, then you have not found it. A feigned desire does not move us to
obtain anything. It is what you really love that you spend thought and effort
and money upon, not what you know you ought to love, and are trying to persuade
yourself to love. In conclusion, this parable lets fall these two words of
warning — 1. Make your calculations, and act accordingly. If you think the world
will pay you better than Christ, then serve it; give yourself heartily and
without compunction to it. Do not be so weak as to allow thoughts of things
eternal and a spiritual world you have forsaken to haunt you and spoil your
enjoyment. Make your choice and act upon it. If there is no better pearl, no
richer treasure than what you can win by devotion to business and living for
yourself, then by all means choose that, and make the most of it. But if you
think that Christ was right, if you foresee that what is outside His kingdom
must perish, and that He has gathered within it all that is worthy, all that is
enduring, all that is as it ought to be, if you know that you are not and can
never be blessed outside that kingdom, then let the reasonableness and
remonstrance of this parable move you to show some eagerness in winning that
great treasure. Make your choice and act upon it. Let your mind dwell on the
objects Christ has in view till you become enamored of them, and till they alone
draw you and command your effort. Strive to shake off the pitiful avarice, the
timorous anxieties, the cowardly self-seeking, the low, earthly, stupid aims of
the man who serves the world, and let the Spirit of Christ draw you into
fellowship with His aims, and give you a place in His kingdom.

2. If you have this treasure, do not murmur at the price you have paid for it.
If you have to forego earthly advancement, if you are inwardly constrained to
part with money which might have brought many comforts, if you have been drawn
to do things which are misconstrued and which make you feel awkward with your
friends, if self asserts itself again and again, and claims pleasure and gain
and gratification of various kinds, do not murmur at what the kingdom is costing
you, but rather count over your treasure, and see how much more you have than
you have lost. Having what worlds cannot buy, you will surely not vex yourself
by longing for this or that which the poorest spirited slave of this world can
easily obtain. Suppose you had the offer to barter your interest in the kingdom
for any or all of the possessions, advantages, and pleasures you are deprived
of, you would not do it; if, then, in your own judgment, and by your own
deliberate choice you have the better portion, it is scarcely fair to bewail
yourself as an ill-used person. Anything you have been required to give up for
the kingdom’s sake was either of no real value — it was the coin which, so long
as you kept it, could neither warn nor clothe you, and whose only use was to buy
valuables; or if of real value, the relinquishment of it has given you what is
of infinite value.


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  CHAPTER 28: 03.06.     THE NET
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THE NET Matthew 13:47-50 In the foregoing parables of the kingdom Jesus has
pointed out the causes of its success and failure, its mixed appearance in this
world, its surprising growth from small beginnings, and the method of its
extension. He now points to the result of all, when the great net shall be drawn
to shore, all the influences and efforts of this life ended and brought to a
pause; when there shall be “no more sea,” no fluctuation, no ebb and flow, no
tide of good resolve and progress sucked back from all it had reached, and
leaving a foul and slimy beach; especially no mingling of bad and good in an
obscure and confusing element; but decision and separation, a deliberate sitting
down to see what has been made of this world by us all, and a summing up on that
eternal shore of all gains and results, and every man’s aim made manifest by his
end.

There is obviously considerable resemblance between this parable of the net and
the parable of the tares. But the one is not a mere repetition of the other
under a different figure. Every parable is intended to illustrate one truth.
Light may incidentally be shed on other points, as you cannot turn your eye or
the light you carry on the object you wish to examine without seeing and
shedding light on other things as well. Now the one truth which is especially
enforced in the parable of the tares is that it is dangerous in the extreme to
attempt in this present time to separate the evil from the good in the Church:
whereas the one truth to which the parable of the net gives prominence is that
this separation will be effected by and by in its own suitable time. No doubt
this future separation appears in the parable of the tares also, but in that
parable it is introduced for the sake of lending emphasis to the warning against
attempting a separation now; in this parable of the net it is introduced with no
such purpose. A weeding process might very naturally suggest itself, indeed
always does suggest itself, to one looking over a hedge at a dirty field; but no
one watching the drawing of a net would dream of plunging in to throw out
worthless fish. Let the net be drawn; then, as a matter of course, the
separation will be made. The value of the take, which cannot yet be estimated,
will be ascertained by and by. The whole results of the work of Christ in the
world will then but not sooner be known.

Another point of distinction between the two parables is this, that while in the
one parable the springing of tares among the good corn is ascribed to the design
of an enemy, in the other the mixture of good and bad in the net is rather
exhibited as necessarily resulting from the nature of the case. In hunting, a
man can make his choice and pick out the finest of the herd, letting the rest
go; but in fishing with a net no such selection is possible; all must be drawn
to shore that happens to have been embraced within the sweep of the net. So in
sending out His servants to invite men to the kingdom, our Lord did not name
individuals to whom they were to go, and who should, from first to last, prove
themselves obedient to the word; He did not even name classes of persons or
races with whom they would be sure to find success, but He told them to go into
all the world and invite all men without distinction. The preachers of the
kingdom have no powers to make selections for God; and to say of one that he
will be, and of another that he will never be valuable to God. They are to cast
the net so as to embrace all, and leave the determination of what is bad and
what is good to the end.

Before endeavoring to extract from the parable its direct teaching, one cannot
fail to notice some more general ideas suggested by the figure used. We are, for
example, reminded that we are all advancing through life towards its final
issue. Our condition in this respect bears a close resemblance to fish enclosed
in a net. You have seen men dragging a river, fixing one end of the net, taking
the other across the whole stream, and then fetching a wide compass, and
enclosing in their net everything dead or alive, bad or good, from surface to
bottom. Or you have seen the same thing done in the sea, one net enclosing quite
a lake within itself, and gradually as it closes round the fish, and they find
that it is sunk to the sand and floated to the crest of the wave, you have
pitied their wild efforts to escape, and seen how sure a barrier these
imperceptible meshes are. At first, while the net is wide, they frisk and leap
and seem free, but soon they discover that their advance is but in one
direction, and when they halt they feel the pressure of the net. So is it with
ourselves — we must go on, we cannot breakthrough into the past, we cannot ever
again be at the same distance from the shore as we were last year, yesterday,
now. Yesterday, however delightful, you cannot live twice; eternity, however
distasteful, you are certainly going on to. This day you have less space and
scope than ever you had before, and every hour you spend, every action you do,
every pleasure you enjoy makes this little space less. You cannot make time
stand still till you shall resolve how to spend it. You cannot bring your life
to a pause while you make experiments as to the best mode of living. The years
you spend ill, you cannot receive again to spend well, the years spent in
indecision, in doubt, in selfish seclusion are spent, and cannot now be filled
with service of God and profit to your fellows. Your lifetime you have but once,
and each hour of it but once; and as remorselessly as the last night of the
convicted criminal is beat out and brings round the morning that is to look upon
his death, so are your lives running steadily out, never faster when you long
for to-morrow, never slower when you fear it, but ever with the same measured
and certain advance. Do what you will, make what plans you will, settle yourself
as fixedly in this life as you will, you are passing through and out of it, and
shall one day look on it as all past — forever past. By no will of our own have
we come into this life, but here we find ourselves and the net fallen behind us,
so that we must accept all the responsibilities of human life, and go on to meet
all its consequences.

Besides enclosure and inevitable passing on to a termination, the net suggests
the idea of entanglement. Looking at fish in a net you see many that are not
swimming freely, but are caught in the meshes and dragged on. The experience of
some persons interprets this to them. While all of us are drawing on together
towards eternity there are some who feel daily the pressure of the net. They
have got into circumstances which they would fain be out of but cannot. Their
position is not altogether of their own choosing, and they discharge its duties
because they must, not because they would. At some former period they were too
careless, or shortsighted, or irresolute; they exercised too little their right
to determine their own course, and they now suffer the bondage consequent on
this neglect.

If the conduct required of you by the position or connection into which you have
come be disapproved by your conscience, then you must somehow break through and
escape, else your soul will suffer detriment, and that in you which was good
when first you were entangled will be landed broken, bruised, and useless. But
if the conduct required be only disagreeable and humiliating and not sinful, you
may have to adjust yourself to your circumstances. Do not toss and struggle in
the net, but quietly set yourself to make the most of the condition you have
unfortunately brought yourself into. It may now be your duty to continue in a
position it was not your duty originally to enter. A wrong choice may have
brought you to a right thing. Do not, therefore, allow any feeling of the
awkwardness, restrictions, unsuitableness, or painfulness of your position, nor
any reflections on the folly that brought you into it, to fret you into
uselessness. Just because it seems in so many ways unsuitable, it may call out
deeper qualities in you, a patience which otherwise might have been undeveloped,
a knowledge of God and man, a meekness and strength, which enlarge and mature
your spirit.

Under very strange influences and forces are we passing onwards; by hopes and
ambitions, by sickness and watching, by anguish and mirth, by the forlorn
remembrance of a happy past and the sad forecasting of the future, by
occupations that hurry us on from day to day, and by longings that abide with us
through life and are never satisfied. And often we would fain escape from the
gentle compulsion by which God draws us to our end, and have to remind ourselves
that however entangled and tied up we are, and however prevented from our own
ways and directions, this present time is after all but the drawing of the net
and not the time of our use; that though now debarred from many pursuits we
think we might be useful in, and hurried past enjoyments that delight us, we are
passing to a shore where there is room and time enough for the fulfilment of
every human purpose and the exercise of every human faculty; that after all our
sins and follies, after all our pains and anxieties and difficulties, there does
most surely come the kingdom of heaven and its glorious liberty. Here we quickly
wax old, our freedom of choice and liberty of action are quickly taken from us,
we stretch forth our hands and another girds us and carries us whither we would
not; but there our youth shall be renewed with all its freedom from care, its
spring and energy, its fresh views of truth, its boldness to live and see good
days, its purpose for the life that lies before it unsullied; and it shall be
again as when “thou wast young and girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou
wouldest.” But these are not the points emphasized in the parable. The parable
sets the present mixture of good and bad in the kingdom of heaven or in the
Church over against the eventual separation.

I. First then, we have the truth that the net gathers “of every kind.” This is
the first thing that strikes one looking at a net drawn ashore — the confused
mass of dead and living rubbish and prize. Shells, mud, starfish, salt-smelling
weed, useless refuse of all kinds, are mingled with the fresh and wholesome fish
that lie gasping and floundering in the net. Of the bad there is every kind of
thing that can spoil the net and injure its contents; and of the good there is
every kind, small and great, coarse and fine. And until the net is fairly landed
it is impossible to say whether the weight is to be rejoiced in or not. This is
set before us as a picture of the Church of Christ as it now is. It embraces
every variety of character. At one time we are tempted to think that the mass of
professing Christians is but so much dead weight; at other times we measure the
success of the gospel by the mere numbers brought within the Church. The truth
is, we cannot yet say much about the success of the gospel. Occasionally indeed
there may be a gleam through the water that gives assurance of a large and fine
fish: there may be deeds done which draw the eye of every one, and unmistakably
prove that in the Church there are men after God’s own heart. We feel that of
some men the character and quality are already ascertained, and that it needs no
day of separation to tell us their worth. But there remains a vast mass about
which we can say little; nay, we know that in the Church there are foul,
lumpish, poisonous creatures. This is what our Lord anticipated, that while His
Church would attract men whom God would gather to Him with delight as being of
His own spirit, there would also be drawn to it a number of wretched creatures
who would go through life trying to hide from themselves that they love the
world much more than God, and who must in the end be thrown aside as fit for no
good purpose, as so much useless rubbish. This mixture arises from the manner in
which the kingdom of heaven is proclaimed among men. It is not proclaimed by
addressing private messages to selected and approved individuals, but publicly
to all. And it is so proclaimed because it is for men generally and not for any
special kind or class, and because God “would have all men to be saved.” The
recruiting sergeant watches for likely men and singles them out from the crowd;
but the kingdom of heaven opens its gates to all, because it has that which
appeals to humanity at large, and can make use of every kind of man who honestly
attaches himself to it. Our freedom of choice is left absolutely uncontrolled so
far as the outward offer of the gospel goes; it is not even biased by any
knowledge on our part that we are considered specially suitable for the work God
has to do. Christ’s kingdom gathers in not only those in whom there is a natural
leaning towards a devout life, or those who are of a susceptible temperament, or
those who are attracted by a life of self-sacrifice, but it gathers in “of every
kind.” You really cannot say who among your friends is most likely to become a
Christian, because men become Christians not from any apparent predisposition,
not because religion suits their idiosyncrasy, their individual mood and special
tastes, but because the kingdom of heaven satisfies human wants which are as
common to the race as hunger and thirst. But the kingdom being thus open to all,
many enter it for the sake of some of its advantages, while they remain at heart
disloyal, and are never carried out of themselves by a sense of its glory, and
are alien to that great movement for the lasting good of men which the kingdom
truly is. They have an external present attachment to the kingdom, but they do
not belong to it and are not in it heart and soul. But this mixture is at length
to give place. In the net, while we are in this world, all distinctions seem to
be made light of; in the end, on the shore, a final and real distinction is to
be exhibited and acted on. All are to pass through the hands of skilled
judgment. The angels sever the wicked from among the just, so that the just
alone are left in the net. The purpose of the net, of the draught, of the whole
ongoing of this world is at length seen to have been for the sake of the just.
Much bulkier, weightier, noisier, brighter colored, more curious things are
drawn up, but these are cast aside summarily — it was not to secure these the
net was drawn. The fishermen were not mere naturalists dragging for what is
curious and rare; not mere idlers fishing for sport and caring little for the
use of the result; not mere children amazed and delighted with every strange or
huge thing they land; but they have cast the net for a purpose, and whatever is
not suitable for this purpose is refuse and rubbish to them. The huge creature
that has been a terror to the deep, the lovely sea plant that has waved its
fruitless head in the garden of the sea — these are not twice looked at by the
fishermen. They are acting on an understanding that the net was drawn for a
purpose. And so it shall be in the end of the world. The end is not a mere
running down of the machinery that keeps the world going, it is not a mere
exhaustion of the life that keeps us all alive, it is not a hap-hazard cutting
of the thread, it is a conclusion, coming as truly in its own fit day and order,
as much in the fulness of time and because things are ripe for it, as the birth
of Christ came. It is the time of the gathering up of all things to completion,
when the few last finishing strokes are given to the work, that suddenly show
the connection of things which seemed widely separate, and reveal at once the
purpose and meaning of the whole. Men will then understand, what now scarcely
one can constantly believe, that it is God’s purpose that is silently being
accomplished, and that it is usefulness to Him that is the final standard of
value. The distinction which finally separates men into two classes must be real
and profound. It is here said to be our value to God. Are we useless to Him, or
can He make us serve any good purpose? Have we become so wholly demoralized by a
selfish, limited life, that we cannot cherish any cordial desire for the common
good, or enter into sympathy with purposes that do not promise profit or
pleasure to ourselves? You have some idea what the purposes of God are; you see
these purposes in the life and death of Christ; you know that in God’s purposes
that which contributes to the elevation of character takes precedence of what
merely secures outward comfort or present advantage; you recognize that His
Spirit delights in deeds of mercy, of self-sacrifice, of holy service — have
you, then, such qualities as would be helpful in carrying out such purposes? are
you already influential in society for good, helpful in extirpating vice and
crime, and in alleviating the wretchedness of disease and poverty? do your
sympathies and your thoughts run much towards such an expenditure of your
energies? have you the first requisite of His servants, such a participation in
His love for men, and such a zeal for the advancement of the race as wither
within you all isolating and debasing selfishness? The fish taken in the net are
disposed of by the fishermen, and are in their hands without choice or motion. A
minute before they were swimming hither and thither, moving themselves by their
own energies; now they are dealt with according to a judgment not their own. The
situation is not more novel to the fishes than it will be to us. Here in this
world we are conscious of a power to choose our own destiny, to change our
character, and become different from what we are. We are not yet all we ought to
be, but we can discard evil habits, repress base motives, and become at length
suitable for God’s work, harmonious with Him through all our being. So we
flatter ourselves. But there comes a time, when, whatever we are, that we shall
forever be; when we shall be, as it were, passive in the grip of destiny,
disposed of by it, and unable to resist or alter it; when we shall find that the
time for choosing is past, and that we must accept and abide by the consequences
of our past choices; when for us the irrevocable word shall have gone forth, “He
that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is holy, let him be holy
still.”

Amidst the sudden revolutions of thought and revulsion of feeling, amidst the
utter discomfiture of many a hope on that day when the net is drawn and we are
all suddenly thrown out on the eternal shore, will your hope not fail you? As
you anticipate the hand that is to separate the good from the bad, do you
rejoice that a penetrating eye and an unerring wisdom will guide it? do you
rejoice that it is God who is coming to judge the world in righteousness, and
that no mistake can be made, no superficial distinction hide the real one?

It is possible some one may defend himself against the parable by saying, “I
will not alarm myself by judging of my destiny by my own qualities; I am
trusting to Christ.” But precisely in so far as you are trusting to Christ, you
have those qualities which the final judgment will require you to show. “If any
man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” You are useful to God in
so far as you have the Spirit of Christ. Plainly the criterion given by the
parable is the only sufficient criterion by which men can be judged as they
issue from this life. Are they in such sympathy with God as to be capable of
entering into His work and ways in the future, or have they only cultivated
habits and qualities which served them for a life that is now past? Only by what
we are, can we be finally judged; not by what we believe, but by what our belief
has made us; not by what we profess, not by what we know, but by the results in
character of what we have professed and known. In the final judgment, we shall
not be required to assert that we are converted persons, or that we are trusting
in Christ; we shall not be required to assert anything; but our future shall be
determined by our actual fitness for it. Fitness for carrying on God’s work in
the future, fitness for helping forward the cause of humanity in the future,
fitness for living in and finding our joy in the future which Christ’s Spirit is
to rule, we must have if we are to enter that future. Get the fitness how you
may, it is this you must have. If you can get it by some other means than by
adherence to Christ and the reception of His Spirit, use that means, but this
fitness you must have. And I think any one who seriously accepts this as the
real outlook for us men will feel that he cannot do better than go to school to
Christ that he may acquire not only a perception of what this fitness is, but
that genuine humility and absorption in great and eternal aims which are its
prime requisites. Apart from Christ, men may be good handicraftsmen, they may be
gifted with genius that delights and aids mankind and beautifies life, they may
see clearly what constitutes civil prosperity, in one way or other they may
materially help forward the common cause; but if after all they are not in
sympathy with the purpose of the king who rules and heads the forward movement,
if their motives in using their gifts are still selfish, it can never be said to
them, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” His joy is a joy they are not
prepared to share, if they have sought their own advantage and not with Him
sacrificed themselves to the common good. It is impossible to say who are
helping and who are hindering the cause of Christ; and happily it is not our
part to judge. The aims and ideas which Christ introduced to the minds of men
have so permeated society that no one can grow up in a Christian country without
coming more or less in contact with them. And the Spirit of Christ may have
wrought in men in ways we are quite unable to trace. But it would seem as if
only through Christ it were possible for us to come into that full sympathy at
once with God and with men, which we see so clearly in His life and death, and
which also is our salvation from selfish isolation and all ungodliness and
inhumanity. It is serviceableness which is to determine our entrance into or
exclusion from the future of God; or, as God does not desire service in which is
no spirit of fellowship, but rather the intelligent and delighted co-operation
of sons, it is sonship that determines our destiny. And who but Christ enables
us to see what sonship is and to become sons? How is that tender, humble,
sin-fearing, reverent spirit of God’s children to be produced, how has it ever
been produced, save by the acceptance of Christ as God the Son dying for our sin
to bring us to the Father?


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  CHAPTER 29: 03.07.     THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT OR THE UNFORGIVING DEBTOR
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THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT OR THE UNFORGIVING DEBTOR Matthew 18:23-35 The occasion
of this parable was a question put by Peter. Our Lord has once again been
warning His disciples against that self-sufficient spirit which makes men
quarrelsome and implacable and censorious. Their ambitious temper had been again
showing itself in the discussion of their favorite topic: “Who is the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven?” They had been betraying their eagerness to be
influential and important persons, their proneness therefore to despise the
uninfluential and to treat with harshness the “little ones” of the kingdom,
those who were weak and erring and always needing forgiveness. Our Lord
therefore warns them that the little ones rather than the great ones are His
care, and that provision is made in His kingdom not for those who need no
forgiveness, not for those who can see only the faults and weaknesses of others,
but for those who make constant demands on mercy. But Peter, when he hears the
precept that he must gain his brother by forgiving him his trespass, foresees
the very probable result, that his brother thus forgiven will repeat his
offense, and puts therefore the question whether some different treatment ought
not then to be adopted. “How often,” he says, “shall I forgive my brother?” He
knew the Jewish rule: Forgive a first offense, forgive a second, a third —
punish the fourth. And he seems to wish to meet at once the most liberal
sentiments of his Master in expanding this common law to more than double its
original measure: “Shall I forgive him till seven times?” But this question was
framed in the very spirit of the old law of retaliation. By proposing any limit
whatever to forgiveness, Peter showed that he still considered that to forgive
was the exceptional thing, was to forego a right which must some time be
reassumed, was not an eternal law of the kingdom but only a tentative measure
which at any moment may be revoked; that underneath the forgiveness we extend to
an erring brother there lies a right to revenge which we may at any time assert.
This feeling wherever it exists shows that we are living with retaliation for
the law, forgiveness for the exception. But Christ’s law is, that forgiveness
shall be unlimited: “I say not unto seven times, but until seventy times seven
“— that is to say an untold number of times. Seven was with the Jews the number
of perfection. When time has run through seven days, it begins again; the circle
is complete. So that no expression could more forcibly convey the impression of
endless, ever renewed, eternal iteration than “seventy times seven.” The parable
is added to illustrate the hatefulness of an unforgiving spirit. In it the Lord
gibbets the implacable temper of the man who refuses to extend to others the
forgiveness he himself needs. His own debt of something like two millions
sterling indicates that he occupied a position of trust, and had exceptional
opportunity of advancing his Lord’s interests. And probably the magnitude of the
debt was intended not merely to suggest the vastness of the liabilities of all
men to God, but also to hint to the Apostles that men so closely allied to their
Lord as they were, might possibly incur a greater debt than those in an inferior
position had opportunity of incurring.

It may seem as if there were some inconsistency between the two parts of our
Lord’s directions regarding the treatment of an offending brother. In the
parable and in His direct answer to Peter’s question He speaks as if the sole
duty of an injured person were to forgive. In the preceding verses He speaks as
if much more were needful, and indeed He lays down the principles which have
ever since governed, theoretically at least, ecclesiastical prosecutions. An
injured person is not to act as a strong healthy minded, good-natured man is
very apt to act. He is not to say to himself, “What does it matter that
so-and-so has called me “cheat” or “liar;” my character will outlive his
attacks; what harm has he done save to himself by circulating slanders about me,
or by taking me into the extent of a few pounds? I am not going to dirty my
hands or bother my head about such a poor creature.” No doubt there are slight
injuries of which this is the proper treatment. To notice them at all would be
to make them of more importance than is wise. But this may be carried too far;
and it is frequently carried too far by the easy-going pleasant-tempered men who
are so agreeable an element in society. There are, says our Lord, offenses of
which the proper treatment is to go to the offending party and remonstrate with
him. There are few more disagreeable duties in life, but sometimes it is a duty.
There are matters that come to your knowledge which you cannot pass by — you
feel that if you do so, it is because of an element of cowardliness in your
nature. Duty requires you to go to the offending party and endeavor to bring him
to repentance. But this treatment and all that follows it is in strict harmony
with the injunction to forgive, for you are never required to forgive an
impenitent person: but you are required — and this is, I think, a duty more
difficult and more frequently neglected than even the duty of forgiveness — you
are required to do all you can to bring to repentance the person who has injured
you. To forgive the man who has wronged you, when he comes humbling himself,
admitting he was wrong and heartily begging you to forgive him, in most actual
cases makes no great call on Christian charity: but to go affectionately and
without a spark of vindictive feeling to the man who has done you a wrong, and
strive patiently to make it as plain to him as it is to yourself that he has
done wrong, and so to do this as to win your brother — this seems to be about
the highest reach of Christian virtue we are likely to meet in this present
world.

There is another initial difficulty. Not only do we feel it almost impossible to
forgive certain injuries, but some well-instructed Christian writers explicitly
maintain that there are injuries which men ought not to forgive.* One who has
done much to elevate the tone of modern literature, introduces the following
lines in his most celebrated drama:

“Oh sirs, look round you lest you be deceived, Forgiveness may be spoken with
the tongue, Forgiveness may be written with the pen, But think not that the
parchment and mouth pardon Will e’er eject old hatreds from the heart.

There’s that betwixt you been men ne’er forget Till they forget themselves, till
all’s forgot.

Till the deep sleep falls on them in that bed From which no morrow’s mischief
knocks them up.”

* On this point, see the remarkable chapter on Forgiveness, in “Ecce Homo,” from
which the thought of this paragraph is derived. The Author cites a modern
novelist who makes one of his characters say: “There are some wrongs that no one
ought to forgive, and I shall be a villain on the day I shake that man’s hand.”

It might seem then as if those who knew human life best agreed that there is a
limitation which must be put to forgiveness, that there are injuries which no
man can be expected to forgive or can forgive, that there are circumstances in
which this rule of Christ’s must be set aside.

Let us test this idea by a very simple instance. Some of the most thoroughly
Christian and wise headmasters have been inclined to wink at fighting among
their boys, taking care that it does not become too frequent nor go any serious
length. And even the most forgiving and Christlike of parents is not altogether
comfortable if his boy comes home from school and tells him that he was grossly
insulted and struck by a boy somewhat bigger than himself, but that instead of
defending himself he forgave the offender. Why then is the parent not quite
comfortable, why would most parents be really more gratified to hear that their
boy had fought a bigger boy, than that when struck he had turned the other
cheek? Simply because most parents might have some suspicion that softness and
cowardliness had as much to do with the turning of the other cheek as Christian
feeling. If they had unmistakable proof of their boy’s courage and manliness, if
they were perfectly sure that fear was a quite unknown feeling to their boy,
they would delight in his having forgiven insolence and ill treatment. But
unfortunately fear and a craven spirit are so much commoner than high spirit
moderated by Christian temper, that wherever gross injuries are forgiven, we are
apt to ascribe this apparently Christian conduct to that spirit which is at the
very antipodes from the spirit of Christ. The parent does not think his boy
ought not to forgive — nay, he is sure that is the highest and manliest, and to
many boys the most difficult conduct — but until he is quite sure that in a
given case the forgiveness has sprung not from a sham magnanimity thrown over a
sneaking and feeble character, he is afraid to commend it. So it is everywhere.
There is no limitation to forgiveness; no injury so gross that it ought not to
be forgiven. But there are injuries so gross that when men forgive them they are
sure to be suspected of doing so from unworthy motives. So little is Christian
feeling in its highest reaches and manifestations counted on, so little is it
seen or even understood, that when a man forgives one who has deeply injured
him, this forgiveness is apt to be ascribed to what is mean, and not to what is
Christlike in the injured party. But wherever, as in the case of our Lord
Himself there is no question of the power to defeat or the courage to face one’s
enemies, wherever forgiveness can be ascribed only to a merciful spirit, there
men do admire the disposition to forgive even the greatest of injuries. The
parable is intended to enforce the teaching of our Lord regarding forgiveness by
exhibiting the unreasonableness and meanness and danger of an unforgiving
spirit. The hatefulness of such a spirit is emphasized by two aggravating
features: —

1. The unmerciful servant had himself required forgiveness and had just been
forgiven.

2. The debt due to him was infinitesimally small when compared with the debt
which had been remitted to him.

1. First, the man is not softened by the remission of his own great debt. He
goes straight from the presence of his master who had forgiven him all his
talents, and lays violent hands on one of his associates who happened to owe him
a few shillings. Having just been forgiven, he might have been expected to
remember, with humble and softened feeling, that there is a better law than
retaliation. He thought mercy a good thing so long as he was the object of it.
So long as he was in the presence of a creditor he had much to say of the
calamity of debt, a thousand reasons to urge for the exercise of patience, and a
thousand excuses for wrongdoing. Five minutes after, in the presence of a
debtor, there is to him no law in the world, but harsh and hasty exaction of
dues. He is deaf to the reasons which had filled his own mouth immediately
before, deaf to everything which was not a promise to pay, and that instantly.
This is no over-colored picture. It is over-colored neither as a representation
of what naturally occurs in connection with pecuniary debts, nor as a picture of
the treatment which sinners give to sinners like themselves. Men who begin to
use the money which belongs to others, and to invest on their own account funds
which either do not exist at all except in their own hopes, or which belong to
others and are only passing through their hands, become deadened with surprising
rapidity to all sense of the injury they do. If they prove bankrupt, it is much
more their own inconvenience and loss they bewail than the wrong done to others.
The enormous debtor of the parable betrayed no sense of shame, no feeling for
his lord’s loss, but only craven dread of slavery and personal suffering. No
serious humility, no honest and thoughtful facing of the facts, no deep
truthfulness have entered his spirit. He is ready to promise anything, if he can
only escape present consequences. This is a true picture of the temper in which
we sometimes crave pardon. Our iniquities overtake us with a throng of painful
and overwhelming consequences, and in terror we cry for forgiveness. But the
distress of our own condition blinds us to the wrong we have done, and no true
humiliation enters the spirit. Deadened by long self-indulgence to a sense of
everything but what directly affects himself with pleasure or pain, the sinner
has no thought of the deeper spiritual relations of his sin. He stupidly thinks
God withholds punishment because he has made a foolish purpose of paying his
dues by amending his ways. There is no deep contrition; no conscience-stricken
yet joyful recognition of the relation he holds to God; no intense delight and
glorying in a God capable of passing by such transgressions as his; no rising of
the spirit to new attachments and new ideas; no “truth in the inward parts,” but
only a desire to escape, as selfish and as soft as was the desire to sin. But
the forgiving love of God, if it does not humble, hardens us. To carry an
unhumbled, self-regarding spirit through such an experience gives the finishing
touch to a dehumanizing selfishness. We have a key here to the conduct of those
religious persons who act as if they meant to make up for their own deficiencies
by charging others with theirs; as if they supposed that the violent and
unrelenting condemnation of those who offend them were the fittest exercise of
their privilege as persons forgiven of God. The little taste of religion they
have had seems to have soured their temper and hardened their heart. They would
be more human had they no religion at all. Just as this man proposes to build up
his credit again by scrupulously exacting every farthing that others owe him, so
do those who have not been thoroughly humbled by God’s forgiveness show their
zeal in exposing and reproving the faults of others. So far from being softened
and enlarged in spirit by their own experience of mercy, they grow more
punctilious in their exactions, more cruel and stiff in their demeanor.

2. Second, the petty amount of the debt he exacts is set over against the
enormity of that which had been remitted to himself. You might expect that a man
who had been forgiven talents would have no heart to exact pence. You would
suppose that one whose eye had been fixed on a kingdom’s revenue would not know
how to count farthings. There is something almost incredibly mean as well as
savage in this man’s quick remembrance of the few pence due to himself, while he
so easily dismisses from his mind the ten thousand talents due by him. But our
incredulity gives way as we look at the facts which underlie the parable, and
measure the debt we owe to God with the peccadilloes committed against
ourselves, and which we are so slow to forget.

What are the offenses which we feel it impossible to forgive, and which alienate
us from one another? If other men do not serve us well and fulfil our
expectations; if they do not throw themselves heartily into our work and
perfectly accomplish what we entrusted to them, we have no forgiveness for them;
they must go. Or some one has been so presumptuous as to differ from us, and has
opposed the propagation of our opinions on some political, or theological, or
practical matter. Or men patronize us, and make us feel insignificant; or they
tell some damaging story about us; or they win the prize that we worked for, or
succeed in getting possession of a little bit of property we coveted. Or has
even some grand exceptional injury been done you? has your whole life been
darkened and altered and obstructed by the injustice or neglect or selfishness
of some one, whose influence circumstances compel you to submit to? Is there
some one whom you cannot think of but with a tumult in the blood and a
passionate emotion? Take the injury that is most difficult for you to forgive,
and measure it with that for which you yourself need to ask forgiveness of God,
and say whether you ought to be implacable and resolved on revenge.

I suppose there are few persons who have not often sat and wondered why it is
that they feel so little sense of obligation to God, and so little shame that
their sins are sins against Him. It is so difficult for us to have any genuine
shame before God, though so easy to feel it before men, that we are sometimes
tempted to fancy that a sense of sin must after all be a fictitious feeling, and
not a feeling which increases in intensity with soundness of mind and clearness
of mental vision. Several considerations, however, combine to show that the
representation given in the parable fairly apportions the comparative guilt of
sinning against God and sinning against man. All our sins directly or indirectly
touch God, while only a few touch any individual on earth. In the injuries done
to yourself by other men you may be able to detect more malice, more intention
to wound and injure than has entered into any sin you have committed against
God. But then, what are the obligations which bind any man to your service
compared with the obligations which bind you to God? For whom have you done, or
for whom can you do, any portion of that which God daily does for you? Debt is
measured by obligation. There can be no debt where there has been no obligation.
We are not equally bound to all. We are not bound to educate another man’s
children as we are bound to educate our own. We can have no debt to a shopkeeper
from whom we have received nothing. And our debt to God is enormous because we
have received from Him benefits deep as life itself, and are bound to Him in
ways as varied as the manifestations of that life. We cannot sin against one
another as we can sin against God. Just as the servant of the parable, in
dealing with his lord, had intromissions with larger sums than he could touch in
dealing with a fellow-servant, so in dealing with God we are lifted to relations
unique in kind and of surpassing sacredness, and are involved in
responsibilities of wider and deeper consequence than any that would otherwise
attach to our life. There ought, then, to be some proportion between our
perception of the wrong done us and the wrong we do. If we so keenly feel the
prick of a needle when inflicted on ourselves, we may be expected to consider
with some compunction the gaping wounds we inflict on another. Is our shame for
sin against God as intense and real as the blaze of indignation, or is it
continuous and persistent as the slow-burning hate which an injury done to
ourselves begets? In speaking of those who defraud or injure us we express our
opinion of what wrong-doing deserves. Is our judgment as explicit, our feeling
as strongly expressed in regard to our own transgressions? As strongly? But they
ought to be a thousand times more vehement; there should be against ourselves an
indignation such as no enemy of ours could excite against himself though his
offenses were many times aggravated. And what after all, is our reputation, our
happiness, our property, that we should make much wail about injury done to
them? Our good name and our advancement in the world are no doubt much to
ourselves, but they are of very little moment indeed to the world at large. The
fate of the unmerciful servant tells us in the plainest language that the mere
canceling of our guilt does not save us. It tells us that unless the forgiveness
of God humbles us and begets within us a truly meek and loving spirit, we cannot
be owned as His children. The best assurance that we are ourselves forgiven is
the consciousness that the very spirit of the forgiving God is working in our
own hearts towards others.

“Tis not enough to weep my sins, ’Tis but one step to heaven; When I am kind to
others, then I know myself forgiven.”

“He that revengeth shall find vengeance from the Lord, and He shall surely
retain his sins. Forgive thy neighbor the hurt that he hath done unto thee, so
shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest. A man beareth hatred against
another, and doth he seek pardon from the Lord? He showeth no mercy to a man who
is like himself: and doth he ask forgiveness of his own sin?” (Sir 28:1-4) “If
ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your heavenly Father forgive
your trespasses.” If you are hard, unrelenting; always chiding; slow to
recognize merit, quick to observe faults; admitting no excuse and making no
allowances; cherishing ill will; still feeling resentment on account of injuries
done you ten years ago; if there are persons from whom you would if you could
exact the uttermost farthing — then you have reason to fear for your own
forgiveness. Can you humbly beseech God, and with tearful eyes look up to Him
for pardon while you have your foot upon your brother’s neck or your hand at his
throat? The very fact that you are proud and unbending should itself convince
you that you have never been humbled before a forgiving God. The very fact that
you can be overbearing and exacting should prompt you to question most seriously
whether you have in very truth let your heart be flooded with God’s undeserved
pardoning mercy. The very fact that in any relation of life you can carry
yourself in a haughty, imperious, and unchastened manner should bid you ask
whether in very truth you are at heart lowly before God as one who day by day
needs His forbearance and pardon. Every bitter word you speak, every unmerciful,
inconsiderate act you do, every relentless, cruel, exacting thought you have,
casts suspicion on your Christianity, and makes it seem possible that your
Master may yet have to mete to you with your own measure.

Thus then does the Lord lay down the law of unlimited forgiveness as a law of
His kingdom. The kingdom or society He came to form, that new. grouping and
association of men which He means to be eternal, cannot be held together without
the observance of this law. This is one of the essential laws of His kingdom.
Men are to be held together and to work smoothly together not by external
compulsion, not by a police agency, not by a criminal law of alarming severity —
it seems ludicrous to speak of such forces in connection with an eternal and
perfect society — but it is to be held together by the inward disposition of
each member of it to forgive and be on terms of brotherly kindness with every
other member.

We lose an immense deal of the power and practical benefit of Christ’s teaching
by refusing to look at things from His point of view, and to listen as cordially
to what He says of His kingdom as to what He says of individuals. We are not
perhaps too much but we are too exclusively taken up with the saving of our own
souls. We neglect to consider that the Bible throughout takes to do with the
Church and people of God, with the kingdom, and with the individual only as a
member of the kingdom. It is not for the individual alone that Christ
legislates. He does riot point out a path by which one man by himself can attain
to a solitary bliss; but He founds a kingdom, and lays down as its fundamental
law the law of love, a law which shows us that our individual happiness and our
individual perfection can only be won in fellowship with others, and by truly
entering into the most enduring bonds with them. To unite us again individually
to God, our Lord recognizes as only half His work: to unite us to one another is
as essential. Salvation consists not only In our being reconciled to God, but
also in our being reconciled to men. When we attach ourselves to Christ we
become members of a society, and can no longer live an isolated life. We must
live for the body we belong to. Until we catch this esprit de corps we are poor
Christians. The man who is content if he is sure his own soul is safe has great
cause to believe it in danger; for there is no surer mark of a healthy Christian
than his practical acknowledgment of the claims of other men and his interest in
the kingdom to which he belongs. But how are we to attain to that thoroughly
healthy state of spirit to which it shall be natural to forgive until seventy
times seven? This parable indicates that the most important step towards this is
taken when we learn to accept God’s forgiveness in a right spirit. The true way
to a forgiving spirit is to be forgiven, to go back again and again to God, and
count over our debt to Him. The man who thinks justly of his own wrong-doing has
no heart to make much of the injuries done to himself. He always feels how much
more he has been forgiven than he can ever be called upon to forgive. His soul
gladdened, softened, and humbled by a sense of the great compassion that has
remitted his great debt, loses all power to be harsh and damnatory.

We must therefore begin with the truth about ourselves. It is not required of us
that we go out of our way to make an ostentatious display of our guilt, but it
is requisite that we let the conviction of our great debt so sink into our minds
that we shall go softly all the days of our life. It is required of us that we
discover and recognize the truth about ourselves, and that we abide and walk in
the truth and not in the unreal world of our own self-satisfied fancy. It is
required of us that we have a character, and that this character be founded on
and grow up out of God’s forgiving grace. We need not proclaim to every man we
meet the reason, but we must let all men see that we have a reason for
loving-kindness, for humility, for gravity, for tender consideration of others,
for every quality that banishes hatred from earth and welds men closer into one
community.


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  CHAPTER 30: 03.08.     LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. FIRST LAST AND LAST FIRST
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LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. FIRST LAST AND LAST FIRST

Matthew 20:1-16 The key to this parable is found in the question to which it was
the answer, and in the circumstances which suggested that question. A young man
of high character and still higher aspirations, but of unfortunately great
wealth, had recognized in Jesus a teacher who in His own person and demeanor
bore evidence that He understood how man could attain to the highest ideal. He
accordingly introduced himself to our Lord as one who was bent upon achieving
the highest human attainment, and who was only anxious to know what more could
be done beyond what he had already accomplished. But on learning that for him
the path to perfection lay through the abandonment of his great possessions, he
felt that this was more than he could do, and turned away ashamed and wretched.
As he passed out of sight, our Lord, sympathizing with the severity of his
temptation, turned to His disciples, and with His usual form of strong
asseveration, said, “Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter
into the kingdom of heaven.” When Peter saw how keenly the Lord appreciated the
difficulty of giving up property and detaching oneself from familiar comforts
and employments, he suggested that those who overcame this difficulty were
peculiarly meritorious. “Behold,” he says, “we have forsaken all and followed
Thee: what shall we have therefore?” But in asking this question Peter betrayed
precisely that disposition which most thoroughly vitiates all service of Christ,
the disposition to bargain, to work for a clearly defined reward and not for the
sake of the work itself and in generous trust in the justice and liberality of
the Master. Peter had to all appearance made, so far as was possible in his
circumstances, the very sacrifice which the rich young man had declined to make;
but if a sacrifice is made merely for the sake of winning for oneself some
greater gain, then it is no longer a sacrifice but a bargain. Love and trust are
of the essence of sacrifice. Peter had left his home, his boat and fishing gear,
and all the pleasant associations of the lake: he had torn himself up by the
roots; but if he had done so not from simple love of Christ which found its
ample reward in His company, but with a clear understanding that he would have a
good return in kind for all he had given up, then he was perhaps premature in so
complacently comparing himself with the rich young man. It is the motive which
gives virtue to any sacrifice or service. The spirit which asks what
compensation is to be made for every sacrifice, is self-regarding, mercenary,
greedy, not generous, trustful, loving: it confounds two things diametrically
different, bargain and sacrifice. The Lord’s answer to Peter’s question is
twofold. He first assures His followers that they shall have ample compensation
for all present loss. Sharing with Him in work, they shall share in His reward.
The results He works for shall be theirs as well as His. But having given them
this assurance. He takes occasion to rebuke the disposition to bargain, the
somewhat craven spirit that sought to be quite sure it would take no harm by
following Him. And he warns them against comparing their sacrifices and services
with those of other men, affirming that many who, like the apostles, were called
at the very beginning of the Lord’s ministry, and were first not only in point
of time, but in eminence of service, and who might therefore seem sure of a
conspicuous and exceptional reward, will after all be found no better off than
those whose expectations have been extremely meager. “Many shall be last that
are first, and first that are last.”

It was to illustrate this statement that the parable of the laborers in the
vineyard was spoken. This is the point of its teaching to which all else is
subordinate. The nature of the work in the vineyard and its exhausting toil; the
unwearied compassion of the Lord of the vineyard, going out hour after hour to
invite the unemployed; these and all other details are but the feathers of the
arrow helping it to fly straight to its mark; but the point is, that those who
were first hired were last paid and least paid, and this because the first-hired
entered on their work in a bargaining spirit and merely for the sake of winning
a calculated and stipulated remuneration, whereas the late-hired laborers did
their work in faith, not knowing what they were to get, but sure they would not
get less than they deserved. The parable, then, is intended to show us the
difference between work done in a bargaining spirit and work done in trust;
between the reward given to work which in quantity may be very great but in
motive is mercenary, and the reward given to work which in quantity may be very
small, but in motive is sound. It directs attention to the fact that in
estimating the value of work we must take into consideration not only the amount
done or the time spent upon it, but the motive that has entered into it. It is
this which God chiefly regards. One hour of trustful, humble service is of
greater value to God than a lifetime of calculating industry and self-regarding
zeal. A gift that is reckoned by thousands of pounds; an ecclesiastical
endowment that makes a noise through a whole generation; a busy, unflagging,
obtrusive zeal which makes itself seen and felt throughout a whole land, these
things make a great impression upon men — and it is well if they do not make a
great impression on the parties themselves who do them and prompt them inwardly
to say, “What shall we have therefor”— but they make no impression upon God
unless animated by a really devoted spirit. While men are applauding the great
workers who ostentatiously wipe the sweat from their brows and pant so that you
can hear them across the whole field, God is regarding an unnoticed worker, who
feels he is doing little, who is ashamed that any one should see his work, who
bitterly regrets he can do no more, who could not name a coin small enough to
pay him, but who is perfectly sure that the Master he serves is well worth
serving. It is thus that the first become last and the last first. That we are
meant to see this difference of spirit in the laborers is obvious alike from the
terms of their respective engagements, from the distribution of the wages, and
from the temper shown by the last paid men.

1. First, the parable is careful to state that those who were hired early in the
day made an agreement to work for a stipulated sum. This sum was the usual day’s
wage of the period: a fair wage, which of itself was sufficient inducement to
work. These men were in a condition to make their own terms. They ruled the
market. At four or five in the morning the laborers in a hiring market have a
keen sense of their own value, and are in no mood to sell themselves cheap. The
masters and stewards have a very hard time of it as they are hooted from knot to
knot of lusty fellows with the pride of the morning in their faces, and strive
in vain to pick up labor at a reasonable figure. No man in the market at that
hour engages without making his own terms, without saying what So-and-so offers,
without knowing to a halfpenny what he will have, and striking hands with his
hirer as his equal. The laborer means to make a good thing of it for himself; if
he does not like the look of one steward he chooses another, if he thinks one
master’s pay too little he waits for a better offer. He is not going to work all
day to oblige some neighboring proprietor, he is going to work to make a good
wage for himself. It’s hot, hard, thirsty work, but it pays. But in the evening
the tables are turned. The masters now have it all their own way. It’s no
longer, “Will you give us more than So-and-so? what will you offer?” but “We’ll
leave that to you, sir; supper and a bed at the most is all we can expect.
There’s scarcely time to get to your place, but we’ll hurry and do our best, if
you’ll have us at all.” Possibly these men were the proudest in the morning, and
missed their chance. Group after group of men has been detailed off at various
hours, and now the shadows begin to lengthen; their pride gives place to hunger
and anxious thoughts of the coming night. They are beginning to have gloomy
thoughts of lying down in the darkness, with no food to refresh them, no roof to
shelter, no promise of more work from an appreciative master, no pleasant talk
and song with their comrades in the vintage. But as the day wears desolately
away, and as now the hard task-masters are heard on all sides beating down the
wages of the jaded hirelings, there rises the considerate voice of this good and
upright householder, “Go ye also into my vineyard, and whatsoever is right, that
shall ye receive.” In no condition to make a bargain, they most gladly trust
themselves to one whose words have the ring of truth. They go, glad to get work
on any terms; they go, not knowing what they are to get, but quite sure they are
in good hands. They go humble, trusting, and grateful; the others went proud,
self-confident, mercenary.

2. Secondly, the same difference in the spirit in which each set of laborers had
entered on their work is implied in the striking scene which ensued at the close
of the day. Those who had barely got their work begun were first paid, and were
paid a full day’s wage. There must, of course, have been a reason for this; it
was not mere caprice, but was the result and expression of some just idea. It
could not be that these late-hired laborers had done as much in their one hour
as the others in twelve; for the others, those who had worked the full day, are
conscious of having done their work well. No hint is given that they were less
skilful or less zealous than the late-hired men. We are thrown back, therefore,
for the explanation on the hint given in the hiring, namely, that those who
wrought merely for the sake of pay received the pay they looked for, while they
who came to the vineyard conscious that they had wasted their day and not daring
to stipulate for any definite wage, but leaving themselves confidently in the
hands of a master they believed in, were gladdened by the unmerited reward of
the fullest wage. The men who bargained were paid according to their bargain;
the men who trusted got far more than they could have dared to bargain for. The
principle is more easily understood because we ourselves so commonly act upon
it. The man who bargains and must have everything in black and white, and thus
shows that in working for you it is himself he is looking after and seeking to
profit, gets every penny he bargained for, but not a penny beyond; whereas the
man who fears his work may not please you, but, if you wish it, will try and do
his best, and says not a word about pay — to this man you give as much as you
decently can, and always more than he is expecting. What you relish and reward,
God also relishes and rewards. It is work done with some human feeling in it
that you delight in. What you give out to be done at a certain rate you accept
and pay for, but take no heed of him who does it. There is nothing personal
between you. He does not work for you, but for his wage. His work may be most
important and thoroughly well done, it may bear the mark of time and toil upon
it, but it is the work of a hireling with whom you are quits when you pay him
what he contracted to receive.

3. Thirdly, the same difference of spirit among the laborers is brought out in
the envious and grudging temper of the first hired and last paid men. Peter must
have felt himself gravely rebuked by the picture here drawn of the man who had
listened to the first call of Christ, but who, after a full, honest day’s work,
was found to be possessed of a selfish, grudging spirit that filled him with
discontent and envy. It was now plain that this early-hired laborer had little
interest in the work, and that it was no satisfaction to him to have been able
to do twelve times as much as the last-hired laborer. He had the hireling’s
spirit, and had been longing for the shadow and counting his wages all day long.
English sailors have been known to be filled with pity for their comrades whose
ships only hove in sight in time to see the enemy’s flag run down, or to fire
the last shot in a long day’s engagement. They have so pitied them for having no
share in the excitement and glory of the day that they would willingly give them
as a compensation their own pay and prize-money. And the true follower of
Christ, who has listened to the earliest call of his Master and has reveled in
the glory of serving Him throughout life, will from the bottom of his heart pity
the man who has only late in life recognized the glory of the service, and has
had barely time to pick up his tools when the dusk of evening falls upon him. It
is impossible that a man whose chief desire was to advance his Master’s work,
should envy another laborer who had done much less than himself. The very fact
that a man envies another his reward is enough of itself to convict him of
self-seeking in his service. The difference in the spirit of the workers which
is thus brought out in the parable will be found, says our Lord, in the Church,
and it will be attended with like results at the time of judgment and award.
Here also “many that are first shall be last,” not all, but many; so commonly
will this be exemplified that there must be something in the nature of the case
inducing it. Many who have done the largest works shall receive the smallest
reward. Many first in man’s esteem shall be last in God’s reckoning. Many who
have borne the burden and heat of the day, who have been conspicuous in the work
of the church, whose names are identified with certain charities or
philanthropic institutions will be rated below j obscure individuals who have
almost no work at all to point to. Many who have served longest in the Lord’s
vineyard have a consciousness that they are the great workers, which likens them
to the self-complacent Peter rather than to the humble, trustful, self-ignoring
spirit of the late-hired laborers. So, many who are most forward in the work of
the Church and of the world are plainly animated by motives which are not above
suspicion, that nothing is more obvious or more commonly remarked upon than that
“many are called but few chosen.” Many make trial of the work, and labor
vigorously in it, but few have the purity of motive which gives them an abiding
place, and wins the approval of Christ. And they especially are tempted to
faultiness of motive who are first in work; they are impressed with their own
consequence; they find it difficult to avoid inwardly comparing themselves with
those who waste their day; and moreover, many of those who live outwardly
blameless and correct lives, and who abound in practical work, do so because
they are originally of a calculating disposition. But though many of the first,
yet not all of them shall be last. This also we know to be true. Some at least
of the best known workers in the vineyard, some who entered it early and never
left it for an hour, some who scarcely once straightened their backs from toil,
and dropped asleep as they came to the end of their task, knowing nothing but
God’s work their whole life through, have also wrought in no bargaining spirit,
but passed as humble a judgment on their work as the last and least and lowest
of their fellow-laborers on theirs. It is a thing that recalls the mind from
thinking cynically and contemptuously of human nature to find how often the
highest faculty, the most conspicuous and helpful gifts are used with absolute
humility and lowliness, with scarcely one conscious thought that great good is
being done. Happily there are some first who shall remain first; first at their
work, and foremost in it; first in the field for amount and quality of work
done, and yet first also in reward, because first in unaffected forgetfulness of
self and pure devotedness to their Master’s interests, and to the work itself.
As it is often the man who is first in the breach who least understands why men
should praise him for courage, he himself having had no thought of danger; as
the charitable man who has helped countless miserable creatures and made
sacrifices which could not be hid, is distressed when his friends speak of
making public recognition of his charity, so some who have most materially
advanced the cause of Christ and of humanity are precisely those who think most
shamefacedly of what they have done, and are unfeignedly astonished to hear they
have been of any service, and cannot once connect the idea of reward with any
toil they have undergone.

Again, as there are some first who remain first, so there are some last who
remain last. Not all who enter the vineyard late enter it humbled. Not all who
do little do it well. Mercenariness is not confined to those who have some small
excuse for it. Even those who have wasted their life, and bring but the wreck of
it into the kingdom, are sometimes possessed with a complacency and
shamelessness that are astonishing to those who know their past history. To come
to Christ late, and to come unhumbled, is the culminating exhibition of human
complacency. To bring to the vineyard neither strength to labor nor purity of
motive is the extreme of unprofitableness. This parable, rightly read, gives no
encouragement to late entrance into the Lord’s service. To think of this service
as that which we can add at any convenient time to the other work of life is to
mistake it altogether. The service of Christ should cover the whole of life; and
what is not done as a part of His work may in some respects as well not be done
at all. All outside His vineyard is idleness. You may be busily, painfully
engrossed in worldly business, and yet absolutely idle as to what conscience
persistently reminds you is the one thing needful. Your life may be far through,
as years go, but the main business of it not yet begun: your prospects always
improving, yourselves no better than when you began. If there are those among
you who feel this painfully enough, who keenly feel the vanity of life, who have
tasted its distresses and disappointments, who know how little it all comes to,
a few pleasures, a few excitements, one or two great changes, a great deal of
dull labor, and a good many sorrows, and then the plunge into oblivion; if there
are those who would welcome anything that would put a heart and a purpose into
the whole, and lift every part of life up out of the low and despicable rut in
which it for the most part moves, then why do you hesitate to respond when
Christ says, “Why stand ye here all the day idle? Go ye into My vineyard, and
what is right ye shall receive?” Do you not believe Him? Do you fancy that He
will suffer you to spend yourself in what is despicable, and fruitless, and
disappointing? Why waste your day? Why waste another hour of it, if there is
real work to be done, if there is work of such importance to be done that He
Himself left heaven to do it, if there is work to be done that the world needs,
that men will be the better for, if there is the least opening for you to put
your hand to what will stand God’s inspection, why go on idling and frittering
your one precious life away on what you yourself despise and are weary of?

Let us then examine ourselves in the light of this parable. Our Lord pointedly
invites us to work for Him, to live for Him, and to do so in the assurance that
whatsoever is right He will give. These laborers who went in faith got more than
the men who had made what they considered a good bargain. In other words, you
are as sure to be rewarded for every hour you spend in Christ’s service as if
you had His written bond and had made your own terms. If you had considered what
you would like in return for anything you do for Him, and if you had stipulated
for this, you would not thus have so much as you are sure to have by simply
leaving it to Him. We need not concern ourselves about the future: we need not
be mentally counting our wages; He would have us fall in love with the service,
so that even though there were to be no reward at all, we should still choose it
as the most honorable, the most useful, the most joyful way of spending our
life, indeed as the one service which is perfect freedom, and satisfies our idea
of what life should be. The slow, hesitating, suspicious person that thinks
Christ wants to use him for some ends that are not the proper ends of human
life, the foolish person that always feels as if Christ did not understand what
it is that gives the truest relish to human life — such persons are not the
laborers He desires. The bargaining spirit gets what it bargains for, but also
gets His rebuke: the spirit that is too broken to bargain, too crushed and
self-diffident to make terms, but can only go and work and trust, gets a reward
that carries in it the hearty approval and encouragement of the Lord. Are you
then in His vineyard at all, or are you still among the unhappy ones who cannot
decide, or among those who have looked at the vineyard in the distance, and have
fallen asleep in the market-place and are dreaming they are in it? or are you
among those who eagerly watch for the reappearance of the Master, and as soon as
He turns the corner of the street offer themselves to Him? He calls you now; He
calls you every hour of the day. And if already in His service, are we among
those who wish to know what they are to get or make by it? or do we leave all
that to Him and enter His work because we are weary of idleness and sick at
heart with hope deferred, or sore with the ill-usage we have received from other
masters?

None of us, surely, dare push this parable aside and pass on into life without
satisfying our conscience about this matter. Many of us are called. Many of us
are in the vineyard, and have long been in it. We have borne, in a mild fashion,
the burden and heat of the day. We have given money; we have spent a great deal
of time; we have performed a number of worrying duties. And we mean to go on.
Well, in what spirit have we labored? Has it been to earn or maintain a
reputation, or to make our influence felt? Has it been under a dim impression
that such works and sacrifices are necessary in those who claim to be
Christians? Have you rendered them as a kind of payment to enable you to
maintain the feeling that you are Christ’s people? Have you striven to help
others mainly for the sake of doing yourself good, of helping out your own
salvation, and keeping your own hands clean? Has your object been advantage to
yourself, either future or present, spiritual or worldly? If so, you will have
your penny, but the cordial approval of your master goes to others. You may say,
Is it not right to aim at our own salvation, and do those good works which are
needful for that purpose? Certainly it is right to save yourself, but it is
better to save ten other people. It is he who loses sight of his own interests
and forgets himself because he is so much taken up with the common work and the
common good that finds he has won the highest reward.

Look, then, to your motives. See that it be pure love of the work and love of
the Master that draw you to it. Actions are always within our own power. Hard
work is always possible, and great sacrifices almost any man can make. It is the
motive that is unattainable save by those whom Christ Himself has renewed.


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  CHAPTER 31: 03.09.     THE TWO SONS
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THE TWO SONS Matthew 21:28-32 The three parables of which this is the first were
spoken at one time, and that the most critical of our Lord’s life. He had come
to Jerusalem knowing the danger of doing so, but also persuaded that it was now
high time to bring matters to an issue. He saw that things were now ripe for a
public manifestation of Himself as the Christ. A career of obscure philanthropy
in Galilee could no longer be pursued. The time was past for His laying His hand
on the mouth of those who would have published His majesty and proclaimed their
conviction that He was the Son of God. He goes to Jerusalem, that in the temple
itself and before the chief priests and constituted authorities, He may again
proclaim His own dignity, and be explicitly and finally received or rejected.
Accordingly He makes it impossible for the authorities any longer to overlook
His actions. They are compelled by the growing excitement of the people to
appoint a deputation of their best men to wait upon Him. This deputation
challenge His right to teach in this unlicensed way, and put to Him the testing
question, “By what authority doest thou these things,” no doubt with the
expectation that He would claim Divine authority, and so give them a handle
against Him. But our Lord declines to give any account of His authority further
than what was manifest in His words and deeds themselves. If they could not see
divine authority in the things themselves, if they did not feel that in His
presence they were in the presence of God, they were not likely to see or to
feel the Divine presence merely because He said it was there.

It is astonishing with what persistency numbers of persons continue to make the
demand of these priests, and put themselves in the condition our Lord condemns.
They will not accept a thing as Divine because it has the attributes of Divinity
attaching to it, but they ask for further evidence. They will not accept a
teacher as inspired, because of the truth he utters, but ask for an authority
external to himself, and over and above his teaching, which shall guarantee it
to them. They will not bow before Christ Himself, because their whole nature
finds in Him the highest and best they know; but, like these ignorantly
dishonest priests, they ask for His authority. They ask for a guarantee outside
of Himself which shall warrant them in trusting Him, as if there could be any
possible guarantee so perfect as the actual moral supremacy they feel Him to
possess. That man’s faith is resting on a very precarious foundation who
believes not because the truth itself has laid hold upon his conscience, but
because he is yielding to authority; who accepts Christ, not because he finds in
Christ the true Lord of His spirit, but because the claims of Christ are
established by what is external to His person.

Jesus, however, is not content merely to evade their entangling question. He
turns their assault against themselves, and so leads the conversation that they
are compelled to utter their own condemnation in presence of the multitude. The
parable is too plain-spoken to be evaded. They cannot deny that the satisfactory
Son is not the one who professes great respect for His father’s authority, while
he does only what pleases himself, but the one who does his father’s bidding,
even though he has at first disowned His authority. They are compelled, that is,
to own that a mere bowing to God’s authority and professing that they attach
great weight to it is of no account in God’s sight unless it be accompanied by
an actual doing of the things He enjoins. John came to you, our Lord says to the
priests and elders, in the way of righteousness, enjoining the works that belong
to the kingdom of God, setting clear before your conscience the duties actually
incumbent on you. You felt he was God’s messenger, the words he spoke proved him
to be so; the holy conduct he enforced compelled you inwardly to own him a
messenger of God to you you dare not now in the presence of these people deny
that he was from God. Why then did you not do his bidding? He was God’s
messenger, he told you plainly who the Christ was, and yet you believed him not.
You refused to work the work of God peculiar to your time and office, the work
of acknowledging and believing in the Son of God, witnessed by John whom ye
yourselves know to be a true witness. You come now and ask Me for my authority
as if, were you convinced it was Divine, you would gladly yield to it; as if you
were anxious to know God’s will, as if there were on your lips constantly the “I
go, sir,” of this Son, whereas already it has been made clear to your own
conscience what God would have you do regarding Me, and yet you obey Him not.
These publicans and harlots whom you despise and loathe are in the kingdom of
God while you are outside; for bad as they were and daringly as they had
disowned God’s authority, and little profession of belief in God as they made,
they yet repented when John proclaimed the coming kingdom, and have believed in
and submitted to the King.

These men were thus unceremoniously dealt with by our Lord because they were
false. They may not have clearly seen that they were false, but they were so.
They were false because they professed to be anxious for additional evidence
regarding Christ, while already they had sufficient evidence. They were
resisting the light already shed into their conscience, and yet professed a
desire for further light. And probably in no age of the world’s history have
there been so many in their state of mind as in our own. There is a very general
misapprehension as to the amount and kind of evidence that may reasonably be
demanded in favor of Christ’s claims, and also as to the manner in which the
evidence may be expected to find entrance into the mind and produce conviction.
And it is certain that unless we use the light we have and follow it, we are not
likely to reach fuller light. If we are at present sure that at any rate the
moral teaching of Christ is healthy, let us practise that teaching; for, if we
do not, we reject the aid which more than any other is likely to bring us to
Christ’s own point of view, and to open our sympathies with His purpose and to
enlighten us regarding His whole position. The application of the parable, then,
to those to whom our Lord was speaking could not be misunderstood. The first son
— the man who at first said he would not go but afterwards repented and went —
was the representative of the publicans and harlots. They had openly asserted
their unwillingness to work for God: they had made no professions of obedience,
they had decidedly turned their backs on everything good. They had lived in open
sin, and were not surprised that men should denounce them as hopelessly corrupt.
The lad that plainly told his father he was not going to the vineyard but meant
to have a holiday with his boon companions would not have been more astonished
to he called a dutiful and obedient son, than these publicans and harlots would
have been had any one addressed them as good and godly people. They knew they
were doing wrong: they were conscious of their wickedness. But John’s preaching
went to their hearts, because he assured them that even for them there was an
open gate into the kingdom of God. They repented because they were assured that
for them there was a place for repentance and a way back to purity of
conscience, to holiness of life, to God. The priests and elders, the men who
represented all that was respectable and religious in the country, were depicted
in the second son who promptly said he would go and work for his father, but did
not do so. This son gives his answer in the one word “I,” as if he meant, “Oh!
you need have no doubt about me. I am ready. I am at your service. My brother is
a shameless fellow, but as for me you have only to command me.” This son takes
it for granted he is the dutiful son; he puts no pressure on himself to secure
obedience; he is conscious of no necessity to guard against temptations to
forgetfulness, to indolence, to selfishness. He takes for granted that no
deficiency will be found in him, and his complacency is his ruin. We all know
this kind of man: the tradesman to whom you give elaborate instructions, and who
assures you he will send you an article precisely to your mind, but actually
sends you what is quite useless for your purposes; the friend who bids you leave
the matter to him, but who has no sooner turned the corner of the street than he
meets some one whose conversation puts you and your affairs clean out of his
mind. If promising had been all that was wanted, no community could have been
more godly than Jerusalem. These priests and elders spent their lives in
professing to be God’s people. Their day was filled with religious services.
They had no secular business at all; they were identified with religion; their
whole life was a proclamation that they were God’s servants, and a profession of
their willingness to obey. And yet they failed to do the one thing they were
there to do. They heard John’s teaching, they knew it was the voice of God, but
they refused to prepare their hearts and understandings, as he taught them, that
they might recognize Christ. The one thing that John commanded them to do, to
prepare for and receive the King, they failed to do. Their whole profession
collapsed like a burst bubble; they were proved to be shams, to be dealing in
mere words with no idea of realities.

It is natural to suppose that the religious world will in every generation
present similar phenomena. It requires no exceptional discernment to see that in
our own day the spiritual condition of these priests and elders is abundantly
reproduced. There are many now whose life is in great part devoted to various
ways of declaring a willingness to serve God, but whose life is also marked by
disobedience. If you listen to what these persons say you would fancy they were
God’s most industrious servants; if you look at what they do you find nothing
done for God at all, or that their own peculiar and chief duty is neglected.
Every person, therefore, who is conscious that he resembles this son in
professing a willingness to do God’s will, should consider whether he does not
also resemble him in leaving that will undone. We seem to be anxious to discover
what God would have us do. We read His word — we go where we hear it explained
and enforced — we are rather proud of our exceptional knowledge of its meaning —
we seem to set great value on any hand that will point out the way, on any voice
that will say to us: There, that is the work for you. But does not this
forwardness in hearing what God’s will is sometimes take the place of our doing
it? Do we not sometimes mistake our zeal in hearing good counsel about spiritual
things for a zeal in God’s service? Is not our knowledge, or our pious feeling,
or our known sympathy with religion, allowed to stand for actual work done? Are
we not sometimes as satisfied with ourselves when we have seen clearly the
reasonableness and desirableness of serving God, and when we have felt some
desire to serve Him, as if we had, in fact, made a sacrifice in our business for
the sake of righteousness? We congratulate ourselves on feeling well-disposed,
we complacently number ourselves among God’s people, we think with satisfaction
of our clear and moving views of Christ’s work; and when all these clear views
and pious feelings have passed away without any result in the shape of work
done, we still congratulate ourselves on having cherished them. There may be
some doubt about our morality, but there can be none about our religion. Men may
not be quite sure how far they can trust us in a business transaction; our
influence at home may not be of the best kind; but no one can have any doubt
that if the religious men of the city were convened our name would appear among
the invited.

Let us then deal honestly with ourselves, and wipe off the reproach of promising
without performing, and of staying among the mere preliminaries of obedience.
God has desired us not only to think right, to cherish certain feelings, to
maintain certain observances, but He has enjoined all those things as helps and
incentives to the doing of His will. He has said to each of us, “Go, work.” His
call comes to us in this form. If you have any connection with God at all, He
has said to you, “Go, work.” And it is a poor reason, surely, to offer for our
not working, that we have seen most clearly the reasons for working, and that no
one has been more ready to promise obedience. Which of you, being a parent,
would not stand amazed, if, when you challenged your child for not doing what
you had told him, he were to say in excuse, “But I promised to do it; I know
that I ought to have done it.” Would you not fear that some strange obliquity of
moral vision had affected your child; and would you not fear lest a child who
could offer so utterly unreasonable an excuse might fall into the most flagrant
and enormous vices? The question, then, is, What have you done? The passer-by
who saw the one son stripped and hard at work under the sun among the vines,
while the other lounged simperingly on the road telling people what an admirable
man his father was, and what a pleasure it was to work for him, and how much he
hoped the vintage would be abundant — I say, the passer-by would have not the
slightest difficulty in forming a judgment of the two sons. Would he that has
noted your habits — and many have noted your habits — feel quite sure you were
God’s obedient son? Would he think it absurd to ask whether you had said you
would obey, having the far better proof of an obedient spirit, that you were
actually obeying? So judge yourself. Do not believe in your purpose to serve God
better until you do serve Him better. Give no credit to yourself for anything
which is not actually accomplished. Do not let us be always speaking of
endeavors, and hopes, and intentions, and struggles, and convictions of what is
right, but let us at last do God’s will. The other son bluntly refused at first
to go and do his father’s bidding. His father had addressed to him a most
reasonable request, and applied to him an epithet much more endearing than our
word “Son;” but he is answered with a harsh, surly refusal. There is no attempt
made by the son to excuse himself or soften the refusal; no mention of previous
engagements, private business of his own, or necessary duties elsewhere. He is
unfeeling and wantonly rude, as well as disobedient. He represents, therefore,
those who are rather forward in their repudiation of God’s authority. So far
from desiring to be considered godly, they rather affect a deeper, more resolute
ungodliness than they feel, a more vicious wickedness than belongs to them. They
flaunt their opposition to all that is Christian.

Such persons are frequently the subjects of a peculiar delusion. Being
themselves quite honest and open in their ungodliness, they profess and
cultivate a special abhorrence of hypocrisy. No character is so contemptible in
their eyes as that which pretends to grace, and thus loses the pleasure both of
sin and of holiness; and amidst all their enjoyments there are few greater than
that which proceeds from the unmasking of some professed Christian. They seem to
think hypocrisy the crowning sin; and so zealously do they cultivate their skill
in detecting it that they become blind to every other. Like well-trained hounds,
they know no game but that they are trained to hunt. And thus they actually
glide into the belief that because they are not hypocrites, they are not in a
dangerous position. But if a man is going to destruction, it is, after all, a
poor consolation that he is doing so with his eyes open. Is it not time for a
man to bethink himself, when he finds matter for self-gratulation in the fact
that he does not make the smallest profession of serving God or of seeking to be
saved? You are honest in refusing to assume a character you do not possess, but
are you wise to refuse the real attainment of that character? You are honest in
seeking to be known for what you are, but are you wise to be what you are? Could
you not be equally honest were you nearer to God and liker Him? It will not
stand you in the day when God takes account of His servants to say that you
never professed to serve Him. But the whole history of this first son is not
that he refused to labor for his father; he afterwards repented and went.
Perhaps the hurt look of his father had shot some compunction into his soul.
Perhaps the very roughness of his own voice had startled him, and suddenly
revealed to him how far he had gone in sin, and how fast his heart was
hardening. Perhaps the weary gait of his aged and unassisted father, his feeble
efforts to accomplish tasks that required younger sinews than his, his evidently
heart-broken and listless and mechanical way of setting about the work — perhaps
this smote the young man’s heart as he lay sunning himself in indolence, and
recalled old days when he was happy with his father, and went to carry the tools
he was too young to use; and the old feelings of filial affection rose again
within him, — he repented and went to the vineyard. Are there none who know that
it is time for them to follow this youth’s example; none who are conscious they
have not done their duty towards God; who have made no pretense even of doing
God’s will, but have persistently shut their eyes to His love, denied His
claims, and despised His commandment? Do you feel no compunction? Are you. worse
than even those publicans and harlots who no sooner learned there was
forgiveness and a clean life for them than they eagerly sought God? Do you
prefer a life every hour of which pains and grieves your heavenly Father, and a
life which in itself is condemned by God and man; do you prefer a life which in
your sober moments you cannot yourself approve, and which lacks all tenderness
towards God and all [truth and purity, to a life which God Himself calls you to
as worthy of you and as the beginning of never-ending blessedness? Were it
possible for God to call you by name and from His unseen dwelling this moment to
break silence and call you to work for Him, were He to tell you of His love for
you and to invite you to turn to Him, would you refuse Him, could you refuse
Him? Does He not then summon you now? Does He not do even more than this? Does
He not speak within your own heart, and cause you to feel it were well and wise
to meet with humble welcome all His overtures? Can you rest under the stigma of
a hard-heartedness that cannot be moved by infinite tenderness? Can you rest
content to turn away to your own private employments and ways while God offers
you that which will make your whole work and your whole life true? As a whole,
this parable shows us how God is served by men, and shows us especially that
though there are greater and less degrees of disobedience and impenitence, there
is no such thing as consistent uniform obedience. The best that God gets from
earth is the obedience of repentance. Men must still, each for himself, try
their own way, and only when this is found to be quite foolish and hurtful and
hopeless, do they try God’s way. No one can take God’s word for it that such and
such are the things to be done; such and such others to be avoided. We must for
ourselves know good and evil, we must be as gods making choice between the good
that sin brings and its evil, and if then God’s judgment about sin tallies with
our own, we accept it. Such a thing as simple, perpetual acceptance of God’s
commands from first to last is not to be found; and repentance, though certainly
to be rejoiced over, is, after all, only the second best thing. Apology, however
sincere, is at all times a very poor substitute for conduct that needs none.*
And yet you will often see that a man considers that a graceful apology, whether
to God or men, more than repairs the wrong he has done.

* So John Foster in his “ Lectures.”

Let us then be on our guard lest even our repentance be sin, and our humiliation
tainted with pride. When we come to God with apology for neglect of duty, we are
often as proud of having insight enough to see deeply into the evil of our
hearts as we are humbled by a sense of the wrong we have done in omitting whole
years of service. We seem to be more worthy of praise for discovering the
sinfulness of a past action than of blame for committing it. We are secretly
flattered by finding that we are taking our place among those who have a fine
discernment of the higher duties of the Christian life and of the secret and
subtle iniquities of the human heart, and when we confess these, it is with less
shame than complacency. Through all our confession there is running a silent, “I
thank Thee, Lord, that I am not as other men, who could not confess such sins as
I am confessing, because they are still down among the glaring and immoral
wickednesses, and have not so much as thought of those duties that I have been
striving after.” It is, no doubt, right to be convinced we have been wrong, it
is right to turn in to God’s vineyard, even though it be after refusing to do
so, but that complacency should mingle with our repentance is surely a triumph
of duplicity. To make our very confession of total unprofitableness matter of
selfgratulation is surely the extreme of even religious self-deception. But if
we carry anything at all with us from this parable, it must be this: How greatly
our knowledge is in excess of our action. Our Lord easily elicited from these
persons an unqualified condemnation of conduct which precisely represented their
own. They held in their minds principles which, had they only been applied to
their own conduct, would have made them very different men. This reproach never
passes from the world: all of us know more than we practise. In the best of us
there lies unused a large amount of instructive, stimulating, consolatory
knowledge. The worst regulated life, the conduct which is most shameful and
hurtful, is frequently that of a thoroughly intelligent and well-instructed
person. In the mind of the most careless among us there is held truth enough to
save the world, and principles which, if only applied, would form an unblemished
character. And which of us, when we recount and condemn the faults of others,
does not show an intelligence and a zeal for virtue of which there is small sign
in some parts of our own life? The question which this parable suggests is not,
what do you know? but, what are you doing? not, have you acknowledged the
righteousness of God’s demands? have you seen that it is good for you to obey?
do you own and constantly profess that you are His servants? but, have you done
what God has given to you to do? God has commanded you to love Him with all your
heart and strength; you know you ought, but have you done it? He has told you
that this especially is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He hath
sent; have you done it? He calls you to work for Him, to consider what you can
do to forward what is good, to set before you as your aim in life not advantage
of any kind to yourself, but righteousness in yourself and in others. Do not
despair of doing something useful; there are ways in which you can be helpful.
These publicans and harlots might well have thought there was no room for them
to do good in the community, and that their tastes were such that they could
never love purity and truth and unselfishness. You may feel the same. You may
feel that if you do the external duty you yet have no love for it, and you
cannot bear to look forward to a life in which at every step you will require to
put compulsion on yourself to do so. But such will not be the case. Do the duty,
and the spirit will come. Obey God, and you will learn to love Him. Compel
yourself to all duties now, and soon you will like the duties that are now
distasteful. The man that is drawn out of the water half-drowned can only be
restored by artificial respiration, but, if this is persevered in, the natural
breathing at last begins, and the functions of healthy, unforced respirations
supersede the artificial means. And thus God educates us to ease and naturalness
in all duty. Under cover of the outward conduct, the new spirit grows and grows
to such strength that at last it maintains the outward conduct as its natural
fruit.


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  CHAPTER 32: 03.10.     THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN
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THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN Matthew 21:33-45

“Hear another parable,” says our Lord to these ecclesiastical dignitaries who
were probably feeling that they had heard quite enough already. Their dignity,
they felt, was suffering in the eyes of the mob, who could not fail to see that
the tables had been turned against them, and who rarely conceal the rough relish
they have in contemplating the discomfiture of pompous ignorance and
sanctimonious arrogance. If there flew round the circle none of those jeering
remarks or smart personal hits which would inevitably have been elicited from an
English crowd, there would not be wanting significant nods and satisfied smiles
which would show with equal clearness to the priests and elders that in seeking
to expose the pretensions of Jesus they had only exposed themselves. Their
falseness in disguising their reluctance to accept Jesus as the Christ under
pretense of seeking further evidence, was with a wonderful facility laid bare to
all. They stood convicted of refusing to accept the testimony of one whom they
dared not deny to be from God. They stood convicted of having incapacituted
themselves for recognizing the divine in Jesus. But theirs is not the guilt of
the common unbeliever; it was not merely their personal duty and interest to
keep themselves awake to the divine by righteousness of life, it was their
official duty as well. It was the duty for which their office existed. They must
therefore be shown up as men who are hollow shams, who are complacently
maintaining their official dignity and the routine and forms of their office,
while they are wholly oblivious of its one great object. They are worse than
useless. They are as agents whom a man has appointed to manage his business or
his property for him, and who use their positions for embezzling the entire
proceeds, and enriching themselves at his expense. The parabolic dress under
which this warning or judgment is carried home to them is a very thin veil,
through which no one could fail to discern the living truth. The liberally
cared-for vineyard, furnished with every advantage to facilitate productiveness,
was of course Israel, hedged off from the outlying and less cared for fields of
heathenism, and furnished with all that goes to fructify human nature. As God
had long since declared, nothing that could be done had been left undone. As
many men will go to any expense in improving their property, trying new methods,
providing the best implements, taking a pride in having every road and fence in
good repair, so everything had been done in Israel that could be expected to
fertilize human nature. A small section of humanity had been railed off, and the
experiment was made that it might be seen to what a pitch of productiveness this
m.ost fruitful of God’s plants could be brought. A family or race of men was
chosen and set apart for the very purpose of receiving every advantage which
could help men to produce the proper fruit of man; to maintain a vigorous,
healthy life, and to yield results which might seem to justify the care spent on
them. There was to be a nursery of virtue, where any one would only have to look
in order to see what proper cultivation could effect. Here it was to be shown
that barbarism, degradation, violence, lust, and idolatry were not the proper
fruit of human nature. In this garden man was to receive every possible aid and
inducement to development and productiveness: nothing was wanting which could
win men to holiness, nothing which could enlarge, purify, fertilize human
nature. And what was the result? The result was that which every reformatory in
the country gives, namely, that human nature in the abstract is one thing; in
the concrete, in the individual, another; that as some soils simply absorb all
that you can put into them and give no sign, so do most men simply absorb all
manner of inducements, counsels, warnings, aids, and bring forth nothing
serviceable to God or man. Even persons professing religion are quite contented,
nay, even think they are making vast attainment and thriving magnificently, when
they are merely receiving, and doing nothing or little. They measure themselves
by the care God is spending on them, not by the fruit they are yielding; by the
amount of instruction they have received and retain, not by the use they have
made of it; by the grace spent upon them, and not by the results. In short, they
make the blunder which subverts the whole of religion, of turning means into
ends. But in this parable it is not the plants that are censured for barrenness,
but the keepers of the vineyard that are condemned for unfaithfulness to the
owner. The fruit borne, whether more or less than common, was intercepted by the
husbandmen. They used their position solely for their own advantage. That is to
say, the priests and elders of the Jews had fallen into the common snare of
ecclesiastical leaders, and had used the dignity and advantageous position of
their office for their own behoof, and had failed to remember that they had it
only as God’s servants. The religious leader is quite as liable as the political
or military leader to be led by a desire for glory, applause, notoriety,
distinction, power. And the Church is quite as open a field for the exercise and
manifestation of such unworthy motives as the State is.* The Church, being a
society of men, must be managed by the usual methods, which all societies of men
adopt. There must be combination, contrivance, adjustment, discussion, laws and
regulations. The Church in its outward system and movements must be wrought by
the same machinery as other large associations use. And it is notorious that the
mere working of this machinery requires no spiritual faculty in the persons who
manage it. It calls into exercise a certain class of gifts and faculties,
certain talents and qualities which are eminently serviceable, but which may
equally be exercised for the State or for the Church, for the world or for God.
The political leader who negotiates with foreign powers, who foresees calamity
and has skill to avert it, who can control large bodies of men and keep vast
organizations in noiseless motion, may exercise these great gifts either for his
country and his God, or merely for the sake of making or maintaining his
reputation as the most influential man of his generation. And the ecclesiastic
who has very much the same kind of work to do, feeling the pulse of the
theological and ecclesiastical world, making out through the distorting haze of
public report and opinion what are the facts of a case and what is best to be
done in it, and talking over to his view large bodies of men — this man, like
the politician, may be serving his God, or he may be serving himself. Success
may be the idol of the one as truly as of the other. To have a large religious
following and wide influence in the Church may be as thoroughly selfish and
worldly a desire as to be at the head of a strong political party. It is not the
sphere in which one’s work is done that proves its spirituality or worldliness;
neither is it always the nature of the work that is done, but the motive that
tests whether it is spiritual or worldly. These priests and elders had not
escaped the snare into which their predecessors had fallen, and to which all
their successors are exposed. They had used their position to attract applause
to themselves, or to make their influence felt in the community, or to win for
themselves a name as defenders of the faith.

* See the late Canon Mozley’s Sermon on “The Reversal of Human Judgment.”

Another and still more insidious form of the same temptation it may be
worthwhile to notice. It is that temptation to which our Lord alluded when He
censured this same class of persons for their zeal in proselytizing. But why so?
Is not zeal in propagating religion a good thing? If these foremost men in the
Jewish Church compassed sea and land to make one proselyte, is this not that
very missionary zeal which the Jews are upbraided for wanting, and the modern
Church prides itself on possessing? Is evangelistic fervor in the nineteenth
century a thing to applaud, while the same fervor in the first is to be
condemned? or what was it in these men’s zeal that so roused our Lord’s
indignation? It was that same element which so often still taints zeal for the
propagation of religious truth — the desire rather to bring men over to my way
of thinking and so to strengthen my own position, than to bring them to the
truth. My way of thinking may be the truth, or may, at least, be much nearer it
than the opinions held by others, and for them it may be a good thing to be
brought over to my views; but for myself it is a bad thing and the mere
strengthening of a selfish craving, if I seek to propagate my opinions rather
because they are mine than because they are the truth. And how wide-spreading
and deep-reaching an evil this is, those well know who have observed religious
controversy and seen how dangerously near propagandism lies to persecution. The
zeal that proceeds from a loving consideration for others does not, when
resisted, darken into violence and ferocity. The mother seeking to persuade her
son does not become fierce when opposed, but only increasingly tender and
pitifully gentle. The zeal for truth that storms at opposition and becomes
bitter and fierce when contradicted, you may, therefore, recognize as springing
from a desire rather to have one’s own wisdom and one’s own influence
acknowledged than from either deep love for others or deep regard for the truth
as the truth. But to return — the implied and slightly disguised condemnation of
the parable our Lord proceeds to enforce in an explicit form. The truth which
had been sheathed in the parable He thrusts home now with naked point. “The
kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the
fruits thereof.” And this warning is grounded not on a parable, which they might
have affected to despise, but on a passage of the very Scriptures they professed
to be the guardians of. There had been the warning before their eyes, read by
them, sung by them at their festivals, carefully treasured in their memories;
and yet, like us all, they had so little penetrated to its sense, had so little
thought out its meaning and possible application, had looked upon it so much as
a dead letter and so little as alive for them and for all men, that our Lord has
yet to ask them: “Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the
builders rejected is become the head of the corner? “Is not this stone the same
as the heir sent by the lord of the vineyard? Are not ye now in danger of
fulfilling the prophecy ye know so well? Are you not about to reject and cast
contempt on one whom in your souls you know to be worthy of far other treatment?
The careful reader of this conversation will be struck with two points in it —
first that Jesus claims to be the heir of God; in other words, He deliberately
sets Himself on a wholly different level from the other prophets — high above
Isaiah, Elijah, nay, even high above Moses himself. They were all servants; He
is in quite a different relation to the proprietor, that is, to God. He is the
Son and Heir; in acting for God He acts for Himself. It is because the
vinedressers identify Him with the owner that they have a hope of gaining
possession of the vineyard by killing the heir. To kill a mere servant would
have served no such purpose, another servant can always be appointed; however
high his office and title, another can always be raised, and equal authority can
be delegated to him; but there is no other son. It is nature and relationship,
not mere official dignity, that underlies this title and that is implied in the
parable. But the second point is even more worthy of remark. Our Lord implies
that this was known by these Jewish leaders. Their condemnation was, that
knowing Him to be the Son of God, they slew Him. Peter, indeed, apologetically
says that they would not have slain Him had they known He was the Lord of glory.
It may have been so in some instances; and, no doubt, had they allowed the fact
to stand clear before their minds, had they given free course to it and weight
to it, they could not have done what they did. Still, as the parable shows, it
was just because they knew this was the heir that they were so eager to remove
Him. Their state of mind is perfectly intelligible and very common. There lay
latent in them a deep consciousness which they would not allow to become
distinct and influential. They had a conviction that Jesus was the Christ, but
they would not let their mind dwell upon it. There are few of us who have not
such buried convictions, few of us who do not leave out of sight thoughts which,
if allowed influence, would urge us to unwelcome action. There are thousands who
have a haunting suspicion that Jesus deserves a very different kind of
recognition from that which they give Him. Is there not lying in the mind of
some of you half-formed thoughts about Jesus, possible if not actual
convictions, which if you carefully thought them out would lead you to take up a
different and much more satisfactory attitude towards Him? And if there are
those who feel that things should be plainer, that the majesty of Christ should
be so borne in upon the soul that all would yield to Him, this is natural; but
it is to overlook the fundamental fact that room must be left for freedom of
choice and the exercise of judgment. The fact is, that the rejection of Christ
by so many is one of the proofs that He is Divine. It is worldly worth that is
acknowledged by all, and worldly blessings that are universally accepted. The
higher the blessing, the fewer accept it. All wish plenty to eat, a minority
value good education, a few seek the kingdom of God. And so our Lord here points
out that it had long been foreseen that when He came He would be rejected. In
reply to those questioners who ask how He can allow the Hosanna Psalm to be
applied to Him by the people, He takes this very psalm, and out of it proves to
the authorities that their very resistance and rejection of Him is the proof
that He is what the crowd were affirming Him to be — the Messiah, the Son and
Heir of God, the Stone despised of the builders, but chosen of God. Rejection by
the builders was one of the marks by which the foundation chosen by God was to
be identified. Truth is often more convincingly exhibited by the opposition of a
certain class of men. It is not discredited by their opposition; but a prima
facie point in its favor is that they do not receive it. And, certainly, had the
claims of Jesus been accepted by these dried-up formal traditionalists we should
have had some cause for doubt.

Abandoning the figure used in the parable, our Lord makes use of a new figure to
complete the warning. He speaks of two possible contingencies — “Whosoever shall
fall on this stone shall be broken”— this had been declared by Isaiah — “but on
whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder,” this figure had been
familiarized by Daniel’s use of it. The stone which lies ready hewn and suitable
for the best part of a building may inflict severe injury on the builder, either
by his carelessly stumbling upon it, falling from a height upon it, and so
getting himself bruised and broken; or it may fall from a height upon him, in
which case it is certain death. The first case is that in which Christ is a
stone of stumbling to those to whom He is presented. God lays this stone
everywhere in our way that we may build upon it or set it high in the place of
honor, and we cannot simply walk on as if God had done no such thing. Whatever
else Christ is, He is substantial, a reality as solid as the stone against which
your foot is jarred. To make as if He were not, and to pass on untouched and
unchanged, is impossible. If we attempt to do so, ignoring that the stone is
there, we stumble and fall and injure ourselves. The foundation stone becomes a
stone of offense. Every one who hears the gospel, every one in whose path Christ
is laid, is either the better or the worse for it. The gospel once heard is
“henceforward a perpetual element in the whole condition, character, and destiny
of the hearer.” No man who has heard can be as if he had not. Though he may wish
to pass on as if he had not seen Christ at all, he is not the same man as he was
before, his spiritual condition is altered, possibilities have dawned upon his
mind, openings into regions which are new and otherwise inaccessible, he is
haunted by unsettled perplexities, doubts, anxieties, thoughts. This attitude of
mind must have been very common in Christ’s own time, many persons must have
shrunk from the responsibility of determining for themselves what they ought to
think of Him. Many now do the same. They wish to overlook Him and pass on into
life as if He were not in their path. But how foolish if He be the one
foundation on whom a life can safely be built. Men do not think of sin as a
permanent foundation — they only think of it as a temporary expedient —
practises get into a man’s life which he does not like to think of as permanent,
but only as serving present turns. They do not deliberately choose anything as
permanently satisfactory, cannot bring their minds to the idea of being built
and settled finally, even though they have some consciousness that it were wise
to be so. Those who thus overlook Christ and try to pass on into life as if He
were not, damage their own character, because they know He is there, and until
they make up their minds about Him, life is a mere make-believe. It is thus they
are bruised on this stone of stumbling. They are practising upon themselves, and
are not true to their own convictions. They do not walk steadily and uprightly
as those whose path is ascertained and assured, but they stumble as those who
are still tripped up and held back by something they have not taken account of.
Just as a person who feels he has forgotten something, cannot give his mind
fully to what is before him, but is held back by the unconscious effort to
remember, so here the spirit that has yet to take account of Christ and decide
regarding Him is held back and distracted. Besides, this unwillingness to face
facts fairly, this desire to do for a time without Christ, and as if He were not
in our path, is apt to produce a habitual falseness in the spirit. You may be
unconscious of any such process, but many processes go on in us quite as
effectually without as with our intention. Those which are fatal to the body do
so. Each refusal to determine regarding Christ makes your conscience blunter,
your heart less open to righteous and reasonable influence. It may be by a very
little, yet it does. The frost of a minute, or of thirty minutes, may be
imperceptible in its result, or it may only draw a few pretty lines upon the
water, but it is frost all the same, and is gradually forming a strength of
surface which no hammer can break, nor any fire melt. By trying, then, to get
past Christ and make a life for yourself without Him, by trying to build on some
other foundation, you are both trying to do what everything is arranged to
defeat, and you arc injuring your own character, not yielding to the influences
that you feel to be good, nor listening to convictions which you shrewdly
suspect to be reasonable. This bruised condition, however, is remediable. The
second action of the stone on the builder is described as final. The stone,
which is of sufficient massiveness to uphold a world, falls upon the unhappy
opposer, and the living, hopeful man lies an undistinguishable mass. At once
slain and buried, those who determinedly opposed Christ lie oppressed by that
which might have been their joy. Their dwelling and refuge becomes their tomb.
Every excellence of Christ they have leagued against themselves. It is their
everlasting shame that they were ashamed of Him. The faithfulness, truth, and
love of Christ, that is to say, the qualities whose existence is all that any
saved man ever had to depend upon, the qualities in the knowledge and faith of
which the weakest and most heartless sinner sets out boldly and hopefully to
eternity, these all now torment with crushing remorse those who have despised
them. Do not suppose this is an extravagant figure used by our Lord to awe His
enemies, and that no man will ever suffer a doom which can be fairly represented
in these terms. It is a statement of fact. Things are to move on eternally in
fulfilment of the will of Christ. He is identified with all that is righteous,
all that is wise, all that is ultimately successful. To oppose His course, to
endeavor to defeat His object, to attempt to work out an eternal success apart
from Him is as idle as to seek to stop the earth in its course, or to stand in
the path of a stone avalanche in order to stem it. His kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom — He has become the Head of our race, that in Him we may together be led
on to everlasting prosperity and righteousness. The whole forward movement of
individuals and of the race must be made on the lines laid down by Christ, and
the time is coming when this shall be so plainly manifested that all who have
not His spirit shall feel that all power has left them, and shall see the whole
stream of life and progress flow past them, leaving them stranded and wrecked
and useless. For a long time it may be doubtful in a country and in national
affairs whether progress and prosperity are bound up with one party or another,
with one spirit in trade and in government or with another, and men take their
sides and adopt their several causes according to their tastes and judgment; but
a day comes when the one party is put to confusion, and when it is entirely left
behind by the current of events. So is it here, but in a far more momentous
sense. It is not only national affairs that are governed and guided by certain
deep laws that the craftiest statesman has no power whatever to alter; but the
affairs of the individual, of each one of us, and of all men together, similarly
move onwards according to certain immutable moral laws. These are revealed to us
in Christ, that we may know and appropriate them. For, just in proportion as we
do so, and attach ourselves to Him, and feel the power and beauty of His way and
of His spirit, shall we ourselves stand with Him when all opposition has slunk
away ashamed, and enter with Him on the great future which will open to those
who are capable of taking a part in it. What, then, you feel it in you to do by
God’s grace in the way of bending your will to what is right, of subduing the
evil in you which you see can but lead to death and disturbance, these things
do, hoping in Him who has promised to return and reign eternally.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 33: 03.11.     THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON
========================================================================

THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING’S SON Matthew 21:45-46; Matthew 22:1-14 This parable is
spoken to the same mixed crowd as the parable of the Two Sons and the parable of
the Wicked Husbandmen. Sorely hit by the two former parables, the chief priests
and Pharisees would fain have put a stop to this kind of teaching, but they
feared the people. Public opinion here, as often elsewhere, was healthier than
the opinion of the clique which had the official guidance of ecclesiastical and
theological affairs. Public opinion was too markedly in favor of Jesus just at
this time for the Pharisees to ignore or brave it. They felt they must take it
into account, and either wait for a turn in the tide, or compass their end by
craft, and secretly. While they hesitate and stand measuring the heartiness of
the crowd in Jesus’ favor, and considering how far they may venture, this third
parable is launched against them. The object of it is still the same — to set in
a vivid light the guilt of the Jewish leaders in rejecting Christ, and the
punishment which in consequence was to fall upon them; but to this third parable
an appendix is added, which is even more striking than the parable itself — an
appendix spoken, as we shall see, rather for the sake of the crowd than as a
warning to the Pharisees.

Already in His parables our Lord had compared the kingdom of God to a feast, for
the sake of illustrating the rude, discourteous, and mistaken way in which men
deal with God’s invitations. There are occasions on which men combine to be
happy, meet for the understood purpose of enjoyment, so that anything which
interrupts or represses the hilarity of the company is frowned upon as out of
place and inopportune. Matters of great importance are postponed, questions
requiring much gravity in their discussion are avoided, anything that might
irritate or slightly annoy or discompose any single guest is excluded, and, in
short, everything is arranged to admit of free, unrestrained mirth. And when
such occasions are public, he who refuses to join in the national festivity is
looked upon as a traitor, and he who has private griefs is expected to keep them
in abeyance, “to anoint his head and wash his face that he appear not unto men
to fast.” Disloyalty could scarcely assume a more marked form than if a man
being invited to share the festal joy of his king on some such worthy occasion
as that here adduced, were either to refuse the invitation, or, accepting it,
were to conduct himself with so sullen and rude a demeanor as to show that his
feelings were quite out of harmony with his host’s. Such a man would be at once
recognized as disaffected and a rebel, and also as a rebel who had chosen a
singularly unfortunate and discourteous mode of exhibiting his rebellion. But
the specialty of this parable is that the feast to which the king invites His
subjects is a marriage feast. Prominence is given to the circumstance that the
host is a king, and that the occasion of the feast is the marriage of His Son.

It is obvious how this figure was suggested to the mind of Christ. Long before
His time the relation between husband and wife had been used to exhibit the
devotedness and fidelity with which God gives Himself to men, as well as the
intimacy and loving care to which He admits them. And the close alliance between
God and men which was thus expressed, was actually consummated in the person of
Jesus Christ. His assumption of humanity into perfect union with His own Divine
nature was the actual marriage of God and man. In Him God and man are made one —
so truly and perfectly one, that whereas formerly marriage was used to
illustrate this union, now this union stands as the ideal to which marriage may
aspire, but which it can never reach. It is a union which has the
characteristics of marriage. It is the result of love and choice, not of nature;
and it implies that the stronger party assume the responsibilities and watch
over the interests of the weaker. The marriage is formed that the stronger party
may have fuller opportunity to help and serve the weaker. God then might
reasonably expect that men should, at least on this occasion, recognize that God
and they constituted one kingdom and cause. Well might He expect that now, at
least, they should rejoice with Him. It is their nature that is seated on the
throne, their rights that are thus secured, their prosperity that is thus
guaranteed. And yet, though proclamation had been made of the coming
festivities, though due invitation had been given, and though, finally, John had
been sent to say that now all things were ready and to herald the bridegroom in
visible form through their streets, the people had listened with dead
indifference, as if it had been a kingdom in the moon that was spoken of, and as
if God had wholly mistaken in supposing that such an event had any bearing at
all on them or their interests. This union of God and man that is as natural as
love, and as supernatural as God — this union, consummated in Christ, is the
foundation of our hope. Apart from this we may find some little help in the hour
of temptation, some faint glimmering of hope in the time of trouble, but nothing
that can quite satisfy and bring to us a perfect light — nothing that can give
us God, the Highest of all, the Eternal, the Almighty, the unfailing Love and
Life. Jesus Christ blesses mankind not by His superior moral teaching mainly,
nor only by His giving us a clearer knowledge of God than other teachers have
done, but by His bringing God into human life, by showing us our God suffering
with and for us, by bringing God to work among us and in our place, and thus to
lift humanity, by a power Divine, to its highest level. It is by bringing thus a
new thing into the world, the fulness of God into human life, that He has done
that which no one but He could do, and which merits the gratitude of every man.
He has thus become the true Bridegroom of men, the joy and help of us all. That
was a memorable expression of Napoleon’s when he said, “Jesus Christ has
succeeded in making of every human soul an appendage to His own.” He has made
Himself the indispensable person to us all — the indispensable “fellow-worker
with each man in the realization of his supreme destiny.” The earnest sincerity
of God in seeking our good in this matter is illustrated in the parable by one
or two unmistakable traits — first, by the king’s willing observance of every
form of courtesy. Among ourselves there are certain forms, an etiquette, which a
host who is anxious to please his guests is careful to conform to. There are
ways of putting an invitation which make it almost impossible even for the
reluctant to withhold acceptance. In the East one of these forms is the sending
of a second messenger to announce the actual readiness of the feast. In
countries where no memoranda are written, and where no fixed hours are observed
or appointed, such a final and second invitation is almost necessary; or, if not
necessary, does at least pleasantly display the cordiality of the host. To this
form God condescended. He not only sent invitations by the prophets, bidding the
Jews expect this festivity, but when it was ready He sent John to remind them
and to bring them. So it is always. Because God is so true in His purpose to
bless you, therefore is He most careful of all your feelings, picking each
smallest stone out of your path that might cause you to stumble and take
offense, leaving the reluctant without apology. God does not invite you to what
has no existence, nor to what is not worth going so far to get, nor on terms it
is impossible to fulfil, nor in such a manner that no man who respects himself
can accept it. On the contrary, what God offers you is that in which He Himself
rejoices. He offers you fellowship with His own Son, He offers you righteousness
and love, and He offers this to you with the observance of every form that could
prove consideration of your feelings, and in a way which involves that every one
who really wishes to be blessed will receive all the help he requires in
striving to be so. Another proof of the earnestness of God in His invitation is
His wrath against the murderers who had refused it. You are not much offended at
one who refuses an invitation you have given in jest, or for form’s sake, half
hoping it would not be accepted. God is angry because you have treated in jest
and made light of what has been most earnest to Him; because you have crossed
Him in the sincerest purpose to bless you; because after He has at the greatest
expense, not only of wealth and exertion, but of life, provided what He knows
you need, you act towards Him as if He had done nothing that deserves the least
consideration. This acceptance or rejection of God’s offers that we come and
talk over, often as if the whole matter were in our hands and we might deal with
it as we arrange for a journey or an evening’s amusement, is to God the most
earnest matter. If God is in earnest about anything, it is about this; if the
whole force of His nature concentrates on any one matter it is on this; if
anywhere the amplitude and intensity of Divine earnestness, to which the most
impassioned human earnestness is as the idle vacant sighing of the summer air,
if these are anywhere in action, it is the tenderness and sincerity with which
He invites you to Himself. There may be nothing so trivial as to be powerless to
turn you from God’s message, but nothing is so important as to turn Him from
seeing how you receive it. You may think His invitation the least interesting of
all subjects, you may In point of fact scarcely ever seriously consider whether
it is to be accepted or not, whether it is an invitation, whether you might act
upon it, and why you do not — the whole matter of God’s offer to you may be
unreal, but your answer is matter of God’s consideration, and nothing can so
occupy Him as to turn His observation from you. No glad tidings from any other
part of His government can so fill His ear as to drown your sullen refusal of
His grace. To save sinners from destruction is His grand purpose, and success in
other parts of His government does not repay Him for failure here. And to make
light of such an earnestness as this, an earnestness so wise, so called for, so
loving, pure, and long suffering, so Divine, is terrible indeed. To have been
the object of such earnest love, to have had all the Divine attributes and
resources set in motion to secure my eternal bliss, and to know myself capable
of making light (making light!) of such earnestness as this, this surely is to
be in the most forlorn and abject condition that any creature can reach. The
last scene in this parable comes upon us unexpectedly, and forms indeed an
appendix introducing a new lesson, and directed to a special section in the
audience. No doubt our Lord perceived that parables such as He had been uttering
were open to misconstruction. Ill-living and godless persons, coarse, covetous,
and malicious men might be led to fancy that it mattered very little how they
had lived, or what they were. They saw that the gates of the kingdom were thrown
open, that all indiscriminately were invited to enter, that God made no
distinction, saying to one, “I cannot forget your former neglect,” to another,
“I do not wish your presence,” to a third, “You are too far gone in sin, I do
not invite you.” It had been made quite clear to them by these parables that
they themselves were as free to enter the kingdom as those religious men they
had been accustomed to consider so much more in God’s favor than they were. This
perception of the absolute unconditioned freedom of entrance, this sense borne
in upon their mind that they were the objects of God’s love and invitation,
might possibly lead them to overlook the great moral change requisite in all who
enter God’s presence and propose to hold intercourse with Him. It is to disabuse
them of the idea that the acceptance of God’s invitation entails no alteration
in their habits and spirit, that this appendix is added. This object is gained
by setting before them an instance in which one who accepted the invitation was
convicted of a contempt of the host even greater than that which was involved in
rejecting his invitation. He entered the banqueting hall without a wedding
garment, appeared at the King’s table in just the dress in which he had been
found in the streets by the servants. But had he any means of obtaining a dress
more in keeping with the occasion? Was he not perhaps a man so poor that he
could afford no preparation of any kind? Had this been so, it would have been
pleaded in excuse. But no doubt the parable supposes that the not unusual custom
of providing for the guests the needed garment had been adopted; a provision
which this guest had despised and refused; he had pushed past the officious
servants who would have clothed him. It is this that constituted the man’s
audacity and guilt. Similar audacity in entering the king’s presence without
putting on the robe sent by the king for that purpose, has been known to cost a
prime minister his life. A traveler who was invited, with the ambassadors he
accompanied, to the table of the Persian king, says: — “We were told by the
officer that we, according to their usage, must hang the splendid vests that
were sent us from the king over our dresses, and so appear in his presence. The
ambassadors at first refused, but the officer urged it so earnestly, alleging,
as also did others, that the omission would greatly displease the king, since
all other envoys observed such a custom, that at last they consented, and
hanged, as did we also, the splendid vests over their shoulders.” So at this
marriage, dresses had been provided by the king. The guests who had been picked
off the streets were not told to go home and do the best they could for their
dress, but in the palace, in the vestibule of the banquet hall each man was
arrayed in the dress the king wished to see worn. — Possibly this man who
declined the offered garment had a dress of his own he grudged to cover.
Possibly he thought he was as well dressed as need be. He would stroll in
superciliously as a patron or spectator, thinking it very fit for those poor,
coarse-clothed and dirty people to make use of the king’s wardrobe, but
conscious of no speck nor uncleanliness in his own raiment that should cause him
to make any alteration of it.

Neither is this a formal and artificial custom representing a formal and
artificial method of judging men. In point of fact this rejection of the
marriage-dress is proof of alienation of spirit, disaffection, want of sympathy
with the feelings of the king. The man who could refuse the festive dress on
such an occasion must lack the festive spirit, and is therefore a “spot in the
feast.” It is a real and internal, not a merely formal and external distinction
that exists between him and the rest of the guests. He sits there out of harmony
with the spirit of the occasion, despising the exultation and mirth of his
neighbors, and disloyal to his king. Therefore is his punishment swift and
severe. The eye of the king that travels round the tables and carries welcome
and hearty recognition, gladdening all his loyal subjects, is suddenly arrested
upon this unseemly, audacious, unjustifiable intruder. As every guest turns to
see the cause of the changed expression in the face that lights up the whole
feast, there with head that would, but cannot, hang, with horror-stricken eye
riveted upon the face of the king, stands the despiser of the wedding-garment —
speechless — all his guilt and easy confidence gone, fearful misgivings sliding
into his heart, quailing and fainting beneath that just and pitiful eye that
empties him of all self-deceit, of all self-confidence, of all untruth. He
welcomes the attendants who hurry him from the gaze of the assembled guests and
the brilliant lights of the hall; but not the outer darkness of an Eastern
street, not the pitchy blackness in which he lies unseen and helpless, can hide
him from that gaze of His Lord which he feels to be imprinted on his conscience
for evermore. It is that which pursues him, that which makes him outcast from
all consolation and all hope, that he has alienated his Lord, has been branded
by his king, has forfeited the approval and favor of Him whose recognition and
fellowship carry with them all joy, and hope, and blessing. Does this man’s
conduct signify anything to ourselves? Does his doom cover any great truth that
concerns ourselves? How idle it seems to ask the question. Is there any commoner
way of dealing with God’s invitation than that which this man adopted? He had no
deep love for his king, no grateful and humbling sense of his kindness, no
perception of what was due to him, but with the blundering stupidity of
godlessness, thought selfishness would carry him through, and ran right upon his
doom. What is commoner than this self-complacency, this utter blindness to the
fact that God is holy, and that holiness must therefore be the rule everywhere;
what is commoner than the feeling that we are well enough, that we shall somehow
pass muster, that as we mean to take our places among the heavenly guests we
shall surely not be ejected? How hard it is for any of us fully to grasp the
radical nature of the inward change that is required if we are to be meet for
the inheritance of the saints in light. Conformity to God, ability to rejoice
with God and in God, humble and devoted reverence, a real willingness to do
honor to the King’s Son, these are great attainments; but these constitute our
wedding-garment, without which we cannot remain in His presence nor abide His
searching gaze. It will come to be a matter between each one of you singly and
Him, and it is the heart you bear towards Him that will determine your destiny.
No mere appearance of accepting His invitation, no associating of yourself with
those who love Him, no outward entrance into His presence, no making use of the
right language is anything to the purpose. What is wanted is a profound sympathy
with God, a real delight in what is holy, a radical acceptance of His will,— in
other words, and as the most untutored conscience might see, what is wanted is a
state of mind-in you which God can delight in, and approve of, and hold
fellowship with. To His table, to His everlasting company, to Himself and His
love He invites you, and in order to accept this, the only invitation He gives
(for there are no degrees, no outer and inner circles, no servants made of those
who will not be friends) — in order to accept this invitation, or in the
acceptance of it, acceptance of God, of His spirit, character, and ways is
necessary. There is no real acceptance of the invitation, no abiding entrance
into God’s favor | where there is no growing likeness to God; without this it is
mere word and self-deception. “Know ye not that the unjust shall not inherit the
kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor effeminate, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor
revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God.” For “many are
called, but few chosen.” To all of us the invitation comes; there is no man whom
God does not desire to see enjoying His bounty. There is no question about the
invitation — you have it — good and bad alike are invited, and yet even among
those who seem to accept it, there is sometimes lacking that which can alone
give them a permanent place in His presence and favor. There is no real sympathy
with God, no pleasure in those matters which He deems important, no similarity
of spirit — in a word, no real goodness. This is a state of spirit which will
one day develop into a consciousness that we have nothing in common with God.

But, in conclusion, there is abundant encouragement in this parable to all who
are willing and desirous to put on the Lord Jesus. As the poor people picked up
by the servants of the king would have felt very awkward about their dress, and
could not in decency have accepted the invitation had they not been assured that
a suitable dress would be given them; so should we feel very awkward indeed, if,
when summoned into God’s presence, there should remain in us anything to make us
feel out of place, uneasy, fearful. But the invitation itself guarantees the
provision of all that follows it. It is the first business of every host to make
his guest feel at home, and therefore does God provide us not only with great
outward blessings, but with all that can make us feel easy and glad in His
presence. Fellowship with Him is indeed reverential, for He is our King: but
being our Father there will be in it also more of the exuberant delight of a
family gathering than of the stiffness of a formal state banquet throughout
which we long for the termination, or are hindered from all enjoyment through
fear of doing something out of place.

Though, therefore, there are many called but few chosen, there is no reason why
you should not be among the few. For God not only offers enjoyment, but also
power to enjoy. If you could not be easy in God’s presence without great
alterations in your character, these alterations will be made. The bona fide
invitation is your guarantee that they will be made. If you could not be easy in
God’s presence without knowing that He was fully aware of all you had thought
and done against Him, and forgave it you; if you could not eat at the table of
one against whom you harbored ill-will; if you could not enjoy anything in
company thoroughly uncongenial, whose conversation was all of subjects quite
uninteresting to you; if you are conscious that in order to enjoy any
entertainment the prime requisite is that you have a genuine admiration and love
for the host — then this will all be communicated to you on your acceptance of
God’s invitation. Do you always feel that God’s holiness is too high and distant
for fellowship? But consider how Christ drew men and women to Him. No one ever
created such a passion of devoted love as He. Consider Him and you will at
length learn to think more wisely of holiness. Are you conscious that your
habitual leanings and likings are earthly, that as yet you are more at home in
other companics than in God’s? Does your unfitness even more than your
unworthiness deter you — does your want of ability to find your joy in God alarm
you more than your guilt? Still you see here that God invites you as you are,
and those whom He casts out are only those who have so fond a confidence in
themselves as to think they are fit enough for His presence as they stand.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 34: 03.12.     THE TEN VIRGINS
========================================================================

THE TEN VIRGINS

Matthew 25:1-13 The prolonged discourse of which this parable forms a striking
part was uttered in reply to a very natural question which the disciples had put
to our Lord. In ignorance of what was chiefly engaging His thoughts, and in
simple-minded, rustic admiration of the metropolis, they had been taking Him
round to show Him the marvels of the now completed temple. And well might they
expect to hear their own exclamations of surprise and overwhelming admiration
echoed from every one who in their day walked about Zion “and marked her
bulwarks, or gazed on the astounding pile of marble that crowned the opposite
summit of Moriah. Buildings of similar magnificence were scarcely elsewhere to
be seen. It can scarcely have been with cold contempt for those stupendous
architectural works, but rather with deep sorrow and compassion that our Lord,
after silently gazing upon them, or entering with sympathy into the enthusiasm
of his companions, at last let fall the unexpected word, “Verily I say unto you
there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown
down.” It was inevitable that the disciples should eagerly desire to know when
this catastrophe was to occur. “Tell us when shall these things be, and what
shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world.” Our Lord’s reply
to this question is, that the day and the hour of His corning are known to the
Father only, and that therefore the only way to be prepared for that hour is to
be always ready, prepared for any hour and every hour. This is the lesson which
He means the parable to convey, and which He expressly draws in the words,
“Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man
cometh.” And we must beware of pressing this or any parable to say more than it
was meant to say. We get what it was intended to give when by its vivid imagery
we are practically aroused to the necessity of being always prepared for our
Lord’s coming. We may therefore dismiss a great deal of minute allegorizing and
searching for hidden meanings in little turns of expression and parabolic
accessories with the words of one of the Reformers who says, “It is nothing at
all to the purpose to speculate and refine about virginity and lamps and oil and
those who sell oil. These refined speculations are the trifles of allegorizers.
But the one idea that is of moment is, that they who are really prepared shall
enter into the joy of the Lord, while the unprepared shall be excluded.” Or we
may say with Calvin himself: — “Some expositors torment themselves greatly in
explaining the lamps, and the vessels, and the oil; but the simple and genuine
meaning of the whole is just this, that it is not enough to have a lively zeal
for a while. We must have in addition a perseverance that never tires.”

Neither need we spend time on the customs from which the parable draws its
imagery. Let it suffice to read the words of one of the most accurate describers
of what is to be seen in India. “At a marriage,” he says, “the procession of
which I saw some years ago, the bridegroom came from a distance, and the bride
lived at Serampore, to which place the bridegroom was to come by water. After
waiting two or three hours, at length, near midnight, it was announced, as if in
the very words of Scripture, “Behold the bridegroom Cometh, go ye out to meet
him.” All the persons employed now lighted their lamps, and ran with them in
their hands to fill up their stations in the procession. Some of them had lost
their lights, and were unprepared; but it was then too late to seek them, and
the cavalcade moved forward to the house of the bride, at which place the
company entered a large and splendidly illuminated area before the house covered
with an awning, where a great multitude of friends, dressed in their best
apparel, were seated upon mats. The bridegroom was carried in the arms of a
friend, and placed upon a superb seat in the midst of the company, where he sat
a short time, and then went into the house, the door of which was immediately
shut, and guarded by sepoys. I and others expostulated with the doorkeepers, but
in vain. Never was I so struck with our Lord’s beautiful parable as at this
moment: and the door was shut.” This imagery so familiar to our Lord’s hearers
was used on this occasion to illustrate chiefly these three things: the meaning
of our Lord’s command to watch; its reason; and the means of fulfilling it. It
illustrates the meaning of the command; showing us that it does not mean, “ Be
ye always on the watch,” but “Be always prepared.” The fisherman’s wife who
spends her time on the pier-head watching for the boats, cannot be so well
prepared to give her husband a comfortable reception as the woman who is busy
about her household work, and only now and again turns a longing look seaward.
None of the virgins were on the watch for the bridegroom, but some of them were
nevertheless prepared for His coming. It is impossible for us to be always
looking out for the coming of Christ, but it is quite possible to be prepared
for His coming. Our life is to bear evidence that one of the things we take into
account is the approach of our Lord.

2. It illustrates also the reason of the command. No one can tell when this
second great interruption of the world’s even course is to take place. It may be
nearer than some expect; or as the parable shows, it may be more distant than
some expect. The expectation of a speedy termination of things which so largely
prevailed in the first Christian generation might have been moderated by the
wide circulation of this parable. The virgins who neglected to carry
reserve-flasks of oil were those who expected the bridegroom would soon appear.
They did not anticipate a long delay; they made no provision for continuance.
Had the hour been a fixed one they would have been prepared, but they were
betrayed by its uncertainty. And no doubt if any one could say with authority,
“The Lord is to come on Tuesday first,” a very large number of persons would at
once prepare as best they could to meet Him. If the belief really grew up within
them that on a certain day not far distant they must face their Lord, that
belief would certainly produce a multitude of thoughts, and some efforts at
preparation. It is, then, after all, your baseless sup, position that the Lord
will not come quickly that betrays you into carelessness. This parable assures
you you have no ground for saying, “My Lord delayeth His coming.” You really do
not know how near He is. And if any one feels, “Well, this then comes to no more
than an appeal to fear. The appeal made by the parable is grounded on the
assumption that Christians will be better men, and do more if they expect to be
quickly summoned into Christ’s presence,”— if this be felt, it can only be said
in reply that fear is in many circumstances the equivalent of prudence, and a
very wholesome motive; and further, that the expectation of Christ’s coming does
not give rise only to fear, but also to hope; that it braces the Christian’s
energies, and in accordance with human nature quickens the spiritual life. Or if
any one feels that to have stimulated all past generations with the expectation
of an event which did not after all occur, is artificial and unworthy, it should
be enough to reflect that the beneficial system of insurance proceeds on
principles to a large extent similar.

3. The parable shows us how we are to prepare for meeting the Lord. We are to be
prepared to join in the festal celebration of His coming. We are to be in a
position to join with those who add luster to His presence, who give Him a
hearty welcome, and who enter with Him into His joy. We are prepared for His
coming if we are in the spirit of the occasion, and if we are furnished with
what may fit us for suitably appearing in His company. The lamps of the virgins
were meant to lend brilliancy to the scene; they were intended as a festal
illumination. The virgins whose lamps burned brightly were not ashamed to be
seen forming part of the bridal company. They were in keeping with it.
Conscience will tell us what numbers us among the wise or among the foolish.
Everything in us that heartily welcomes Christ’s presence, and heartily rises to
do Him honor; everything about us that can reflect any brightness or glory on
Him; everything that makes us better than blots and blacknesses in His retinue;
everything that will seem a suitable accompaniment in the triumph of a holy
Redeemer, is a preparation for Christ’s coming. The parable is not addressed to
those who have never made any preparation for Christ’s coming, but to those who
have not made sufficient preparation. It reminds us that all who may at one time
show similar preparedness for Christ’s presence do not in the end show the same.
Of those who start with similar intentions and similar external appearance a
number fail to fulfil their original intention, and in the end belie their
promising appearance. It is the same everywhere: in severe marches, prolonged
and fatiguing enterprises and labors, a number always tail off and are not
forthcoming at the final muster. The number who at any period of their life
really go forth to meet their Lord, delighting to do Him honor and seeking His
presence, may not be very large; but it is much larger than the number who
maintain their preparedness to the end. The reason of this so frequent failure
is here declared. The folly of the foolish virgins consisted In this, that while
the wise took oil, they took none: that is to say, made no provision against any
delay in the time of the Bridegroom’s appearance. They lit their lamps, but made
no provision for feeding them: the flame was to all appearance satisfactory, but
the source of it was defective. And without running the figure too hard, we may
say that those who In the end of their life fail to show as much fitness for
Christ’s presence as they did at some previous period, fail because they have
been all along superficial and have never been filled with grace at the source,
have not had the root of the matter in them. The foolish virgins, then, are a
warning to all who are tempted to make conversion everything, edification
nothing; who cultivate religion for a season and then think they have done
enough; who were religious once, can remember the time when they had very
serious thoughts, and very solemn resolutions, but who have made no earnest
effort, and are making none, to maintain within themselves the life they once
began. The wise are those who recognize that they must have within them that
which shall enable them to endure to the end — not only impressions, right
Impulses, tender feelings, but Ineradicable beliefs and principles which will at
all times produce all right impulse and feeling. It is not in vain that our
nature is made as it is made. In body and soul things are so ordered that one
part aids and feeds another part. Without a good digestion no other function can
be thoroughly well performed; as well performed as it might be. And in our
spiritual nature, our feelings and impulses are nourished by our beliefs and
perceptions. If we recognize the truth, if we have come to an assured and
settled conviction that Christ has lived, and that He now lives, if our
perceptions and beliefs are bringing us in contact with the truth, with Christ,
and with things unseen, then we may expect to continue to the end.

Another point may be accepted from this part of the Parable: that there must be
regard paid both to the outward and inward life. The vessel of oil is not enough
without the burning lamp; nor the lamp merely lighted and with no supply of oil.
There is a something which makes you worthy of entering with Christ into lasting
joy. And this something is not an exhibition of the external marks of a
Christian, neither is it the certainty that once you had inward grace; but it is
the continuous maintenance, to the end, both of the outward works which
manifest, and of the inward graces which are the life of a Christian. The inward
life of the soul and the outward expression of that life bear to one another an
essential relation. On the one hand, if you do not constantly renew your supply
of grace, if you do not carefully see to the condition of your own spirit, your
good works will soon become less frequent, less sincere, and less lovely: your
flame will burn low. But, on the other hand, if you tend only the life of your
own soul, if you seek only to possess as much grace as possible for yourself, if
you ask for the Holy Spirit and yet do none of those things in which the Spirit
would naturally express Himself, if you do not let your light shine before and
upon men in the actual circumstances you are placed in, then you will soon find
that your internal life begins to stagnate and corrupt. To a healthy Christian
life these two things are essential. A vessel of oil is, in itself, of no use on
a dark night. The oil is not light, and might as well be water unless a light be
added. And a burning wick which lasts only for half a minute, is only
disappointing and tantalizing. A Christian must not only feel right but do
right; and must not only do right but feel right. To be filled with the Spirit
you have but to pray. You cannot manufacture nor create that which can sustain
your spiritual life: God only can give it, and give it He does, gladly and
liberally, in answer to your requests. And having the Spirit you must use Him;
letting your light shine not so as to show yourself more conspicuously, but so
as to help on others in their dark and doubtful way through this life; by
dealing fairly with them, by being generous and considerate, by doing the best
you can for every one you have to do with in any capacity. This is the reason
why many of us feel slightly jarred in spirit when we hear converts rising in a
confession-meeting one after another and saying, “I was saved last Wednesday
night,” “I was saved on the 18th February,” “I was saved on the 12th March,” and
so on. It is not that we do not believe that they are speaking the truth, but
that we know that they have yet to be tested by life. We rejoice with them
because they have found their Saviour; we tremble for them because we know that
they have yet to work out their own salvation through years of temptation. All
that their confession means is, that their lamp is lit, but how long it will
burn is quite another question. They are merely in the condition of the ten
virgins as they first went out, and only time can show whether they have oil or
not. They may have been able to rejoice in Christ at a given hour last week or
last month, and may at that hour have risen to greet Him, and there is nothing
wrong in their declaring that such has been the case: but their trial has yet to
take place; it has yet to be discovered whether, when many years have passed,
they shall still be found rejoicing in Him. For in many cases it would appear as
if conversion and salvation were looked upon as equivalents: in many cases there
is a lack of soberminded counting of the cost, and a jubilation of spirit which
would be more becoming at the close of the long fight of faith than at its
commencement. You may say you are saved when you fairly put yourself into
Christ’s hand; but you must also remember that then your salvation is only
beginning, and that you cannot, in the fullest sense, say you are saved until
Christ has wrought in you a perfect conformity to Himself. This being the
distinction between the wise and foolish virgins, that which brings it to light
is that the Bridegroom did not come while all the lamps were yet burning, and
that during His delay they all slumbered and slept. This seems to mean no more
than that all, having made such preparation as they judged sufficient “calmly
and securely waited the approach of the Bridegroom.” There can scarcely be any
more than this meant by the sleep; nothing which would make the sleep culpable
on the part of the wise, for we do not find that any evil consequence whatever
followed to them; rather they would be all the fresher for their rest, the
better prepared to enter on the joy. But the security which is excusable, and
the repose which is necessary to one condition, is in another utter madness.
Unconstrained mirth, eager pursuit of business, is one thing in the man who has
just examined his books and made arrangements to meet all claims, but it is
quite another thing in him who has made no such arrangements and does not know
whether he can meet his engagements. So it is one thing to turn away your
attention from the person and coming of Christ when you have made sure you are
prepared to meet Him, and altogether another thing to turn your attention to
other things in mere thoughtless security. It is one thing to engage in the
business of this life, knowing that though your Lord find you in it, you have
what will enable you to meet Him, the graces then required being really in you
and ready to show themselves, though not at present called into exercise by the
calculation, or the plan, or the work you are engaged in for the hour; but it is
wholly another thing to plunge into the world’s business without having once
considered whether you have given sufficient attention to your preparedness for
that event which may interrupt any day’s business, or without keeping up a
constant examination of the inward life of your spirit. But we may learn from
the slumber of the wise, as well as from the rash sleep of the foolish. There is
a kind of sleep in which the sense of hearing, at least, is on the alert, and
when by a skilful discrimination unattainable when awake, the sense takes note
only of the one sound it waits for, so that the sound of a distant and
watched-for footstep arouses to the keenest wakefulness. If you look on these
weary, slumbering virgins, you see the lamps firmly grasped, and when you try to
unclasp the slumbering but faithful fingers, every faculty is at once on the
alert. Other noises do not awaken them, but before the cry, “The Bridegroom
cometh” has ceased to echo in the porch that shelters them, they stand erect and
are trimming their lamps. So should it be with us; whatever necessary
occupation, whatever necessary saturation of our minds with the thoughts of this
world’s property, turns our direct attention from the approach of our Lord,
there should still be an openness of sense in His direction, a settled
persuasion that it is His voice that must be hearkened to, a predisposedness to
attend rather to Him if He should call, an inwrought though latent expectation
of His coming, a consciousness, which but a whisper will arouse, that what we
are here for is not to slumber, not to do what we might as well or better do
anywhere else and with no hope of our Lord’s coming, but still to meet Him.
Through all the sleep of these virgins, dream would be chasing dream, they would
be seeing bridal processions, gorgeous with all the gay and fantastic adornment
which the closed eye so clearly sees, hearing sackbut and dulcimer and all kinds
of music, and ever and anon starting to hear if the cry, “The Bridegroom cometh”
were not real and summoning themselves. So through all the occupations of a
Christian in which he is not watching for his Lord and trimming his lamp, there
is, or should be, an under-current of expectation, ever keeping him in
unconscious prepared, ness, occasionally roused into actual looking out to see.
He is not always gazing forward, but ever and anon sends a messenger from the
inmost citadel of his soul to inquire, “Watchman, what of the night?”

While they are thus all slumbering, and when their sleep is deepest, when the
fatigue of watching is most felt, when things are stillest, and men count upon a
few hours quiet and deliverance from care, “at midnight,” the cry is heard,
“Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!” And now the difference between the really and
apparently prepared is manifested. There is something terrible in the security
of the foolish maintained up to the last. They, too, arise and trim their lamps;
even though there is nothing but a quenched, foul wick yet they seem to think
still that matters are not so bad. They have but to ask oil of their pleasant
companions. Not yet are they aware that their fate is already sealed. And this
sudden and appalling reversal of their hopes, this mingling at a marriage feast
of exultant joy and the most melancholy and calamitous ruin, seems intended to
fix in our minds an idea opposite to, and that should extirpate the idle fancy
that things somehow will come all right; that there is no real need of all this
urgent warning and watching; that in a world governed by a good and loving God,
and where things are going on now pretty tolerably and so very prosaically,
there cannot occur those startling, unnatural, desolating events predicted in
God’s word. It seems so fearful and incredible a thing that a world men take so
lightly and joyously should be quietly leading them on to eternal ruin, that men
maintain their easy disposition to the last, and cannot believe that out of a
life that may be jested or trifled away, consequences so lasting and so awful
can possibly flow. Many things are needed to drive this security out of us, and
many things are given us for this end. The virgins go out with no thought but of
festivity, enjoyment, and happy excitement; five of them, before the night is
gone, are found and left in the bitterest sorrow and self-reproach. “They that
were ready went in to the marriage, and the door was shut.” In these words one
seems to hear the decisive, final doom of the lost. The crash of the heavy
dungeon door and the retiring footsteps are not more sickening to the heart of
him that is left to die of hunger, than the heavy, sudden closing of this door
that shuts in the saved and shuts out the lost. As the feeling; of comfort
inside the house increases when the storm howls around and shakes it, as if
seeking an entrance that it cannot find, so does the misery of those left
outside increase when they hear the sound of revelry and mirth, and see the warm
lights thrown out on the darkness. They look round despairingly as the storm
begins to rise, as the first moan of the gathering tempest nears and lights upon
them, and warns them, as if in pity, of the blasts that follow as if in anger.
But once the door is shut no piteous clamor outside can open it. No sense of the
awful state of things outside, no willingness now to be within, avails to force
it back upon its hinges. Every voice that wails for entrance is still met by the
same chilling, hopeless reply, “ I know you not.” A new thing it is for that
door to be shut. So long has it stood open, thrown wide back, that we forget
there is a door that can shut that entrance; that it is not more useful now to
let in, than one day to keep out. But the time comes when whosoever will shall
not be saved; when it will be vain pointing men to the door; when whosoever is
outside, there remains. And this time may be before you rise from where you now
sit. No man can say it shall not. He who feels it most unfair to be hedged up
thus to an hour, to be told it is unsafe and unreasonable to delay even so long,
cannot assert that the end is further distant. To-day the door is open,
to-morrow it may be too late to seek entrance. The hand that closes it may
already be laid upon it.

It is foolishness, not wickedness, that is reprehended in these virgins — that
is to say, in those who are represented by them. The wise man is he who shapes
his conduct in accordance with the truth of things and with actual facts; the
foolish man is he who shuts his eyes to what he does not wish to see, and
fancies that somehow, though he can’t tell how, things will go all right with
him. He is, in fact, the ostrich who buries his head in the sand and fancies he
has escaped because he has shut his eyes to what is hostile. The man who makes
no preparation for the future is a foolish man. He may explain it to himself as
he pleases, but to attempt an explanation is only to give further proof of his
foolishness. He may see his way with perfect clearness a few paces before him,
but if he does not see where it is to end, how can he tell whether he ought to
go on even these few paces? The man who does not think, who does not consider
whether he is prepared for the future or not, who does not seriously measure
himself by every standard he can think of, and especially by the inevitable
requirements of God and eternity, is a foolish man. He may be clever, brilliant
in talk and very entertaining in company, he may be useful in business, he may
be well-meaning, but he is foolish — has none of that wisdom which consists in
seeing things as they actually are, and in conforming oneself to them. The man
who at this present time is in point of fact leaving it to mere chance whether
he is to be saved or lost, must surely feel that he is profoundly foolish.

Let us then meet Christ’s intention in the parable, and see that for our part we
are prepared for His coming. Let us make sure that the little flame once kindled
is not already burning low. Let us be sure that we are living in constant
communication with the source of all spiritual life; that the very spirit of
Christ dwells in us richly. Is there one who feels that things are not with him
as they ought to be, and that he has declined from the glad preparedness he once
enjoyed, or even that he has never attained to a state in which any luster could
be thrown by him on the redeeming grace of Christ? To this person Christ speaks
the parable. It is you He longs to see providing yourself with the material of
everlasting goodness and everlasting joy. There is a Spirit offered you through
whom you can become pure and loving, capable of good, at peace with yourself and
with God. What response do you make to Christ’s offers? Are you to turn away and
let it be possible that the next summons you hear may be: “Behold the Bridegroom
cometh, go ye out to meet Him?”


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  CHAPTER 35: 03.13.     THE TALENTS
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THE TALENTS Matthew 25:14-30 This parable illustrates the great principle which
regulates the distribution of rewards and punishments in the kingdom of God —
the principle that men shall be judged according to the means at their disposal.
The “talents” represent everything over and above natural ability, by which men
can advance the interests of the kingdom; position, opportunities, and
especially the measure of grace given to each man. All the interests of Christ
upon earth are entrusted to His people. He has distributed among us all that He
values upon earth. Destroy from earth what men have and enjoy, and all that
Christ prizes is gone. There is no interest of His carried forward without human
labor; if His servants all cease to work, His cause on earth is at an end. And
every servant of His is endowed with means enough to accomplish his own share in
Christ’s work. He may not have as much as others. But to be fair, there must be
little put in the hands of the servant who can only make use of a little, and
much put at the disposal of him who can manage a large amount. It is as easy —
you may say — to make ten talents out of five, as to make four out of two;
perhaps easier. Yes, if you choose the right man, but many a man who could make
a small business pay, would ruin himself in a big one. Each gets what each can
conveniently and effectively handle; and no one is expected to produce results
which are quite out of proportion to his ability and his means. And in order
that the judgment may be fair, the reckoning is not made until “after a long
time.” We are not called upon to show fruit before autumn. The servants are not
summoned to the reckoning while yet embarrassed by the novelty of their
position; time is allowed them to consider, to calculate, to wait opportunities,
to make experiments. The Lord does not quickly return in a captious spirit, but
delays till the wise have had time to lay up great gains, and even the foolish
to have learnt wisdom. So with ourselves: we cannot complain if strict account
be taken at the end, because we really have time to learn how to serve our Lord.
We have time to repair bad beginnings, to take thought, to make up in some
degree for lost time. We are not hurried into mistakes and snatched to judgment,
as if life were an ordeal we were passing through, where the slightest failure
finishes our chances and is relentlessly watched for and insisted upon. We see
well enough that with God it is quite otherwise; that He wishes us to succeed,
will not observe our failures, winks at our shortcomings, and often repairs the
ill we have done.

It is not without significance that the servant who did nothing at all for his
master, was he who had received but one talent. No doubt those who have great
ability are liable to temptations of their own; they may be more ambitious, and
may find it difficult to serve their master with means which they see would
bring in to themselves profits of a kind they covet. But such men are at all
events not tempted to bury their talent. This is the peculiar temptation of the
man who has little ability, and sullenly retires from a service in which he
cannot shine and play a conspicuous part. His ambition outruns his ability, and
while he envies the position of others, he neglects the duties of his own.
Because he cannot do as much as he would, he will not do as much as he can. By
showing no interest in that situation in life that God has seen fit he should
fill, he would have us believe he is qualified for a higher.

There are many to whom this hint of the parable applies. You are in the same
condemnation as this servant when you shrink from exercising your talent;
because it is only one and a small one; when you refuse to do anything, because
you cannot do a great deal; when you refuse to help, where you cannot lead; when
you hesitate about aiding in some work, because those with whom you would be
associated in it do it better, and show better in the doing of it than yourself;
when you refuse to speak a word in behalf of Christ, because you could not
satisfy your own taste, because you could not do it so well as some other person
could; when you refuse to take some position, engage in some duty, be of some
use in a certain department in which you would not excel, and would be
recognized as surpassed by some others. This miserable fear of being mediocre,
how many a good work has it prevented or crippled. If we wait till we are fully
qualified to serve Christ, we shall never serve Him at all. If we cannot stoop
to learn to do great things by doing very little things, we shall never do great
things. The only known way to become a strong and full-grown man is to be first
a little child.

It is a true proverb that “the sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men
that can render a reason.” He can always justify his conduct. The insolence of
this man’s words is not intentional. He reads off correctly his own state of
mind, and fancies that his conduct was appropriate and innocent. It was not his
fault that his master was a man who struck terror into the hearts of his
servants, and whom it was useless trying to please. And probably this man’s
account of the reason of his inactivity was accurate. All wrongness of conduct
is at bottom based on a wrong view of God. Nothing so conduces to right action
as right thoughts about God. If we think with this servant that God is hard,
grudging to give and greedy to get, taking note of all shortcomings, but making
no acknowledgment of sincere service, exacting the utmost farthing and making no
abatement or allowance — if we one way or other virtually come to think that God
never really delights in our efforts after good, and that whatever we attempt in
our life He will coldly weigh and scorn, then manifestly we shall have no heart
to labor for Him. But this view of God is unpardonably narrow, and the action
flowing from it is after all inconsistent. It is unpardonably wrong, and the
very heartiness with which these other servants were greeted refutes it. You
hear the hearty “well done” ringing through the whole palace — there is no
hesitating scrutiny, no reminding them they had after all merely done what it
was their duty to do — not at all — it is the genial, generous outburst of a man
who likes to praise and hates to find people at fault; he has been hoping to get
a good account of his servants, and it is far more joy in them than
gratification in his increased property that prompts this exclamation of
surprise and delight and approval. He feels himself much richer in the fidelity
of his servants than in their gains. He has pleasure in promoting them, in
bringing them up more nearly to his own rank and person, and in making them thus
share in his own plans and arrangements and rule and joy.

Moreover, not only is the view of the master wrong, but the consequent action,
as the master points out, is inconsistent. If the master is so slow to recognize
sincere effort, so oppressive in his exactions, demanding bricks where he has
given no straw, requiring impossible performances, and measuring all work by an
impossible standard, is this a reason for making no effort to conciliate him? If
you feared that, in the necessary hazard of business, you might lose your lord’s
talent, yet surely his anger would be as much aroused by inactivity as by
unsuccessful efforts to serve him? Why did you not at least put his money into
the hands of men who would have found a use for it, and would have paid you a
good interest? If you were too timid to use the trust your lord left you, if you
knew too little of business and the world’s ways to venture on any self-devised
investment, there were plenty of substantial genuine undertakings into which you
might have put your means. You could work under the guidance of some more
masculine nature, who could direct and shelter you.

There are numberless ways in which the most slenderly equipped among us can
fulfil the suggestion here given, and put our talent to the exchangers, into the
hands of men who can use it. There is no lack of great works going on for our
Lord to which we may safely attach ourselves, and in which our talent is rather
used by the leaders of the work, invested for us, than left to our own
discretion. Just as in the world there is such an endless variety of work
needing to be done, that every one finds his niche, so there is no kind of
ability that cannot be made use of in the kingdom i of Christ. The parable does
not acknowledge any servants who have absolutely nothing; some I have little as
compared with others, but all have some capacity to forward the interests of the
absent master. Is every one of us practically recognizing this — that there is a
part of the work he is expected to do? He may seem to himself to have only one
talent that is not worth speaking about, but that one talent was given that it
might be used, and if it be not used, there will be something lacking when
reckoning is made which might and ought to have been forthcoming. Certainly
there is something you can do, that is unquestionable; there is something that
needs to be done which precisely you can do, something by doing which you will
please Him whose pleasure in you will fill your nature with gladness. It is
given to you to increase your Lord’s goods. But the law which is exhibited in
this parabolic representation is also explicitly announced in the words: “For
unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance, but from
him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” This may be
called the law of Spiritual Capital. It is a law with the operation of which we
are familiar in nature, and in the commercial world. It is he who has even a
little capital to begin with, and who makes a right use of it, who soon leaves
far behind the man who has none, or who neglects to invest what he has. And the
more this capital grows, the more rapidly and the more easily is it increased.
After a certain point, it seems to increase by virtue of its own momentum. So in
certain sicknesses, as soon as the crisis of the disease is past and a little
health has been funded again in the patient’s constitution, this rapidly grows
to complete recovery. So with popularity, it begins one scarce knows how; but
once begun, the tide flows apace. You may scarcely be able to say why one
statesman or one author should be so immeasurably more popular than others; but
so it is, that when once a beginning is made, tribute flows in naturally, as
waters from all sides settle in a hollow. It is the same with the acquirement of
knowledge: the difficulty is to get past a certain point, it is all up-hill till
then; but that point once gained, you reach the table lands and high levels of
knowledge where you begin to see all round you, and information that has been
fragmentary, and therefore useless before, now pieces itself together and
rapidly grows to complete attainment. Everything your hear or see now seems by a
law of nature to contribute to the fund you have already acquired. It claims
kindred with it, and unites itself to it. “ ’Tis the taught already that profits
by teaching.”

It is this same law which regulates our attainment in the service of Christ.
However little grace we seem to have to begin with, it is this we must invest,
and so nurse it into size and strength. Each time we use the grace we have by
responding: to the demands made upon it, it returns to us increased. Our capital
grows by an inevitable law. The efforts of young or inexperienced Christians to
give utterance to the life that is in them may often be awkward, like the
movements of most young animals. They may be able to begin only in a very small
way, so small a way that sensitive persons are frequently ashamed to begin at
all. Having received Christ, they are conscious of new desires and of a new
strength; they have a regard for Christ, and were they to assert this regard in
the circumstances which call for its assertion, their regard would be deepened.
They have a desire to serve Him, and were they to do so in those small matters
with which they have daily concern, their desire and ability would be increased.
Grace of any kind invested in the actual opportunities of life cannot come back
to us as small as it was, but enlarged and strengthened.

Such grace then as we have, such knowledge as we have of what is due to others,
to ourselves, and to God, let us give free expression to. Such investments of
Christian principle as are within our reach let us make; such manifestations of
a Christian temper and mind as our circumstances daily demand let us exhibit,
and it must come to pass that we increase in grace. There is no other way
whatever of becoming richly endowed in spirit than by trading with whatever we
have to begin with. We cannot leap into a fortune in spiritual things; rich
saints cannot bequeath us what their life-long toil has won; they cannot even
lend us so that we may begin on borrowed capital. In the spiritual life all must
be genuine;; we must work our own way upwards, and by I humbly and wisely laying
out whatever we now possess, make it more or be forever poor. And yet how few
avail themselves of this law, and lay up treasure in heaven. How few make great
fortunes in the spiritual life. The mass of Christians never get even fairly
started in a career which is at all likely to end in great saintliness of
character and serviceableness. They act as if they had no capital of grace to
begin with, no fund to trade upon; and they never make any more of it than they
made the first week of their profession. They are not traders, every year
increasing their stock and enlarging their gains, but they resemble men who
receive a weekly wage, which is no more to-day than it was years ago. Is it not
worthy of remark that after years of prayer and of concernment with the fountain
of all spiritual life, there should be so small a fund of it laid up within
ourselves? Is it not the fact that we seem to be living from hand to mouth, on
the verge of bankruptcy, with no more between us and spiritual starvation than
the day we believed? Are we conscious that our Christian principle has been
deepening year by year? Can we count over our spiritual gains this day, and
reckon up solid accumulations of grace in our character? Or are we still merely
keeping the wolf from the door, and not always that? Are we making a bare shift
to get through without absolutely breaking down? Is it all we can do to make
ends meet, and to keep up in our own souls the idea that we are servants of
Christ? Do we feel as if they were the thinnest partition between us and great
sin? In a word, are we enriched with the “more abundance “of the well-doing
servant, and do we find ourselves every way better equipped for all good work;
or does even that which we once persuaded ourselves we had seem to be vanishing
away? But the parable reminds us that it is not only the careless who fail to
use their talents to advantage, but that the same result sometimes follows from
a deliberate but false conception of the service of Christ. As in the world,
there are many who prefer comfort to wealth, and have no ambition to rank as
millionaires, so in the Christian life many prefer what they conceive to be
security to eminent saintliness. They do not care about greatly increasing the
godliness they already have. They would like to have so much grace as would set
them on the right hand, not on the left; on the winning and not on the losing
side; but they are not concerned to have an abundant entrance if only they get
into the kingdom at all. They therefore make no thoroughgoing effort to keep
moving forwards, but rather avoid whatever would effectually commit them to a
more devoted and self-sacrificing life. They rather repress the gracious
feelings they have than seek to secure for them an increasing expression in
their life. They see customs in business which they cannot approve, but they
make no remonstrance. They recognize circumstances in which a word of Christian
advice might be beneficial, but they do not speak it. They decline to appeal to
the highest motives of those around them. They do not pray in their families.
They avoid all action which might give them a character for zeal. They seek to
live a moderate, decent life. They seek to hit the mean and to be neither
obviously godless nor to be righteous over much. They have some grace, but they
do not circulate it and seek to make it more; they have a talent, but they bury
it. Of such a method of dealing with our connection with Christ, there is only
one possible result. The unused talent passes from the servant who would not use
it to the man who will. A landlord has two farms lying together: the one is
admirably managed, the other is left almost to itself, with the least possible
management, and becomes the talk of the whole country-side for poor crops and
untidiness. No one asks what the landlord will do when the leases are out. It is
a matter of course that he dismisses the careless tenant, and puts his farm into
the hands of the skilful and diligent farmer. He enforces the great law: “To him
that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but from him that
hath not shall be taken even that he hath.” In the kingdom of Christ this law is
self-acting. To bury our talent and so keep it as originally given is an
impossibility. To have just so much grace and no more is an impossibility. It
must either be circulating and so multiplying, or it! ceases to be. It must
grow, or it will die. You might as well try to keep your child always a child:
he must either grow or die. In the physical world the law has become familiar.
The unused muscle dwindles and disappears: no one needs to come and remove it;
want of use removes it. The ants whose habits of life enabled them to find food
without the aid of sight have gradually lost the organ of sight itself. And so
is it in the spiritual world also. The unused faculty becomes extinct. Hence it
is that you see some old persons absolutely callous: the time was when they had
at least a capacity for believing in divine things and for choosing God as their
portion, but now you would say that the very capacity is destroyed; no Godward
emotion can find a place in their heart, nothing can stir a penitent thought in
them. Hence it is that in your own souls you perhaps are finding that, no matter
what effort you make, you cannot enter as heartily into holy services and
occupations as once you did, but are finding your old joy and assurance
honey-combed by unbelieving thoughts. Hence it is that the susceptibility to
right feeling you had in boyhood has gone from you. You did not mean to become
unfeeling, but only shrank from acting as feeling dictated. But he who blows out
the flame, finds that the heat and the glow die out of themselves. The teaching
of this side of the parable, then, is alarming in the extreme. The warning it
conveys proceeds not from an external voice we can defy or which may be
mistaken, but from the laws of our nature; and it speaks not of an arbitrary
infliction of punishment, but of results which these laws render inevitable. The
unused faculty dies out. The capacities we have for loving and serving God are
taken from us. That which was once possible becomes forever impossible. The
future once open to us is closed. We are permanently crippled, limited,
paralyzed, deadened. Had we followed the openings given to us, had we used the
talent committed to us, endless expansion and fulness of joy would have been
ours, but now our chances are past. We have had our opportunity, we have for
years been on probation, but now it is over for us. How gladly would a man
renounce all that sin has brought him, if only he could stand again with his
talent in his hand, and all life’s opportunities before him. If there is one
truth more than another on which the young may begin to build their life, it is
this: that each time you decline a duty to which your better selfs prompts you,
you become less capable of doing it; and on the other hand, that each resistance
to temptation, each humble and painful effort after what is good, is real growth
in character, growth as real and as permanent as the growth in stature which,
once attained, can never again dwindle to the size of the child.

Let us then give ear to the parable, and if we are conscious that even now we
are very poor in spiritual things, let us make the most of the grace we have
lest we become altogether destitute. If we are now stammering in prayer, the
likelihood is we shall soon be dumb, unable to pray. If we are more frequently
questioning the reality of God’s interference in human affairs, and if we more
freely admit doubts regarding cardinal truths, the likelihood is we shall soon
disbelieve, and have the very faculty of faith paralyzed so as to be unable to
perceive evidence the most weighty and conclusive. If we are letting go one by
one our Christian connections, and involving ourselves more and more with
worldly matters, the probability is that shortly we shall be hardened and eager
worldlings. We have seen the process going on in many; why is it not to go on in
ourselves? If good works and charitable employments are more a burden to us than
they were, let us beware lest we wither and become fit only for the axe and the
fire. As the cramped and numbed arm warms and wakens the sleeper, so let this
creeping hardness that comes over our spirits awaken us, while yet there is time
to chafe the dead limb to life. If yet we can summon into active life one
self-denying resolution, if yet we can feel at all the constraining power of
Christ’s love, and can obey His voice in any one particular, if yet we can
prevail upon ourselves to give up worldly and carnal ideas of life, and
entertain humble and chastened desires; then let us most anxiously cherish such
feelings, let us fan every good disposition into flame lest it die, let us at
once circulate and invest our little remaining capital in the good works we are
daily called to, that the very faculty of doing anything for God and our
fellow-men may not forever perish out of us. In closing, it may be well to give
special prominence to a truth which has throughout been implied that increased
grace is its own reward; or at any rate, an essential part of it. The servant
who had multiplied his talents is rewarded by the possession and use of these
multiplied talents. He does not now get the burden of business lifted off his
shoulders, and a life of ease appointed to him. This would be to reward the
successful officer by depriving him of his command, as if an ample pension would
compensate to a martial spirit for the want of active service and fresh
opportunities of using richer experience and ampler powers. The talents gained
are left in the hands, that gained them, and wider opportunities for their use
are afforded. This is the reward of the faithful servant of Christ; the grace he
has diligently used is increased, and his opportunities continually multiply. He
is always entering upon; his reward; and entrance into heaven only marks the
point at which his Lord expresses His approval, and raises him from a position
in which his fidelity is tested to a position of rule, that is. of acknowledged
trustworthiness and self-control, the position of one who has acquired an
interest in the work, and who so manifestly lives for it that it is impossible
any interest of his own should divert him from this. He has no other interest.
His joy is his Lord’s joy, joy in successfully advancing the best interests of
men, joy in the sight of others made righteously happy.

This, then, is the reward Christ offers to us, a reward consisting mainly in
increased ability to serve Him and forward what is good. There can be no reward
more certain, for it begins here and now. Your increasing grace is your heaven
begun. This is the earnest of the Spirit, the dawning of eternal day. No one
need tell you that there is no heaven: the kingdom of heaven is within you. And
this reward is also the best you can imagine. All other rewards would be
external to yourself and separable from yourself, but this reward is within you,
in your own growth in character. Not your condition alone, but you yourself are
to be good. What can be better than this? What is the reward the sick man
receives for his attention to every prescription of his physician and his
avoidance of everything that would throw him back? His reward is that he becomes
healthy. . What reward has the boy for obedience and diligence and purity? His
reward is that he becomes a vigorous and capable man, fit for the ampler
enjoyments which the nobler activities of life bring. So says our Lord, “I am
come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.” If it
be asked, what is the great inducement? what is that which makes life worth
living? what is that which we can set before us as our sufficient reward and
aim? the answer can only be: the inducement is that we have the sure hope of
becoming satisfactory persons, of: growing up to the stature and energies of
perfect men, of becoming perfect as our Father is perfect, who needs no reward
but delights evermore in being and doing good; who loves and is therein blessed.


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  CHAPTER 36: 03.14.     PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS
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PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS

Luke 7:36-50 The reader of the Gospels cannot fail to remark that the narratives
of physical cures are greatly in excess of the narratives of spiritual
restorations. Even in cases where spiritual good was received, this comes in
sometimes as a mere appendage to the physical healing. Neither can it be thought
that the faith required for the cure of the bodily disease itself guarantees the
permanent health of the spirit; for there is convincing evidence that not every
one who was physically restored was also emancipated from spiritual disorder. In
fact, the reader longs for fuller information regarding our Lord’s method of
dealing with those whose soundness of body enabled them to dispense with appeal
to His miraculous power, but who were yet broken in fortune, defeated in life,
enthralled by evil habit. This little story presents us with such a case; and it
gives us a glimpse of the background of the life of Christ. It was only by
accident this woman’s case came to the front. There may have been many who, like
her, received light and healing of soul from a few minutes’ quiet talk with
Christ, and who returned to their occupations unnoticed but renewed. Before she
came to Simon’s house, this woman had heard Jesus, and had found in Him
salvation; but nothing is told us of that part of her history. In asking Jesus
to dine with him, the Pharisee probably acted, as most men on all occasions act,
from mixed motives. Others were invited, and gladly, no doubt, availed
themselves of the opportunity of meeting Jesus and for themselves determining
whether His claim to be a prophet was or was not valid. That the Pharisee felt
himself in the position of a superior person who might sit in judgment on this
man from Nazareth, is apparent from the circumstance that though he asked Him to
his house, he gave Him a barely civil reception, pointing Him to His place
without even the formal courtesies which, though small in themselves, greatly
facilitate freedom and friendliness of intercourse. A Pharisee, above all men,
might have been expected to be punctilious in these matters. But very often
those whose manners are formed upon irreproachable models fail grievously in the
genial consideration of others which springs from sweetness of nature. The
coldness of the reception given to Jesus by the self-satisfied Pharisee was
unexpectedly set in a very strong light by the strikingly opposite conduct of
the woman who came into the room where the company was dining. The common
Eastern fashion is to sit cross-legged on the floor at meals. But the Jews of
our Lord’s time had adopted the more luxurious Greek style of reclining on
couches round a raised table. Jesus was thus reclining on His left side, with
His head towards the table and His feet extended on the couch towards the wall
of the room. The intrusion of an uninvited guest during meals would of itself
excite no remark. In fact, provision was often made for such intruders by
setting cushions round the wall of the room for the accommodation of persons who
might wish to talk with the guests either on business or other matters. But that
a woman of notoriously bad character, and who could not fail to be known in the
little town to all but strangers, should thus enter the dining-room of a
Pharisee, was probably an unheard-of presumption. But her whole nature was for
the time absorbed in devotion to Jesus, and she could not wait for a quieter
time or more convenient place, but passed unheeding through the abuse and
repulses of the servants of the house. For her there was but one presence there.
She saw no one else; she thought of no one else. Her impulsive temperament,
which had possibly led her astray at first, now stands her in good stead, and
rebukes our cold and tardy expressions of gratitude, our cautious and timorous
professions of love to Christ.

She enters the room with the intention of anointing the feet of Jesus. But ere
she can offer Him this adoration, the fulness of her heart, stirred by His
presence, overflows, and in a tumult of penitence, joy, and love she sinks at
His feet and bursts into tears. In her confusion, seeking for something to wipe
the feet her tears have wet, she uses the hair that is hanging disheveled about
her, and her face being thus drawn down and hidden, she covers His feet with
kisses. Then remembering her errand, she pours the ointment over them. That our
Lord did not interrupt her is more remarkable than that none of the onlookers
did. To any ordinary teacher or benefactor there would have been extreme
awkwardness in receiving so extravagant a demonstration of affection and in such
circumstances. She kissed His feet. Homage can find no lowlier tribute to pay.
Adoration can no farther go. And we cannot but rejoice that for the credit of
our common humanity such a tribute was paid to our Lord. There were at least
some on earth who recognized that He deserved all they could give. This woman’s
worship is an exhilarating spectacle. She creates an atmosphere it does one good
to breathe, an atmosphere of high and true sentiment, in which things are
rightly estimated, and in which conventionality disappears. Would only that her
kissing of the feet of incarnate goodness and love were the representative
expression of the feeling of all men towards Christ! But to the Pharisee the
admission of this woman to such liberties was proof that Jesus was no prophet.
He himself would have allowed no such unseemly familiarities at the hands of a
degraded person; and indeed he might be very easy on that score, for it is not
the sanctimoniousness of the Pharisee that elicits such tributes of devotion.
Judging Jesus by himself and his class, he did not doubt that He too would have
spurned this woman’s attentions had He known her character. It was obvious to
the Pharisee that Jesus could not know her character, and he therefore concluded
He had none of the spiritual insight supposed to characterize the prophet. Jesus
penetrates his thought, and makes him sensible that whether or not He had
understood the woman’s state. He at any rate accurately gauged him. In a
conversational, easy way He shows, by the Parable of the Two Debtors, that love
is proportioned to indebtedness; and then, applying the Parable, He defends the
woman’s conduct, and leaves Simon to draw edifying conclusions from his own. The
Parable is so put that it is obvious to the entire company that great love means
great forgiveness, while meager love means small or doubtful forgiveness. Our
Lord then contrasts Simon’s conduct with the woman’s; his supercilious violation
of the commonest courtesies with her gratuitous attentions; his haughty
suspicion with her undoubting and devoted reverence; his self-serving and
contemptuous hospitality, his languid and cool civility, which was unequal to
the task of filling even the common forms of politeness, with the woman’s
uncontrollable love that broke through all rules and proprieties of life, and
forced new channels for its own vast volume. The facts are obvious to the whole
company; the woman’s love is unmistakable, Simon’s coldness is equally apparent.

What deduction, then, is to be drawn from these facts regarding the spiritual
condition of either party? Simon himself has announced the rule for making such
a deduction. Great love, he has just said, is the result of great forgiveness.
The larger debtor loved his creditor because he forgave him much. This woman,
then, has been greatly forgiven; her love is the evidence, the proof of it,
according to Simon’s own showing. Love, you have told us, varies with
indebtedness; this woman’s great love means that she is greatly indebted, has
been greatly forgiven. The vehemence, or as no doubt you would say, the
indecency of this woman’s affection, is proof that her many sins are forgiven;
that is to say, that she is pure. But — our Lord adds with a significant warning
— to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little; a hint which might raise
in the mind of Simon the question, Am I forgiven at all? If love be the index by
which we can read the amount of forgiveness, and if I have barely love enough to
show decent respect, what am I to conclude regarding my own debt? Our Lord’s
immediate object in this Parable was to defend the woman and justify His own
allowance of her presence and expressions of affection. This defense and
justification are accomplished when it is shown that the very familiarities
which the Pharisee thought Jesus should have rebuked are the proof that the
woman is forgiven, cleansed, and pure. Simon had inwardly condemned both the
woman and Jesus; the woman for being a sinner, Jesus for admitting her
familiarities. By the Parable, Jesus gives him to understand that her love is
its own justification. In this reasoning there is involved — first, that love to
Christ is love to God, and is therefore the measure of purity; and secondly,
that love to Christ is the result of forgiveness.

1. First, Christ points to the woman’s demonstrations of love to Him as proof
that her sins are forgiven. He is the creditor who has forgiven much, and is
therefore loved much. In other words, He puts Himself, and allows the woman to
put Him, in the place of God; accepting her love for Himself as if it were love
to God, and therefore proof that she is forgiven and pure. He does not appeal to
the fact that her heart was filled with love, irrespective of the object of the
love; He does not argue that because she was now possessed by a pure and
unselfish affection, she was in a radically sound state of spirit. His argument
is, that she has been forgiven a debt, and therefore loves her creditor. It is
Christ Himself she loves, and He therefore is the creditor who has forgiven her;
but her debt was sin, transgression against God, and it is therefore God who is
her true creditor. Christ thus identifies Himself with God, and in the simplest
manner accepts love to Himself as if it were love to God, and as decisive
evidence regarding the woman’s relation to the Highest. On another occasion the
Pharisees observed what was implied in Christ’s forgiving sin, and took
exception to His doing so on the valid ground that none can forgive sins but God
only. And it maybe supposed that on reflection this woman saw what was implied
in her connection with Christ. It may be that as yet she had no definite ideas
regarding the relation in which Christ stood to God. We do not know how He had
got round her heart and quickened within her a craving for purity, and
encouraged her to strive after it. But plainly He had enabled her to believe
herself forgiven, and had filled her heart with new desires, and to her He was
the embodiment of the Divine. All she sought was in Him. And Christ does not
warn her, as if this passionate devotion to Him might arrest a love which should
go beyond His person. He allows her to worship Him, to rivet her affections and
her hopes upon Him; He encourages her to think of Him as the forgiver of her
sin, as the one to whom it was right to give undivided and unstinted love, as
her Lord and her God.

Christ is, in human personality, “the power not ourselves that makes for
righteousness.” He is God manifest in the flesh. In Him we have all that lifts
us to what is best and highest in human nature. In Him we find God; all that is
sufficient to give us confidence, guidance, peace; to fill our affections and
quicken them, to educate conscience and cleanse it, to lift us out of ourselves
and give us eternal satisfaction. And Christ links us to Himself by love, and
through our love imparts all the blessing He gives. To create an enthusiasm for
Himself, a true attachment to His own person, is His chief object. This woman
may have had many foolish ideas about God and man, she may have retained much
that was faulty, but in that passion of devotion to Himself our Lord saw the
beginning of all good in her. Affection for Him deadens every evil passion; it
maintains the soul in an atmosphere of purity; it assimilates the whole nature
to the Divine, and fills the heart with love to men. Love to Christ is,
therefore, the measure and the pledge of purity.

2. Secondly, love to Christ is the result of forgiveness, and varies with the
amount of debt forgiven. But this statement requires certain modifications. We
must not force out of the parable any numerically exact ratio between pardon and
love. Jesus does not mean that the one debtor of the Parable was precisely ten
times as grateful as the other, although his canceled debt was ten times as
great. Manifestly the character of the debtors must be taken into account, and
their way of looking at the debt. If they were men of a precisely similar
sensitiveness of conscience and quickness of feeling, then their gratitude would
be in proportion to their debt. But where do we find two such men? Is it not
notorious that while one man is broken-hearted under the shame of bankruptcy,
another, less nicely educated to mercantile honor, jauntily sets about repairing
his shattered fortunes, and gaily trims his sails to catch the changing wind?
And between these extremes are there not all possible gradations of feeling and
of conduct? So is it with our debt to God. He who has inherited a sensitive
conscience, and has been trained to shrink from the smallest stain, will on that
very account be deeply humbled even by sins which others make light of, and will
highly value the mercy that forgives them. A coarser nature, habituated to vice,
and saturated with depraved ideas, may accept forgiveness with surprisingly
little sense of the goodness of God. It is not, in short, the amount of sin, but
the sense of it, which is the measure of gratitude to Him who forgives it. To
suppose that by sinning deeply you secure that one day you will love much, is a
fallacy. You may have more sin to be conscious of; but your consciousness of it,
instead of being greater, will be less. You will seek in vain for the old shame,
for the early remonstrances of conscience, for the same humiliation on account
of many sins that you once had on account of few. Your many sins will stand as
facts in your history; but your heart, long used to their company, will refuse
to loathe them as once it did. To be very wicked is no safe receipt for becoming
very good. But the fact to which our Lord points in the parable is the commonly
recognized one, that abstinence from crime, and from vices which society
condemns, and which stain the outward life, frequently produces a self-satisfied
and superficial character. The Pharisee is essentially shallow. He accustoms
himself to judge by what appears; and when he is conscious that he satisfies the
requirements of men like himself, who see no deeper than the conduct, he thinks
little of his essential character, and spends no pains on ascertaining in what
his virtue is rooted. The obvious difference between himself and the flagrant
transgressor of the law betrays him into self-complacency, pride, and ignorance
of the spiritual life and of God. Such a person remains unhumbled, and has no
thirst for forgiveness, not being sensible of defilement. He criticises Christ,
observes and considers but does not fully understand Him. He investigates His
relation to other men; but no instinct of his own prompts him to cast himself
upon His friendship as the very Person he needs. In contrast to this cold and
self-satisfied character, our Lord sets the humbled penitent, the person who is
broken-hearted on account of the defilement and accumulating misery and
hopelessness of his sin. His transgression may have been of a kind that makes a
dark blot on the life. Originally of a warm and passionate nature, he may have
burst the ordinary trammels which society lays upon men, and may have brought
into his life a great deal of wretchedness. He may be so entangled that
deliverance seems hopeless; character and strength of will alike gone, he may go
from day to day not knowing where to look for any help, and sometimes disposed
to abandon all thought of restoration, and give himself frankly and finally to
ruin. Such a person, when he is lifted out of his solitary despair by the loving
recognition of Christ, when he feels the forgiving hand laid upon him and sees
the gate of a new life standing open at his very feet, when he becomes conscious
that through all his vileness and selfishness a Divine compassion has followed
him, is wholly overcome with mingled shame and joy, and hails the Saviour as One
who seems to have been provided precisely for his necessities. This is the
advantage that the conscious sinner has over the self-righteous Pharisee. The
sins of the one being branded by public sentiment, and bringing the sinner into
collision with physical and social laws, are recognized by the sinner himself as
deadly and humiliating evils. He cannot blind himself to the fact that
forgiveness and cleansing, inward help and purity, are needed by himself. Sin,
if it has not deepened his nature, has, at all events, convinced him of its own
reality, and of the terrible influence it can exert in a human life. The Person
who sets him free from this pervasive, intractable, and overmastering evil
becomes all in all to him. But how was Simon, and how are we, to profit by the
knowledge that love to Christ is the result of forgiveness? We are conscious
that for the settlement and perfecting of the spirit there is nothing like love
to Christ. We know that the existence in us of this affection would secure that
our relations to everything else should be right. We have a sense of degradation
so long as we are attracted by other persons and things, and yet feel only a
slight attraction and an insecure attachment to Christ. We would fain love Him
with the whole strength of our nature. But how are we to achieve this highest
state of feeling? It is useless to demand love, as if such a demand could be
directly enforced. This is the old dead law over again: “Thou shalt love.” This,
we find, we cannot fulfil. We cannot love just because we are commanded to love;
no, nor because it would be to our advantage to love, nor even because we wish
to do so. Love must be spontaneous: it is created in presence of what fits our
nature, so that often we cannot tell why we love such and such a person, not
understanding our own nature sufficiently to see the suitableness. Love to
Christ is the spontaneous product of our sense of His suitableness to our nature
and condition, and of our indebtedness to him. A sense of indebtedness does in
some cases produce hatred rather than love. But we cannot seek or accept
forgiveness until we are humbled and see something of the transcendent
attractiveness of the Lord. The soil is thus prepared for the springing of love
in response to the sunshine of His favor.

Besides forgiveness is not a solitary gift. It is the beginning of a new life, a
center from which life and light radiate, a germ which exists not so much for
itself as for what it produces. It brings assurance of a friendship that is of
infinite value; it imparts a reliance upon God, as our God, teaching us to count
upon Him, exhibiting to us His hitherto unthought-of goodness. It pervades the
soul with new and exhilarating sensations, and fills it with new desires and
purposes. Therefore the Gospel does not directly say “Love,” but “Believe.”
Trust in Christ as willing to forgive. Bring to Him your empty, ruined, ungodly,
unloving spirit, and have it healed, filled, renewed. Act upon what you at
present know, that He makes provision in His own person and work for sinful men.
Humbly appeal to Him with such penitence and with such earnestness as you have;
and as you open your spirit more and more to His influence, and find
increasingly how complete you are in Him, your love will grow. It may not be of
the passionate type elicited in this woman by the visible presence of the Lord,
but it will be sound enough to urge you to serve and to please Him. The
character of the love we bear Him must be in some respects different from that
which those felt who saw His loving expression of face, and heard their
forgiveness pronounced by His own lips; but it cannot be impossible or unlikely
that we should learn truly and deeply to love Him who alone brings into our life
the fruitful and happy expectation of endless purity and love, who alone gives
us assurance that this life is anything better than a short and uneasy dream.
Can we fail to love Him whose love for us is, after all, almost the only fixed
and sure thing we can count upon? Can we fail to love Him to whom we must be
indebted for as great a forgiveness as was this woman?

She sat and wept beside His feet; the weight Of sin oppressed her heart; for all
the blame, And the poor malice of the worldly shame, To her was past, extinct,
and out of date;

Only the sin remained,— the leprous state;

She would be melted by the heat of love, By fires far fiercer than are blown to
prove And purge the silver ore adulterate.

She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair Still wiped the feet she was so
blest to touch; And He wiped off the soiling of despair From her sweet soul,
because she loved so much.

I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears;

Make me a humble thing of love and tears.


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  CHAPTER 37: 03.15.     THE GOOD SAMARITAN
========================================================================

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

Luke 10:25-37 The lawyer who unwittingly gave occasion to our Lord to utter the
Parable of the Good Samaritan, was not one of those who sought to betray Him
into some indiscreet or unorthodox expression with which they might accuse Him
before the authorities. He was rather of the less offensive type of person very
largely represented in our own day, who takes an interest in religious subjects
and religious teachers, who goes to hear all the varieties of preaching, and is
ready with an opinion on every novel theory, and who for the most part measures
all he hears by a standard as obsolete and inapplicable as it would be to
measure the sufficiency of a town’s defenses by their ability to resist
sling-stones or battering rams. This lawyer tested our Lord by putting to Him a
question on which a great many others hinged, and which gave promise of a lively
discussion in which a number of our Lord’s opinions would be expressed and a
full view of His teaching laid open. He wished to arrive at that kind of
knowledge of our Lord’s religious position and whereabouts which in our own day
is sometimes sought to be reached by putting the question, Do you believe in
miracles? or, Do you believe that Jesus is truly and properly God? The question,
however, proved an unfortunate one for the scribe’s purpose, though one of the
luckiest ever put, in so far as it called out one of those Parables which the
child eagerly listens to and which never throughout his whole life cease to have
some influence upon him.

What answer the lawyer expected it is impossible to say. Certainly he did not
expect to be referred directly and solely to the moral law, but probably thought
he should hear of fasts and prayer and sacrifices. And in responding as he did
and quoting a perfect summary of the law, he no doubt anticipated that Jesus
would speak of purely religious duties in which the scribe was probably
exemplary, or would at all events take off the edge of the bare commandment by
muffling it round with a number of observances, explanations, and so forth. But
in place of this he is staggered by having the naked law thrust home upon
himself as the sole and sufficient reply to his own question: That is God’s law;
He asks no more; you already know all His requirement; do it, and you live.

There is, of course, not the smallest shade of quibble in this answer of our
Lord’s. It is the simple eternal truth. All we have to do to inherit eternal
life is to love. God is love, and in creating us He made us such that all we
have to do is to love. Let us only do this, heartily love God and our neighbor,
and we fulfil the whole law. God has given us this feeling to be both the spring
and regulator of all else, so that if it be in life and healthy exercise all
else goes well with us. To ask why we may not hate or neglect, is to ask why we
are as we are, why God has made us thus? For us eternal life is eternal love.
Christ did not come to abolish this law, but to fulfil it; to make it possible
to us to keep this eternal law of our being. What we in this generation have to
do and to be in order to be eternally alive, is, of course, precisely the same
as what men of any generation have had to do and to be; the difference is, that
we have better means of fulfilling the law. The lawyer, however, cannot allow
his question to be so easily disposed of. He seeks to pursue the subject, and
accordingly puts the further question, “Who is my neighbor?” The simplicity of
the answer of Jesus to his first question must have excited in the minds of the
bystanders some suspicion of the scribe’s sincerity. They must have felt that
any one professing to know the law might have answered such a question for
himself. The scribe therefore “desiring to justify himself,” to show that he had
a real interest in the subject, and that it was not so easily disposed of as
Christ’s answer implied, asks for a definition of the term “neighbor.” To one
trained as he was, it was a natural inquiry, and yet it betrays the shallowness
of his thoughts on the subject. No one whose heart was filled with love could
have asked such a question. Love never seeks limits, but always outlets wider
and freer. In His reply, therefore, our Lord does not direct attention to the
objects of love, but to those who exercise it. He does not directly answer the
question, “Who is my neighbor?”— a question that bore in it the hope that these
neighbors might prove to be few and such as might be easily loved — friends,
relatives, connections; but He shows, by an instance of the actual working of
love, that it makes neighbors. It is not the defining of neighbors that gives us
the definition of love, but the experience of love that defines for us who are
our neighbors. He makes the lawyer at once see who his neighbor is, by showing
him what love is. He lets him see that his question cannot be asked by a loving
heart. Love is here, as elsewhere, a much prompter and truer teacher than
theological definition.

It is this, then, that our Lord teaches by means of the Parable — that love, or
a merciful spirit, finds a neighbor in every one that is in need and can be
helped; that no tie of kindred or obligation imposed by office is so
keen-sighted in detecting a neighbor as love is. This He illustrates with the
same wonderful readiness and finished perfection and fertility of thought as are
displayed in all the Parables. The instance of misery or misfortune which our
Lord chose was one constantly occurring. It was as common for a man to fall
among thieves on the Jericho road and be left half dead as it is now for miners
to be killed by an explosion of fire-damp or for men to be maimed for life by a
machinery accident. So notorious had that road become for robbery and violence
that it was called “the red or bloody way.” It only needs to be observed about
this poor man, that he lay in the most urgent need of a friend, of one who would
give him help, of one who would take a little trouble and spend a little time
over him. It remained to be seen whether such a person would turn up. The first
to come to the spot was a priest, that is, the man of all others bound to do him
a friendly turn. The priest was not only a Jew, he was the representative of the
Jews, the Jew by preeminence; as especially Jewish as the British sailor is
especially British, and to be counted on wherever a fellow-countryman is in
trouble. He was by his birth and by his office the brother of all his race, not
suffered to recognize one tribe more than another, not suffered to allow even
his own family ties to draw him from close attachment to all the people. The
medical officer of a parish would surely not pass a man lying on the road with
his head cut open, or why does he hold his appointment? A soldier who has fallen
wounded in a retired part of the field of battle will hail it as an unusually
fortunate circumstance if the first man that comes up is the surgeon of his own
regiment. So, if this wounded Jew had strength enough to see the priest as he
came in sight, he must have considered it a remarkably happy coincidence which
brought just the person who might most naturally be expected to show him
kindness — one who lived for the people’s good, and one who had just been
engaged at Jerusalem in services well fitted to bring him into sympathy with the
various distresses of men. If any man might be included in the term “neighbor,”
surely the priest might. But the priest thought otherwise. Like many another
man, he was content to do what he was obliged to do, and what his ritual
prescribed, but had none of the spirit of his office. And so it had happened to
him as it happens to all who so use their official position — it had hardened on
him as a shell, and separated him from his fellows. He was not more a man
because a priest, but less a man. It was not the fulness of his humanity that
made him a fit priest; but his priestliness actually blighted his humanity all
round. The other order of men who might chiefly have been expected, from the
nature of their order and office, to be forward to assist and put themselves as
public property at the disposal of all, was the Levitical. The insufficiency of
a merely official tie is therefore further illustrated by our Lord’s
introduction of a Levite on the scene. He also sees, but turns his head away and
almost persuades himself he does not know his help is needed. It is as if the
English consul in some Italian port, in passing along the street, saw an
Englishman being assaulted and in danger of his life, but instead of interfering
turned into a side street, trying to persuade himself that the man was not an
Englishman, or that the quarrel was not serious, though he saw blood; or that
the robbers were Government officials securing a culprit.

It is unfortunately too easy for us all to imagine, with the aid of our
self-knowledge, what excuses these men would make for themselves. Possibly the
priest knew the Levite was behind him, and thought the work fitter for him; if
so, it is one instance more of the folly of leaving to others work which is
fairly our own. Possibly both men were tired with their service in Jerusalem,
and eager to get home. Possibly both were a little afraid of delaying in a spot
in which there was such speaking evidence of its insecurity. Probably neither of
them cared to get mixed up with a business which might involve them in legal
proceedings, necessitating them to appear as witnesses, or which might even
bring suspicion on themselves. So they passed by on the other side — they tried
not to see it. From our translation you might suppose the Levite made a more
minute examination of the man than the priest — “came and looked on him,” it
says — but the words are the same in both cases. There is no reason to suppose
the Levite was either so much harder-hearted that he went out of curiosity close
up to the man to see how he was hurt, nor that he was so much softer-hearted as
to intend at first to help him, but found, or persuaded himself he found, his
wounds too deep for skill of his. The significant fact in both cases is, that
they saw the man, but passed by on the other side, as if trying to persuade
themselves there was no man there and no reason why they should pause. This
conduct, I say, we can too well understand. Which of us has not been guilty of
passing by on the other side, of leaving misery unrelieved because it was not
clamorous? This unfortunate, lying half dead by the roadside, could make no
importunate supplications for relief, could not sit up and prove to the priest
that it was his duty to help him, could not even ask help, so as to lay on the
priest the responsibility of positive refusal; and so he got past with less
discomfort, but not with less guilt. The need is often greatest where least is
asked. And how many forms of misery are there lying within our knowledge as we
journey along the blood-stained road of life, but which we pass by because they
do not bar our progress till we give our help, or because it is possible for us
to put them out of our mind and live as though these things were not. It is true
we could not live, or certainly could only live in depression and wretchedness,
if we kept constantly before our minds all known suffering, — if we had a vivid
image of the pain and sorrow at this present moment afflicting thousands of
gentle and innocent persons, — if we set before the mind’s eye the the hopeless,
wearing anguish that is hidden in every hospital in this and other lands, the
blank despair that numbs the spirit of whole tribes swept into slavery under the
crudest oppression, the various miseries and difficulties which desolate life
and cause many and many a victim to curse the day of his birth. To go about our
ordinary duties with all this present to our mind would be as impossible as to
live in peace, or to live at all, if our senses were acute enough to make
audible to us all the noise within a radius of two or three miles, or to make
visible to us all that exists unseen. But the passing by on the other side which
leaves guilt upon the conscience is the putting aside of distress that comes
naturally before us, and the refusing to assist where circumstances give us the
opportunity of assisting. A lost child is crying on the street, but it is
awkward to be seen leading a dirty, crying child home, so we refuse to notice
that the child is lost; a man is lying as if he were ill, but he may only be
intoxicated, and it looks foolish to meddle, and may be troublesome, so we leave
him to others, though another minute in that position may, for all we know, make
the difference between life and death. You read a paragraph of a paper giving a
thrilling account of a famine in China, or some other great calamity; but when
yoi. come to a clause intimating that subscriptions will be received at such and
such a place, you pass to another column, and refuse to allow that to make the
impression on your mind which you feel it is beginning to make. In short, you
will, in these and many like circumstances, wait till you are asked to help; you
know you could not in decency refuse if you were asked, if the matter were fully
laid before you and all the circumstances detailed, but you will put yourself
out of reach before this can be done; you will not expose yourself to the risk
of having your charitable feelings stirred, or at any rate of having your help
drawn upon; you will, if possible, wipe the thing from your mind, you will
carefully avoid following up any clue, or considering steadily any hint or
suggestion of suffering.

But, as we have said, it was not just another man, or just another Jew, that
came and saw this man lying in his blood, it was, both in the case of the priest
and Levite, one who had a special tie or obligation to be compassionate. These
men were supposed to be a kind of embodied and living law of God, an incarnate
compassion, a reflex on earth of the mercy of the Most High. They of all men
should have recognized this Jew as their brother. Their peculiar guilt is ours
when we repudiate any special responsibility, and make as though there were no
tie between us and the object needing help. And happy are they who can say that
at least of this special guilt they are free, — who have really filled up with
active love all the relationships of life by which God has brought them into
connection with others, and who cannot reproach themselves with failing to see
what any friend, servant, relative required, or, having seen it, to do it for
them, — who know no instance in which they failed to bring assistance because it
was of a troublesome kind, or of a kind that would have brought them into
connection with disreputable people, or would have made them look foolish or
meddling or romantic. Surely if not in your own case, then in the case of
others, you see that it is not always the relationship that gives the love, but
the love that makes the relationship, — that there is often a friend that
sticketh closer than a brother — an outlaw from the faith that is more
substantially helpful, wiser and readier in advice and prompter in lending a
hand, than one belonging to the same “household of faith.” Had you met this
Levite after seeing his conduct, would you not have been tempted to say to him,
What are you a Levite for, if not to give such help? If you encountered a police
official who carefully avoided all dangerous and troublesome interference, would
you not be apt to challenge his right to retain his post? But might we not turn
our challenge on ourselves, and say to ourselves, Why are you a Christian? what
do you unite yourself to Christ for? Is it not that you may be able to do good,
to be helpful, to become salt to the earth, and of exceptional value among men?
If, then, you shrink from all exceptional duty, from all that calls for trouble
and real sacrifice, from all that puts you seriously about, what is the good of
your Christianity? where does it go? But while there are men whose lack of
humanity empties their relationships and every office they hold of all service
to others, save only what they are rigidly bound to by the letter of their
engagement, and compelled to by the insistence or observance of others, there
are also men whose love throws out sympathies on all sides, invents obligations
where no claim could be enforced, and breaks through restrictions naturally
hindering them from interference. So far from seeking excuse for not helping,
they invent excuses for helping, or are unconscious that excuses are needed. Of
this class of men the Good Samaritan is the mortal type — the once-drawn picture
of the master-hand that needs no added touch. In him you see that it it is love
that makes the difference; that in the time of need a compassionate heart is to
more purpose than any tie, engagement, office, or bond. All the excuses the
others had might have been his, and many more. He was not bound to the man by
any tie of country, he was not even a mere foreigner, but was of the Samaritans,
who had no dealings with the Jews. What the Christian is to the Mohammedan, the
Jew was to the Samaritan. Born among a people whose most active energy was spent
in demonstrations of enmity against the Jews, part of his education must have
been to annoy and persecute. Neither was this man an official like the priest,
who might have been greeted with a respectful salutation had the man been in a
condition to have given it, and who would probably have resented the omission of
such a token of respect; but he was an alien who would more likely have read the
expression of a mocking hatred on the face of the passer-by, or have even been
greeted with cursing, or “Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil.” But over all
these influences love triumphs, and he with whom this wounded Jew would at any
other time have contemptuously refused to deal has now dealings with him of a
very touching nature. That is to say, it is love that makes man neighbor to man.
The true neighbor is the man who has a compassionate heart and a friendly
spirit. Where this is wanting, it avails not that a man lives next door, or
belongs to the same congregation, or is a member of the same club or union or
profession; it ought to be so that these external associations quicken our
friendliness, and so they often do, and where love exists they find expression
for it in many suitable ways; but these external bonds can never supply the
place of love. No doubt the people who saw how careful the Samaritan was of his
protégé would say, He must be his brother, or his neighbor, or an old friend;
for the truth is, that genuine compassion and affection make a man brother,
neighbor, and friend of all. It is not, then, by any marks in others that you
can test who is your neighbor; it is not by the marks of race, neighborhood,
religion, common pursuits, old friendships, not by anything in them at all you
can determine; but only by what is in yourself, namely, humanity of disposition,
friendliness, compassion, or whatever name you choose to give it. Love alone can
determine who is your neighbor.

Another point is incidentally brought out by our Lord. Love does not ask, What
claim has this man and that man on me? but, What does this or that man need that
I can do for him? It must have been, and it still is, an edifying sight to see
the completeness of the Samaritan’s attentions — to see him kneeling with the
interested, anxious eye of a friend by the side of the Jew, gently raising his
head, cleansing his wounds, mollifying them with oil, binding them with strips
torn from the first thing that came to hand, restoring in him the grateful
desire of life, and greeting his return to consciousness with the
strength-giving congratulations of genuine affection. We might suppose he had
now done enough. How is his own business to go forward if he thus delays? But
love is not so soon satisfied. He sits by him till he is strong enough to be set
on his beast, and does not resign his charge to any other. He does not feel that
the robbed man is off his hands when he has got him to an inn. He has himself to
go on his journey, but he will not on that account, nor on any account,
disconnect himself from the man; he will disconnect himself from him only when
he needs no more assistance. This is love’s way. To be asking, How far am I to
go in helping others? shows we have not love. To be asking, To what extent must
I love? Where can I stop? Whom can I exclude? and From what sacrifices may I
reasonably turn away? is simply to prove that we have not as yet the essential
thing, a loving spirit; for love asks no such questions, but ever seeks for
wider and wider openings.

This, then, is our Lord’s answer to the question. How shall I inherit eternal
life? The answer is. Love as this Samaritan did. You will not receive eternal
life as the reward of doing so, in the sense that, having now helped men and
sacrificed for them, you shall enter into an eternity in which you may cease
doing so, and live in some other relation to them. Not so. But by loving men
thus you hereby enter into that state of spirit and that relation to your
fellow-men which is eternal life, the only eternal relation possible. What more
can you be asked to do than to love those you have to do with? It is that which
will alone enable you to fulfil all duty to them. You need not ask. What is due
to this man or that, how much service, how much assistance, how much substantial
help? These are very useful questions where there is no love, but they are never
sufficient, and they are therefore all summarily dismissed by Paul in his brief
rule, “Owe no man anything, but to love one another,”— that is the one debt
always due, never paid off, always renewed, and that covers all others. You are
meant to live happily and strongly and sweetly; the relations of society part to
part are meant to move as sweetly as the finest machinery, and love alone can
accomplish this. It is a mere groping after harmony and order and social
well-being that we are occupied with while we try to adjust class to class,
nation to nation, man to man, by outward laws or defined positions.

One of our most popular teachers, Emerson, is indeed bold enough to say, in
direct contradiction to this Parable, “ Do not tell me, as a good man did today,
of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I
tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the
cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not belong.
There is a class of persons to whom, by all spiritual affinity, I am bought and
sold; for them I will go to prison if need be.” Him we may well leave to be
answered by that deeper seeing heathen, who said, “Nature bids me assist men;
and whether they be bond or free, gentlefolk or freedmen, what matter? Wherever
a man is, there is room for doing good.” To obey Emerson’s law would be to
introduce into a world already sufficiently broken up into sects, classes, and
parties, a division more alienating and inextinguishable than creed
distinctions, more bitter and personal than race hatred, more irreconcilable and
truly hardening than class separation.

We may therefore measure ourselves thus, and thus we may see what our religion
has done for us. Our Lord came to set us right with one another; to put us on a
footing with those with whom we are to spend eternity, such as shall make it
possible to us to do so. He said, again and again, “This is the command I give
unto you, that ye love one another.” This is one half of our salvation, one half
which involves the other, and you may measure the help you have received from
Christ and ascertain in how far you are a saved person by the ability you have
to keep this command. This is the test John gives: “We know that we have passed
from death to life.” How? “Because we love the brethren.” How is it, then, with
ourselves? While Christ tells us we should not hesitate even to lay down our
lives for the brethren, that is to say should not be behind even natural
generosity, which week by week prompts men to sacrifice life for others, even
for persons they could not name, — while Christ leaves us this command, and
illustrates it by His whole life, do we grudge to live uncomfortably for our
brethren? This comfort and that we raise to the rank of necessities, and limit
our givings and our sympathies. But love sweeps away such necessities, and shows
itself the highest law of all. If still you say, What are we to do for others?
is it not enough to give what law and decency require us to give? is it not
enough to forbear doing harm, speaking evil, inflicting injury? your Lord has
but the one answer: Love them first of all, and see what will come of that.


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  CHAPTER 38: 03.16.     THE RICH FOOL
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THE RICH FOOL

Luke 12:13-21 This is yet another Parable in which our Lord illustrates the
attitude He expects us to assume towards the world and its goods. It was
occasioned by an unusually blunt exhibition of worldliness. Our Lord had been
assuring His disciples that if they were brought into court, the Holy Ghost
would teach them what to say. There is a man in the crowd to whom, at last, the
words of Jesus begin to seem practical; courts, lawsuits, inheritances, were the
staple of his thoughts, and the familiar words make him prick his ears. This
ability to speak in courts is the very thing he has been seeking. If Jesus has
it, He will possibly be good enough to use it for him, and so he will get his
law gratis, as well as recover his share in the inheritance. This is a
delightful prospect, too good an opportunity to let slip. And so, utterly blind
to the kind of interests our Lord had at heart, utterly regardless of the crowd,
possessed with the one thought that for months and years had consumed him, and
seeing only that Jesus had great wisdom and justice, a remarkable faculty of
putting things in their right light, and an authoritative manner, which surely
not even his brother could resist, he blurts out—“Master, speak to my brother,
that he divide the inheritance with me.” To one whose interests are religious,
or political, or literary, or scientific, it is always amusing to see the
unbounded importance which many men whose business is in money attach to their
department of affairs, and the unaffected earnestness with which they discuss
them. There is a solemnity in their manner when they speak of large sums; they
seem to grow and swell with the amounts they name, a mystery and awe in their
tone as they tell of big transactions, a pompous and grand dignity as they give
the history of some bit of property, which is abundantly instructive. They turn
from religious talk to this monetary style with the air of one who should say,
Religion is all very well as a pleasing speculation or emotional tonic, but this
other is the reality; let us now put aside all mere play of the imagination and
turn to the substantial affairs of life. They constantly betray the
understanding on which they live, the understanding that everything must give
way to business, that it is the real thread on which life is strung. The egotism
of worldliness was never exhibited in a more barefaced, naked, shameless form.
Here had this man, through all our Lord’s conversation, been thinking his own
worldly thoughts; what he gathers from all our Lord has been saying is, that He
would make a good lawyer; and the best thing he can imagine that Christ, with
His felt authority and goodness, can do for him, is to help him to a better
income. He is sensible of Christ’s power; if he was informed that He had come
down from heaven, he would not be disposed to question it. What is it then, as
he stands in presence of this highest beneficence, that he will claim; what is
it, now, that he finds his opportunity, that he will have? That half-acre his
brother has kept him out of. So are men judged by their wishes and cravings. In
many small towns you find harmless lunatics, who are glad to find a stranger on
their streets whom they can lay hold of, and pour out their wrongs to, and
repeat the old story of their claims to this estate or that title or handsome
fortune. One would be glad to think this man was such an irresponsible creature,
who, merely recognizing in our Lord a strange face, gave utterance to his one
constant demand, “Speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance.” But
covetousness and lunacy are always so nearly allied that this man can scarcely
be considered as showing any special signs of lunacy. We can all detect in
ourselves the germs of his character. We know how possible it is to retain a
grasping disposition and avaricious purposes through very solemn converse with
things spiritual. We know what it is to let some one important affair take such
possession of our thoughts that, for the time, God and all spiritual things are
as though they were not. Nay, do we not know what it is to calculate on the
influence of Christ moving some one to do us a worldly advantage, which
otherwise we could not hope for?

What a contrast did these two central figures of the crowd present! This man in
whom no response whatever is found to anything spiritual, who can stand and
listen to God Incarnate and be conscious of no new desires, no new world opening
to his hope, — this poor shrunken creature on the one hand, and on the other
Jesus, in whose eye no answering sparkle met the glitter of gold, who could
listen to talk about disputed successions and undivided properties without the
smallest interest, who could not be tempted to assume authority in affairs where
the arbiter would not be forgotten. What our Lord continued throughout His life
to do. He did here — refused to interfere in civil matters, repelling
indignantly the idea that He was to be used as a petty magistrate. Not that the
kingdom He had come to establish was to have no influence on the world, for it
was destined to influence its minutest affair, but this was all to come about in
a regular way; the hearts of men were to be Christianized, and they being so,
all other things would feel the influence. Our Lord would not spend a word in
composing that fraternal difference, but He would spend all the force of His
teaching on extirpating the cause of the difference. “Man, who made me a judge
or a divider over you?” He said, but also, “Take heed, and beware of
covetousness.” If our Lord, who saw in every case what was right to be done,
refused to intermeddle, how much more should we limit ourselves to what is our
own sphere, who neither clearly and wholly understand, nor are wise to act. A
great part of the mischief that is done in the world comes of men overstepping
the region with which they are familiar, and in which they are authoritative. It
is amazing to hear with what boldness and unsuspecting confidence men pronounce
upon matters with which they have had the most meager acquaintance.

It was the shock produced by this man’s naive display of his absorbing
worldliness which made our Lord at once turn to the crowd with the words, “Take
heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things he possesseth.” This, then, is pointed out as the great
snare of covetousness, that it tends to make a man identify himself with his
possessions and rate himself by them. This is what our Lord here lays His finger
on, as being especially disastrous in this vice; it blinds a man to the fact
that he remains forever distinct from his possessions; that he is one thing, his
possessions another; that he and they cannot be amalgamated, but must remain
separate in essence and in destiny. That covetousness has this tendency every
one knows. The man who values himself for what he has, and not for what he is,
the man who fancies himself great because his possessions are great, is one of
the most familiar objects of ridicule. But take heed, for there is a current
setting that way which all of us feel the force of. Money-making is one of the
most obvious and convenient goals which a man can choose for himself in life.
Many men, when young, are sadly at a loss what to make of life, and are burdened
with their capabilities. They know they can do something, but cannot determine
what. They have not tested themselves, and cannot say what might be the prudent
course. They have no strong natural bent towards any particular calling. Now to
realize a competence supplies an aim, easily thought of and easily held in view.
To make a fortune is an appreciable result, that a man may spend his effort on
and measure his progress by. If it be made, there it is to show, it is actual
visible achievement, a monument of labor spent. And in the course towards the
goal there is a great deal of satisfaction, there is evident progress. A man is
fallen very low indeed, if he is not at all concerned to know that he is making
any advance one way or another. Now, men can very soon learn the art of
measuring their progress, not by themselves, or their own personal growth, not
by any ripeness of character and real internal acquisition, but by mere outward,
material gain. They are content with some little glows of satisfaction that they
are rising in the world, that they are able this year to command some luxuries
that were last year beyond their reach, and especially that this actual thing,
money, has increased in their hands. This is the way we practically come to
measure ourselves by what we have, and to think that our life consists in the
abundance of the things we possess. And what our Lord insists upon here, and
seeks to impress us with, is the folly and disaster of so doing. He shows us
that a man and his possessions are distinct; that a man’s life is not longer nor
happier in proportion to what he has; that the man, the living soul, is one
thing, the goods another; that he goes one way, they another; and that by no
ingenuity can a man get himself and his property so united that he shall be
beautiful, strong, lasting as it is. He may fill his shelves with the wisest and
most elevating books, and yet remain illiterate; he may gather round him
precious works of art, and be a clown and a boor; he may buy up a county, and be
the smallest souled man in it; he may erect a mansion which will last for ten
generations, and may not have ten years of life or ten minutes of health to
enjoy it. A man’s possessions obstinately stand off from himself. Naturally we
all feel that we are expanding and enlarging ourselves in extending our
possessions, that we are more firmly rooting ourselves on earth; in each of them
we seem to have a mirror reflecting ourselves, and each of them adds to our
importance. Our Lord, therefore, presents to our view a man who has abundant,
superabundant possessions, but has no life left. He had laid up goods in
abundance, and reckoned on life in abundance, a long, full, lively life. He
forgot the distinction, but it was made nevertheless. He is shown to us separate
from his possessions, and transferred to a sphere where, like old-world coins,
their value is unknown and they can neither be accounted, used, nor enjoyed. The
rich man of the parable is represented as one of the exceptionally favored
children of fortune. He had already become wealthy at an age at which he might
naturally count upon having several years of enjoyment. His wealth, too, had
been acquired, not by hard fatiguing labor, but in that line of life in which,
more than in any other, a man’s time is his own, and he can work or play as he
feels disposed. And especially it is to be remarked that no sin attached to his
money-making; he had not made his money by gambling, he had not profited by
another man’s disaster, no one was the loser for his winnings, it was the
honest, unsullied gift of Heaven to him; his fields yielded enormously. But as a
sudden and great alteration of circumstances is the best revealer of what a man
really is, this sudden wealth disclosed a selfishness in this land-holder of
which before he had perhaps not been suspected. The manner in which his wealth
had come to him sets his ingratitude to God in a stronger light. Though his
wealth had come to him through that medium which is most evidently at God’s
discretion, so evidently that even men who are ungodly in other matters make
some show of acknowledging that years of famine and years of plenty depend on
God’s will, — though the gifts of God had come to him by the shortest route, as
if from and out of God’s very hand, unhidden by any complicated transactions
with men, — though his wealth had been built up by the elements, whose influence
he could neither command nor restrain, — yet he seizes and claims as his own the
fruits of his fields, as if he had been the maker of them, as if no one else had
spent anything on them, and as if he had to consult no one but himself as to
their disposal. What most men would have decency if not devotion enough to call
a Godsend, he calls a windfall, and gathers up as his very own. A great success
solemnizes some men; they hurry home and fall on their knees; they are ashamed
of so much goodness coming to men so unworthy, and they hasten to make
acknowledgment. Serious-minded men who engage in business not for the mere
excitement and gain of it, walk in God’s presence, and bear in mind that the
silver and the gold are His, that promotion cometh not from the north or south
by the wind that happens to be blowing, and are therefore ever ready to say,
What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me? Can anything be
more pitiable than the man who stands at his counting-house door and forbids
God’s entrance while his balance is being struck, who does not care that God
should know how much he made last year, but goes and prays that this God would
give him success this year? Is it not astonishing how religious men who profess
to live for God, should so carefully keep Him from interfering in their money
matters, that is, in those matters round which their life really revolves? If we
cannot go before God and frankly say, This is what I have made this year, and I
could not have made it but for Thee and Thy help, — this is because we fear God
will claim too much, and prompt us to use it as we are not prepared to do. Must
there not be something wrong if we are not letting God’s eye and judgment fully
and freely into every transaction we engage in, and every gain we make? In the
case of this rich man, certainly his blindness to the source of his wealth and
the bad use he made of it did hang together. He missed the opportunity of being
God’s almoner, of dispensing God’s bounty to the needy. He did not recognize
that it was the Lord who gave, and therefore it was not the Lord’s poor who got.
The goods are his goods — he can’t get past that; he may do what he likes with
them, he cannot see that there is any other vote or voice in the matter. In what
sense the fulness of the world is God’s he has no mind to consider. His barns
are bursting, he has more wealth than he knows what to do with; but one thing is
certain, it must all be spent on himself. You would suppose he had never seen a
hungry child in his life; you would suppose he had never met a beggar, or seen a
blind man or a cripple in his market town. “Where shall I bestow my goods? “This
was his difficulty, and yet he had the world before him, a world filled with
want, abundant in misery, rich in cases of need. How many hundreds there were
who could have given him very pointed and definite directions! how many who
would quickly have relieved him from his perplexity! how many at that very hour,
when he was wondering what he could do with his superfluity, were tortured by
the opposite perplexity, wondering where they could get bread for these pale,
appealing children, where they could find temporary aid to help them through a
year of disaster! Among all the investments he had heard and thought of, there
was one prospectus he had apparently not seen, that to which God has put His
name, “He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord.” He did not apprehend
that their bare and empty homes would be better houses of investment than his
own locked and useless barns.

It is no more than what thousands of rich men, and of men who are not rich,
every day do; he would not be in the Parable if he were exceptional. He is here
because he is typical — typical of the men who, in considering how they shall
invest their gains, look only to their own interests, — who, in considering
their next step, have chiefly in view, what advantage can I win for myself? and
who do not consider what good they can do. Life is constructed almost entirely
on selfish principles: business is carried on upon the understanding that every
man must look out for himself. One of the many benefits of war is, that it
counteracts this selfishness; men learn to think of the common cause, of the
public good, of the prosperity of the country, of the honor of their regiment.
But in most departments of life men are prone to consider merely or chiefly. How
can I get the utmost of good for myself? Often and often no other thought
whatever is at the root of an investment, a transaction, an enterprise. The
future is sketched in the mind, and I am the center, and all else is arranged so
as most effectually to contribute to my joy. They are the few whose first
thought it is, Is there any one I can benefit? and who so frequently think how
they can promote the welfare and happiness of others, that at last this becomes
a habit with them. When we consider the sleek and complacent selfishness of the
man that could quietly propose to spend many years of comfort without a thought
of others, we are almost glad to hear of his sudden disappointment. Doubtless
the man might have died as suddenly if he had been better prepared. Had he
invited all the poor of the district, to make a distribution to them of his
surplus, he might all the same have died without seeing his benevolence enjoyed.
But while there are few things more delightful to contemplate than the sudden
painless departure of the man who has walked with God, there are few things so
shocking as the sudden death of the sinner, who dies in passion with an oath on
his lips, or never wakens from the insensibility of drunkenness. And what this
Parable draws attention to is the vanity, the insecurity of worldly and selfish
expectations. The man had one view of the future: God another. The man was
saying, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years:” God was saying, “Not
another night shall you possess a single bushel.” What a satire is here upon
man! Truly every man walketh in a vain show; he heapeth up riches and knoweth
not who shall gather them. He builds his house and purposes to live and see good
days, but a voice falls from heaven, Thou misreckoning man, the house may be
built, but there will be no man to inhabit it. In his own thoughts the man was
living through long years of ease and plenty, but the cold reality touched his
warm expectations, and they withered death-stricken. The wind passeth over him
and he is gone, and the place he counted his knows him no more. He was reckoning
that no life could be worthy of comparison with his; that his shrewd plans had
been fully accomplished, his utmost hopes exceeded, he was in the full triumph
of self-gratulation, counting himself the most successful of men, the man to be
envied; but this is God’s judgment: “Thou fool.” But might he not set even God’s
judgment of his conduct at defiance? Was he not surrounded by tokens of his
success, by proofs of his wisdom? Alas! in that very article and particular in
which he had judged himself most wise, he was exhibited as conspicuous in folly.
He had spent all his poor wisdom in providing for this soul of his an easy,
merry, plentiful life, and he finds that so far from providing an abundant life
for himself, he is unable to secure life of any kind, and would gladly exchange
his position for the life of the meanest of his slaves. Stripped, naked, a bare,
desolate soul, he passes from our sight, lost in the darkness of eternal
remorse, his own voice still dolefully echoing the condemning voice of God, his
own soul turning on itself with the everlasting reproach “Thou fool! thou fool!”

“This night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall these things
be, that thou hast provided?” The answer comes from many a dissipated fortune,
from many an auction room, in which are exposed the accumulations of a lifetime.
There is one of the places a man proud of his possessions may moralize. The most
precious and frequently handled gems of the departed owner are handed over to
men who never saw him, or who made a jest of his avarice, or to men who rivaled
him, and are now proud of living a year or two longer and getting as their own
what they had long grudged to him. The books he read are now penciled by others;
his plate his defaced and marked with other names; the very bed he lay on he
needs no more; the clothes he wore he shall never again use; his mirrors, it is
well they cannot now reflect him.

“So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God.” So
that is equally senseless, and in an equally precarious position. But how many
does this judgment hit? Yet not all; for some, on finding unexpected means
coming into their hands, would have said within themselves. This is delightful,
this will enable me to provide for this needy relative, this will at last put me
in a position to make up for loss I unwittingly occasioned. This will precisely
fit the wants of this or that benevolent institution that I know makes admirable
use of its funds. God identifies Himself with all that is needy on earth, and
spending treasure for the needy is spending treasure for God. And in so spending
we become rich towards God, are provided for so far as our outlook Godwards is
concerned. How is it then with us? Suppose all earthly possessions were suddenly
to drop from about you, as they one day will, what would you have left? Would
you then be rich or poor? Would the wants you would then begin to feel be amply
provided for? Here we are now without our possessions, are we rich at this
moment? Suppose we never got back to our homes, suppose we were by some great
natural catastrophe at this hour separated from all that we have provided for
this life, should we still be rich? Is there something so belonging to you that
you can say, This is mine for evermore — mine through every change, through
health and sickness, in life and death — mine though I be stripped of all that
can be separated from my person, though I stand a bare spirit without connection
with material things? Will you honestly give yourselves an answer to this
question? What have I towards God? What that is certain to increase the nearer I
go to Him? Am I so joined to Him that I can say, “I am persuaded, that neither
life nor death, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?”


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  CHAPTER 39: 03.17.     THE BARREN FIG-TREE
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THE BARREN FIG-TREE

Luke 13:6-9 This Parable formed part of the conversation which our Lord held
with those who reported to Him the fate of some Galileans whom Pilate had
slaughtered in the temple. The Galileans were notoriously turbulent, and on more
than one occasion Pilate quelled their disposition to riot with the decisive and
unrelenting ferocity that characterized him. On this occasion he seems to have
stepped beyond his jurisdiction, and to have sent soldiers into the temple to
slay the sacrificers among the beasts they were sacrificing — an act which would
have desecrated a pagan temple, and which was peculiarly horrible in a temple so
sacred and exclusive as that of the Jews. Indeed, one is tempted to suppose the
atrocity had been magnified by rumor, and that what had at first been related in
strong figures was at last taken literally; that Pilate had slaughtered some
Galileans who had come to the city to sacrifice, but were not yet inside the
temple; and that some one returning to Galilee, and finding himself an object of
interest as a participator in the disturbance, and desiring to make a terse and
picturesque report of what had happened, said with an allowable figure of speech
that Pilate had mingled their blood with that of their sacrifices. This report a
hearer taking literally might suppose to mean that Pilate had sent soldiers into
the temple and had slain the worshipers among the altars and sacrificial
animals.

Whatever the act of Pilate had been, those who now spoke of it seemed impressed,
not so much with any perfidy or profane ferocity on his part, as with the
exceptional guilt which they suppose these Galileans must have incurred to
justify their consignment to such a doom. They argue that God would not have
delivered up any of His worshipers to so shocking a death, had they not been
guilty of some exceptional iniquity. And with the pleasure men find in speaking
of the disasters of others while themselves secure, and of commenting upon
wickedness which they believe to exceed their own, these persons come with their
story to Jesus, hoping to hear some edifying discourse on the wickedness of the
world at large, and some suggestions which may warrant them in congratulating
themselves with still more satisfied complacency.

They are, however, disappointed. In this slaughter of the Galileans, as well as
in other calamities to which public attention had been drawn, our Lord sees no
evidence of exceptional guilt, but rather samples of calamity threatening the
whole nation. These disasters were the first mutterings of the storm which was
shortly to break over the whole community. The Jews were not to look at the
Galileans, or at those of their own number on whom the tower of Siloam fell, as
separate from themselves by any peculiar wickedness; they were to consider them
as integral parts of the nation, and to accept and gather warning from the
strokes which thus fell upon the people at large. These strokes, our Lord says,
were meant to awaken the whole nation to its precarious condition. They were
meant to make the people at large consider whether they did not as a people
together deserve a like doom. They are, in short, the first efforts of the
husbandman to stimulate the tree to greater activity. The branches which have
been cut off are cut off not for any special fault of theirs, but to quicken the
whole tree. If the Jewish ear were opened, it would hear in these thickening
accidents and disasters, not any private calamity, but the voice of the
husbandman wondering how the whole tree can be made to produce any proper and
valuable fruit. Hence the Parable of the Fig-tree. The direct meaning of the
Parable is unmistakable. What had happened to these Galileans would shortly
happen to the whole nation unless they so repented as to accomplish God’s
purpose with them. This Jewish people was like a fig-tree enjoying every
advantage, but bearing no fruit. As three years make up the full lime which it
is reasonable to spend upon the cultivation of an apparently barren tree, so
there is a fulness of time in the history of a nation during which it receives
its opportunities. This time had now expired with the Jews, and the forty years
that were yet given them, in answer to the “Father, forgive them,” which our
Lord breathed from the cross, were the tree’s ultimate year of probation which
was to decide its fate. To every nation God has given a special task, and
special gifts and opportunities to accomplish it. As the body requires many
members, and all the members have not the same office, — as the orchard has many
kinds of trees, and one kind cannot bear all fruits, — so each nation has had
some special impulse to give to the progress of the race. A modern nation,
however civilized, cannot do the work which was committed to an ancient tribe,
of choosing out the habitable parts of the earth and sowing the seed which all
subsequent times have been reaping. The Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians and
Persians, Cyrus, whom God owned as His servant, and many besides, had their
peculiar functions in the education of the race and in preparing the world for
Christ. But the Jews were called to a distinctive place. A different species of
fruit was expected from them. Their special function was to acknowledge Christ
when He came, and to form His kingdom. This fruit they had not borne. As a
nation they had failed, and seemed likely yet to fail, whatever individuals
among them had done and were yet to do. Having failed and continuing to fail,
they would become mere cumberers of the ground. There would be no reason why
their national existence should be continued. The Parable, however, has
important personal bearings. Every man’s conscience gives the Parable a personal
application. You would hardly find any one who would deny that God expects some
fruit of his life. If you asked yourself or any one else, Is it a matter of
absolute indifference to God what results from your life? you would be answered,
That it is impossible to conceive of God at all without supposing that He
desires every human life to serve some good purpose. This, at all events, is
Christ’s view. This it is which made His life what it was, influential to all
time, and the unfailing source of the highest energy to all other lives. That is
to say, He has given us the most cogent of all demonstrations that in proportion
as we accept His view of the connection of our life with God, shall we resemble
Him in the utility and permanent result of all we do. It has become obvious that
in the world of nature nothing is isolated and independent, but that everything
is connected more or less remotely with everything else; that all nature is one
whole, governed by one idea and fulfilling one purpose. Human lives are under
the same law. No life is outside of the plan which comprehends the whole; every
life contributes something to the fulfilment of the great purpose all are to
serve. Our Lord tells us that this purpose is in the mind of God, and that He
judges us by our fulfilment or non-fulfilment of His will. And that we should be
reluctant to bring forth fruit to God, or hesitate to live for Him, has its root
in the foolish and objectionable idea that God and we have opposing interests,
so that to help out God’s idea of the world and to work with Him and towards His
end is really not our best. Nothing seems to teach us that God is all on our
side. It has taken men six thousand years to find out some part of the provision
for our good which He has laid up in the material world, and it seems it will
take us even longer to discover the provision He has made for feeling and
thought and for spiritual strength and joy. But not only has each human life a
purpose; most men have the more or less distinct perception that they are as
fig-trees among vines; that they have peculiar opportunities not given to other
men, and that in one way or other they enjoy special advantages. The fig-tree of
the Parable was not lost among a forest of precisely similar, equally cared-for
and equally uncared-for trees; it was one, standing by itself among plants of
different kind, and receiving different attention. You have little feeling of
responsibility to God so long as you think you have dropped into your place
casually as the seed blown by the wind, or that what you receive you receive not
because it is suitable for you, and therefore given by God, but only because you
and all around you are included in some general order of things, and. dealt with
in the mass and regardless of individual characteristics. But if you deal with
God about your life at all, you find it to be necessarily implied that you
ascribe to Him a constant watchfulness over it and a power to introduce what is
needful for you, and to give you all that is needed for fruit-bearing, for
accomplishing His purpose. The position, then, that you occupy and the
advantages you enjoy are the indication that God means your life to serve a good
purpose. If you look at life with the secret or expressed conviction that it is
a pitiful and contemptible thing from which nothing good can result, it will in
your case become a contemptible and barren affair. But begin with the belief
that God’s purposes are worth accomplishing, and that they can be and are being
accomplished by men, and that you may accomplish them and this will give to your
life a steady and hopeful energy, and put your life on the only track that is
really eternal. A man may indeed find the thought rising in him, that as some
nations have served God’s purpose by war, by godless culture, by living out
their own nature irrespective of God, so may I accomplish His purpose although I
pursue the bent of my own nature and build up my life solely in accordance with
my own views and plans. But why has God given you light about His will if He
meant you to make no use of it? You can only judge of the kind of fruit God
wishes you to bear by considering the position He has set you in; and you can
bear that fruit only by using all the advantages He has given you. The gardener
leaves some plants out and unsheltered, but others he brings into the walled
garden, and some he puts under glass; and if the vine were treated like a
gooseberry bush, it would bear neither grapes nor yet gooseberries. So if we
exclude or neglect influences which God has seen fit to furnish us with, we must
be failing to produce the fruit He wishes. If He has brought you light in Christ
which you are not making any use of, if you decline to live in that communion
with the heart of all spiritual life which exists in the Father of spirits, then
it must be that you are failing to produce the fruit for the sake of producing
which He has given you these advantages. Are you sure there is nothing to be
gained by fellowship with Christ? are you sure that you can be as complete a man
without this person who felt it in Him to draw all men to Him? are you sure that
you can serve every good and worthy purpose just as well without any direct help
from Him as with it? Because, if you are not sure, then it is obvious that, for
all you know, you are shutting out an influence which would simply make all the
difference between bearing fruit and not doing so; between your life serving the
best purpose possible and serving a purpose disappointing and disastrous;
between fruit borne on the south side of a high brick wall and fruit borne or
attempted on the north side. And what can be more utterly humiliating than to
have our life examined by absolute insight and the most loving justice, and to
be pronounced barren? To fail in any one department of life is humiliating
enough, but to fail over the whole, and to find that the whole thing is gone for
nothing, must be impossible to bear. To have consciously failed in helpfulness
to a friend, or to have failed as a son or as a parent, to have quite
disappointed one who was trusting to us, makes a mark on our conscience we do
not easily cover over; to be engaged with others in a work all of which is
retarded or spoiled by a piece of stupidity or neglect on our part, affects us
with a very sensible shame. But think of failing in what our whole life was
given us to accomplish! How vain to defend ourselves by affirming that if we
have not pleased God and borne the fruit He desired, we have yet not lived in
vain! A young surgeon is appointed to an hospital, but the mortality greatly
increases; inquiry is made, and it is found that he has neglected his duties. He
is charged with neglect, and acknowledges it. “But,” he says, “come with me, and
I will show you I have not been idle.” He takes the authorities to his room, and
shows them a freshly finished painting or a half-written book which he expects
will make his fortune. No one questions whether such a person will be retained
or dismissed. For the charge of bringing forth no fruit is not the only one
which the owner of the fig-tree brings against it. It also cumbered the ground,
took up a place in his vineyard which might be more profitably used. It not only
bore no fruit itself, but “sucked the soil’s fertility” from wholesome and
productive plants. It used up room and nourishment which another tree might have
used for fruit-bearing. This tree had given promise, and because of its
promising appearance had been set where it was — but it failed. And it reminds
us of the guilt we incur when we engage to perform duties which nevertheless we
neglect. Had we not professed a willingness to perform them, others would have
been found to do them. Had we not thrust ourselves forward, or would we only
stand aside and yield the duties to others, they would be performed; but by
taking engagements upon us and not fulfilling them, we both omit our own part
and prevent others from performing it: like a crowd idly gazing from the shore
at a man drowning, and hindering the one eager to rescue who cannot make his way
to the water’s edge through the idle mass. Have you never seen some one spoiling
a piece of work which you were sure you could do well, but with which you cannot
interfere because the other is the party engaged to do it? Far better that he
were out of the way; but until he is discharged by a competent authority, he
must be allowed, not only to spoil the work himself, but to prevent any one else
from doing it well. The reason why no one interferes with your work is not
always that it is perfectly satisfactory. You may blunder and weary, you may do
your work in a perfunctory and slovenly way, but while you occupy the place, the
better workman cannot interfere to mend matters.

It is a saddening but also a stimulating reflection, that many duties might be
better performed were we out of the way. To many parents it must occur that
their children would have been better provided for in an orphan hospital,
sometimes even better clothed and fed, better instructed in religion, with a
more worthy example to incite them to well-doing, and receiving a better start
in life than they can do while their natural guardians are alive and engaged to
perform duties which are almost wholly neglected. And in many directions in
which our relations in life branch out, it may well shame us to look upon the
dead barren twigs into which we send no sap, and which might be all beautified
and bending under mellow fruit were some other enjoying the place that we occupy
with our lifeless bulk. If others had had our advantages, is it not probable
that more beneficial results would have appeared? If others had enjoyed the same
parent1 age, the same thoughtful prayerful love watching over their early years,
the same clear light regarding duty, the same encouragement to well-doing, — if
others had received as fully as we of what is thoroughly beneficial in life, or
what goes to form character and to make the conduct wholesome and helpful, — is
it not likely that fruit of a rarer quality and of greater abundance would have
appeared?

It is impossible that such waste of ground should be suffered forever in such a
vineyard as this of the Parable. If we on whom certain duties are depending are
the very persons who prevent these duties from being done, this is not a state
of things which a wise God will allow. Indolence, distrust, anything which
hinders us from working harmoniously with God, must be removed and is being
removed from His dominion. Such things can only be suffered for a time, and do
not belong to the eternal condition of things. Therefore God in His mercy warns
us that all such obstructive dispositions must be abolished. Here Christ in His
office of Saviour and Intercessor is represented as interposing between the
owner and the barren tree: “Lord,” He says, “ let it alone this year also. Let
me give it one chance more, let me do my utmost for it.” This request is acceded
to, but on the distinct understanding that this is a last chance. It is agreed
on both sides that if fruit be not now borne, the end has come. There will be no
more pleading. The spade will be thrown aside and the axe lifted. There is no
hurry in the matter, but a distinct agreement — one thing or other must be done
— either the fruit borne or the tree cut down. As it is said, “God does not pay
on Saturdays, but at last He pays.” His judgments are not weekly, but they are
infallibly certain. Every delay He makes, He makes with a distinct understanding
of what He means by it, of how long it is to be and of what will take place at
the expiry of the term. There comes a time when even the tears of Christ will
not save us; when even He can do no more than weep. The Jews accordingly
received their year of grace. Judgment was delayed for forty years; for a
generation. Time was given for passions to die down, for prejudice to pass away,
for reflection to be made on all that Christ had been and done. The tree was
digged about and well cared for. Means never before used were now used.
Preachers as zealous as the old prophets and with more telling words to utter
held clearly before them the king they had disowned. The trees planted near them
all began to yield fruit. In fact, as every one sees, it was useless trying to
do more to bring them to acknowledge Christ; nothing more could be done. And so
the heavy hand of Rome which so long had been held back was at last allowed to
fall, and the nation went to pieces under the blow. But when the old tree is
torn up by the storm, what chiefly astonishes us is to see that the mass below
the ground has been almost as widespread as the branches above: that each branch
and leafy twig that has waved in the air is represented by an unseen root or
sucker below which has fed and sustained it; and so if you look below the
surface through this period of grace, your eye lights upon the sustaining love
of God, your ear discerns the regretful, dirge-like mourning that breathed
through the words, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” the bitter disappointment and
yearning that can only with deepest sorrow and pain give up hoping and that
still repeats, “Oh that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked
in My ways! I would soon have subdued their enemies, and turned My hand against
their adversaries.” This Parable, then, bears in it a strong encouragement that
may well pervade and strengthen our whole life. For this vinedresser had not
interceded for the tree unless he had thought it possible that fruit might yet
be borne; and you may be sure the pains he spent on that tree would exceed all
that he spent on the rest. You can fancy him leaning on his spade and carefully
studying it, thinking of it as he went home at sundown, talking it over with
neighboring vinedressers, and coming out early to try some fresh method,
resolved that it should lose no chance of mending. And were our ear keen enough
to hear the deliberations and judgments pronounced now in the spiritual world,
might not some of us become aware that we ourselves were under discussion and
that the time of our final probation had come; that methods were now being tried
with us which, if they fail, cannot be renewed? If hitherto you have done little
for God, and if lately the thought of your opportunities of doing good service
has been borne in upon you, if your advantages have been strikingly increased,
your position improved, and hindrances taken out of the way, then ought you not
in reason to construe this into a renewed invitation on God’s part that you
should make up your mind at length to live for Him? Suppose you could overhear
the remarks passed upon your condition by these unseen overseers, suppose you
could overhear what is thought of your past and what is resolved regarding your
future, have you no reason to believe that you would hear remarks very similar
to those which were called forth by this tree from the persons who stood and
considered it? If it be so, if you are now to be put on a final trial, then He
who seeks and longs that you win is at your side to give you every advantage,
such arrangement of your worldly circumstances as is most likely to tell upon
you for good, such influences brought to bear upon you as you must consciously
resist if you are not to bring forth fruit, such promptings of conscience and
present light about duty as you must shut your eyes to if you are not to see and
obey. If this consideration and treatment of you is going on, and if indeed the
main reason of your being in life at all is that it may go on, then are you not
to think what may come of it, are you not to bestir yourself to some serious and
thorough response to God’s dealing? If you so bestir yourself, then you are
certain of success. Christ does tend you. Much that He does may be offensive to
you, much unintelligible; but believe in Him, frankly and heartily co-operate
with Him; welcome His efforts in your behalf; consider how much fruit His own
life bore, how, through neglect and contradiction of sinners, through
unsettlement and poverty and at last suffering, He still served God’s purpose.
Consider how utterly His life gives the lie to all within you that would either
say that life is easy, or that it is fruitless and empty and contemptible.
Consider Him and His promise that His Spirit, which made Him what He was, shall
pass into you, and take courage to live with Him and like Him. Believe that He
means you well, believe that He understands human life and means to make yours
worthy, and that if you co-operate with Him, nothing can defeat you.

There is encouragement also for those who have long been striving to serve God.
Do not despond about your own bad state and its many unfavorable symptoms. Do
not learn to treat life carelessly, as if its duties and trials had no reference
beyond the present time; do not treat this world as if Christ had never been in
it and had not shown you how everlasting results may flow from a brief time
spent among men and their sins and passions. Do not believe that you are left on
earth to grope and stumble blind and forlorn to an uncertain termination, but
abide in Christ and keep your mind occupied with His ways and seek His presence,
until you feel sure that every day comes to you with opportunities of living as
He did. It may seem very poor fruit such soil as you are planted in can produce,
but leave that to Him; He knows the kind of fruit He seeks from your life; and,
if it satisfies Him, it may satisfy you. Do not fancy that all is over with you,
and that fruit is what once might have been, but now cannot be. Even out of the
withered hopes that lie damp upon your heart and the comforts that have
gradually fallen from about you and now lie dead and saddening all your life,
your Lord can bring happiness and profit to you, can use these disappointments
and griefs as nature uses the dead leaves of the autumn to nourish and feed the
spring and the coming harvest. Certainly this remains to us all to say: I may
bring forth fruit to God, it is open to me to please and gratify Him, it is open
to me to make my life worthy of the approval and commendation of Him compared to
whose judgment the praise or blame of men is as the bluster of the wind that,
once heard, dies out forever. Life may in other respects be sad and dreary; I
may be fixed in one cramped and narrow spot all my days, enlivened and
stimulated by no change, the same familiar employments palling upon me more
drearily every day; I may have to stand out exposed to burning heat or chilling
storms, and may long for shelter, for comfort, for ease, for pleasure, but the
want of any or all of these ought not to make me think there is no object in my
life, no good use I can put it to, no worthily compensating end it will serve.
In the assurance of my Lord I mean to abide, that there still and always remains
to me the possibility of doing God’s will, and opportunity of satisfying His
purpose with me.


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  CHAPTER 40: 03.18.     THE GREAT SUPPER
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THE GREAT SUPPER

Luke 14:16-24 The occasion of this Parable is carefully explained by Luke. One
Sabbath-day, a leading Pharisee of the metropolis had invited a large and
apparently distinguished company to dinner; possibly the guests were invited on
the express understanding that they would have an opportunity of conversing with
Jesus more freely than they could in a public place; possibly Jesus was a casual
guest, asked at the moment. At all events the innate authority which shone
through His bearing and conversation at once disarmed His intended critics, and
instead of a spirited debate they found themselves forming an audience to this
dangerous teacher. It was strictly tabletalk our Lord here indulged in. His
remarks, though not calculated to make either host or guests feel quite at their
ease, were seasonable. Perhaps His advice to guests that they should modestly
take the lowest place is rendered less needful in our own society, in which any
obtrusive assumption of precedence would be considered a breach of good manners.
And yet there are still extant characters which by kindred vices become the bane
of all genial and sociable intercourse. There is the man who uses every dinner
table as an occasion for the exhibition of his own wit or knowledge or powers of
conversation. .There is the man who is uncomfortable and unhappy all the evening
if he does not meet with full recognition of his importance. There is the woman
who is offended if you ask her to sit at the same table with those whom she
considers much her inferiors in station. There is the person who is always
thinking of what is due by others to himself, never or rarely of what is due by
him to others. To His host, our Lord, as He looks round on the richly-clad and
well-conditioned guests, remarks that his hospitality might be better expended
on those who had more need of it. Our Lord does not mean to discountenance
friendly gatherings, which are, have been, and always will be among the highest
pleasures in life, but He means to warn against heartless and hollow civilities,
— against asking people to your house whom you really don’t care to see, but to
whom you must return the doubtful favor they have shown you in giving you a
similar invitation. Our Lord, that is to say, complains of what society itself
is continually complaining of, that so much time, means, thought, and energy are
spent on the giving and returning of formal civilities which every one knows to
be hollow. Where a real advantage can be conferred by your hospitality, where
the comfort of a stranger can be secured, where innocent and exhilarating
pleasure can be bestowed, where you can be the means of forming friendships
useful and satisfactory to yourself and others, — in such cases be given to
hospitality; but on every account emancipate yourself from the dreary, wasteful,
resultless round of entertainments which are likely to be as distasteful and
heartless to those who receive them as those of which they are the recompense
were to yourself. But this kind of talk began to touch the company somewhat too
nearly, and one of them makes an unsuccessful attempt to put an end to the
conversation by a pious remark that no one will be irreverent enough to
criticise or throw over. The remark is skilful — sufficiently in the line of
what had previously been said to warrant him in making it, sufficiently off the
line to change the subject, and sufficiently solemn to prevent any from
violently returning to the old subject. “Blessed,” he says, “is he that shall
eat bread in the kingdom of God” — a most undeniable and edifying assertion, and
which, for the matter of it, might have fallen from the lips of our Lord
Himself, but Pharisaic in this, that, under the guise of piety, it was intended
to turn the conversation from what was personal and profitable to a vague
generality which touched nobody. You can see the sanctimonious old hypocrite
solemnly shaking his head, and letting the words fall unctuously from his
tongue. But with all our Lord’s benignity and forbearance, there was one thing
He could not stand, and that was cant. He therefore does not answer the man as
if he had been a simple soul longing for communion with God, but utters a
Parable to remind him and the rest that a verbal appreciation of the blessedness
of the kingdom was often joined with an entire refusal to enter it. A person
with less delicate edge on his teaching and less skill to manage a conversation,
might have bluntly replied to the Pharisee, What avails it to extol with so much
pious enthusiasm this blessedness, if all the while you yourself are rejecting
it? The Parable illustrates the difficulty of finding any to accept what all
acknowledge to be desirable: the lack of all obtrusive eagerness to take the
place next the host, when the host happens to be Divine; and the wisdom of
making a feast not for the well-to-do, who will rather excuse themselves, but
for the needy, who will accept the invitation with glad surprise. Our Lord
exposes the insincerity of the Messianic expectation which found utterance in
such expressions as that of the sanctimonious guest, by exhibiting the actual
treatment which was at the same time being given to God’s invitation to the
Messianic feast. He utters a Parable which shows how hard God finds it to
furnish with guests a table He has spread with the utmost bounty. He shows that
notwithstanding first and second invitations proclamations of God’s friendship
and bounty by the prophets and by the Baptist, the Jews were so immersed in
political and commercial schemes that they despised and ignored the happiness
God had so carefully prepared for them. They professed to be waiting for the
Messiah, but when He actually came and offered them places in His kingdom, they
contemptuously declined. Of all those who never broke bread without exclaiming,
“Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God,” scarcely one was
found to take his place at the table God actually spread before them. To furnish
His table with guests God had to pass from the first invited and call in the
outcasts among the Jews themselves, and after ransacking the lanes and slums of
the city, had to go far afield among the highways and hedges of the outlying
Gentiles that His bounty might not be wasted. The application of the Parable to
our Lord’s contemporaries is sufficiently obvious. It has also obvious
applications to ourselves which may be briefly indicated. And as it is to the
manner in which men deal with God’s invitations that the Parable directs
attention, rather than to the fact that the Messianic kingdom is suitably
represented by a feast, it may be enough to say regarding this latter point,
that those who actually enter God’s kingdom find all their cravings satisfied,
all their necessities provided for; and that in the present person and work of
Christ God’s kingdom was open to men, and remains open now to us. The feast
being prepared, whom will God invite to partake of it? For admission to a feast
is solely by invitation. You may have a strong desire to be at some
entertainment which you know is to be given; you may have most urgent reasons
for wishing to be there; your happiness for some time to come may, so far as you
can judge, depend upon your presence; and yet you can do nothing but wait for an
invitation. The idea of going unasked is not once thought of; your presence or
absence depends entirely on the will of another person. If they wish your
company, or think it advisable to ask you, that decides the matter. You may see
invitations, which others have received, but you cannot beg, buy, or borrow
these. Unless one comes to yourself, you remain outside, excluded from the
company you crave, ignored by the set you long to be in, prevented from pursuing
your most warmly cherished plan. The same rule applies to the feast of the
Parable. There is a “not transferable” impressed on every invitation issued. It
must come to yourself from God, or it is invalid and a forgery. If it were known
that only three men in a generation were admitted to intimacy with God, and that
all others were omitted, passed by, and left in exclusion, with what envy would
these three men be looked upon. Or if it were known that a small, indefinite
number were chosen in each generation, and that for each of them it was settled
at the age of thirty by some distinguishing mark appearing on their person, we
should then feel how completely we were dependent on the will of God in this
matter. Yet we are as dependent on His invitation as this would imply. If God
has prepared nothing for you, what can you do? If God does not desire that you
be provided for, if no place is set apart for you at this feast, if He has not
had you in view in making it, what can you do to mend matters? Do not think of
salvation as a thing there, ready for you, whenever you choose to go and take
it. It depends on God’s invitation whether any good awaits you. You have first
to discover whether God in unmistakable words invites you or not.

Those to whom it was first intimated that the supper was ready, had previously
been prepared for this announcement. They were the Jews the well-instructed,
Messiah-expectant Jews. They were persons who might seem to be on friendly terms
with the host, and had no appearance of destitution. We must look for their
counterpart in men whose need of salvation does not lie on the surface, whose
sins are not going before them to judgment, and crying out in the hearing of
all, but who rather seem to be on terms of amity with God, and have no
difficulty in believing that they are invited to His banquet. That which
exhibits the true character of these men is their actual treatment of a present
invitation; not what they said about it, not the flattering terms in which they
replied to the host, but their conduct when summoned to come now to the feast.
It is this which marks off the real friend of God from him whose spurious
devotion enables him to ejaculate, as he thinks of a future and heavenly state,
“Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” We are all prepared
to utter such an otiosed sentiment; but the pious contemplation of heavenly
blessedness is one thing, the entrance upon such friendships and habits as make
us capable of it is quite another thing. The man who provoked the Parable was
not saying what he did not feel: his feeling was present, but it was merely
sentimental, with no result in action. The Parable gives three specimens of the
grounds on which men refuse the invitation of God, and of the terms in which
they couch their refusal. 1. The first says: “I have bought a piece of ground,
and must needs go and see it. I pray thee have me excused.” No doubt he had seen
the ground before he bought it, but it was a much more interesting sight now. A
piece of ground, very poor-looking in itself, becomes attractive to a new
purchaser. He can now mentally divide it out and plan its crops or its
buildings. This man of the Parable had not been of so much consequence in the
world when he first accepted the invitation. He still sees the desirableness of
maintaining friendship with the host; but his invitation does not now seem so
attractive as it did before he was a landowner. He endeavors, therefore, with a
show of courtesy to set up an opposing necessity. It is not, he says, that he
does not desire to accept the invitation, not at all; the host will quite
misconceive him if he thinks he is not dying to come; but necessity compels him
to look after his property. He must go and take it over, and make arrangements
about its use. He is extremely sorry, but so it is. The invitation of God comes
inopportunely to the man who is enjoying the first pleasures of proprietorship.
He feels himself to be a solid part of this world, and is disposed to resent
anything which reminds him that there are claims more pressing than even those
of his recent investment. It will now appear which possession the owner thinks
most substantial and finds most attractive, the bit of land or the friendship of
God. He tries to persuade himself he has a regard for God too, and is compelled
for a little to defer the manifestation of that regard. These are ominous
necessities indeed which grow up between a man and God, and prevent him from
enjoying God’s friendship. And yet do you not constantly find men speaking of
the necessity of postponing God’s will and work to the world’s business? Do not
. men on all hands betray that inwardly they put earthly possessions first, God
second? They profess to be compelled to do so, and to be sorry they are
compelled; and do not see that nothing compels them but their own likings and
will.

2. The second refusal was worded: “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to
prove them. I pray thee have me excused.” This man merely announces his
intention, assuming that there can be no doubt of its propriety. However
disappointed the host is, he must see that the guest’s conduct is justifiable.
This guest does not stay to explain the urgency; he does not even condescend to
say that there is a necessity; simply states that he goes, as if every one must
at once recognize the reasonableness of his conduct. He is so absorbed that he
does not even perceive the claims the host has upon him. Of how many men in
their prime does this man stand as the representative; men so engrossed in the
business or pursuits of the world that they positively do not know that God has
any claims upon their time, — so busy in pushing ] forward mercantile or
scientific or literary or political or military affairs, that it never once
occurs to them that there are other objects for the sake of which these affairs
should be for a time suspended. All men appreciate what contributes to bodily
comfort, to convenience of moving from place to place, to rapidity in attaining
a competence; and those arts and skilful applications of science which are daily
with increasing success contributing to these ends, come to be almost worshiped
by us. There is a palpable utility which imparts a dignity to the cultivation of
the arts which enlarge and beautify life, and few escape the temptation to
ascribe to them even greater power than they possess. When we do choose them as
our pursuit in life, and discover the real wonders they work, and the mysterious
and apparently limitless powers that lie in them, we are fascinated. To check a
man in the launching of some great undertaking which is to bring material
advantage to a city or country, to recall him from the abstraction of deep
research, or the anxiety of fine and prolonged experiment, to interrupt him in a
calculation of some large financial scheme, to invite him to curtail the time he
gives to business for the sake of entering more fully into the enjoyment of
fellowship with God — this seems to many a man a mere impertinence, an absurdity
bordering on madness. The objects for which men labor are to them so real and
commanding that they do not see that they are required to justify an entire
devotion of themselves to these objects. A man’s life seems to be nobly spent in
subduing the powers of nature to the use of his fellow-men; but these powers,
how mysterious and beautiful soever they be, are but as the five yoke of oxen
when compared with that closest intercourse with the God of nature to which we
are invited. And as this man would have had more temper to manage his young oxen
in the morning had he treated his host with proper respect, and put friendship
before self-interest, so there is no one of us who will not make a better use of
the powers of this world if he himself is inspired with the thoughts and
purposes which spring from fellowship with God.

3. The third who refuses to go to the supper gives as his reason: “I have
married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” These several grounds of refusal
are instanced as illustrating that anything is considered sufficient ground, and
as showing also the various engagements which occupy men to the exclusion of
fellowship with God, rather than because each has some distinctive and
significant feature. If it be supposed that this refusal is distinctive, then it
may be said that it reminds us that pleasure as well as business prevents us
from paying due regard to the appeals of God. Marriage, if not always really so,
is at least symbolically joyful; and it seems to this man that the host takes
quite the wrong time to invite him. So, with a greater harshness than the former
decliners, he almost rudely refuses the invitation. Many feel as if God’s
invitations came at the wrong time. They think God might stand aside for a
little. The thought of perfect purity, of a life of consecration, of devotedness
to the highest aims, of renunciation of all that is paltry and self-pleasing,
comes inopportunely when they have just launched on a current that promises
quiet domestic pleasure, and a happiness that tempts to forgetfulness of others’
woes and wants. The three refusals have this in common, that under a very thin
disguise there lies a real indifference to the feast. They had better
engagements elsewhere — more exciting, profitable, and pleasant than
conversation with their professed friend. His kind intentions are nothing to
them: whatever he can have provided for their entertainment is beneath their
notice. They can apologize afterwards, but meanwhile they must attend to more
important matters. Had they really liked his society and heartily honored him,
they would have found it easy to go. The land would not have vanished before
next day; the cattle would have been proved in time to get to the feast; and
even the wife would not have been an insuperable difficulty. But any engagement
was enough to compete with one they wished to decline. And the Parable is spoken
that men may be warned and may see clearly how amidst considerable profession of
friendship with God there may exist a real distaste for His society and His
pleasures. If there is anything else to attend to, it will receive our first
attention. God is postponed to everything else. This fact, so obvious in the
life of many of us, should let light in upon our true I state of heart; and it
will let light in where such; light is honestly desired. It is a severe Parable,
saying very pointedly to many now as to this sanctimonious person who provoked
it, That is your real estimate of communion with God: you talk a great deal
about it, you extol spiritual pleasures, so that, to hear you, one would suppose
you scarcely belonged to earth, but your life reveals a very different state of
matters. Judging by your verbal acknowledgments of the excellence and infinite
superiority of spiritual to worldly things one would expect to find you absorbed
in the work of Christ, but your actions give the lie to your words, and prove
them to be pitiful cant — phrases with which you unintentionally blind yourself
to your real likings.

Judging, then, not from our words, not from the easy phrases that drop from our
lips as readily as remarks about the weather, but judging from our life and
actions, where are we to say that our real pleasures lie? What is it for which
we will defer any engagement? what is it we never forget, never neglect, never
find tedious and an unwelcome interruption? Let us know this; for it is not our
profession that we ought to be spiritual, nor our acknowledgment that we ought
to love God that avails; but what avails is our being Spiritual and our actually
loving God above all. When we think of the kingdom of God as a future state in
which all shall be assembled as to a family gathering in the quiet and cool of
evening, it is easy to express desire to be present there. Who does not feel
some desire to see face-to-face the real person of the Lord, and have leisure to
scan the features of this Host to whom he is so intimately linked? Who does not
desire to exchange thoughts with Him, and so to learn how personal and searching
is the interest the Lord has taken in him? But these desires are apt to be
merely sentimental, and before we trust them they must be tested by the actual
use we now make of the access to Christ we already have. The doom of those who
reject God’s invitation is plainly pronounced. They are passed by, and the offer
is made to others. Paul, seeing this doom accomplished, said, “Through their
fall — the fall of the Jews — salvation is come to the Gentiles.” Does the
threat that none of those who were bidden should taste of His supper seem by no
means very terrible? Does it strike you as extravagant and grandiloquent to put
such a threat in the form of a threat at all? And yet I suppose there are
persons you so esteem that, if such a message came from them, you would feel
that disgrace had fallen upon you, and that until you were justly reinstated in
the goodwill and friendship of those persons, your life must be clouded and full
of bitterness. Is it less ignominious to treat God with disrespect, and less
disastrous to be excluded from His favor? Suppose you were sure that this doom
had been pronounced upon you, and that therefore it was quite vain for you to
expect God’s help or blessing in any matter you have to do with, — suppose you
had the prospect of entering the world of spirits unaided and uncared for, and
that while others were seen to and provided for by God, you were left to
yourself, — suppose you had reason to know that God, who is slowest to take
offense and never unjust, is offended with you, and henceforth renounces you,
deleting your name from among His friends, — would this not affect you with
shame? would it not at least move you to consider what just cause of offense you
have given, and would it excite no anxiety; or is it all one to you whether
there opens up before you an eternity full of brightness and hope, calculated to
call out every high sentiment and all worthy activity in you, or one that is
full of gloom, disappointment, and misery, the lot of lost, defeated, sunken,
degraded souls? The invitation, when despised by those to whom it was originally
addressed, was conveyed to those who could least of all anticipate any such
communication. The class of outcasts described in the Parable is recognizable at
all times. They are those who seem to be beyond help and hope — the maimed, the
blind, the vagrant, the destitute, the criminal Such descriptions are
self-interpreting. Whoever finds himself in a wretched and abandoned condition
is taught here that God invites him to His table. He who cannot discover in his
condition one hopeful symptom; he who is crushed and defeated; he who has been
maimed in the service of sin, and has laid himself down by the hedge-side, to
let the busy stream of life run past without noticing him; he who is utterly
weary and heart-broken, and knows not how he can ever be restored to virtuous
and serviceable living — to him comes God’s invitation to the utmost of His
bounty. The servants were sent to invite promiscuously every one they found:
bold sinners in the streets, secret and shamefaced sinners in the lanes, proud
sinners in the highways, and woebegone sinners by the hedges; wherever they
found a man, wherever human life yet stirred the mass of filthy rags, that they
were to bring to the feast.

Such persons were to be compelled to come in. The servants were not to let them
away to dress themselves under promise of coming in an hour. They were to bring
them as they stood or as they lay. They were to take no excuse, but were to
“compel” them to come. They were to use the strongest persuasion in their power;
to allow no shame, no sense of unworthiness, no fear of offending the host, no
remembrance of wrongs done to the host, to deter them; but they were to use
authority, argument, entreaty, everything to move them; or doing less, they did
less than their master’s pleasure. They were not merely to walk along the
highways with a placard, or to proclaim as they passed by that any who chose
might go. They were to lay their hands on the men, and compel them to listen.
They were to represent their master’s cordiality and urgency. They were not to
leave any in doubt as to how they would be received, and they were not to let
any away with a mere promise to come. They were to bring them. And if the lame
gave as an excuse that they could not go, or if the blind said they would have
been glad to go had they been able to find their way, the servant was to become
eyes to the blind and feet to the lame; he was not to think he had cleared his
conscience by giving them the invitation, but was to see them inside the
guest-chamber. Such is the freedom and such the urgency of the Gospel of Christ.


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  CHAPTER 41: 03.19.     THE LOST SHEEP AND THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY
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THE LOST SHEEP AND THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY

Luke 15:1-10 The heathen philosopher Seneca made a practise of dining with his
slaves, and when challenged for an innovation so directly in the teeth of all
customary proprieties and so offensive to the Roman mind, he defended himself by
saying that he dined with some because they were worthy of his esteem, and with
others that they might become so. The action and its defense were alike
admirable, and read a salutary lesson to the aristocrats of Rome. But it was
even a greater shock to the Pharisees, and, if possible, even more
unaccountable, that Jesus should prefer the society of notorious sinners to
their own irreproachable manners and decorous conversation. They were honestly
surprised and nonplussed by His treatment of these abandoned characters. They
could not understand why a teacher of holy life, instead of frowning upon the
notoriously profligate, should show a preference for their society. Our Lord’s
explanation is ample and thorough. It was of extreme importance that His
demeanor towards sinners should be made perfectly intelligible, and that its
reasonableness should be put beyond a doubt. He devotes, therefore, the three
Parables recorded in this chapter to this purpose.

It is perhaps worth remarking that on one point He felt that no explanation was
required. Even the Pharisees did not suspect Him of any sympathy with sin. These
critics of His conduct had not failed to remark that in His presence the daring
profanity and audacious license of wicked men were tamed. They could not but
remark that into these doubtful companies He carried an influence that quite
overmastered the habitual manners and tendencies of the degraded creatures among
whom He so unostentatiously took His place. They never suspected Him of any
desire to be initiated into the mysteries of crime, nor was any one blind enough
to fancy He had some secret liking for the talk and experiences of the vicious.
When Samuel Johnson, late one night, found a poor woman lying on the streets of
London, exhausted with want, disease, and poverty, and carried her home on his
back, and nursed her with all tenderness and sought to put her in a virtuous way
of living, no one misconstrued his motives. It was seen to be the Christ-like
act of a simple, great, and charitable nature. But while the contemporaries of
our Lord did not suppose He had any personal relish for sin, they still held it
to be an unaccountable if not blameworthy feature of His conduct that He
received sinners and ate with them. For as we sometimes find ourselves laying to
a man’s charge that which is his chief claim to our regard, and citing that as
his weakness which in reality is his strength, so did the Pharisees and scribes
bring against our Lord as a damning accusation that very habit which is His
eternal praise: “This man receiveth sinners.” The most desolate and broken soul
cannot desire any better account of the Saviour’s work than is thus given by
those who were reading off the most obvious facts of His life.

Those who so narrowly criticised our Lord’s conduct might have seen its
reasonableness had they been able to look at it from another point of view. With
equal surprise they might have exclaimed: “Sinners receive this man and eat with
Him.” Among them it was a new thing that the godly should consort with sinners;
but surely it was equally novel that sinners should seek the company of One
whose conversation was instinct with purity and breathed of heaven. Could the
people recall many instances in which outcasts and profligates had been seen
longing to talk with a man whose words were all of purity and righteousness?
These dissolute and lawless characters could themselves have explained the
change. They were attracted to Jesus because, together with unmistakable
sanctity, and even somehow appearing as the chief feature of His sanctity, there
was an understanding of the sinner’s position and a hopefulness about him which
threw a hitherto unknown spell over them. Separate from sinners, as they had
never before felt any one to be, He seemed to come closer to their heart by far
than any other had come. He had a heart open to all their troubles. He saw them
through and through, and yet showed no loathing, no scorn, no astonishment, no
perplexity, no weariness. Instead of meeting them with upbraiding, and showing
them all they had lost. He gave them immediate entrance into His own pure, deep,
efficient love, and gladdened their hearts with a sense of what they yet had in
Him.

Therefore men whose seared conscience felt no other touch, who had a ready scoff
for every other form of holiness, admitted this new power and yielded to it. Old
sinners broke down before Him, and with tears and simplicity as when they had
sobbed out their first fault on their mother’s bosom, repented of their weary
life of sin. Men from whom the Roman lash could draw no word of confession; men
whom society had branded as outcasts and who flung back on society a scorn as
contemptuous as its own; men who had long since abandoned all belief in
goodness, and who delighted in showing their disbelief, were not ashamed even in
the public streets, to own to Him their sin and to supplicate His mercy. Women
whose vanity and light-heartedness had led them to self-loathing and despair,
who forced a ghastly gaiety from hearts that lay cold and heavy as stone in
their breasts, found to their astonishment that Christ did not shrink from them,
but spoke to them with a tenderness and a hope which were new sounds to them.
The disheartened, the polluted, the ruined, the degraded came to Him, because in
Him they found an inexhaustible compassion. He did not give advice; He did not I
warn; He did not send them away with minute directions for godly living; — there
were plenty who could do that — He received them, opened to them His heart, and
gave them to feel through their whole being that they were loved and thought of
by this highest and purest of persons. The contrast between this new attitude of
a holy person towards the sinner and that to which men had commonly been
accustomed, has been finely described in the following words: “He who thought
most seriously of the disease held it to be curable; while those who thought
less seriously of it pronounced it incurable. Those who loved their race a
little made war to the knife against its enemies and oppressors; He who loved it
so much as to die for it, made overtures of peace to them. The half-just judge
punished the convicted criminal; the thoroughly just Judge offered him
forgiveness. Perfect justice here appears to take the very course which would be
taken by injustice.”

It is this, then, that calls for explanation. And it is explained by our Lord in
three Parables, each of which illustrates the fact that a more active interest
in any possession is aroused by the very circumstance that it is lost. The sheep
that is lost is not on that account disregarded by the shepherd but receives for
the time greater attention than those which remain in the fold. The piece of
money that has gone amissing becomes on that very account of greater immediate
importance to the woman than all she has safe in her jar in the cupboard. If one
of a family turns out ill, it is a small mitigation that all the rest turn out
well; it is after the lost the parent’s heart persistently goes. So is it with
God. The very circumstance that men have strayed from Him evokes in Him a more
manifest and active solicitude in their behalf. The attitude of God and of
Christ towards sinners is reduced to the great principle, that anything which is
lost and may be regained exercises our thought more and calls out a more
solicitous regard than a thing of equal value which rests securely in our
possession. This is the principle which these Parables are intended to
illustrate: that with God as with men that which is lost occupies, for the time
and until restored, more of His thought and provokes clearer and larger
manifestations of His love than that which has not been lost or is already
restored. The figures used for the purpose of illustration must not be pushed
too far. They are not so much images of our state as instances of the
application of one common principle. They are instances of lost articles; that
is all. It is merely accidental that there is a resemblance between the silly
sheep that heedlessly nibbles the sweet grass that lies before it and so crops
its way from spot to spot of pasture till it is utterly lost, and the man who
looks only to present gratification and so strays on with the same foolish
thoughtlessness and unconsciousness of danger, and is only awakened to see how
near akin thoughtlessness is to wickedness by finding himself involved in
inextricable difficulties and threatened with danger of the most alarming kind.
In like manner it may be said that we resemble lost coin that has fallen out of
circulation and is lying unused and being gradually tarnished, defaced, and
buried in dust; for we too have been issued with the image of our Maker upon us,
but are gradually suffering it to be defaced and are dropping aside from all
serviceable living. But the points of the comparison for the sake of which these
illustrative instances are introduced are simply the lostness of the sheep, the
money, and ourselves alike; the consequent concentration of attention on what is
lost; and the joy of finding it again.

1. The first point, then, suggested by these Parables is, that God suffers loss
in every sinner that departs from Him. To the Pharisaic mind this was a new
light on the character of God. The Pharisee himself trusted little to
tenderness, much to rigid law. Naturally he thought of God also as standing upon
His rights, enforcing His will by compulsion, and with equanimity punishing and
driving into permanent exile those who have strayed from Him. It is a revelation
to them to hear that the lostness of the sinner is God’s loss; that God suffers
more than the sinner in the separation. For God loves the sinner and this love
is wounded, whereas the sinner has no love for God that can be wounded by
separation. The silly sheep is quite satisfied with its state, while the
shepherd’s heart beats fast with anxiety about its possible fate. It is not the
son but the mother whose hair turns gray with slow anguish as she marks the
increasing frequency with which he is absent from her fireside, and how he is
becoming lost to her. So it is God who suffers, and not the heartless sinner,
who, without a thought of the wounds he is inflicting, goes his own wretched way
and courts the destruction which Christ died to save him from. All the
broken-heartedness of parents who year by year watch the failure of all their
efforts to lead some misguided child to well-doing; all the crushing anguish of
wives who see their husbands slowly hardening in vice and sinking out of reach
of their love; all the varied misery that love must endure in this sinful world,
is after all but the reflection of what Infinite Love suffers in sympathy with
every sinner who spurns it and chooses death. Look at the sorrow of God in
Christ, and say whether the loss God suffers in your separation from Him is true
or feigned. This was what the Pharisees had wholly left out of account, that God
loves men and mourns over every ill that befalls them. And this is what we find
it so hard to believe. It is only very slowly we come to believe even in human
love. With difficulty we believe that there are persons to whom it would give
real pleasure to make a sacrifice for us. How impossible is it for a child to
understand the love his parent has for him. How few of us conceived anything of
the tenderness and intensity and persistence and self-sacrifice of parental
love, till we ourselves grew up and had it interpreted to us by our own
feelings. In some of us, grief for lost friends or parents has j been embittered
by the thought of what we might I and would have done for them, had we only
sooner learned what we have since discovered of their love for us. Are none of
us preparing for ourselves a similar remorse by our neglect of that Love which
is the true spring of all other affection, and itself greater than all?

These Parables thus bring us face to face with the most significant and fertile
of all realities, God’s love for us. This love encompasses you whether you will
or no. Love never asks leave; it cannot; it enters like sunshine, and often
where it seems much out of place. You may destroy all love to God in your own
soul, but you cannot destroy His love for you. It persists, because it is love.
It waits patiently for requital; it humbles itself to be often slighted, often
misconstrued, often refused. Can it be true that God loves you; that you
yourself are connected by this most fruitful of ties to the eternal God? Surely
there is no question that may more worthily engage the attention. It will not do
for a man to persuade himself he is honorable and rightminded, if he is making
no account of this expenditure of love upon him. This is no question of
casuistry that plain men need not trouble their heads about. It is no question
of doctrine which a man may believe or disbelieve, and still remain sound at
heart. It is a question regarding your conduct towards a Person, a question that
touches what lies deepest in our life and character.

2. Secondly, these Parables suggest that the very fact of our being lost excites
action of a specially tender kind toward us. God does not console Himself for
our loss by the fellowship of those who have constantly loved Him. He does not
call new creatures into being and so fill up the blank we have made by straying
from Him. He is not a Sovereign who has no personal knowledge of His subjects,
nor an employer of labor who can always get afresh hand to fill an emptied post:
He is rather a shepherd who knows His sheep one by one, a Father who loves His
children individually. He would rather restore the most abandoned sinner than
blot him from his place to substitute an archangel. Love is personal and settles
upon individuals. It is not all the same to God if some other person is saved
while you are not.

“Thou art as much His care as if beside Nor man nor angel lived in heaven or
earth.” When men sin, therefore, and fall into difficulties, God cannot remain
indifferent or quiescent. Interference of a direct and special kind becomes
necessary. The normal relations being disturbed, and man becoming helpless by
the disturbance, it falls to God to restore matters. A new set of ideas and
dealings is brought into play. So long as things go smoothly and men by nature
love God and seek to do His will, there is no anxiety, no meeting of emergencies
by unexpected effort, hidden resources, costly sacrifice. But when sin brings
into view all that is tragic, and when utter destruction seems to be man’s
appointed destiny, there is called into exercise the deepest tenderness, the
utmost power of the Divine nature. Here where the profoundest feeling of God is
concerned, where His connection with His own children is threatened, Divinity is
stirred to its utmost. This appears, among other things, in the spontaneity and
persistence of the search God institutes for the lost. The shepherd who misses
one of his flock does not sit down by the ninety and nine in the pasture, but
straightway goes in search of the lost. He does not expect that it will seek
him; he goes after it. He does not expect to meet it coming home to him, so that
if he had only waited and left it to itself, it would have found its own way
back. On the contrary, he knows the recovery of the sheep depends wholly on
himself and he prepares himself for trouble, provocation, risk. On him must fall
the burden of finding it, of devising means of rescue and of bringing it back to
the fold. Yet men sometimes seem to suppose that God is not alive to their
dangers, but needs to be aroused to take a livelier interest in their condition
and to help them in their strivings against evil. He is thought of as sitting
coldly watching our passionate and almost despairing struggles to break away
from evil and make our way back to a pure and helpful life; as if He were
saying, I will let this sinner learn what it is to have strayed from Me. But it
is not so: God is as truly beforehand with the sinner as the shepherd with the
sheep. The initiative is God’s; and all that you desire or do in the way of
return to righteousness is prompted by Him, He has already sufficiently shown
that He is alive to the emergency and that no trouble is too great, no sacrifice
too great, while there is a possibility of saving the human soul.

God’s search is also persistent. The woman of the Parable sweeps out every dusty
corner; she shakes out every article of clothing; she lifts boxes that have not
been lifted for years; she carefully searches drawers where she knows the coin
cannot be; she reads the face of every one J who has come near her house for a
month; she I exhausts every possibility of finding her piece of i money.
Possibly she required it to make up a sum for a purchase. Certainly God needs us
for some end He has in view. This is not our whole history, that with immense
outlay of Divine resources we are restored to permanent rectitude. There must be
much beyond, and for this God prepares us now. The experiences of earth, however
exalted, do not exhaust the eventfulness of our eternal life. Therefore God
seeks us with earnestness as if we were necessary not only to His love but to
His purposes. He makes diligent search. He leaves no stone unturned. With
active, intelligent, unwearied search. He strives to win the sinner to purity
and love. Christ astonished men on earth by the company into which He found His
way, and by the affection with which He spoke to low and worthless people; and
so does He still, by means less observable but equally efficient, seek to win
men to the recognition of His love and of all the good He makes possible. The
shepherd sought “until he found” his sheep; the woman swept diligently “until
she found” her coin. But while God’s search is infinitely more persistent, it
may be baffled by the cold indifference, the resolute badness of the sinner.

3. The third point illustrated by these Parables is the exceeding joy consequent
on the restoration of the sinner. “Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.”
The joy is greater, because the effort to bring it about has been greater, and
because for a time the result has been in suspense, so that when the end is
attained there is a sense of clear gain. The joy of success is proportioned to
the difficulty, the doubtfulness of attaining it. All the hazards and sacrifices
of the search are repaid by the recovery of the lost. The value of the unfallen
soul may intrinsically be greater than the value of the redeemed; but the joy is
proportioned, not to the value of the article, but to the amount of anxiety that
has been spent upon it. So that Christ virtually says to the Pharisees: “You
murmur at Me; but if you were in sympathy with heaven, you would rejoice with
Me. You need no repentance, — at least you think so; and for this very reason I
seek to attract those who do. Their state is admittedly precarious, and to win
them will be clear gain to the kingdom of heaven. The finding is an intenser joy
than the keeping safe, because the loss has been actually felt and is now
relieved, the pang of separation has been actually endured and is now swallowed
up in the joy of restoration.” To the sinner then, these Parables say, It is
your unspeakably happy privilege to give God joy. There is no joy comparable to
the joy of successful love; of love, that is to say, not only recognized and
returned, but which succeeds in making the object of it as happy as it desires,
and does so after many repulses and misunderstandings and hazards. This is God’s
greatest joy. When God succeeds in securing the happiness, — the inward purity
and rectitude, and therefore the happiness, — of any one who has been estranged
from Him, there is joy in heaven. What can more worthily give joy to intelligent
beings than the increase of goodness? God’s joy is the unutterable joy of the
parent who for many years has been anxiously watching his son’s growth, his
leanings, his temptations, his resolutions, his declensions, his alienations of
spirit, and at length sees proof that the lad is wholly sound at heart, that he
has chosen the better part and thrown off all vice that clung to him; that he is
bent now upon a pure and honorable life, and with his own soul hates the thought
of evil; that he has finally abjured the allurements that tempted and bound him
formerly, and has in himself that deep principle and those wise and generous
dispositions which will guide him in all circumstances and in all companies.
This joy you have it in your power to give to God. There is a joy which no one
but yourself can excite in God, a joy over your repentance, over your return to
good; a joy therefore which none but yourself has the humble glory of stirring
in the mind of God. In this joy the angels are represented as sharing. Their
experience of the blessedness of life with God, gives them sympathy with all who
enter that life. They know the happiness that lies before every one who yields
himself to God’s purpose and to God’s love, and therefore they rejoice. And if
it be true that the conversion of one soul be so reasonable a ground of joy to
those who are merely spectators, what unspeakable gladness ought it to bring to
those who themselves experience it? Have you ever had such happiness that you
would deem it reasonable that all heaven should rejoice with you in it? Yet
there is such happiness open to you. Uninteresting, solitary, monotonous, and
unobserved as your life may seem, it is, if there be truth in these words of the
Lord, an object of intensest interest to God and angels. With all its evils, its
fears, its misery, it may be lifted to so true a harmony with the ever-living
God, that those pure and discerning spirits who see it cannot forbear rejoicing
over it with well-grounded satisfaction.

If God with all heaven is thus in sympathy with I us, defeated in our defeat,
triumphing in our victory; if the cause of love and moral order is one
throughout the universe, we have every encouragement to play our part well. It
is no short and easy passage of arms we are called to; we are wearied and often
overcome by the constant accompaniment of sin, weakness, and folly in all we do;
but in all this evil and conflict there is material for victory and joy. Are you
weighted by nature with a poor craven spirit, a vain selfish heart, sordid or
gross passions, a feeble inconstant will, a nature that often causes shame?
Humbly recognize all this as what you are actually called to master; do not
waste your energies envying those who have a better nature and an easier task,
but face the conflict that actually awaits you and carry into it the assurance
that every stroke for the right and every defeat of evil you accomplish has an
echo of the truest kind in heaven. Remember the greater joy God has in the
painful, difficult, penitential return of a lost . soul than in the easy
righteousness of the naturally pure.


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  CHAPTER 42: 03.20.     THE PRODIGAL SON AND HIS ELDER BROTHER
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THE PRODIGAL SON AND HIS ELDER BROTHER

Luke 15:11-32 In the Parables of the Lost Sheep and Lost Piece of Money, our
Lord has already shown that the very circumstance that men are lost inevitably
attracts towards them the greater solicitude on God’s part; that so far from
their notoriously bad character and gross breach of all law, human and Divine,
putting them beyond God’s love, this really only provokes a more manifest and
touching exhibition of God’s love. In this Parable He repeats this lesson, but
adds another figure to the dramatis persona; a figure which represents the
objecting Pharisees and scribes, and in which they might see the
unreasonableness and hatefulness of the spirit which could find fault with the
unquestioning welcome and festal reception of the returning penitent. There is
also another difference between the Parables. The two former bring into great
prominence the loss which God sustains in the lapse and destruction of the
sinner, the suffering which His love necessarily endures in being prevented from
achieving the happiness of its object. In this Parable of the Prodigal, so much
is said of the wretchedness to which the sinner is reduced, that while the
central figure it still the father, our attention is strongly directed towards
that which was entirely absent from the other Parables, the experience and
change of mind in the lost sinner himself. It is, however, to be borne in mind
that this description of the sinner’s misery is given still to give point and
justification to what might otherwise seem the extravagant joy of the father.
Had the son been absent for a year or two on a mercantile mission as his
father’s agent, and were he now returning successful, this exultation would be
out of place. The miserable plight of the prodigal is detailed to justify the
recoil of the father’s feeling from long-suppressed love, compassionate anxiety,
and longing to overflowing, unrestrained rejoicing. The few strokes in which the
career of the prodigal is sketched have approved themselves at the bar of
universal experience, and have become part and parcel of the imagery in which
all of us clothe our thoughts. It has, too, been kept alive in the minds of men
by the unhappy circumstance that the career here depicted is so often actually
reproduced in the lives of young men who start with every advantage and comfort,
and who perish miserably in some distant colony, or in a few years run through
their health, and come home only to die in sorrow and shame. The beginning is
the same in all cases; an incapacity to find the fullest enjoyment in God’s
love, God’s presence, and God’s ways. The son grows weary of the father’s home;
he desires his goods, but not his presence; he wishes to be his own master,
believing that he is cramped and straitened by goodness, and that liberty to do
evil is the true emancipation. There is nothing in sin that affects us with a
keener sense of degradation than the youthful folly that runs through it all,
the inexperienced and thoughtless fancy that unless we sin we have not freedom,
and the sense that God would be more to us were He less in Himself. He is too
good for us to be quite at home in His presence. His holiness shames us and
discomforts us. His presence ceases to be the most grateful, the most enjoyable,
the easiest. What answer do you get when you ask yourself, Should I be satisfied
were God to give me as my own what would make me independent of Him? Were I sure
of life, of power to spend and enjoy it as I pleased, with no interference of
punishment or remonstrance from God, would this satisfy me? Or would it be
itself a terrible punishment to me to be cast forth from God, even though I had
provision for all my future? Were communion with God denied me, would this
really make a difference to me, would my life seem a blank? would this take the
soul out of all my hopes, all my plans, all my enjoyments? Should I feel as a
homeless outcast suddenly ejected into an undesired, bleak, blank world, my
heart unable to rest in anything, but turning ever back to the Father I had
lost? When the heart is thus alienated, God does not desire a constrained bodily
service. He does not compel us to abide with Him. If our real desire is for His
portion, and not for Himself, He gives us our desire. He does not treat us as if
we had no capacity of choice. He does not save us, whether we will or no. But
neither does He let us go without regret or into oblivion. The father by
dismissing his son does not help to lose him; but foreseeing that nothing but an
experience of the world’s emptiness can bring him to appreciate the home and
love of his father, he sadly sends him to this painful school. He sees him away
and turns into his house, and who can tell the brokenhearted anguish with which
in secret he pictures to himself the probable career of his loved child? What
servant on the farm does not well understand the sudden lack of interest in all
the work, the absent look as schemes of improvement are detailed to him, the
many signs that reveal that his heart is with his lost son, and that all else is
matter of indifference to him? But the son, for his part, after the first pang,
exults in the freedom he has gained, wantonly puts the greatest distance between
his father and himself, does not provide for a return home, nor dreams of
needing further help, but boldly launches on the world sufficient for himself.
It is thus that in the pride of life when health is unbroken, and the world
untried, we reckon only on a life of success and gratification, gather to us all
our means and powers of enjoyment, and accept guidance solely from our own
casual impulses or shortsighted longings, without a thought of the pain we are
inflicting on Him whose love persistently follows us, and with out a thought of
the misery we are courting.

How soon the scene shifts, and how utterly! The gay youth who was foremost in
every revel, whose bright face and confident bearing seemed the very embodiment
of the pride of life, whose wealth gave him command of every form of luxurious
living, and to whom no earthly pleasure was unfamiliar — look at him now,
blackened with starvation and filth, clothed in the rags that others have thrown
out, noticed only by those who gaze with astonishment at him as one who is too
sunken to be helped. But to none does he look so miserable as to himself. In his
mind alone is there visible the full contrast between what he is and what he
was; between what he is and what he might have been. The love he might have
enjoyed, the noble uses he might have served, the expansion of his life under
the wise enterprise of his father, the growing influence and respect, the share
in the real work and permanent rewards of life that might have been his, — all
this gone beyond his reach, and in its place cold and filth, hunger and
nakedness, neglect and desolate bitterness of soul.

Against how many of us does this picture lift up its parable! For he is not the
only prodigal who in riotous pleasure or vain display brings himself to beggary;
but he is the prodigal who in any way wastes the powers and means God gave him
to effect substantial good and results that might always be looked on with
pleasure. It seems a matter of no importance, and gives us not a thought that we
are living for ourselves; we think that living for God is a height of
consecration that some may aspire to, but that it is no law of life for all; but
we come to find that it is just this which makes the difference, and that all we
have done on any other footing had far better have been left undone. We have
been laboriously carting stones into a moss which quietly absorbs all our labor,
and shows absolutely no result. If we have spent our portion, our talents, our
opportunities, our life, in striving to please ourselves, — if we have not made
common cause and partnership with God, and been content to have our individual
portion merged in His, — then manifestly we have as thoroughly alienated
ourselves and our portion from God as if we had spent it on riotous living.

Indeed the riotous livers always seem to have more to say for themselves than
the more respectable self-pleasers. They say or they feel, There is a great
untried sphere, a world that promises enjoyment, away in that direction. Let us
try this promising freedom, let us make experiment of that life that lies beyond
law and restraint; we shall at least know more. Yes, as John Ruskin says, “You
now know the habits of swine and the taste of husks; do you think your father
could not have taught you to know better habits and pleasanter tastes, if you
had stayed in his house; and that the knowledge you have lost would not have
been more, as well as sweeter, than that you have gained?” “No one ever gets
wiser by doing wrong, nor stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only by
doing right, whether forced or not; the prime, the one need is to do that, under
whatever compulsion, till you can do it without compulsion.” And this is not a
mere critical remark made upon us from without, by one who has different tastes
from ourselves; it is a truth that asserts itself in the experience of every
prodigal. The famine comes, and the husks won’t satisfy. They may keep down the
gnawing pangs of hunger, they may stay the appetite for the hour, but they do
not nourish. Take any pleasure or pursuit that is ungodly, and you know that
this is all it does. It passes the time, it interests and engages you, it stays
an appetite; but your nature is not fed, the deepest parts of your nature are
unfilled; yourself in that which is most yourself, is impoverished. You are not
growing in any fitness for the future, you are not gaining mastery of your
spirit, you are not enlarging in your love of goodness. Do you wish proof of
this? Have you never wished that your nature did not require anything better
than the world provides? As this poor prodigal lying by the swine’s trough may
sometimes have wished that he could fatten on that food as they did, so it is
not a wholly unknown desire among us to wish that we were a shade liker the
beasts, that every part of our nature might be satisfied with that which only
satisfies the lower parts of it, that it were not wrong to enjoy the pleasures
of sin, and that God had made us for no higher ends than our own weak and
depraved hearts aspire to. But our natures will not remake themselves. They are
made for God, and nowhere else can we find eventually aught but famine. You may
as well try to feed a horse upon carrion or a lion upon straw. “Man liveth by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” We must have assurance of
God’s presence with us, and of His love. He must speak to us words of
approbation and encouragement, we must be on terms of the truest affection with
Him. We live through all our being when the words and sentiments that come
straight and true from the heart of God Himself come home to our hearts, when He
manifests Himself to us, — gives us to understand, as with His own lips, what no
other can tell us of His love, — conveys to us the inward assurance that He is
ours, and that we are His for evermore.

If you have learned that after all enjoyment of this world, there is a something
more you must have if enjoyment is to last; if you are not yet wholly citizens
of this world, but have still some feelings of the alien, some longings, however
faint, after another kind of home, some indications, however slight, that this
is not filling and feeding you, that this may do for a while, but would be
misery if forever, — if you feel, in short, your need of God, — then look and
listen to His Incarnate Word. Christ is sent to speak these words of everlasting
life to you, to win you back to your true home and Father, to be the channel
through which the whole fulness of God’s love is poured into your famishing
spirits, to refresh and invigorate you with undying hope, to loosen the hands
that are feely clutching the foul husks, and fill them with the bread that
cometh from heaven. The return of the prodigal was perhaps not prompted by the
very highest of motives. What high motives could you expect in a man who had
lived for his own pleasure, and was now lying starving? But who would be saved
if he had to show a repentance void of all selfishness? The chief reason why men
turn to God is in the great majority of cases the same as that which prompted
the prodigal’s return. The prodigal could not make a better of it; we too have
tried everything else, and been disappointed. We do not try God until convinced
that nothing else will serve our turn. Health gives way, or the spirit is
broken, or hope baffled, or one way or other we find the world is not going to
be the paradise we expected. The world sees and says this; it sneers at
conversion as if it were unreal, because it is so often the result of
disappointment with the world. God sees and says it too; but receives the
returning sinner, and in the reception a better mind is produced in him, and his
selfishness broken.

Besides, there was even in this compulsory return that belief in the father’s
love which condones all offenses. There was the instinctive undying feeling that
a parent is still a parent, and will receive when others cast us out. You have,
I dare say, read the experience of the great French philosopher Diderot. “The
first few years of my life in Paris had been rather irregular, my behavior was
enough to irritate my father, without there being any need to make it worse by
exaggeration. Still calumny was not wanting. People told him — well, what did
they not tell him? An opportunity for going to see him presented itself. I did
not give it two thoughts. I set out full of confidence in his goodness. I
thought that he would see me, that I should throw myself into his arms, that
both of us should shed tears, and that all would be forgotten. I thought
rightly.” So thought the prodigal. And whatever his motives were, his action was
right. He put himself again within reach of his father’s love, and that love
received him without question, exulting in the ample opportunity of uttering
itself. It had opportunity now of helping its pitiable object, of doing all for
the still loved son. This was no time for inquiry as to why he had come. Here he
was, and in need. That is enough for true love.

Nothing can surpass the pathos of the meeting of father and son. While the
prodigal was “ yet a great way off,” his father saw him, and had compassion, and
ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. It is as if he had been watching for
him night and day; as when a mother has lost a son, she will start at every ring
or footstep, thinking it may perhaps be he. Every feature, every peculiarity of
gait, every line of his figure was imprinted on the father’s heart, so that long
before another eye could recognize him, the father’s heart had welcomed the son.
He saw him, and had compassion, simultaneously; there was no hesitation to be
fought against, no pondering whether he should not harden himself against this
heartless profligate; but as soon as his eyes rested on him, all his sorrow
passed away, the sun of his life shone out again. The rags that would have
disguised him from any other eye could not hide him from the father; the rags
and misery that would have tempted others to spurn him as a hopeless, abandoned
creature, drew forth the father’s love. He ran to meet him, everything else
neglected, his own dignity out of the question; he cares not to require a seemly
submission on his son’s part that the servants may understand he is justified in
receiving him. There is no attempt to impress upon the son a sense of his
demerit, nothing done to make sure that he has a sufficient sense of guilt to
justify pardon. The reason of the father’s receiving him is not that; is not
that the son has a sufficient sense of anything, but only that the father loves
him, and the son is now within reach of the father, will suffer him now to show
his love. And therefore the father runs as if it were all on his side the
blessing were, as if it were he who was to win favors from his son; he runs and
falls on his neck, overcome with joy, his heart bounding with happiness, his
soul satisfied, his life complete. No words can express the first welcome, the
father cannot find language to utter the fulness of his heart; but in that eager
embrace, in that kiss of love and peace, the prodigal knows himself a son still,
as surely and more vehemently loved by his father than if he had never sinned.
This is a picture of the reception the returning sinner receives. You may have
wasted the best years of your life in selfish gratification, without a thought
of serving God; you may have indulged in sins that fill you with self-loathing;
you may have sunk to a state of heart that you would be ashamed to lay bare to
the most generous and charitable of men; you may painfully feel that you have
nothing to offer to God but the worthless dregs of a wasted life; you may be
conscious that even your heart is not given to God as it ought, and that through
the whole of your repentance your original selfishness is running; but only put
yourself into God’s hands as you are, and as this father was not hindered by the
foul and sour rags of his son who came to him from among the swine, but fell on
his neck, overcome by joy, so will you find in God no revulsion, but an
immediate and hearty welcome that will cause you to rejoice in His love. You
need not fear that you are to be put through some preparatory discipline, lodged
in some sad and dreary moral quarantine till some of the loathsomeness and
defilement of sin be worn off you. You will not be charged with your sins and
reminded of your folly. All that will be left to yourself, and what God does is
to meet you with the tenderest love, and to do everything to give you assurance
of it, and wipe out the past. The father does every, thing to assure the son of
his immediate reinstatement as his son, — everything to relieve him from fear,
from want, from pain, from sadness; and whatever God must give us, if we are to
be delivered from the same sensations, we are warranted in expecting. The father
cannot do enough for the son; would like him at this hour of return to tell him
of every least way in which help could be given him. It is this that God longs
for, that we give Him the opportunity of blessing us, that we learn to trust in
His love, and knowing that all else has failed us, believe that it will prove
sufficient. And because it is love we have to do with, no one need fear that
having been received he will yet make no progress in all that constitutes man’s
real growth and happiness; nor need any one suppose that they who are received
are suffered to remain just what they were. They have been received because they
are loved, and the love of God is not inactive nor ineffective, but does most
certainly continue to watch over its objects, and to confer the highest gifts
upon them. Whatever more complete severance from old habits and desires is
needed, whatever persistence in well-doing, whatever deepening repentance,
whatever growth in knowing and loving the Father is requisite, — all this will
most certainly be given. And now in contrast to this joy of God in the returning
sinner, our Lord sets the cold-hearted jealousy of the Pharisaically righteous
man. He not only justifies His own conduct by showing how the father acts, but
condemns the objections of the Pharisees by holding up to them in this elder
brother a mirror in which they may see their own hateful likeness. The Pharisees
had murmured against our Lord, “ This man receiveth sinners;” He shows them an
elder brother saying of his father, “This man receiveth a sinner,” and leaves
them to draw their own conclusion. Every touch in the description brings out
some ungenial, servile, grudging, and envious feature of his character. He was “
in the fields “when his brother came; too busy with his industrious and useful
labors to share in his father’s earnest watching for the prodigal’s return; not
perceiving from his mercenary point of view that he might have pleased his
father immeasurably more by going after and recovering his lost brother than by
an ostentatious and punctilious performance of his own private duties; not even
having such insight into his father’s heart as would have enabled him to guess
the one occurrence that could have given his father such gladness; not even
observing that by contrasting his own life of toil with his brother’s riotous
living, he betrays his own secret liking for that, and proves that his service
had been the heavy, unacceptable task of one who is not in sympathy with either
the object of the work or him who set him to it. Thus may a man, after years of
respectable living, disclose a heart alien from God, and out of sympathy with
Him; thus may he disclose that his whole past life has been unloving and
self-seeking. But as the father was patient and loving with the younger brother,
so is he with the elder. He answers his bitter words and audacious reproaches in
a tone of surprised and pained yet gentle and encouraging remonstrance: “Son,
thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” Why grudge thy brother
this hour of gladness, when the calm and even joy of abundant life has all along
been thine? I have never given thee a kid, because all I have is thine. We have
mistaken one another. I thought that to be with me from day to day, sharing my
thoughts, my plans, my joy, my prosperity, would be enough for you. As I am
satisfied in my work, in increasing good, and in thy love, I judged that you
also were finding it your joy to be with me, my partner in all things. But now I
see you have been serving as a slave, doing your work not for its sake, not for
mine, but for reward.

There is sufficient Pharisaism in each of us to justify the application of this
to ourselves. They who have long served God with care and diligence and yet find
their life a hard struggle, with few bright passages, many disappointments, and
never joy such as the penitent at once enters into, naturally feel some soreness
that one step should bring a life-long sinner abreast of them. You may have been
striving all your days to be useful, and making great sacrifices to further what
you believe to be the cause of God, and yet you cannot point to any success; but
suddenly a man converted yesterday takes your place, and all things seem to
shape themselves to his hand, and the field that was a heart-break to you is
fertile to him. You have denied yourself every pleasure that you might know the
happiness of communion with God, and you have not known it, but you see a
banquet spread in God’s presence for him who has till this hour been delighting
in sin. You have had neither the riotous living nor the fatted calf. You have
gone among the abandoned and neglected, and striven to enlighten and lift them;
you have done violence to your own feelings that you might be helpful to others;
and, so far as you can see, nothing has come of it. But another man who has
lived irregularly, who has not prepared himself for the work, who is untaught,
imprudent, unsatisfactory, has the immediate joy of winning souls to God. Have
you not been tempted to say, “Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and
washed my hands in innocency”.All this may be needful to convince you that it is
not service that wins God’s love; that His love is with you now, and that your
acceptance of it will make all that has seemed to you grievous to be light and
happy. Take refuge from all failure and disappointment in the words, “Son, I am
ever with thee, and all that I have is thine.” Learn to find your joy in Him,
and you will be unable to think of any reward.


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  CHAPTER 43: 03.21.     THE UNJUST STEWARD
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THE UNJUST STEWARD

Luke 16:1-13 The occasion, and therefore the intention, of the last Parables we
considered — those of the preceding chapter — were obvious. They formed our
Lord’s defense of His solicitude for great sinners. The occasion and intention
of the Parables in this chapter are not so obvious. But it would appear that the
same crowd was yet around Him. There were Pharisees still hanging about, as the
fourteenth verse shows. But what our Lord had now to say was not addressed
directly to them, as the three preceding Parables had been, but “to His
disciples”; and very probably it was for the sake of the publicans and rich men
among these disciples that His teaching took the peculiar cast it now did. These
publicans and sinners had suddenly been made aware of the fact that the fraud,
extortion, violence, and luxurious living which had made them outcasts from the
purest Jewish society had rather attracted towards them an exceptional
solicitude on God’s part. The place they still held in God’s love had been
vividly set before them. The value He set upon them, the eagerness of His desire
to recover them, the glad welcome and full forgiveness with which they were met,
had been brought home to their hearts with irresistible force. Being but men,
and men whose character had been sapped by constant familiarity with crime, and
whose views of all transactions were determined by their own selfish habits, it
was natural that they should be tempted to think less severely of their sin than
was right. It is true that nothing so cleanses the heart as the knowledge of
God’s love. To be overcome by God’s love is the only effectual cleansing and bar
against sin. But as yet the holiness of God’s love had not been signalized in
the cross, and there was a danger, as there is even now a danger, of the
penitent luxuriating in the love of God, while oblivious that this love is
consumingly holy. It is at last the holiness of God’s love that gives it its
power; at last we come to see that His love and His holiness are one and the
same thing; but at first we are tempted to forget that the love of God burns to
make us holy as Himself.

Apparently, therefore, though not certainly, these Parables were spoken that the
publicans might distinctly understand how their ill-gotten gains were to be
used. They were to be taught that, though their past is forgiven, they have a
duty to do with the gains they have made. And they are addressed as men
thoroughly versed in all the ways of monied men, wide awake to appreciate hard
work, vigilance, enterprise, and promptitude. And the aim of this first Parable
is to impress on them the necessity of carrying over with them into the kingdom
of God the qualities which had made them successful in the kingdom of mammon.
They are to use the world’s opportunities, and especially what we significantly
call “means,” with the same vigor and sagacity, but for higher ends; they are so
to use their opportunities that, when they terminate, they shall have served to
provide a competence for eternity. The figure or character through whom this
lesson is conveyed is one with which they were perfectly familiar and had daily
transactions. Indeed, it is not unlikely that when the unjust steward was
described, significant glances would be exchanged by some of the crowd who had
good reason to know how close to reality the description lay. He was a steward;
not a farm steward, or a house steward, but, in modern language, an agent,
factor, or “man of business.” He was apparently much employed in the receipt of
rents, the tenants paying to the landlord not a regular sum of money, but a
proportion of the harvest; and apparently, also, it depended on the tenant
himself to say truthfully, subject no doubt to the inspection of the steward,
what the crop of each year yielded, and how much was due to the landlord as his
proportion. Each tenant gave in, it seems, a bill to the steward stating the
amount as his debt to the landlord, as his rent due; so that it lay between the
tenant and the steward to be true or to impose upon the landlord. The landlord
would make it the steward’s interest to be watchful and faithful, but there
might yet be some collusion between the steward and the tenants. They might
agree to state the crop as less than it had been, and therefore the landlord’s
proportion as less. And in this case, as the Parable also shows, the landlord
had no redress. He had, in the first place, no direct means of informing himself
of the real amount of the harvest in the olive yards or corn lands; and even if,
as in the case before us, some interested party informed him of the fraud that
was being practised upon him, he had no redress; for it seems to have been
established by law that what the steward did the landlord did. There was no
legal redress against a steward’s infidelity, no legal means of recovering from
the tenants what had been kept back by the steward’s sanction. When this steward
of the Parable was called to give an account of his stewardship, he at once saw
that it was at least quite in vain to think of talking his employer over, so
that he might still be retained in his service. Without a thought of idle
lamentation he at once faces the question, what was to be done when discharged.
A life of luxury had unfitted him for manual labor; he had spoiled his chance of
getting any other such situation as he now held; and he who had been regarded
with greater dread than his master could not bring his mind to begging his
bread. He sees at once the difficulty of his position, and, displaying here a
business-like promptitude, sets himself to devise some scheme for extricating
himself. The stewardship would be his no longer; it was already slipping through
his fingers, but out of this fragment of stewardship that remained to him he
resolved to make for himself a competent provision. While his master was laying
to his charge one defalcation after another, his quick apprehension was taking
in every element in his position; and undismayed by the ruin that stared him in
the face, he held his sagacity so completely at command that he lighted on a
solution of his difficulty. As his employer came to the last item in his
indictment, and was pronouncing his dismissal, the subtle and active and
self-possessed steward was saying in himself, “I have it “; “I see what to do.”
And he was confident that he had resolved aright; there is no suspicious flurry
in his dealing with his lord’s debtors, but only the speed which he knew he must
use if his scheme was to be of any avail. One after another of the debtors of
his lord was delighted by having a large part of his debt remitted to him. They
cannot but feel most grateful for something like the gift of half a year’s
income; and the steward at once sees that he has secured the gratitude and
goodwill of some well-to-do men, who in turn will stand by him. The plan was, of
course, thoroughly unprincipled and dishonest. It was simply stealing, taking
out of his master’s pocket, and banking the stolen money in the houses of these
new friends. Yet the plan was admirably ingenious. There could not indeed have
been any other extrication from his difficulty so entirely devoid of evil
consequences to himself, so completely furnishing him with all that he aimed at.
Had he perpetrated a direct theft, the law could have pursued him; but he acted
still as steward, so that what he did must hold as law, and his lord had no
redress. So felicitous was the device, that the landlord, though himself the
loser by it, cannot withhold his admiration of this parting proof his steward
had given him of his ready-wittedness. He had humor enough to enjoy the man’s
cleverness, candor enough to praise his prudence. “His lord commended the unjust
steward, because he had done wisely.”

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to observe that it is merely the wisdom, the
practical sagacity, the savoir faire of the steward that is commended to our
attention and imitation. A bad thing may be well done. The most admirable
qualities — industry, perseverance, bravery, quickness — may serve to accomplish
a wicked as well as a righteous purpose. Few can withhold a tribute of applause
from the forger who successfully copies a very difficult bank-note, or
elaborates a professedly medieval document so as to deceive even the experts. No
one commends the morality of David when he played the madman at Gath, and
scrabbled on the gate, but who has not smiled at his skill in meeting the
occasion, in overreaching all his enemies, and making them serve him by the
simple device of hiding the brightest intellect of the age under the vacant,
silly stare of the idiot? The wisdom of the unjust steward, which we are invited
to admire, appeared mainly in his businesslike apprehension of the actual
situation in which he was placed, and his sagacity and promptitude in making the
most of it. He looked the facts in the face. He did not buoy himself up with
delusive hopes. He did not waste his brief opportunity in idle expectations. He
did not fool himself by thinking, “I’ll never need any other home than the one I
now have,” but recognizing that he would soon be turned out of his present home
and employment, and knowing that nothing is more desirable to a man out of a
situation than a friend’s house where he can be quite at home, he takes steps to
provide this for himself. He manfully faced the inevitable, and this was his
salvation. The ability to do so is a great part of what is known as a strong
character. It is a great part of that wisdom of the children of this world,
which surpasses the wisdom of the children of light. It is this that makes the
successful general, the trusted statesman, the skilful man of business. To be
able to distinguish between what we would wish to be the case, and what actually
is the case; j to be able to brush aside all that blinds, and look steadily at
realities — this is the beginning of practical wisdom. The wise man may, for
example, ardently desire that his son should enter a certain profession, but he
will not allow this desire to blind him to the qualities which unfit the lad for
it; he will not fight against fate. By holding up for our imitation this style
of man, our Lord suggests to us to inquire whether we are thus apprehending the
situation. The children of this world have a clear idea of what they aim at, and
they steadily and consistently pursue their aims. Their aim may be wholly “of
this world;” but they are not distracted by desiring one thing, while they
profess to be desiring another. They make everything subserve their actual
purpose, and do not disguise the facts. Are we as clear-sighted and as
single-eyed? Here is one large fact, for example, regarding our condition in
this world. We are stewards who must shortly give account of our stewardship.
Our opportunities are rapidly narrowing down. We should have had a very short
and strong term to apply to this steward of the Parable, if he had made light of
the message his lord sent him, — if he had said to himself, “I have been so long
my own master, not interfered with, allowed to do as I like, and live
comfortably, that I don’t believe I am a steward. I am called a steward, but
that is merely a title. If my lord does come, — though I do not believe he will,
— it will be all right. He has always allowed me to do as I please, and I do not
believe in this calling to account.” Our friend of the Parable was no such fool.
He knew how the case actually stood; he had a very lenient master, but he
himself was but a steward.

I Let us also then be clear in our minds whether we are stewards or masters;
whether we are to stay here for ever, or must shortly go hence and find another
home; whether we are ourselves supreme, or whether we can be called to account.
Let us face the facts of our existence here, and understand the terms on which
we live in this world. If we are stewards, set here to act justly, and
faithfully to use for higher interest than our own whatever is in our power,
then let us recognize that it is quite in vain for us to think of working any
other principle. You might as well build a house on the understanding that never
more will there be either wind or rain. Nature pays no respect to your
understandings, but acts out her own laws without warning and without apology.
You do not alter facts by hiding your eyes like the ostrich. You are called upon
to assert your manhood by ascertaining what are the facts and laws of human
life, and by frankly accepting them, knowing that they not only are inexorable,
but are also the best for you. If we do not ascertain the very terms on which we
are living, and using what we use, the judgment we must pronounce upon ourselves
is certainly that we are dishonest, and fools into the bargain. But our Lord
makes a special application of the example of the steward: “Make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when it fails, they may receive
you into everlasting habitations.” The steward made use of his departing power
over his master’s goods with such skill and effect, that when this power was
taken from him he found himself welcomed into comfortable houses. You, says our
Lord, ought to make such use of your opportunities, and especially of your share
of the unrighteous mammon, that, when it fails you, and you cease to have any
power over it, you may find yourselves welcomed into everlasting habitations.
Doubtless this is a Parable specially for rich men, specially for those whose
opportunities are considerable, who may be called stewards as having manifestly
a responsibility to God on the one hand, and to men of inferior station on the
other. The Parable is full of encouragement to such. It reminds them that the
opportunity given them by being rich and influential is no slight one, that the
power of wealth does not terminate with this world, that they need not greedily
and fearfully try to get the utmost selfish enjoyment out of their money while
they have it, because it must soon be beyond their power; but on the contrary,
that they may so use it as to secure eternal comfort. They can so invest it that
the interest shall be paid them as regularly in the world to come as here. They
may, in short, be eternally the better for being rich men in this world. The
love of money is the root of all evil, but the possession of it is an
opportunity of much good.

It need scarcely be said that, if money is to serve this eternal purpose, it
must be invested with some better feelings than the mere selfish foresight of
the steward. And here lies the difficulty; a man may have love enough to give
away a little, but he who has great wealth needs great love. It is like every
other great opportunity, it needs some greatness in the man to use it greatly.
At the same time it may be questioned whether in our day there is not just
rather too much said against doing good for the sake of reward. The selfishness
which buys an eternal inheritance at the price of great earthly advantages is
not so very common a failing that much need be said against it. And, to say the
least, the selfishness that can sacrifice money and earthly comforts for the
sake of future and heavenly happiness is a nobler thing and a much better thing
for the community than the selfishness which spends on display and pleasure
without a thought of the future, or hoards with a view to satisfy the vulgar
ambition of being rich, or without any view at all. But although this Parable
was spoken to rich men, and for their special good, we have all more or less of
the mammon of unrighteousness. Mammon is just the Syriac word for money, and it
is called “unrighteous” or “unjust,” because those to whom our Lord was speaking
had made their money by injustice. It was as little their own as the unjust
steward’s was. The steward was unjust because he had not regarded himself as a
steward; and in so far as we have forgotten this fundamental circumstance, we
also are unjust. We may not have consciously wronged any man or defrauded any;
but if we have omitted to consider what was due to God and man, the likelihood
is we have more money than we have aT right to. The name, indeed, “unrighteous
mammon,” is sometimes sweepingly applied to all wealth and material advantages,
because there is a feeling that the whole system of trade, commerce, and social
life is inextricably permeated with fraudulent practises and iniquitous customs
— so permeated that no man can be altogether free, or is at all likely to be
altogether free, from all guilt in this matter. Take any coin out of your pocket
and make it tell its history, the hands it has been in, the things it has paid
for, the transactions it has assisted, and you would be inclined to fling it
away as contaminated and filthy. But that coin is a mere emblem of all that
comes to you through the ordinary channels of trade, and suggests to you the
pollution of the whole social condition. The clothes you wear, the food you eat,
the house you live in, the money you are asked to invest, have all a history
which will not bear scrutiny. Oppression, greed, and fraud serve you every day.
Whether you will or not you are made partakers of other men’s sins. You may be
thankful if your hands are not soiled by any stain that you have wittingly
incurred; but even so, you must ask, what compensation can I make for the
unrighteousness which cleaves to mammon? how am I to use it now, seeing I have
it? Our Lord says, “You are to make friends with it who may receive you into
everlasting habitations.” You are so to use your opportunities that when your
present stewardship is over you may not be turned out in the cold and to
beggary, but may have secured friends who will give you a welcome to the eternal
world. It is the same view of the connection of this world and the next which
our Lord gives in His picture of the last judgment, when He says, “Inasmuch as
ye have done it to the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.” Those whom we
have done most good to are, as a rule, those whom we have most loved; and what
better welcome to a new world, what more grateful guidance in its ways could we
desire than that of those whom here on earth we have loved most dearly? Can you
promise yourselves any better reward than to meet the loving recognition and
welcome of those who have experienced your kindness: to be received by those to
whom you have willingly sacrificed money, time, opportunities of serving
yourself? The parents whose closing years you watched and sheltered at the
sacrifice of the opportunities of your own youth, the children for whom you have
toiled, the friend or relative whose long sickness you brightened and retarded
by unwearied affection, the acquaintance you kept from poverty by timely
intervention, the lad whose whole life you lifted to a higher level by giving
him the first step — all those whom you have so loved here that your service of
them has been ungrudging and unthought of — these are they who will receive you
into everlasting habitations. But if any one staggers at such a reading of the
Parable, there is no necessity that the “friends” be considered as persons. The
word “friends” is used only for the sake of keeping up the figure introduced by
the Parable, and may be legitimately applied to anything on which you spend
yourself, and which you should like to renew acquaintance with in eternity. It
is possible, this Parable reminds us, so to spend the time of our stewardship
here that we shall hereafter live upon the happy results of what we have here
done. The happy idea of the steward was to spend what was left in his hands, not
on himself, but on those with whom he would have to do after he was ousted from
office. It was this which showed his business capacity. An ordinary rogue would
merely have exacted more from his master’s debtors and decamped with the whole.
But far deeper was the plan of this astute individual; he would not eat his
seed-corn in this rough style. The little he could make out of the few remaining
transactions he could do for his master, he handed over to others, knowing that
their friendship and good-will would return him a hundredfold. And you may do
the same. Your life you may either spend or invest. You may use it either as
seed or you may devour it. You may so live that death will close all and shut
you out into outer darkness, or you may so live that death shall usher you into
an everlasting home, peopled with familiar faces that recognize and reassure
you, and show you that in substance eternity is not so very different from time,
and lead you to and assign to you your exact position in the eternal world and
your real place among men. These brilliant and memorable apophthegms which form
a kind of appendix to the Parable can be only briefly alluded to. The Parable is
forgotten in the momentous reality it has served to set before our minds; and
the great law is enounced, “He that is faithful in that which is least is
faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in
much.” Here are two great truths suggested to us: 1st, That we are here in this
world merely on trial, and serving our apprenticeship; and 2d, That it is our
fidelity that is tried, not so much whether we have done great or little things,
but whether we have shown the spirit which above all else a steward should show
— fidelity to the interests entrusted to him. The two verses following, in which
this is applied, may best be illustrated by familiar figures. “If,” says our
Lord, “ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to
your trust that which is real?” He considers us all in this world as children
busy with mere playthings and toys, though so profoundly in earnest. But looking
at children so engaged you can perfectly see the character of each. Although the
actual things they are doing are of no moment or reality, although, with a
frankness and penetration not given to their elders, they know they are but
playing, yet each is exhibiting the very qualities which will afterwards make or
mar him, the selfish greed and fraud of one child being as patent as the
guileless open-handedness of the other. To the watchful parent these games that
are forgotten in the night’s sleep, these buildings which as soon as complete
are swept away to make room for others, are as thorough a revelation of the
character of the child as affairs of state and complicated transactions are of
the grown man. And if the parent sees a grasping selfishness in his child, or a
domineering inconsiderateness of every one but himself, as he plays at buying
and selling, building and visiting, he knows that these same qualities will come
out in the real work of life, and will unfit their possessor for the best work,
and prevent him from honorable and generous conduct, and all the highest
functions and duties of life. So our Lord, observant of the dispositions we are
showing as we deal with the shadowy objects and passing events of this seeming
substantial world, marks us off as fit or unfit to be entrusted with what is
real and abiding. If this man shows such greed for the gold he knows he must in
a few years leave, will he not show a keener, intenser selfishness in regard to
what is abiding? If he can trample on other people’s rights for the sake of a
pound or two, how can he be trusted to deal with what is infinitely more
valuable? If here in a world where mistakes are not final, and which is destined
to be burned up with all the traces of evil that are in it, — if in a world
which, after all, is a mere card-house, or in which we are apprentices learning
the use of our tools, and busy with work which, if we spoil, we do no
irreparable harm, — if here we display incorrigible negligence and incapacity to
keep a high aim and a good model before us, who would be so foolish as to let us
loose among eternal matters, things of abiding importance, and in which mistake
and carelessness and infidelity are irreparable?

“And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give
you that which is your own?” A merchant sees among his clerks one whose look and
bearing are prepossessing, and he thinks that by and by this lad might possibly
make a good partner; he watches him, but he finds him gradually degenerating
into slipshod ways of doing his work, coming down late in the mornings, and
showing no zeal for the growth of the business, and so the thought grows in his
mind, “If he is not faithful in that which is another man’s, how can I give him
the business as his own?” I can’t hand over my business to one who will squander
what I have spent my life in accumulating; to one who has not sufficient liking
for work to give himself heartily to it, or sufficient sense of honor to do it
heartily whether he likes it or no. Much as I should like to lift him out of a
subordinate situation, I cannot do so. Thus are determined the commercial and
social prospects of many an unconscious youth, and thus are determined the
eternal prospects of many a heedless servant of God, who little thinks that the
Master’s eye is upon him, and that by hasting to be rich he is making himself
eternally poor, and by slackness in God’s service is ruining his own future.


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  CHAPTER 44: 03.22.     DIVES AND LAZARUS
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DIVES AND LAZARUS

Luke 16:19-31 The Parable of the Unjust Steward was spoken for the purpose of
encouraging rich men to make a right use of their wealth, as well as for the
sake of reminding all Christians that the qualities which give success in the
world and constitute practical wisdom are very much required in the kingdom of
God. But the Pharisees, who were rich, and who under a show of godliness and
piety kept a very firm hold on their money, laughed at the novel investment
which our Lord proposed. In our day the views of Christ regarding the
distribution of wealth are seriously discussed by political economists, and no
one ventures to deride His suggestion. There are still, however, double-dyed
Pharisees, who with decorous solemnity and without a shadow of a smile listen to
our Lord’s recommendations, but listen also without the slightest intention of
allowing them any practical force, without one thought of giving them effect in
their own life. The Pharisee who smiled incredulously in our Lord’s face, and
expressed pity for His ignorance of the world, was no match for our modern
Pharisee, who can persuade himself he gives our Lord a reverent hearing though
he does not dream of obeying Him. The satirical and mocking observations which
began to fly round the crowd when the former Parable was closed, induced our
Lord to expose still more plainly the folly of the Pharisees and rich men. They
lived in the comfortable creed that wealth was a manifest sign, if not the
manifest sign, of God’s favor, while disease and poverty were the results of sin
either in the sufferer or in his parents, a creed which had just truth enough in
it to give it life and make it pernicious. They believed that the man who was
wealthy here would be wealthy in the world to come, and that God could not but
esteem that which commanded the admiration of the well-washed and decorous
Pharisee. They had, to their own perfect satisfaction, reconciled the love of
God and the love of money. They laughed at our Lord, therefore, when He told
them that God and mammon were irreconcilable, and that to be rich and honored in
this world was no sign whatever of riches and honor in the world to come. Our
Lord, therefore, argues no further with them, but draws aside for a moment the
curtain that hides the world of spirits and discloses to their view the after
history of two men, one of whom had been opulent and powerful, the other
nothing. He shows them what becomes of many highly respectable citizens, and
what is frequently the result of the kind of life they chiefly admired. He takes
them into the unseen world and gives them to understand that —

“Many there be who fill the highest place, Kings upon earth, who here like swine
shall bide, Leaving but scorn and horror in their trace.” The first figure our
Lord sets before us in the Parable is intended as a mirror to the Pharisees. He
is not intended to be depicted as a monstrous specimen of humanity or luxurious
living. We do not read that his wealth had been unrighteously acquired. No
doubtful speculations, no far too clever financing, no transactions generally
condemned, are charged against him. He was simply a rich man, who had made his
money in the usual way. Neither was he a miser who could not bear to spend what
he had made; on the contrary, he liked to see his friends enjoying themselves at
his expense. Had he been notoriously selfish and uncharitable, his gate would
never have been chosen as the asylum of the beggar. Indeed, this circumstance,
that Lazarus was day after day laid there, points rather to a character for such
Pharisaic almsgiving as would maintain his reputation as an observer of the law;
for those who were careful enough to carry the beggar out in the morning would
certainly set him where he would be pretty sure of being fed. The rich man did
not refuse to have so loathsome an object at his gate, did not refuse to have
his pleasure somewhat spoilt by the sickening sight, did not order his servants
to drive the disgusting creature off his doorstep. Neither is it said that the
man was a sensualist, curious in sauces and wines, knowing how everything should
be cooked and in what season and with what relish it should be eaten. Not at
all: he had money and liked to live pleasantly and brightly. He wore good
clothes; not tissue of silver like Herod, nor anything that made him stared at
in the streets, but merely, like fifty other rich men in his town, good linen
next his skin and seemly purple over it. It is, in short, to his condition and
not to his character our attention is in the first place directed. His character
is shown by and by; but if we would receive the Parable in its full force, we
must not anticipate its conclusion, but suffer ourselves to be led to it step by
step. And this first step is to set before us a man surrounded by all the
comforts of life and enjoying them to the full. In striking contrast to this
affluent. easy, brilliant life is set the other extreme of the human condition.
And here, too, nothing as yet is said of the character of Lazarus; it is only
intended to paint vividly external circumstances as squalid, disgusting, and
pitiable, as those of the rich Pharisee were enviable and glittering. While the
gaily appareled guests throng into the mansion, while the sounds of mirth and
dancing attract the passers-by, and the brilliant lights shed a radiance over
all within, Lazarus lies through the weary hours in the outer darkness under the
sweeping, chilling rain, waiting for the scraps that the hungriest slave casts
out. Within, the Pharisee is receiving the flatteries of a hundred of his
clients, and is wrapped round with all that nurses self-complacency; at his gate
lies a helpless heap, a distorted wreck of a man that the dogs mistake for a
carcass thrown out to them, and that men hurry past with a shudder. It is a
contrast such as our own streets continually present, and if anything you have
yourselves seen of the extremes of comfort and discomfort can add another touch
to this picture, you are welcome to see remembered reality shining through the
Parable.

There are some pictures so constructed that when the spectator is thoroughly
impressed with the scene before him, a spring is touched, the picture turns on a
pivot and exposes on its reverse side that which completes the intended
impression. This picture is constructed on similar principles. The festive
Pharisee and the diseased beggar filling the eye, the picture is in a moment
reversed, and the Pharisee is seen dropped out of all comfort and affluence,
craving a drop of water as a boon he has no means of procuring, while Lazarus is
lifted to the pinnacle of human sufficiency and glorified above all earthly
magnificence. There is something intentionally horrifying in the suddenness of
the contrast. Fresh from his luxurious ease, Dives is in torments; quicker than
a troop of bandits strip a traveler, is he stripped of all the inexhaustible
equipment for comfortable living which had characterized him in life. In the
suddenness, completeness, and terror of the contrast, it is comparable to that
which passes under a brilliant southern sky where nature has been prodigal of
her beauties, when there is but one moment’s murmur, and the earth opens, pours
out its flood of fire, and the fruitful land lies a scorched and sterile waste.

It need scarcely be said that this is merely a pictorial or figurative
representation. Disembodied spirits have not eyes, fingers, tongues, voices. But
the impression conveyed to the reader is strictly true, that a man’s condition
in this life may be reversed in the world to come. The truth our Lord desired in
the first place to enforce was, that what is highly esteemed among men is
abomination in the sight of God — that while men hurry past Lazarus with
sickening revulsion and seek the company of the luxurious Dives in his
well-appointed house, it is from Dives that God turns with loathing. This is not
at once made apparent, but in the ordinary course of things this judgment of God
finds its counterpart in actual events and circumstances. And it is a pity that
we should be so little able to enter into and sympathize with God’s judgments;
that our admiration should be so much spent upon rank, talent, wealth, success
and prosperity. The man who invents a machine or makes a discovery which will
facilitate business operations or add to the conveniences of life is at once
raised to a pinnacle of fame; the author of a brilliant novel or the leader of a
political party can scarcely make his way through applauding crowds. And it
seems ungracious to turn the other side of the picture, and show their rank and
place in a world where rank and place are determined solely by character. Yet
the fact is that all things that make the greatest show in the world, wealth and
power and genius, are the mere instruments with which character works, and are
useful or hurtful according as the motive that wields them is good or evil. Let
us learn then to esteem character, that it may not be said of us also, that what
is highly esteemed by us is abomination in God’s sight. It is of the essence of
Pharisaism to be deceived by appearances, to have its judgment arrested on the
outside and the surface, to be satisfied if the manners are good and the outward
conduct respectable. It is weak and Pharisaic to be taken in by what is not of
the essence of the man, and may be changed with circumstances, and must be left
behind at death. And it is this way of judging by the outsides and accidents of
things, that prepares those tremendous reversals of human judgment exemplified
in the Parable. If men were now grouped and ranked according to their spiritual
and moral qualities, how often would rags take precedence of purple, and the
outcast from under the hedge be counted more valuable for all eternal purposes
than the well-housed and respectable citizen. On the other hand, when tempted to
murmur at the rougher portions of your lot, when you begin to look upon your
misfortunes as punishment driving you from God, when you suffer your outward
circumstances to regulate your inward peace, and find it hard to believe in the
love of God when it sends you no better physicians than dogs, no ampler
provision than crumbs from a rich man’s table, remember Lazarus, and learn that
the outward circumstances of this life is no index by which you may read the
relation you hold to God; that you may have one value in this world, another in
the world to come; that here outward circumstances are the training of saints,
there the unmistakable indication of the spiritual condition, sinners there
being the only sufferers.

If the Parable, however, merely exhibited the sudden and shocking reversal of
human judgments and alteration of human conditions, it might be open to the
charge often brought against it, that it Is a mere condemnation of wealthy men
as wealthy and a defense of poverty. But the Parable at once proceeds to show on
what the reversal of human judgment is founded — it goes on to show what the
character of the rich man had been, what was the moral element and principle
which ran through and determined his life upon earth. “Son, remember,” says
Abraham to him, “remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things,
and likewise Lazarus evil things.” That is to say, if you desired equality with
Lazarus in this world of spirits, you should have laid the foundation for it in
giving him equality with you in your lifetime. Had you made friends with the
unrighteous mammon which you so abundantly possessed, you would have been
anxiously expected and welcomed by Lazarus and all those you blessed. Had you
used your wealth as God’s steward for the use of God’s suffering creatures, you
would now be enjoying pleasures greater than ever you experienced on earth. You
beg for the friendship of Lazarus now, and entreat his kindly offices; but you
had the means of making him your friend while on earth. He is now beyond reach
of your good things and friendship, and you are beyond reach of his. It is you
yourself who allowed the contrast between you and Lazarus to abide, and it does
abide. “Remember,” look back on your earthly life, reflect upon its
opportunities and the way you used them, and you will understand the origin and
the justice of your present condition; you will recognize that it is yourself
who have fixed this yawning chasm between you and all permanent joy. You did not
bridge the chasm between you in life — you did not leave your splendor to sit by
his side, to hold his racking, weary head, to drive off the dogs and make him
feel that at least in one human breast he had an asylum — you did not even send
your servants to bring him in to an outhouse to lie among your cattle — you had
everything that he needed and you left him in his need — you did not inquire
into his necessities, nor penetrate through the rags and stench and poverty to
the humanity they encased — you did not own him as a brother, and in
anticipation of his lying in Abraham’s bosom at the banquet of eternal bliss,
take him in to yourself — you stood aloof and separated yourself from him, and
that separation abides. Had you shared with him on earth, you would have shared
with him now. This is no doubt a pretty hard lesson to learn. And I believe
those will feel its hardness most who have most desire to learn it; who have
candor enough and integrity of purpose enough to look straight at our Lord as He
utters this counsel, and to feel that if they are to maintain a conscience void
of offense they must be clear in their own minds as to the use they make of
money and advantages. It is startling, too, to find that the destiny of Dives
was determined by his conduct towards this one poor man; little as he thought of
him, it was this powerless creature who could not even crawl into his path and
force attention, who was exercising a more determining influence on his future
than any of those who thronged his banqueting rooms and discussed with him all
his plans and new devices of money-making or money-spending. What one person is
it who holds this relation to our life; perhaps as little thought of by us as
Lazarus by Dives, and yet truly determining what we are to be and to have in
eternity? The man whose wants you relieve sullenly, almost angrily; the man
whose too frequently recurring necessities you resent and spurn; the person who
crossed your path when you were too much occupied with your own joys to observe
his face of starvation or disease; such persons, and they whose claims you now
refuse to look at for a moment, are determining your eternal condition. But
“beside all this”— the thing you ask is impossible. It is, in the first place,
just that there should be this reversal of your condition; but supposing that
Lazarus were willing to forget the long wretched hours he spent at your gate, or
supposing that his experience of pain made him sensitive to yours and anxious to
relieve it, the thing cannot be done. This too is an essential part of the
Parable. The results produced by character and a life-long habit cannot be
expunged in the easy way suggested by Dives. The consequences of a selfish life
of pleasure cannot be reversed as soon as they begin to be uncomfortable and
distressing. If you take the wrong turning at the entrance to a mountain pass,
you may emerge very near your friend who has taken the right one, but with a
yawning gulf between that no human agility can leap — the only way is to go
right back and follow the path he has taken, and if it is too late to go back,
if the night has fallen and the mist closed in around you, no beseeching of the
inexorable hills will repair your error. So a life of easy careless selfishness
leads to a moral condition, a state of heart and of lot, from which no sudden
leap can bring a man into the company and condition of those who have passed
through long years of purifying pain and patient endurance that have tested
every fiber of their character.

It is a grave charge indeed that we are each of us entrusted with — to determine
for ourselves the eternity in which we are to live. And are we to expect that
this can be well done without thought, care, conflict, all that can prove us men
and bring out our manhood? Does any one resent being called upon to be in
earnest and to make this life an ideal and a noble life for himself? Does any
one object to this life being a real trial of men, fitted to determine and
actually determining what they really are? — Surely no right-minded person would
shrink from a test that is real, that goes deep enough to search the very roots
of evil and of good in us.

One would naturally expect that the Parable would close at this point. The doom
of the selfish pleasure-seeker, of the man who does not use the means in his
power to help the needy, has been clearly shown. It has been shown that if
Pharisees on earth deride the proposal to serve God only and not mammon at all,
the Pharisee who has left earth is in no laughing mood, is convinced of the
justice of his doom and the impossibility of relief. And one would suppose this
left no more to be said. But if no more had been said, the Pharisees, ever ready
to justify themselves, would have said: This is a mere fancy sketch, spoken
under provocation for the sake of alarming us. If things were as He represents
them to be, some courteous ghost would blab it out — we should not be left by
our father Abraham to glide on to such a doom, unstayed and unwarned.
Anticipating such evasions, our Lord appends the pathetic supplication of Dives:
“If I am past redemption, save my brethren; if no relief can reach me in this
place of torment, hinder them from a similar doom.” And this request is
introduced merely for the sake of bringing out that already all needed warning
is given, and that the proposed additional warning would have no effect whatever
— that is to say, the Pharisees are without excuse if they continue their
attempts to make the best of both worlds. The statement of the Parable, however,
to the effect that those who disregard Moses and the Prophets would equally
disregard the appearance of a dead friend, is one which at first seems open to
question. Who has not often longed to lift the veil and see for a little the
actual condition of the dead? Who has not felt as if it would be so much easier
to believe if we could but for one hour see? Who has not been ready to say with
these Pharisees: Why not end all this doubt, all this plague of skepticism, all
this brutality and worldliness, by sending back from among the dead some
messengers who might be identified, and who might plainly tell us what they
know, and allow us to cross-examine them? Could they be better employed? And if
faith is so desirable, why is not everything done that can be done to give us
faith? If there is a spiritual world in which it is so important that we
believe, why are we not put in direct communication with it so that it would
become as real to us as France or China or any country of whose existence we
have no doubt, although we have never seen it? Is it possible that this world
and a world so utterly different can be in so close a connection, as if
separated only by a paper screen through which a man may any moment fall, and
that yet we should so little know what passes in that world? Is it possible that
that world can be filled with friends of our own, and yet not one of them
whispers us a single word, no more than if there were no such world at all? Is
it possible that men who are to-day fully occupied with this world, following
its fashion and leaving the world of retribution to sober, religious people, may
to-morrow find themselves in that world? And if so, why does not nature herself
cry out to warn us from our ruin? Why do not the spirits of the dead return and
command us to hold back?

Such feelings are natural, but they are misleading. The rich man’s brethren were
heedless of the unseen world, not because they did not believe that any future
state awaited them, but because this world’s pleasures absorbed their interes t.
It was a profound moral change they needed, and for effecting such a change, “
Moses and the Prophets,” the continuous revelation of God and His holiness in
the past, was a much more powerful and appropriate instrument than an
apparition. By such a messenger from the dead as the rich man proposed —
supposing his message could be authenticated — our ideas of what lies beyond the
veil might be altered, and fear might lead us to adapt our conduct to the
revealed future; but could our character be thus changed? No revelation of
punishment awaiting the evil-doer could avail to make us different in heart, or
could unfix our real inward affections from sensual and worldly objects, and fix
them upon God and what is spiritual and holy. Only the revelation to our own
souls of the beauty of holiness, only the revelation of God, in the fullest
sense of these words, can teach us to fix our hearts unalterably on God and all
that lives with Him and in Him. Only by seeing and knowing Him can we learn to
love Him; and only by loving Him are we perfected as men.

It is doubtful if even the information given by such a messenger — apart
altogether from the effects such information might produce — would be of much
value, or would be permanently accepted as valid. It is true, many in our own
day are persuaded that they receive the most assured knowledge of the unseen
world by holding direct communication with those who have entered it, and I
would be slow to deny the possibility or actuality of all such communication;
but as yet this method of discovering the unseen has merely shown how constant a
craving for such knowledge exists in men, rather than that much assured and
wholesome truth has been reached by it. He was more deeply instructed who rather
shrank from any such reappearances of the dead, and anticipated the
fruitlessness of any such comfort:

“If any vision should reveal Thy likeness, I might count in vain, As but the
canker of the brain;

Yea, though it spake and made appeal To chances where our lots were cast
Together in the days behind, I might but say, I hear a wind Or memory murmuring
the past.”

It is not in that direction we need look for relief from our skepticism with all
its unrest, vacillation, and brooding sadness. But does not God everywhere elude
observation? Is God not unwilling that we should know Him? Does He not hide
Himself? Are not clouds and darkness impenetrable round about Him? Not so. God
seeks to make Himself known to you. He wishes to bring as much light as possible
into your mind, and has used the best means of introducing that light. Why then
do so many earnest men spend their years in a vain search for God? Why have so
many most thoughtful and inquiring men missed the light they have all their days
been looking for, and without which they have no joy in life? Partly, perhaps
chiefly, because, like the rich man, each inquirer prefers some self-devised
method of revelation to the method God has actually adopted. To those who
understand that God is the One Living Spirit, all things reveal Him, He besets
them behind and before, and though they should be oppressed by the presence and
flee from it, God awaits them in their place of flight and they cannot escape
Him. The intelligence discernible in all things, in their harmony and unity, in
their universal subservience of one plan and contribution to progress — this is
God. The holy love that is discernible in the law that governs human affairs —
this is God. More discernible is this law in Jewish history than elsewhere,
because the Jews awaited its working, and observed and recorded it, while other
races mistook what they had to deal with. But if men look for a God that is not
or where He is not, they cannot find Him. If they will not look at things as
they actually are; if they will not consider what Moses and the Prophets teach;
if they will not recognize the unseen Spirit that trained and guided and made
Himself felt by Israel; if they shut their eyes to the embodiment of that Spirit
in Christ, and to His working since in millions of our race; if, that is to say,
they exclude all that is most significant in human history, can we expect
anything else than that the search for God elsewhere will be fruitless and
disappointing? If we find God at all, we must find Him not spectrally separate
from all known realities, but in and through all things that are, and especially
in and through human history and our own souls.

Through all these things God reveals Himself to us, as to moral and reasonable
creatures, who can be more profoundly influenced by appeals to conscience and
reason than by startling and abnormal apparitions. And if from these things we
can learn nothing about God and our duty to Him, still less are we likely to
learn from necromancy. Conscience lies deeper in us and is a more essential
organ than the eye, and if conscience responds to all that Moses and the
Prophets, completed and interpreted by Christ, tell us about God, this is an
infinitely worthier testimony to His existence and His truth than if an
unsubstantial shade hovered before the eye, and in some hollow, sepulchral
mutterings, warned us of the results of unbelief. If your faith is weak, do not
wait for unusual manifestations or novel proofs of things unseen, but use the
means of knowing God which others have found sufficient, and which God has
actually furnished. Keep your mind saturated with the teachings and life of
Christ, and what your conscience responds to, see that you act upon. For if the
humble and loving tone of the morality you find there enters into your blood,
the eyes of your understanding will become brighter to discern spiritual things.
Begin at the right end, and with what is already within your reach. Begin with
what you know to be true, that is, with what your conscience accepts. Begin with
obedience, with gratefully accepting a light upon duty and upon your relation to
the persons and things around you which you cannot but own to be the truest and
best, and by following this light you will at length reach an atmosphere in
which things will assume their right and true proportions. Thus will you earn
the reward of humility and truthfulness of spirit, not outrunning your actual
faith, but not lagging behind conscience; thus will you learn the truth of the
Lord’s own words: “If any man do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine
whether it be of God.” The pure in heart shall see God; if not now, then
hereafter.


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  CHAPTER 45: 03.23.     THE UNJUST JUDGE
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THE UNJUST JUDGE Luke 18:1-8; Luke 11:5-13. The two Parables of the Importunate
Friend at midnight and the Importunate Widow illustrate the same idea, that
importunity prevails irrespective of the character or disposition of the person
on whom it is practised. Alike in this, the Parables differ inasmuch as the one
has a genera], the other a special reference. The successful importunity of the
midnight petitioner is a sample of the success that attends all persevering
prayer. The widow’s conquest of the surly judge is intended to encourage the
disciples of Christ to the persistent expectation of His second coming, and to
unwearied prayer for that good time when all their desires shall be fulfilled.
All prayer is trying to the character, and few persons there are who can
perseveringly offer the “effectual fervent “prayer which avails: but there is
special temptation to faint in prayer for the coming of the Son of man. Wrongs
are so slowly righted; wisdom, justice, and righteousness make such little way
upon earth; misery and wickedness renew themselves with a vigor so unabated,
that the most sanguine are often tempted to refer this to indifference on the
part of Him who reigns and has all power. It is not easy to reconcile the
meagre, unsatisfactory results of Christianity in the world with the claims and
promises of Christ, and under the pressure of this difficulty many cease to hope
and pray and sink into a bewildered or quite unbelieving habit.

These Parables, then, are meant to afford us effectual encouragement in prayer.
Those who first faint in prayer and then cease to pray commonly do so from some
kind of latent feeling that God does not regard them. Well, says our Lord, even
supposing He does not regard you, do not give up asking, for even in the most
unpromising circumstances persevering and importunate entreaty gets what it
seeks. Take the most sluggish and selfish nature, the man who won’t so much as
get out of bed to do a friend a good turn, — you can make him do what you want
by the very simple device of going on knocking till you cause it to dawn upon
his slumbering brain that the only way to get the sleep he so much desires is
first of all to satisfy you. Or take the other most unpromising case you can
think of, that of a thoroughly and unscrupulously unjust judge. The man who, of
all living Englishmen, knows the East best, says that “there are three ways of
treating Asiatic officials — by bribe, by bullying, or by bothering them with a
dogged perseverance into attending to you and your concerns,” The two former
methods being out of the question with a poor widow, she adopts the third. She
does not go home and wail to her children, she does not content herself with
regretfully wishing that a just judge occupied the judgment seat; she merely
makes up her mind: “I will have justice. I will annoy, pester, harass, torment,
plague him, until he sees that the easier course for himself is to look into my
matters. I am but a poor, desolate, weak creature; but as the small insect can
madden the hugest beast of the forest, so will I fix upon him until he shall be
glad to get quit of me at any price.” The principle which these Parables
illustrate is well understood — the principle that importunity succeeds in
wringing consent from the reluctant, relief from the niggardly, its own way from
all. The dog that is driven from following his master understands that, if he
only continue, his master will yield and give him his way. Never a child grew up
ignorant of this, that prolonged, persistent crying can wring from a parent what
has been absolutely refused at first. It is to this principle the beggar trusts
when he obstinately shuts his ears to denial, and follows supplicating till an
alms is given, not to relieve him, but to relieve the giver. And it was on this
principle the widow of the Parable acted, not counting at all on the charity of
the judge, but still confident that she would get from him what he had no desire
nor intention to give her; knowing that, if she only held to him, the time would
come when he should be forced to say, “Because this widow troubleth me, I will
avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” There was nothing in the
judge the widow could count upon. There was no influence, human or Divine, which
this poor woman could bring to bear upon him. Would she threaten him with Divine
vengeance and call heaven to I witness against his injustice? He would like it,
he would count it a treat; he would call in his companions to help him to enjoy
the widow’s anguish. Would she come meekly, piteously, and fall at his feet,
pointing to her sackcloth and her train of helpless children? Would she hold up
to him the little infant to smile in his face and melt the hard heart? He would
drive her from his judgment seat with a curse, or he would jest with her, or
turn to other business. Would she inform against him or expose him? He was
already exposed, and had nothing to hide. Would she get help against him? But he
was the man of whom all others were afraid. Here, in short, was a man of whom
the description is intended to convey to us the idea that he was thoroughly
impracticable, — that if in any circumstances a person might seem warranted in
turning away hopeless, this widow was in such circumstances, and yet she
obtained her request. The argument our Lord builds on these instances is very
intelligible and very cogent. Reckon on finding in God no more readiness to hear
and to help than you can count on in the most hardened and illiberal and selfish
of men, and yet do not rest till you obtain your request from Him. Though you
have not yet succeeded, and though you are beginning to think prayer utterly
useless and a mere waste of time and of feeling, follow Him, cry after Him, lay
hold on His skirt, and weary Him into compliance. Though, so far from indicating
the slightest willingness to help and bless you, God had again and again
repulsed you; though He had given you every reason to believe that He would
never grant your request nor raise a finger to help you, yet the course which
reason and your own interest approve is to persist in presenting your suit
before Him. To do otherwise would be to prove yourselves bereft of the wit of
this poor untrained widow, and even of the instinct of the inferior creatures.
Though you had reason to believe that God has no love, no interest in you, that
you are as unlikely to move Him as this widow who had none to speak a word for
her to the judge, though all the world is saying, “There is no help for him in
God,” and though your own soul is saying, “I am forgotten as a dead man out of
mind,” yet you may have your desire. Only when you can say, There is nothing God
can give me; only when you can say that already you have in actual and secure
possession what you are ready to spend eternity with; only then can you
reasonably cease to pray.

This, however, by no means exhausts the force of our Lord’s argument in the
Parable. There is a “how much more” in it. The argument is not merely, If the
unjust judge was thus coerced, you may also expect God to yield; but rather, If
persistent entreaty prevailed with one who was resolved not to give, how much
more will it prevail with one who is more anxious than the petitioner himself
that justice be done. Suppose that the wisdom and integrity of the judge had
never been questioned; that his name had become the synonym for righteous and
equitable judgment; that every man who had a just cause rejoiced when appeal
could be made to him; and that he was especially regarded by the poor and
oppressed as their champion and defender; nothing but unpardonable weakness
could have made the widow despair of being heard by such a man. Suppose that her
case required delay, and that the judge had assured her of this in the tenderest
and most encouraging terms that could be used from his seat of office — would
she not have been almost worthy of misery had she gone from court grumbling or
fearful? Suppose still further that during the whole term of her suit the judge
was doing her many acts of kindness, providing for her children, reminding her
of his friendship for her deceased husband, assuring her on his oath of the
ultimate success of her appeal, sending her every morning some little token to
keep her heart up — can you conceive any one so unreasonable as to cherish
suspicion in such circumstances? But even such a state of matters does not
represent our own relation to God in prayer. For it is absolute justice,
absolute faithfulness, absolute simplicity of purpose to bless us, with which we
have to do. In our day fainting in prayer arises not from any direct doubt of
God’s goodness so much as from the belief that, however much He was concerned in
setting this world in motion at the first. He has retired from any active
interference in its affairs, and allows it to be regulated solely by laws
inherent in things themselves, or at any rate actually in existence and
inexorable. We all find that this world, with ourselves and all else that is in
it, is under certain laws — laws of nature, as we call them. We find that a
certain never-failing order of things is established. The sun rises every
morning without fail, without fail it shines on us more in summer than in
winter; the tides ebb and flow in unaltering and calculable order; certain
diseases have a course that can be predicted. Wherever we recognize this
inflexible course of things, we accept it as the order established by God’s will
and submit ourselves to it. A man may know that the rising of to-morrow’s sun
will bring with it death or misery worse than death, but he does not pray that
the sun may not rise. He knows that, pray as he may, the sun will rise. The
godly maiden, who for her faith was bound to a stake within reach of the tide,
did not pray that the tide might be stayed in its flow; or, whether she prayed
or not, the tide, gradually and precisely in its usual manner, came in, making
no recognition of her prayers or of her condition. The most believing of men
ceases to pray for the life of a friend who is declared and seen to be drawing
near to death. In such cases it becomes apparent to the petitioner that his
desires are not consistent with the will of God, and he feels that to continue
to pray would be not reverent but irreverent. But it is argued, and with much
plausibility, that every future event, every occurrence of any kind that may in
any way affect us, is already as certain as the death of a man incurably
diseased. The storm which wrecks the ill-fated ship is not aroused by chance,
but by definite though sometimes obscure and complicated causes. And if the wife
or mother who prays for those at sea saw these causes, would not prayer die from
her lips, and the chill of despair freeze the warm utterances of faith? The
prayer is uttered because the event is not seen to be certain; the effect is not
seen in the cause; but an enlarged knowledge of the laws of nature, a j deeper
insight into the connection of one thing with another, would see that only one
event is possible, and that it is useless hoping for any other. Every man ceases
to pray when he sees what is going to happen. But everything is as certainly
produced by causes already in existence, as that effect which he distinctly
foresees. We pray because we are ignorant of what is going to take place; but if
our knowledge of all the laws of nature were as accurate as our knowledge of
some of them is, we should altogether cease to pray.

Many persons, moved by such representations, do abandon the practise of prayer.
We may suppose one of their number stating his case in this way: I believe in
God. I believe that every law which regulates the course of things in this world
is of His appointment, and is therefore the best possible. I am perfectly
satisfied with what I receive from the operation of these laws; any suffering I
have to endure I recognize as perfectly just. I am aware that the government
under which I should have been perfectly happy could not have been a just
government. I am content to live on under these laws, and I resign myself to
them. But when you ask me to pray, you perplex me. I can worship God: I can come
to Him morning and evening and acknowledge Him and delight in Him. But when you
ask me to be continually laying before Him some request for His interference
with the natural result of those very laws He has appointed as the best; when
you bid me ask Him for anything which would not come to me by the operation of
natural laws, you perplex me wholly. Prayer, instead of being the strength and
joy of my religion, has been my permanent difficulty, an insoluble puzzle. I
seem to have more faith in God when I do not pray. I find it easier to believe
in God when I think of Him as the Author of nature who knows that “we have need
of all these things,” than when I am asked to supplicate His interference with
the established order of things. And yet the reasoning which results in
prayerlessness is not so conclusive as it seems. This reverence for the order of
nature, on which it proceeds, does not prevent its devotees from resisting its
laws to the utmost and from endeavoring to manipulate them to their own
advantage. They check the natural course of a disease, and thwart the operation
of the laws which govern disease, by the skill that comes of accumulated
observation and experiment. They do not allow nature to take its course, but
guide it so as to avert threatening danger. May not God do the same? May not the
subtle, incomprehensible Intelligence that resides in nature and upholds it,
guide it in ways and to issues unattainable by our puny efforts?

There are two powers which we ourselves possess and which we cannot but ascribe
to God also. We have, first, a power in our own wills to move our own bodies.
This power is mysterious and not as yet understood. We cannot understand how a
spiritual force such as that of the will can become a physical force, lifting
the arm, moving the lips, and so forth. But, understood or not understood, the
power exists. God, though unseen and spiritual, has the same power directly to
move material things and effect His will in them. To this power the limit can
only be in God Himself, not in any external obstacle.

We have also a power to play off one law of nature against another; to make a
balloon rise, e.g. by using the law of the levity of gas to counteract the law
of gravitation. We can make one ingredient in nature counterwork another, and so
use its right hand against its left as to make it harmless where otherwise it
would be hurtful. The law that guides a disease to a fatal issue we can defeat
by the help of another law which gives to certain remedies power to check and
remove the disease. By adjusting one law of nature to another, by bringing
together things naturally separate, and by directing the course of natural law
into channels of our own devising, we can bring about results of the most
surprising kind, and which could never be brought about by nature herself. The
telescope, the hydraulic press, the railway, the telegraph — these are not
natural results, but they are results of natural laws manipulated by human
ingenuity. This power to use nature for purposes she could never of herself
accomplish, we cannot but ascribe to God as well as to ourselves. We cannot but
believe that if there be a God, a conscious, intelligent, individual existence
at the root of all that is, He must have this power of playing off one law of
nature against another, and of so guiding, controlling, and adapting the whole
of nature and every part of it as to work out His own purposes. He has this
power, not in the measure we have it so that we can produce results which seem
miraculous to the uninitiated, but absolutely and without measure so that He can
produce results inconceivable and incomprehensible. But even though God’s power
to answer prayer be not questioned, it may still be doubted whether He can be
expected to depart from His purpose or “plan” of all that is to be. It is
sometimes said to be impious, irreverent, blasphemous, to ask God to allow our
wills to influence His, our wisdom to instruct His, our interests to
counterbalance the interests of the universe. But it is obvious that God’s plan
may have included this very thing, that certain results are to be brought about
by prayer. God’s eternal will and knowledge embrace not only certain ends that
are to be accomplished, but all that is to bring about these ends. His design is
not an outline or skeleton draft of the future, but an outline filled in with
every detail. It is very conceivable that God may have ordained that such and
such things take place in connection with and as the result of the prayers of
those who wait upon Him; and if so, prayer cannot be considered an interference
with His plan, but a fulfilment of it. But that which too frequently gives force
to all objections is our own experience of the slender results of prayer. We
faint in prayer, and gradually become formal and remiss, because our own prayers
have so often been apparently in vain. We believe in hard work, because what we
work for we get. We can see in our life the results of hard work; but some of us
are ready to say we can see in our possession not one thing which we might not
equally have had, had we never prayed. This is the temptation not only of the
individual, but of the Church. All Christian people have been praying for
eighteen centuries that the kingdom of God might come, and how small an
appearance of answer has there been. But convincing as the evidence of
experience IS, we may misconstrue experience, and must balance it by
considerations which also have weight. We must consider that there may be good
reason for not answering some prayers, and also that our Lord foresaw that it
would be difficult to maintain faith and therefore encourages us to do so. That
there may be reason for not answering some prayers we cannot but admit. We are
aware that we have uttered unseasonable, ill-considered, petulant, unholy
prayers. It cannot but make us ashamed to reflect how frequently we have
besought God to pander to the most unworthy feelings, to make provision for the
flesh, to satisfy our own petty ambition, to gratify some earthly passion.
Prayers which at bottom are dictated by mere self-love, sensuality, ambition,
envy, revenge, covetousness, are not heard. And if in our conscience we know
that the disappointment of our desires was calculated to do us more good than
their gratification; if, that is, we recognize that the consideration which
refused our petitions was really deeper than that which should have granted
them; then we see how right and reasonable has been the delay in answering us.
And such delays are teaching us more and more that it is when we “seek first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness “that we are answered speedily; it is when
we get up above what is merely selfish, individual, and earthly, and rise to the
region in which we begin to see what it is God is aiming at and counts worthy of
His effort, it is when our hearts are enlarged by a knowledge of His purposes,
and we begin to seek the common good and blessings that are eternal, that we
feel confidence in prayer and know it must prevail.

Answers are delayed, too, because the prayer was not hearty. God has made no
promise to answer insincere prayer; and that prayer is insincere which is not
followed up by hearty efforts to obtain the thing sought. Or it is so formal
that, though the answer came, we should not recognize it. Angels are at our
gates, but because their wings are folded and we have not traced their descent
from heaven, we do not notice them nor invite them to abide with us. We lose
thus a thousand of God’s gifts, not recognizing that the very thing we need is
brought within our reach. We see the change of circumstances, not the fresh
opportunity; we feel the disappointment, not the hand of God giving us humility;
we recognize the bitterness and the sorrow, but not the heavenly mind and
abandonment of worldly ambitions which they enfold.

Again, there is an order in God’s gifts, and we cannot have the greater unless
first we have the less. We ask God to give us this or that grace, as if it could
be suddenly conferred upon us, irrespective of our present character; and we ask
it without considering how much we ourselves may have to do and to suffer before
we can attain it. Character has an organic Integrity and a consecutive growth as
a tree has. You cannot expect fruit if there has been no blossom. No power can
cause fruit to grow before a branch has grown to bear it. But in many of our
petitions we ask God to give us fruit without either branch, blossom, or time.
We ask Him to build the top story of our house before the lower story is begun.
We wish ability to accomplish certain objects before we have the fundamental
graces out of which that ability can alone spring. Your child asks you to give
him your skill in calculating or your knowledge of a language; what can you do?
You can only say to him, “My boy, these things cannot be immediately given. I
can only see that you are educated and help you to persevere, and one day you
will have the knowledge you ask. But it cannot be given; it must grow. You
cannot get it without me, but neither can you get it without much hard work of
your own.” So when we are suddenly put to shame by our lack of Christian temper,
or courage, or charity, or sobriety of mind, or unworldliness, we as suddenly
ask Christ for the grace we need, apparently supposing that it is as easily
manufactured and assumed as a new suit of clothes; that we have just to give the
order and put on the readymade habit. Let us deal reasonably with God. Let us
bear in mind that many of the gifts we are in the habit of asking are such
qualities of soul as can be produced only by long and painful processes. You ask
for humility. Do you consider that in so doing you ask for that which makes
humility humiliation; for failure, mortified vanity disappointed hopes? You ask
for a heavenly mind. Do you consider that in so doing you ask to be led forward
to those painful times which compel men to feel that here they have no permanent
home? You ask to be near Christ and like Him. Can you be baptized with His
baptism, can you drink of His cup? But undoubtedly that on which we chiefly and
wisely fall back is the plain command of our Lord, that we should continue
praying. Very often we have just to own we do not see all round this matter, and
abide by the unmistakable promise which built up our Lord’s own strength, “Ask,
and ye shall receive.” If there was one thing more than another He taught about
God, it was just this, that He answers prayer; if there is any truth, any
meaning in His plain assertion that He knew God, and that by having been in
heaven He understood how heavenly things are managed, then there can be no doubt
that if we go on asking we shall receive, and that if we go on knocking at that
door which now is shut we shall one day find entrance to the light we crave, and
pass through all that bars our progress. This is the time of seeking, this is
the time when we may reasonably say, “We are but of yesterday, and know
nothing;” it becomes us, therefore, to believe, to inquire, to be diligent in
seeking what our highest instincts prompt us to, assured that one day the door
shall be open to those who have besieged it, and that we shall have what we now
crave and enter on the fruit of all honest effort.


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  CHAPTER 46: 03.24.     THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN
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THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN

Luke 18:9-14 The purpose of this trenchant Parable is explicitly stated. It was
leveled at those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and
despised others.” Such a temper is offensive in whatever field of conduct it is
displayed. It must not be confounded with humble self-reliance. It is quite
possible to have a correct estimate both of one’s own merits and of other
people’s. A military commander frequently conjoins with entire self-confidence a
salutary respect for the skill and strength of the force that opposes him. But a
self-confidence which exhibits itself at the expense of other men, and counts
its merits exceptional, is offensive, and if not empty and delusive is at least
foolish. Self-admiration effectually excludes a man from the admiration of
others; and although self-confidence will often carry a man over many of the
ordinary difficulties of life, it almost certainly betrays him into greater
difficulties. That religion, whose function it is to render men humble and
loving, should actually in many instances make them self-satisfied and
contemptuous, calls for explanation. And the explanation is not far to seek.
Human nature displays itself in religion as in everything else with which men
have to do. The men who in the ordinary walks of life seek a cheap success carry
their slothful ambition into religion, and crave an eminence that costs them
little. The shallow characters that are content to have the appearance without
the reality, reputation without worth, applause without desert, priority and
high station without superior excellence, are content to be accepted as godly,
although void of the love of God. And this lack of integrity and downright
thoroughness, this craving for appearance and reputation irrespective of reality
and excellence, is so common in every community that morality and religion tend
to be dissociated. There are always persons who wish to be recognized as
eminently religious; their desire for recognition exceeds their craving for that
which deserves it, and unconsciously they erect a standard of judgment which is
at once easy of attainment and out of the ordinary reach.

Pharisaism was the ripest historical manifestation of this constant tendency,
and has therefore given its name to similar manifestations in all ages. With a
single touch our Lord brings out in the Parable the two characteristics of all
Pharisaism — its ambitious motive and its false standard. The Pharisee of the
Parable thanks God he Is not as other men; his religion has been rather an
affair between him and other men than between him and God. His object in
cultivating religion has been to surpass other men and win their favorable
judgment; and now that he has made good for himself the claim to be a religious
man he is satisfied. Further, the standard of comparison which he uses, and by
applying which he fancies himself superior to others, is one not of morality but
of superficial purity and formal observances; he is not an adulterer, nor an
extortioner, and he fasts twice a week.

It is this tendency to judge by outward acts rather than by the essential
character, and to substitute observances for righteousness, which constitutes
the danger of Pharisaism. Anxious rather to have the credit of being righteous
than actually to be so, the Pharisee thinks it enough to maintain an outward
purity of life. The letter of the law he knows he must satisfy, and in all
matters to which that letter applies he is careful and exact. But while
attending to his conduct so far as it meets the eye, he is careless of the state
of his heart. The man, the real nature and permanent dispositions, are
overlooked, and nothing is thought of but the conduct. The idea grows that good
actions make a good man, and it is forgotten that unless the man is good the
actions cannot be good. The Pharisee holds that good fruit makes the tree good,
and does not believe that only if the tree is good can the fruit be good. His
own eternal character he is little concerned about, if only he has a good
reputation: the real good of men is not the object of his moral endeavors, and
so he is satisfied if he seems to be fulfilling the law. There is thus
propagated a misconception of morality all round; a misconception of its nature,
of its use, of the means of its attainment. Morality being thus misconceived,
religion also is misconceived. The Pharisee, aiming only at a superficial and
selfish morality, feels no need of coming into a living fellowship with the root
of all goodness in God. It is impossible, therefore, he should understand what
religion is. But seeking to have a conspicuous religion, he finds this in a
routine of observances which can be performed irrespective of character, by good
men and bad men alike. Certain observances are added to the moral law, and by
degrees these observances take a higher place than the common duties of life.
These extras come to be considered the distinctive mark of a religious man, so
that each person’s status or rank in the religious world is determined by his
observance of these, and not by his regard to justice, charity, truth, purity.
And when Pharisaism dominates in any community, men are actually judged
irrespective of character, and their position as religious or irreligious
persons is determined by their observance or non-observance of certain outward
forms and practises which have no necessary connection with morality. If inquiry
is made regarding a man’s religion, if it is asked whether he is a religious or
an irreligious man, such features of his life are cited as, that he has prayers
in his family night and morning, that he is regular in his attendance at church,
that he takes an interest in ecclesiastical affairs, but not that he is
honorable and straightforward in business, helpful to his relatives, careless of
display and of gain. It is obvious that a man of no character can fast twice a
week, and will do so if he can thereby secure his own ends. Of all such
observances we may use Paul’s language and say, “Meat commendeth us not to God:
for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the
worse.” The Pharisee thus misapprehends the meaning and use of religious
observances, and distorts the relation between morality and religion. The great
end of religion is to bring us into perfect harmony with God, a harmony which is
not the merely apparent and temporary alliance which can be effected by
compulsion or outward arrangement, but the thorough unanimity and eternal
fellowship which result from identity of will and similarity of character. In a
word, the great end of religion is to make us like to God — to make us just and
loving, truthful and pure. Religion has not done its work until we are in very
truth the children of God; and we cannot be called religious men, in any but a
most superficial and misleading sense, until we are morally like God. In order
to accomplish this great end of religion a certain training is needful, and this
training is aided by the observance of certain practises, rites, and forms of
worship. Prayer, worship, attendance on ordinances, and so forth, are requisite
as means for the attainment of the knowledge and love of God out of which
holiness springs. Unfortunately, the practise of these observances is much more
obvious as a distinctive mark of religious people than the result of them in
exceptional holiness of life. Not all who profess religion become more upright
and less worldly than their neighbors, but all who profess religion do attend
church and maintain certain appearances of godliness. And in consequence, these
observances become identified with religion, while a high and pure morality does
not become so identified; and in determining whether a man is or is not
religious, attention is turned to a few habits, whose real importance lies
solely in what they accomplish and not at all in themselves. And thus Pharisaism
is encouraged; and men who would not for the world go to bed without saying
their prayers, or who make a great scruple about it, make no scruple at all
about slandering or cheating their neighbor, about being cold and sullen and
tyrannical at home, greedy in business, vindictive and violent in their dealings
with men.

Evidently no perversion of religion could be more fatal than this substitution
of the means for the end. To make religion consist in repeating prayers,
observing fasts, attending ordinances, upholding rites, is to reduce it to a
pernicious, delusive, deadening, worse than useless burden, which reasonable men
must and ought at once to abolish. To encourage men to imagine that they have
attained the summit of human excellence when they can fast twice a week is
plainly to burlesque religion. To induce men to measure their religious
attainment by their diligence in any kind of ritual observances is simply to
fatally delude them. Religion, instead of being the very life of the spirit,
giving it its true place in the universe and imparting to it eternal principles,
is transformed into a mere matter of external performances, which might be as
accurately discharged by a soulless automaton. The character developed by such a
conception of religion is obnoxious alike to God and man, offending God by a
superficial homage and alienating men by self-satisfied pride. The God of the
Pharisee is not the loving Father of all men, but a distant, self-seeking
Sovereign who must be propitiated by rites and ceremonies and sacrifices, and
who cares little for the love of men and has little interest in their genuine
spiritual growth. The Pharisee’s religion is a mere tax paid to this
unattractive and impossible Being, and not an essential of human life. And the
more diligent in his religion the Pharisee is, the less capable does he become
of cherishing any rational and large views of God’s relation to the world and of
His work in it.

Such a religion stunts his humanity as well, and instead of softening him and
widening his sympathies and expanding his heart and his life, by the
consciousness that God is his and will control the future, it contracts and
hardens his whole nature. He is recognizable by his “despising others.” A just
estimate of the difference in natural advantages which makes that easy to one
which is impossible to others; an intelligent comparison of the various
difficulties with which different men have to contend; a perception of what
perfectness of character really is, tends to make good men slow to pronounce
upon their neighbors. They know something of their own frailty, and how much
depravity lies hid under a fairly righteous conduct; they know how obstinately
the heart clings to natural vices of thought and feeling, and how insecure the
attainment already made seems to be, and how remote from a state in which sin is
impossible, and feeling how slight and hardly won their own victories are, they
have sympathy with the defeated and are slow to condemn them. Besides, the chief
element in true growth is growth in love: no man is making permanent growth in
character who is not growing in sympathy, in pity, in helpfulness, in all that
connects him with his fellow-men. To be perfect is to be able to add much to the
good of the world, that is to say, to have the disposition and the ability to
help weaker men against vice and its consequences. The attainment in godliness
which is content with looking down on sinful men and keeping its own garments
clean is no attainment at all. And any true discernment of the actual terms on
which the battle of right and wrong has actually to be fought out by men in this
world makes it impossible to despise those who fall. Pharisaic contempt can only
result from a total misapprehension of what human virtue consists in and of how
it is attained.

Foolish, hateful, and fatal as these views of religion are then, we must beware
lest we ourselves be infected with the leaven of the Pharisees. We are so, when
we allow our attention to the forms of religion to hide from us our neglect of
its inward spirit; when we can detect the slightest disposition to judge our
religious life by its manifestations in worship rather than by its
manifestations in conduct; when we allow ourselves in a self-satisfied
comparison with those who do not carry so many of the external marks of religion
as we do, but who surpass us in generosity, in honor, in kindliness, even in a
self-abasing consciousness of sin. We are infected with the leaven of the
Pharisees when we in any way mistake means for ends; when we read the Bible or
pray as if these occupations were duties to be done for their own sakes and not
for the sake of the result they have; when we are satisfied with having attended
church, though it has done us no good; when we allow religious service to be an
end in itself and not a means towards something beyond itself. We are infected
with the leaven of the Pharisees when we look more to the duties we do than to
the spirit and motive from which they spring; when we become satisfied with
ourselves because we do certain things which other men do not, and when in place
of lowliness and charity our religion is producing in us self-complacency and
either a hard contempt or a compassionate patronage of other men.

This, then, is the type of religion our Lord exhibits in the Pharisee of the
Parable. He sets before the mind’s eye of His hearers a person they were very
familiar with and secretly abhorred, though they feared to express their
abhorrence. They daily saw the man enter the temple with scrupulous conformity
to every prescription of the law of Moses and of the traditions of the elders —
having undergone all the required ablutions, with phylacteries fastened in the
most approved fashion, his face shining with sanctimonious self-satisfaction,
or, on fast days, carefully left un. washed and untrimmed, that it might be seen
he had been fasting, pompously and decorously approaching the place of prayer,
and with measured phrase, disturbed by no agitating emotion, uttering his
unwitting self-condemnation. The prayer our Lord puts into his lips looks at
first sight like a caricature, and we find it difficult to believe that any man,
however dyed with Pharisaism, could be so absolutely self-complacent in his
superiority as this prayer indicates. But not only are there actual prayers on
record which rival this in blind self-adulation, but it is certainly not an
overdrawn picture of the Pharisaic mind. In contrast to the superficial religion
of forms, our Lord sets true heart-religion. Over against the Pharisee,
satisfied with himself and despising others, stands the publican, so occupied
with his own sinful state that he cannot think of other men. There is no
comparison instituted between the Pharisee and the impenitent sinner, though
even such a comparison might not be altogether to the advantage of the
clean-living Pharisee; for self-satisfaction is a more obstinate bar to progress
than the vices of men who make no pretensions to virtue. But between the
Pharisee and the penitent publican the comparison must be wholly in favor of the
latter. Here is a man who unconsciously goes direct to the heart of religion. By
a simple recognition of his actual condition he shoots at a bound far ahead of
the Pharisee. The very circumstance that his sins are gross and undeniable is in
his favor. Condemned as he is by the judgment of men, he feels himself to be
inexcusable; and aided thus by the conscience of others, his own conscience
loudly accuses him. The true penitent is identified by every mark of humble and
sincere contrition: he stands afar off, his shame will not suffer him to lift up
his eyes; in his misery he beats his breast; he cannot, so deep in his sense of
guilt, even address God directly, but merely ejaculates, “God be merciful to me
a sinner.” It is the picture of a man thoroughly alive to all the shame and
misery of sin. His sin is past apology, extenuation, or explanation. It is the
grand feature of his life: he has nothing else to speak of; it occupies his
thoughts. He has not the remotest idea that anything acceptable to God can be
found in him. “A sinner”— that is the term that describes him. Mercy is the only
attribute of God he dare appeal to. He does not buoy himself up with any
remembrance of almsdeeds or prayers in the past, nor with any promise of
amendment. His is a case that it is in vain to disguise; he does not attempt to
give any account of it: he can but utter the one cry that is left to the man who
knows his whole life has been wrong and that no power of reparation is now left
to him.

Such a condition is probably not rare. Rare it may be in instructed and
religious circles, where penitence is urged as a duty; but probably not rare
among those who have not put themselves much in the way of religious instruction
and whose penitence is the sincere and genuine growth of their own experience of
the fruits of sin. Life is the most effective teacher; and where elaborate
doctrinal instruction often produces only Pharisees, life produces true
penitents. And plainly our Lord means to shed a ray of hope into those dark
regions which lie outside the pale of ecclesiastical teaching; for though both
men were praying in the temple, the impression is left on the mind that the
publican was a somewhat unfamiliar visitant of the place of prayer. The ignorant
cry of the sinner, almost crushed with despair, has in it, our Lord would say,
the germ of a new life. The moment of heart-broken hopelessness is like the
sinking in death of the old life, which makes way for a new hope in God and a
new life in Him. To be absolutely broken in our own self-confidence and stopped
in our own way is the turning point which brings us to God’s everlasting way. It
is an experience full of wretchedness, but only by a clear recognition of our
actual state can amendment be begun. If we are to find our life in God, life in
self must be proved futile. If we are to use intelligently the helps God affords
us, we must see our dangers. If salvation from sin is to be rational and real,
it must meet us where we are and be applied to us as we are. We must face the
actual truth about the relation which our life holds to perfect holiness. We
must fairly judge ourselves by a perfect life and own to all actual derelictions
of duty. We are not summoned to penitence as a seemly and suitable
acknowledgment of God; we are summoned to own and face the truth, to touch and
take to do with reality, to look at life as it really is and ourselves as we
really are; and if the truth about our own life and character does not compel
shame and humble us before God, we are not asked to force a penitence that is
not natural and reasonable. The circumstance that the humble, brokenhearted
publican went down to his house justified rather than the Pharisee, shows us
that there is no true religion without a consciousness of sin; that the
consciousness of God involves a consciousness of sin, as the strongest light
casts the darkest shadows. God is so subtly interwoven with all things, and
especially with all that is moral, that we cannot know Him until we know human
life, and cannot know human life until we know Him. The two grandest parts of
knowledge go hand in hand and grow together. And you can always tell how much a
man knows of God by ascertaining how much he knows of his own sin. By the
knowledge of God he is lifted into quite a new point of view. When he knows
something of the love, patience, and sacrifice of God, he finds himself in anew
moral world, in the presence of principles and purposes infinitely exalted above
those he has been familiar with, and applying to all things a scale immeasurably
higher. When the life of Jesus Christ is taken seriously as the one standard or
mirror for all human life, when it is seen to be the Divine idea for us all, we
cannot but sink in shame at the contrast it presents to our own. And to which of
us is the prayer of the publican unsuitable? Which of us has not sinned without
excuse? Who among us can invite God’s strict judgment? Would it not be the part
of candor and honesty to go to God as frankly and humbly as the publican, and
supplicate God’s mercy? Must we not be living an altogether delusive life if we
are living with sin unconfessed? Is it possible we can be satisfied with our
life while we have been at no pains to ascertain how sin is to be dealt with?
And is it possible we can leave a sinful past behind us and pass on to the
future with principles unchanged, with no certainty that the future will be
better than the past, with no real hope or assurance that we are advancing
towards a sinless and perfect condition? To the real penitent this Parable is
meant to bring encouragement. It plainly says that God will not despise the
prayer of the contrite. When the heart fails under a sense of sin, when the
whole of life is filled with darkness, then God is near and accepts the
penitent. To be hopeless is at all times mistaken and wrong. To be hopeless is
to be godless, and no man is godless however he may have denied God and forsaken
Him. He has a God still, a God ready to forgive, delighting in mercy; and if
nothing else convinces him of God’s nearness, his own sense of sin ought to do
so, proving, as it does, the supreme importance of all moral relations. THE END


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  CHAPTER 47: 04.00. THE PRAYER THAT TEACHES US TO PRAY
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THE PRAYER THAT TEACHES US TO PRAY BY MARCUS DODS, D.D.

LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27, PATERNOSTER ROW

1900

4S234 ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

CONTENTS. THE PRAYER THAT TEACHES US TO PRAY1 BY MARCUS DODS, D.D.1 Chapter I.
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven.”1 Chapter
II. “Hallowed be Thy name.”10 Chapter III. “Thy kingdom come.”19 Chapter IV.
“Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”29 Chapter V. “Give us this day
our daily bread.”37 Chapter VI. “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors.”46 Chapter VII. “ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil.”57

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed
be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil: For Thine is
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Matthew 6:9-13.


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  CHAPTER 48: 04.01.     AFTER MANNER THEREFORE PRAY YE: OUR FATHER
========================================================================

Chapter I. “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven.”

FAR better than all instructions and precepts about prayer is this simple model.
Using this, we learn both how to pray and what to pray for. And when we have
learned this prayer, it will be time to consider how we shall expand the
teaching of our Lord. If it is “after this manner” we are to pray, then who can
restrain prayer on the ground of lack of time for devotion? This is the “five
words with understanding” preferable to ten thousand of formality or repetition.
Here is no vain and heathenish babbling, as if the length of our prayer were to
measure the value of its answer; nor any explanatory repetition, as if God did
not know what things we have need of. But there is here only a straightforward
laying before God of one desire after another. Simplicity and brevity are
discernible at a glance, and are taught at the first lesson. But if it is “
after this manner “ we are to pray, then who can restrain prayer on the ground
of mental inability to pray? For here are desires presented before God with the
barest possible clothing of words. Elaborate language, then, is no essential of
prayer; nor yet ingenious thought, nor the observant penetration of spirit which
discovers the minute or hidden wants of man. Only so much language is required
as makes the desire audible. We are backward in prayer, not because it is too
difficult, but because it is too simple for us. It is so unlike our other ways
of gaining and getting, that we are always trying to make it something more than
it is, an asking for what we want. And to every man this model prayer says, “ If
you want nothing from God, then do not pray you cannot pray; but whatever you
want from Him, ask for, and you pray “. This prayer, however, is a model as much
for its matter as its manner. So that we ought not only to imitate, but use it.
We are not to be satisfied if our prayers have some general resemblance to it,
but we are to use the very words taught us by our Lord. Does some one think that
it may do well enough for beginners, or for ordinary occasions, or to eke out
some petitions of our own devising, but that an advanced spiritual condition
demands something fuller and richer? So apparently thought one of our Lord’s
disciples; for we read in the narrative of Luke that, when the disciples saw
Christ pray, one of them asked to be taught to pray; hoping, probably, to
receive some fuller, more striking, more sublime petitions. But what says our
Lord? Not only, as here, “ After this manner pray ye “; but, “ when ye pray, say
“. And there is no getting past the evident precept here delivered, that we
ought habitually to use these words. And as we use them, we shall find that
though we learnt them at our mother’s knee, it takes a lifetime to fill them
with their meaning, and eternity to give them all their answer. If these be our
leading and guiding desires, it matters less what else we are seeking. But if
these be not at all among our desires, then we are not being led in the best
direction, and have yet to learn what these petitions include, and how desirable
their contents are. To let this prayer lie with all the riches of its promise in
our view, and not to use it, is to be cruel to our own souls as Saul was to his
men, when he commanded that none should put forth his hand to take of the honey
that was dripping from the trees of the wood, which taken would enlighten the
eyes and give strength to the faint. Are we anxious to know what future lies
before us? Let us pray this prayer and we become prophets of our own future,
surely knowing that these are the things which shall be; for by commanding us so
to pray, our Lord has given us sure pledge of the fulfilment of these things.
Here, then, we have the future of the Church, the future of those on whom God
delights to show the wealth of His love. We have it here, as it lies now in the
desires of those who are tending towards it through the unlikely and unpromising
things of this world. And if with one heart and mind we were desiring these
things, would they not be more speedily accomplished, the obstructions of the
world sooner conquered, and our own blessedness and triumph in God more rapidly
achieved? This prayer, taught by our Lord, and wrought by His Spirit in the
desires of His people, is the bond of attraction, drawing earth steadily towards
heaven; drawing it with a momentum ever increasing as the distance becomes less,
and as these common desires find a hold in a greater number of hearts. Of the
arrangement of this prayer many things have been noticed some fanciful, some
just. It has been compared to the law of the Decalogue, inasmuch as, like it,
this prayer has two tables, the first pertaining to the things of God, the
second to the things of man. There has also been noticed (if not with more
justice, at least with more meaning) a reference to the Trinity through out; the
first petition of either part of the prayer referring to God as Creator and
Preserver; the second petition of either part referring to God as Redeemer; and
the third to God the Holy Spirit. This has considerable foundation in the form
of the prayer, and not a little significance with regard to the completeness of
the blessing we should seek. But the obvious division is the useful one to bear
in mind. There are two parts. In the first part the object of worship rivets the
thought that has been turned towards Him, and those desires which concern His
great purposes are first uttered; and only after that follows the second part,
in which tn^ attention turns to our own condition and wants. The petitions of
the first part are inseparable from one another; each includes the one which
follows; the name of God must be recognised and hallowed before His kingdom can
be established, and only when His kingdom has come can His will be done. And,
indeed, all these petitions are included in the very invocation, when we say, “
Our Father which art in heaven “; for when we say this with our hearts, we
already hallow the name, own the authority, and submit to the will of God. And,
again, the first part of the prayer paves the way for the second, and introduces
it; for the things which we implore in the first part are not to come to pass
irrespective of our condition. We are men; if, then, the will of God is to be
done by us on earth, we must be maintained in life. We are sinners; if, then,
His kingdom is to come to us, our sins must be for given, since nothing that
defiles can enter that kingdom. If all the petitions of the first part are to be
answered, and if our calling God “ Father “is not to be in word only, then we
must depend on God to give us the guidance of His wisdom, and to rescue us from
the power of the Evil.

Let us try, then, to learn what is contained in this invocation, and to see how
it implies every good disposition for prayer, and includes every encouragement,
remembering that as much that we say is determined by the tone, and that as some
words in our common speech, such as “ mother,” “ father,” are peculiarly
elastic, containing as much meaning as the heart which uses them can pour into
them, so we have to learn to give to these words, “ Our Father,” the tone of
Christ; and as we learn this, we shall find that we never do fill them to the
full, that they rather still extend beyond our actual feelings, and show us that
there is more to be striven after. Indeed, if there be any who thinks he has
exhausted these words, who has never trembled at the glory and the promise that
are in them, who has never hesitated, even on his knees, before he has dared to
take them and use them as his words, is not he still using them merely as a
form, not believing, perhaps never having even conceived, that there is a
reality which they depict? The first thing to be noticed about these words is,
that they are new in the Bible and in the world, put now for the first time into
the mouth of man. They begin New-Testament prayer.

They evidence that a change is passing; that as men are now expected to be more
than formerly, having clearer declarations of the will of God, so they are
invited to richer encouragement, having clearer exhibition of the nature of God.
“ The true light now shineth.” God has passed through the clouds and darkness
that are around His throne, and has dwelt with us, that we might “ acquaint
ourselves with God “. What was given long before as a promise, “Thou shalt call
Me, My Father,” is now fulfilled. In all the fervent confidence of David we
never find him uttering these words, “ My Father “. And wherever we do find God
spoken of as the Father of Israel, this title seems to refer to the kindness of
God as their guide and defence, or to His creating and preserving power. Thus
Malachi explains the cause, “Have we not all one Father?” by “Hath not one God
created us? “ And even in this sense we do not find it used in the form of
address. The nearest approach to it that we find is that most moving prayer
recorded in Isaiah, in which the orphaned and desolate people reassure them
selves of God’s favour in these words, “ Doubt less Thou art our Father, our
Redeemer “; but by the last part of the same supplication we see that little
more is meant even here than to call upon God as a faithful Creator, who has
indeed entered into some peculiar connection with them, for it is said, “ Thou,
O Lord, art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our potter, and we are all the
work of Thy hand! “ In this there is a dimness which the birth of Immanuel
scatters. There is a feeling after the indissoluble bond, but in the humanity of
our Lord we see the union formed.

It was for Christ the Son to give us this liberty of calling God “ our Father “.
So that there is something more here than the mere acknowledgment of God as our
Creator and Keeper. There is a recognition, distinct and necessary, of the Son
of God and His work, and through Him we aspire to an intimacy which the Creator
has not with any mere creature. By Christ we are lifted to quite a new level and
rank before God. We still have God as our faithful Creator, who will supply all
our necessities. The Creator is included in the Father; but in the Father we
have, over and above, the assurance that our connection with Him is one of love
and of lasting relationship; that we shall not be suf fered to go adrift, but
shall be brought up into His likeness, and shall live with Him; and that the
ground on which this relationship is established is one of unutterable dignity,
the Son of God having become our brother, our nature being now worn by the same
person as wears the nature of God. If, therefore, we do not acknowledge Christ
in saying “ Our Father,” this epithet is either profane, misty, or heathenish.
The heathen called God Father, seeing the goodness, but not understanding the
majesty, of Him on whom they called. And there is among ourselves a confused
idea of the love of God, and of His desire to bless us, which seems to justify
our calling God, as by a figure, “Our Father”. But it is no such confused and
delusive figure that Christ sets before us, but a reality. It is a fact
accomplished, that God has become man; a present reality, that God is man. The
Son of God has become Son of Man, and for this very purpose” that we might
receive the adoption of sons “; that we might claim the same Father as Christ
claims.

These words, then, which the Son puts into our lips, again and again raise our
hearts to the belief, that not only may we expect for His sake many blessings
from God, so that it shall be a very apt simile to call Him Father, but that God
enters into a relationship with us in Him, and be comes for ever connected with
us in a way that secures that all blessings shall be ours. It is not on account
of what we receive from God that we are to think of Him with filial gratitude,
and count Him a Father; but because He is in very truth our Father, we shall
receive all things at His hand. The relationship is to be first in our minds,
deeper also in our affections; and, this being so, hope will be easy and
humility natural. This is what humbles us and raises us up to believe that God
has connected Himself with us.

Supposing that nothing ever came of this relation ship, still it must remain,
and remain for ever. Our relationship to God has been established; the Elder
Brother of our race calls God Father; and, irrespective of all that may result
from it, this relationship is satisfying to man. Our natures are bound to that
of God in the person of Christ; and so long as that person remains undestroyed,
we remain related to God. There is, of course, no earthly relationship which
fully sets forth this our connection with God. It is a separate, singular
reality, and it must be conceived of separately in its own reality. Other
relation ships may help us to understand it; but while it is only considered
under earthly figures, we are in danger of forgetting that underneath there lies
the substantial reality of our sonship. And this, instead of being less true
than earthly relationships, is the one relationship which when a man enters into
he ceases to be homeless and a wan derer, a fugitive and vagabond -upon the face
of the earth, and from the face of God ceases to be a mere withered leaf borne
helpless on the wind, whose origin none cares to trace, and whose destiny none
turns to see. He has found his place in the universe, he has found a hold and a
hope; and however in himself unstable, weak, and incapable, he rests enduringly
in the unchangeable Father.

He has been outside, thinking the world a strange, cold, barren, friendless, and
unsatisfying place; he has wandered about, not seeing “ through the thick
cloud,” and still less dreaming that One was seeing and caring for him; and now
he finds he has a Father One to love, One to serve, One to glorify, One to
worship.* But is it so sacred a ground as this that we are to tread in each
day’s ordinary approach to God? No other path is open. The only prayer our Lord
will teach begins, “ Our Father “. These words it is easy to use in the
figurative sense, * “ I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no
man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. I cried unto
Thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge, and my portion in the land of the
living. “Psalms 142:4-5. for we can all readily acknowledge that God has been
kind, and acted towards us like a Father. But this sense wins us nothing. It
goes round, like a thief or a robber, seeking another entrance to the favour of
God than the door that He has Himself opened in Christ, and therefore it brings
us no nearer God, but only misleads us. And there is no need that we seek for
another entrance, for the door is wide enough. It lets in every one that would
pass through it. The one thing that we have to show as our passport by this gate
is our humanity. If we say that we are born of woman, as Christ was “born of a
woman,” then His Father owns us. This is all.

There is no man who may not use this prayer. And there is no man who is more
entitled to use it than another. For the title does not lie in the petitioner,
but in Christ. These words do not say, “ If you are of kindred spirit with
Christ, if you can depend upon the resolves you have made to live a pure and
holy life, if you have often used this prayer already, then come, and with
freedom and boldness call God Father”; but they go out to the ends of the earth,
they look upon all human conditions, they consider the fair and the foul, the
stately, noble, and promising in human character, and also all that is wrecked
and lost, and they say, “ If you are human, if you wear the nature worn by the
Son, if you are born of woman, then no matter whatever else you are, come, and
say, My Father “.

These words may be abused. A man may shrink from this holy relationship, and yet
call upon God. Of course, he gains nothing by it; the favour of God has never
been stolen into under cover of deceit. He knows who come to Him through Christ,
and who only name the name of Christ. But we may deceive ourselves. And
therefore we are to listen to conscience, which tells us that a likeness of
character is expected between father and child. This likeness is found in all
who call God Father in truth.

Such an assimilation Christ supposes, saying, in this same Sermon on the Mount,
“ Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, that ye may be the children
of your Father which is in heaven”. But to recognise, own, and call upon our
Father is the first and most grateful promise of likeness to Him. And as the
earthly parent feels a new bond to his child, when the child, in its first
efforts at language, calls upon him and claims him as his father, so the first
movement of the Spirit of holiness within the child of God teaches him to cry,
“Abba, Father,” and, imperfectly though it be spoken, God hails it as the sign
of holiness begun, and as the earnest of likeness to Himself. This same idea is
carried out by the epithet attached; for we say not merely, “Our Father,” but
distinctively, “Our Father which art in heaven”. And as the ideas of holiness
and power are those which all men naturally associate with “heaven,” we are to
bear in mind mainly these ], two things about Him to whom we pray that He is
holy, and that He is powerful. No doubt, there are other ideas which are also
suggested to our thoughts as these words pass our lips. No doubt, by praying to
Heaven, we acknowledge that earth is not sufficient for us; that the things of
earth are gifts, not here of themselves, but sent by God, and that “ a man can
receive nothing, except it be given him of Heaven “. We look to Heaven as the
source of all power; when the heavens hear the earth, then the earth yields her
fruit. This expression helps us further in prayer, by giving to God a distinct
habitation. Our prayer would be much more difficult were we permitted to say
nothing more than “ Our Father”. Our minds are by far too weak to grasp the idea
of an omnipresent spirit. It is true, as it has been said, “ Where God is, there
is heaven and where is God not? “ But ought we not rather to say, “ Whither
Christ has ascended, and now lives with His human body, there is heaven, and the
presence of the Father for us”? Unless so, unless we concentrate heaven in the
person of Christ, and believe in His bodily appearing before God for us, then
are we set to a harder task in our worship than were ever the ancient people of
God. We need such an aid as is here given to keep the distinct personality of
God before us. We are not to mingle Him with His creation, but are to pray to
one who is separate from all He has made. So the Bible tells us of heaven, where
His throne is set. Of the reality and position of this dwelling-place of God it
is enough for us to know that Christ is there. Knowing this, God cannot be lost
to us.

Wherever man is, there is a heaven above him; and from the spot he stands on, he
may appeal to God through Him that is the Way. It is not to an idea of our own
we appeal, but to a separate, definite person, who hears when we say, “ Thou “.
We do not make His presence by falling on our knees; He was before we prayed,
and was present before we realised His presence. But the leading idea put into
our minds by our Lord is, that as God will help us as our Father, so can He as
being in heaven. As David says, “ Our God is in the heavens, He hath done
whatsoever He hath pleased”. From the darkness of earth we pray to Him who is in
the light of heaven; from the confusion of earth and its perplexity, we pray to
Him who sits above, seeing to the end, and ordering all things; from the trouble
and weakness of earth we cry up to the “ blessed and only Potentate, God over
all, blessed for evermore”. It is good for us to remember that there even is a
heaven as well as an earth; a place where God’s rule is seen, and where all is
harmonious, well-ordered, steady, peaceful, as the blue vault that symbolises
it. But how much better to direct our prayer into that kingdom, to its centre
and throne, and thus to fasten and secure our hopes in the world above, where
there is no more curse, and where they dwell who even now have overcome! This is
our comfort, that while we are involved in this world we can appeal to One who
is above it, and uncontrolled by it. Or this might be our comfort, did we not
bring God also down to earth, and either lose sight of Him amid its confusion,
or bind Him helpless with His own laws. Our prayer will not proceed in faith
until we raise God high above us and all that we know, to the very supreme of
power. When the utmost skill and strength of the child have failed, he runs to
his father, never doubting that with him is more skill and sufficient strength.
And we must learn to cease from measuring the power of God by our own, and
reasoning from the one to the other. We must learn to set God above His own
laws; not that He will reverse them, but use them as we know not how. We are not
to think that, where we see no possibility, God sees none; that, when all human
skill has been fruitlessly spent, there is no more that God can do; that, when
everything goes wrong with us, and we are ready to sit down and wait for ruin,
there is no help for us in God. Too often we pray to a God whom we do not set in
the heavens, to whom we do not in fact ascribe as much wisdom and power as we do
to men, whose help we do not as fully trust in as we should in the combined help
of some on earth we know of, whom we scarcely trust in much more than in
ourselves, else we should not be found despairing when we see no remedy for our
ills, and when our own strength is exhausted.

Again, this invocation sets before us a God of heavenly holiness as well as of
heavenly power. In the God to whom we pray centres all influence for good, and
from Him proceeds no evil.

Every exercise of His power has been, and continues to be, on the side of good.
“ He cannot be tempted.” No circumstances can combine to make Him favour
evil-doing or neglect well-doing. It is of His nature to help, to give, to bless
to the utmost. Free from all suspicion, because He knows what is in us, He
appreciates the feeblest beginnings of good, cherishes and fosters into life
what man would count dead and lost, knows nothing of the grudging, of the
malice, of the captiousness of man; but watches how He may encourage us in the
slightest efforts towards the right, watches how He may insinuate His help, and
in proportion to His own freedom from all taint or shadow of evil, deals
delicately with the sinner in all His way, until our eyes begin to open to the
perfect rectitude, simplicity, and loveliness of His character; and we see that
in Him there is help for us in all good, and deliverance from all evil. And when
we see something of the holiness of God, we shall be careful to restrain such
desires as are inconsistent with His purposes, but shall very boldly expect that
He will “ hear the right “.

It need scarcely be said, that the word “our,” by which we are here taught to
address God, can by no means prohibit or discountenance the indi vidual and
private use of this prayer. But our Lord, viewing the need of the whole body of
His people, gives one prayer for all; and it is when we pray together and for
the things we need in common with all men who have lived through this world,
that we feel the certainty of our being heard grow to its height. We then but
swell the common voice which has gone up to God in all times and from all
corners of the world, which has passed to Him from the unhardened lips of the
child, and which He has caught up from the broken utterances of the dying; which
has been sighed as a forlorn hope by the despondent and oppressed, when all
other hope seemed vain, and which is gradually risen to, through other prayers,
as the highest and most hopeful utterance of Christian faith an utterance which,
like the highest flight of angels on Jacob’s ladder of prayer, carries the soul
out of sight of earth, and, giving it the vision of the things of God, teaches
it what is worthy to be desired. Round this prayer the desires of all the
faithful cluster, and here we enjoy the communion of saints. Praying in
remembrance of that great company of our fellow-men in whom we see more legibly
and variously written all the sorrows and anxieties, all the pains and sins,
that are incident to our common humanity, we learn what are indeed our deep and
urgent needs. No more blinded by our own peculiar and immediately present
circumstances, we learn to see through them to the wants which lie at the ground
of our nature, and always exist. And thus we are taught what to pray for, both
by the company in which we pray, and by the nature of Him to whom we pray.
Praying with our fellow-men, and excluding no most distant character, nor
saddest condition, nor deepest necessity, our hearts expand to desire those
larger blessings which embrace our whole beings, and do not limit prayer to
those particular benefits which touch only what is peculiar in our present case.
And praying to the holy and loving God, our hearts renounce evil and earthly
desires, and rise to things that are worthy to be given by the Father of glory.
The propriety and breadth of this invocation are thus readily appreciated. To
use it rightly, with the understanding and the spirit, is to begin prayer as we
ought; confidently and lovingly, because we pray to “Our Father”; humbly, \
because we call God “ Father “ only through the humiliation of the Son;
hopefully, because all power is with Him; carefully, because He is holy. When we
are drawing near to God, as if we were hardly used, as if our misery were giving
us a claim, as it gives God occasion of mercy, then this “ Our Father” reduces
our spirits to a lowly and suitable thankfulness. I cannot be hardly dealt with
if I can say to God, “ My Father “. When we are drawing near recklessly, more
because the time of prayer has come round than because the heart is hungering
after the things of God, does not this “Our Father” bring before our thoughts
all the toil of Christ on our behalf, His incarnation and His passion, His
ascension and His ceaseless appearing before God for us, and forbid us to use
lightly what is so earnest a matter to Him? When we would gladly have the
blessings of God’s bounty and the security of His favour, but would rather have
these at a distance from Himself, than come into any connection with Him which
would oblige us to lead a holy life, does not this “ Our Father” profitably
remind us, that relationship, close, enduring, and assimilating, must be the
beginning of all hope and blessing? When we are entering on an act of devotion,
as if it were a mere exercise of the spirit, in which none is concerned but
itself, this invocation reminds us that prayer is something more than “ a
posture of the soul,” a beneficial state of mind, an under going of certain
trains of thought and emotion, that it is address to another, transaction with a
personal, present, living God. In short, this introduction suits itself to every
praying spirit, attracting and encouraging and filling with all suitable
thoughts and feelings.

Let us, then, use this common prayer with intelligence, striving always to fill
it more fully with meaning and desire. Let us wait for no other introduction
than that which is given us here; and, seeing that it is no stranger who asks
for our worship, let us believe that thus He would have us get over that great
difficulty of drawing near to Him suitably, and let us ask from Him, than whom
none is nearer, none more intelligent of our condition, none more consider ate,
none more painstaking about us. And as we have the faculty of love to attach us
one to another, which makes solitude wearisome and friendlessness terrible, so
we have this faculty of worship which is relieved and finds its object, when we
return from our distance and banishment, and fall down before God, and say, “
Our Father which art in heaven “. This is love, and admiration, and trust, the
most absolute. This is the ultimate repose of the spirit, beyond which nothing
is desired, nor can be conceived. This is the feeling which at last says, “It is
good for us to be here; here let us dwell, even in Thee, O Lord, who art our
dwelling-place in all generations “.


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  CHAPTER 49: 04.02.     HALLOWED BE THY NAME
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Chapter II. “Hallowed be Thy name.” OF the petitions which are included in this
prayer, none has been less prayed than this which our Lord sets first. Many a
man has cried earnestly and sincerely enough, “ Give me this day my daily bread
“; many with deeper earnestness, and out of a more appalling helplessness, have
cried, “Deliver us from evil”; but few have learnt to have this petition deepest
in the heart and readiest on the lip, “ Hallowed be Thy name “. At all times we
recognise it as very proper, but rather as a doing of homage to Him we invoke,
than as the first soaring petition, in which the spirit, feeling its liberty and
rejoicing in the wealth of its prospect, rises at once to the very summit of all
desire. Is there not this feeling still in our hearts (and is it not one that
must be got rid of), that to desire God’s glory, and pray for it before we tell
the wants which are gnawing our spirits with very sensible agony, may be a
seemly and decorous order, but is cer tainly not the natural one; that, if it be
right to seek the glory of God first, this must always be with us an artificial
order; that the habit of our minds is so constantly to make for our own good
that it can only be by constraint and correction we can reverse this habit, and
seek other things as heartily? Now, prayer demands that the very order of it be
sincere, that we do not set first among our petitions what ranks among the last
of our desires, nor think to propitiate God by an artificial introduction
wrought up beyond our feeling. The aid of the Spirit is afforded us that the
deep-seated longing for the glory of God, which has seemed impossible to us, may
become not only possible, but habitually predominant.

However, that we may not set before ourselves a higher attainment than God has
set, and higher therefore than we can achieve, and so, instead of rising, sink
into a despairing helplessness that gives up all effort, let us remember that
God’s glory and our own good are so connected that we cannot desire the one
without also, at least in directly, desiring the other; as little as a soldier
can eagerly advance the glory of his commander without thereby advancing
himself. And as there are times when the only way to secure the good of the
cause in which he serves is to give his whole thought to the providing for his
personal safety, and when he is so tumultuously and pressingly surrounded with
dangers, that it were idle to ask him to think of anything else, or desire
definitely anything else than his own deliverance and victory, so there are
times when a man’s personal wants so throng before him, and when his own
condition is so critical, that to ask him to pray for anything else than
personal help and deliverance would be useless and wrong. For what so desirable
as that a man be brought to God by the intense agonising desires of his own
heart, and should own, out of his personal and unmistakable experience, that
with God are blessings which must be had now, and before anything further can be
thought of? But this prayer, while by its individual petitions it satisfies
these occasional moods, is specially adapted to our ordinary condition, and
teaches that to an unperturbed mind, calmly surveying the desirable state of
things, the glory of God will appear to be the comprehensive and prime blessing,
which, if secured, all else will go well. We are to desire it not as something
different from, but as including our own good; nor yet are we to desire it for
this one reason only, that it includes our own good, but in view also of all
that other good which is besides embraced in it. The right condition of things,
the well-ordered and firmly-established condition, in which we may eternally
abide with security, gladness, scope, and highest energy, is to be attained by
this prayer; surely, then, first of all must God, the centre and head of all,
get His place in the world. Should we believe that this was a prayer to be
trusted to, did it open with any other, any lower petition? Is not this at least
a good beginning, a sure foundation? Is not this that which all men, at all
times, may agree to desire? But though these words, “ Hallowed be Thy name,” are
a distinct petition, and not a mere appendix to the invocation, yet without the
invocation we cannot understand nor use this first petition. For to think of God
as we naturally do, and pray that His name may be hallowed, is impossible. The
names by which our untaught hearts would call God are such as these, distant,
inexorable unsympathising, grudging; inhabiting quite another world than ours;
separate from, and even ignorant of, all influences which move us; having a will
to humble and tyrannise over and baffle us. If such be the names which
bestrepresent our idea of God, then of course we cannot pray, “ Hallowed be Thy
name “. But such is not the God to whom we have been introduced by Christ; He
has taught us to say, “Our Father “; He has come, and, without upbraiding, has
convinced us how totally we have misunder stood God. He has taken the veil from
our hearts, and the fixed aspect of eternal and unalterable love moves us to
humility and wondering devotion. He shows us how, while we have been forgetting
God, He has been thinking upon us; how, while our thoughts toward Him have been
full of suspicion, and weariness, and aversion, His towards us have been “
precious,” fraught with ineffable compassion, forbearance such as the patience
of God could alone exhibit, and a marvellous goodness which has taken up every
feature of our necessity, and being still unexhausted by this great draught upon
it, has liberally and rejoicingly showered upon us lavish and unthought-of
blessings. He has shown us above all, that, while we have been seeking to sever
ourselves from God, He has been connecting Himself with us, so that no interests
can be dearer to Him than ours; that “ hitherto hath the Father worked “ and the
Son for the unconscious and helpless younger brethren; and that His care being
to provide for us, His purpose to prosper us, His glory our well-being, and His
Son our elder brother, He would have us know Him by this name, “ Our Father “.
And when we are moved by the Spirit of adoption to call God by this name, and to
believe that there is one family in heaven and on earth, called by the name of
the Son of man who came down from heaven; when we look to the face of this
Father and see in its loving wisdom and majesty and truth that verily He is also
God; when we survey the excellences which belong alone to Him whose love thus
embraces us as in a sure dwelling place, then glorying, we glory in God; and
saying, “ Our Father which art in heaven,” we say in the same breath, in the
same burst of feeling, Hallowed be Thy name”. We need not the old admonition, “
If I be a Father, where is Mine honour? “ For the time, at least, we have the
feelings of God’s children; and what so dear to the heart of the child as the
honour of his father’s name? As we approach and address Him our hearts fill and
swell with a sense of His boundless might and marvellous counsel, of His
supremacy in dominion and in excellence, so different from all else that He is
seen to have right to His name, “ I am, and there is none else beside Me,” and
yet “ Our Father “: so separated from all besides that He and they can not be
named under the same kind of existence, and yet “ Our Father “. How can we but
long that all men should revere this name, and should come to such knowledge of
it as to live by it? But what precisely are the feelings we express when we say,
“ Hallowed be Thy name “? Is the name of God of similar use and meaning to the
name of a man? A man’s name is that by which we speak of him to distinguish him
from every one else. When we use the name of any one, it calls up to our minds a
certain character, not always according to truth, but according to our idea of
the man. And so, when we hear or use the name of God, there is also present to
our minds a certain character; too often a character made up of the ideas which
we have thoughtlessly suffered to cluster round the name; some times, however, a
character which does on the whole agree with what God has taught us to believe
about Him. The name of God is not God Himself, neither is it our idea of God;
but it is that expressed idea of Him which He Himself would have us to possess,
and which may be gathered from His own revelation. The name of God is not the
nature of God, nor His relationship to us; but if the conception which God would
have us to cherish of Him can be summed up in one word, then that word is the
name of God. When it is said, “ Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but
we will remember the name of the Lord our God,” the meaning is, that confidence
could be best maintained by remembering what God had taught concerning Himself.
When it is said, “ They that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee,” it is
meant that whoever has that idea of God which He Himself by His dealings and
teaching has warranted, will trust in Him. These dealings and teaching are not
themselves the name, but rather the utterance of the name. From all that God has
done and said, gather up the various features of His character, and express
these, and in that expression you have the name. The name of God is that which
we can contemplate and say, “ God is that “. This name we are not left to find
out for ourselves. From the first it has been the care of God “ to spell out
Himself to us, sometimes by one perfection, and sometimes by another “. One
feature after another of His character has been revealed, until at length all
has been shown us in Him who is “ the express image of His person “. Hint upon
hint was given of the loving purpose of God to man, until all was told in the
Word who declared the Father. Nearer and nearer did heaven seem coming to earth,
closer and closer did God involve His glory with human interests, till the Son
came and showed us “the Father”. Nothing now can be added to this name; in it
all that God is to us is summed up, and all that He is in Himself is implied in
it. He jealously guarded His former names, and called the attention of men to
each addition to His name, that the glory of this final name might be understood
and received. To Moses He says, “ I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto
Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by My name Jehovah was I not known to
them,” intimating as distinctly as may be that now He is about to reveal
something more of His character. When He gave this name, He was about to bring
out of an idolatrous country, and plant in the midst of an idolatrous world, a
people in whom the knowledge of the one God was to be maintained for all
generations. And so He calls Himself now by a name distinguishing Him from all
usurpant gods. He calls Him self Jehovah, the I Am, the living God, who alone
has life in Himself, the eternal and unchangeable One, which is, and which was,
and which is to come. So hallowed was this name by the Jews, that they would not
pronounce it; nor do we wonder at their awe when we read their books, and see
what God Himself made of this name.

There, at the end of warnings that are terrible to read, come these words as the
seal, “ I Jehovah “; He who would be of the same mind to all generations, whose
threatenings could not be vain, but were the expression of an eternal decision,
of judgment passed with all time present to His eternal, all-embracing vision.
And at the end of promises reaching far into the future, and speaking of things
far different from the then present, come again these words as the firm ground
of all assurance, the signature of God, “ I Jehovah “. This name was the
fountain of all authority, and the guarantee of all confidence: a name asserting
for its owner, what no other name ever did, the exclusive proprietorship of
life; a “ glorious and fearful name,” which set itself above every name, and
inhabited a glory of its own. But this name was then given not only to preserve
those who hallowed it from the hallowing of any names which were unworthy of
worship, but to be a constant comfort and near refuge to them in all their
wanderings. Jehovah is the eternal, the only God, because He only hath life, but
also the only dwelling-place of His people, because He only is unchangeable.
They had to be taught, as we have to be taught, that not in this place nor in
that, but in God is the true rest. And so, while they were led from place to
place, they had God dwelling among them by a striking symbol, and they had the
name of the Eternal and Un changeable, keeping them in mind that He who led them
changed not nor ever passed away. But to this was to be added a further name. To
know God as a rest and a home, even this was not enough. It might seem at first
sight to be enough to know Him as the “ I AM,” who has life, independent of all
origin, independent also of all accidents and contingencies, who possesses the
only true existence, and without whom nothing else can be; it might seem enough
to know Him as the “ I AM,” the eternally Present, with whom is neither past nor
future, whose name is “ I AM,” because in Him is no revolution of years nor
succession and lapse of times. If He “ is “ now all that He ever has been, all
that He ever shall become; if all time as well as all place is embraced in His
existence; if by the name He has given us of Himself He has taught our faculties
to strive to annihilate time and its changes and rise to His eternity, to resist
our sinkings and waverings of faith and our varying moods, and to live now in
all the peace and joy of a life that we have in the Eternal; if He has taught us
thus that with Him there is and can be “ neither variableness nor shadow of
turning”; if He has taught us also to be independent of place, and has shown to
us Himself as the One that is still with us, in whom we live, and who still
brings us to the place that yields us the life He intends; if He does all this,
is there more that He can do?

Over the virgin mother’s babe He pronounces a name which so fills the heart that
it excludes all others. “ Behold, I send a messenger before thee, to keep thee
in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared; obey His
voice, for My name is in Him.” And the name that is in Him is “ Our Father,” no
longer a name that needs to be interpreted by accompanying symbols, but a name
that “ is in” the living person of Jesus Christ, and that we read as often as we
look to Him; no longer the dwelling-place merely, but the Father in whom we are
secured of refuge and rest; no longer the Almighty to whom we may appeal with
sure hope, but the Father who “ Him self loveth us,” and whose care it is to
accomplish our blessedness; no longer a “fearful name,” the utterance of which
overwhelms us, and the comprehension of which is above us; but a name which
every child of woman can understand, and whose very simplicity attracts and wins
us by its condescending nearness to ourselves. But this name excludes all other
names, only because it contains all that was in them. It comes “ not to destroy,
but to fulfil”. It was this name that the hearts of God’s people were
unconsciously yearning after through all other names that were given, until the
Son came forth, for whom all revelation of God’s nature and relation to us was
preparing, and in whom all revelation is summed up, the Word whom God “has
magnified above all His name”.

It is this name, then, which we are to hallow. The prayer runs thus, “ Our
Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name”. And so it is of all the
petitions: each is introduced by an in vocation to “ Our Father”. It is our
Father we ask to rule us, our Father we ask to forgive us, our Father we ask to
lead us. And it is, along with this, to be noted that this is a name which,
though at first hearing it speaks only of relation ship to us, tells also and
fully of God’s nature. The relation it speaks of is one that comes of His
attributes. It is not accidental nor arbitrary, but is so truly the result and
free expression of the nature of God, that through it we can read all that it
concerns us to know of that nature. And this will be obvious to all who are
accustomed to find in the incarnation and cross of Christ the most evident
manifestation of God. So that we learn to pray that this name may be hallowed
not only because it is our Father’s name, but because the name of God is “ Our
Father”; that is, we see that the name of God is to be hallowed not only because
of His connection with us, but in view also of all the worth which this
connection reveals. Beginning, it may be, with more of gratitude for God’s grace
to us than of vision of His nature, and springing always from this source of
grateful love, this petition yet leads us to all the depths and all the heights
of worship. God would have us, first of all, to worship Him not as the Ruler of
all worlds, but as bound to this world; not as attending to all parts of an
infinite universe, but as regarding us; not, in short, as the Head of all things
that are, but mainly and in the first instance as “ Our Father”. He confines our
view that we may see more distinctly; this name does not show any part of His
nature nor any portion of His dealings with which we are not concerned, but it
runs directly between us and Him, and as through a glass which by confining
magnifies and renders distinct, so through this name we are separated from
distracting views of God, and led straight to all that He means to kindle our
worship.

Learning what God is, we ask that His name may be hallowed or held sacred,
regarded by all as a true and holy thing that is at any cost to be maintained in
esteem, and under all temptation still believed in. May the idea of God, which
He would have us to possess, be held as the choice possession of our spirits,
the treasure on which our hearts rest, and to which they ever return; may it be
held separate from all contamination of our own thoughts about God; and may it
never be obscured by any cloud of adversity tempting us to think that God has
changed; never lost sight of by any careless devotion of our thoughts to other
objects and names; never presumed upon nor polluted as countenancing folly or
sin, but cherished still and guarded as “ the holy and reverend name of the Lord
“. For this is what we all need, the abiding assurance of the reality of God in
the excellences of His nature and the grace of His connection with us.

How heartily would this name of God in Christ have been welcomed by those who
felt after God, if haply they might find Him; how would they have welcomed the
utterance of God’s name in the life of Christ, as giving to them at last the
knowledge of what is eternally right and good, pure and holy; as giving them at
last one whom they could eternally worship, from whom they could accept law and
guidance, and in whom they could trust for all. And this is what we also must
find; if there be One, and who He is, to whom we may ever look up, and whom we
may love and worship; whose actings are not biassed by personal leanings, nor
fashioned by the customs or ideas of others, but are true and righteous; One who
“is light, and in whom is no darkness at all “; One in whom we may trust without
fear, because He is absolutely good, His love breaking down at no point,
interrupted by no suspicion or coldness, yet never leading us astray, nor doing
for us what needs to be undone. This is what we need, to learn and not to invent
the name of God; to see His character displayed in a perfect, living person,
that we may no longer guess at His thoughts and ways from our own, nor worship
our own best idea, but may worship one whom we can call by name; whose name is
written for us, and has become familiar to us, by the actualities of life, and
whose name embodies and represents to us all that is absolutely and eternally
excellent. And who that worships at all has not found his need of a more fixed
idea of God? Who has not learnt that, if he is to worship at all, or pray to
some more real object than a Samaritan god, he needs this for his first
petition, “ Hallowed be Thy name “? This morning I found it easy to worship; God
seemed near and living, as a second Person with me; His majesty so patent, that
humility was natural, and levity impossible; His holiness and love so evident,
that my soul was rapt from all other objects. I did worship, and I worshipped
God; but when the remembrance of the morning bids me this evening seek a renewal
of the delight, how different and how hard a task do I set my self! What seemed
so substantial and living, has become shadowy and ideal only. He who seemed so
attractive, that I was prepared to for sake all and follow Him, has put on the
task master, or the cold, repulsive indifference of the ruler of other worlds.
The name of God has not been hallowed by me; profane feet have trodden the
shrine consecrated to it. The examples of men have pressed out of remembrance
the unalterable holiness of God, and I have lived as if holiness were not
expected of me. Eagerness to compete with the world at its own race, has hurried
me beyond the voice of God, and the restraining sense of His presence has been
sup planted by indifference and forgetfulness. Once having fallen, I have
thought myself unworthy or made myself regardless of God’s forgiveness and aid,
and have fought my own battles wiping the name of my Father from my heart. I
have let go the thought of what God is to me, and have too freely admitted other
claims. And now the name that I have so often denied seems untrue in my lips.
And not less for life than for worship do we need that the name of God be
hallowed; for by a man’s thoughts of God is his whole character formed.* Let him
think of a god who delights in blood, and he will delight in the same; let him
worship a god imperfect in holiness, and his efforts after holy living will not
be many nor severe; let him think of a god who is pleased with ceremonies, and
he will become a formalist; let him think of a god who can be paid by ser vice,
and he will become a hypocrite; let him think of a hard master, reaping where he
has not sown, and gathering where he strawed not, and he will shirk every duty
he dare, and tremble through a life of slavery to a death of confusion and
dismay. But let him know God as his Father in Christ, and every influence for
good that can be brought to bear upon the human character is enjoyed by that
man. This knowledge will be the little leaven leavening the whole mass; the new
centre in the heart round which each regenerated principle within us will take
its place.

It is an influence all for good, unlike that of the * “ Upon our thoughts of
God, it will depend, in one time or another, whether we rise higher or sink
lower as societies and as individuals.” MAURICE. character of man, which mingles
harm with its healing. It is the character which from the first has sustained,
and to the last will sustain, all good that is found in man. It is because God
is what He is, that there has been any holiness on earth; because He loveth
righteousness, therefore has He created men capable of righteous deeds; because
He has been demanding perfect holiness, therefore have those who hallowed His
name bitterly mourned over their shortcomings, and have still persevered and
hoped, because He is their Father. By His name, by the real and holy and aiding
personality which that name keeps within our ken, is the inevitable and
stimulating idea of duty cherished within us. These words, “ Re member thy
Father in Christ “ (which have taken the place of “Remember the Lord thy God”*),
when spoken amid the tumult of the soul, have been as the monarch’s voice, and
have been enough to calm and lay its wild rebellion, to curb its passionate
desire, to turn again to its rightful object the attention and homage of the
soul.

Under the most adverse circumstances, the name of God has still done its work.
Through this name God has found entrance to the most har * See Tholuck on “ The
Sermon on the Mount “. dened heart, and uttering it over the dead conscience
that has long lain buried under manifold iniquities, He has quickened it to life
and wakeful activity; in hearts that have been a prey to all doubt, and whose
doubt has been fostered by all impurity of life, this name has enshrined itself
and round it has gradually been formed again a temple of the living God; and it
has still been calmly and lovingly answering the doleful questions of despairing
souls, and to those who have either wickedly or in their weakness cried, “ What
is truth?” and, “Who will show us any good?” its response has ever been, “ Our
Father “. Hope fully as the morning star has it risen on the benighted and
weary; with healing and joy, as the Sun of Righteousness, has it ushered in the
ever lasting “ day which the Lord hath made,” and from which all darkness is
passed away, and in which. we see God as He is, and discover the holiness and
the hope there is for us in Him.

Scattering all false ideas of sin and duty, all false rules of life that have
grown with our growth, all blind thoughts of God which keep us murmuring and
unbelieving, this name of God has come into the soul and said, “ Now our Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, and God. even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath
given us everlasting consolation, and good hope through grace, comfort your
hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work”. And what the name of God
is for individuals it is for communities. If for our own land, or for other
lands, we hope for better things than the present, these better things will be
brought about, when the name of God is hallowed when His name is declared to
all, and believed by all and kept jealously and sacredly by all; when it shines
out from the contempt and misunderstanding which overlay it, and is recovered
from the suspicion which banishes it; when it rises above all the
representations and tones of man’s utterance of it, and appears in its own
purity, as if written by the finger of God in the heavens; when it is
acknowledged by all as the highest name, and receives from each a regard which
nothing else commands; when, that is, men learn to look simply and constantly,
intelligently and devoutly, to Jesus Christ as the “ image of God,” and will
suffer no thought of God to find harbour and influence within them, which is not
expressed in His person. When men own God, and own Him as the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, then will there be saving health among all nations. When men come
to the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, then
shall they have eternal life. Need it be said that there is nothing else that
will reform the world than this, no other head under which all things can be
reconciled, no other centre round which all can gather in love? Let all men have
one common idea of God, and that the true one; let each man be a true worshipper
of the true God; let each in the solemn and secret chamber of his own soul,
where none seeth but our Father who seeth in secret, be owning his
responsibility to his God; let each man lie prostrate and broken-hearted before
the love of God in Christ; and is there not already “ Glory to God in the
highest, and peace on earth “? How different a world would be that little world
with which each of us has to do, and which gives us samples of its sin and its
misery, could we say of every one we had to deal with, “ I may trust that man to
the uttermost; I may banish every fear, and all suspicion; I may expect great
things of him, for I know that, far deeper than any earthly influence can
penetrate, lies written on his heart the name of God, his Redeemer and Father;
he knows and acknowledges God, and therefore acknowledges every right claim; he
is already bound by an obligation which no entreaty, no persuasion of mine,
could make more binding “.

Let each one, then, look on his own life, and on other lives, and see the blank
which God’s answers to this petition might have already filled and may yet fill.
Let him consider the place which God claims for Himself; let him give heed to
His Word, “ Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom; neither let the mighty man
glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that
glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord
which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth “. And
let him pray, “ From me, then, O Lord, remove all ignorance of Thee, and all
unworthy thoughts of Thee; keep far from me all that is forgetful, irreverent,
profane; cast forth from my heart all that opposeth and exalteth itself above
all the name of God or that is worshipped; cast forth from Thy temple all that
sitteth therein showing itself that it is God; all my rebellious distrust of
Thee do Thou graciously turn into childlike attachment and confidence; my
presumption of Thy indifference into hope of Thy mercy; grant to me the spirit
of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Thee, that, whatever fails me, my
trust in Thee may still increase, and that I may serve Thee in love and
acceptance, and my body become a temple of Thine. And these things not in myself
only, but in all others perform, that men may know that Thou whose name alone is
Jehovah, art the Most High over all the earth; that all nations whom Thou hast
made may come and worship before Thee, O Lord, and may glorify Thy name.” And
this he prays, who with the understanding and the spirit prays, “ Our Father
which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name “.


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  CHAPTER 50: 04.03.     THY KINGDOM COME
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Chapter III. “Thy kingdom come.” WHEN we find an earthly and a heavenly thing
called by the same name, we are very apt to think of the earthly as that which
better fills and satisfies the name common to both. When God calls a spiritual
thing or a heavenly arrangement by the name of something earthly and well known,
we look upon this as merely a mode of illustration, possibly a happy,
well-selected illustration, but nothing more. We still look on the earthly as
the substantial reality to which the name belongs, and deem that there is far
more in it than will be found in the other. We think that the heavenly is only
somewhat like the other, but will fail in some point. Thus, when God speaks to
us of His kingdom, we are too ready to view this as but a figure of speech,
which may intimate that the government of God over us does in some points
resemble the sway of a monarch over his subjects; whereas the truth is, that
this kingdom is the only one which comes up to the idea of a kingdom, which
falls short in nothing of what a kingdom should be. “ The Lord is King, not
borrowing this title from the kings of the earth, but having lent His own title
to them; and not the name only, but having so ordered, that all true rule and
government upon earth, with its righteous laws, its stable ordinances, its
punishment and its grace, its majesty and its terror, should tell of Him and of
His kingdom which ruleth over all so that * kingdom of God is not in fact a
figurative expression, but most literal: it is rather the earthly kingdoms and
the earthly kings that are figures and shadows of the true.” * What king but one
fulfils David’s idea of a king, the idea which he seems to have lived to learn,
and which, dying, he left as a * Dean Trench, Notes on the Parables, p. 14,
where the connection of the earthly with the heavenly is fully discussed. The
following lines of Coleridge are worth remembering in this connection, “ For all
that meets the bodily sense I deem Symbolical, one mighty alphabet For infant
minds; and we in the low world Placed with our backs to bright reality, That we
may learn with young unwounded ken The substance from its shadow “. legacy to
his people, and surrounded with an emphatic accumulation of authority that strik
ingly declares its importance? “ These be the last words of David. David the son
of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of
Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the Lord spake by
me, and His word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel
spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God;
and he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun - riseth, even a
morning without clouds, as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear
shining after rain.” Who is there that does not expect (more or less
consciously) that some time there will be a better order of things than now we
know of? Who is satisfied with this temporary state, in which evil seems so
native, good so foreign? Or, if satisfied, is it not just because we are aware
that it is only temporary, that it is to be got over, travelled through to some
better beyond? Who can believe that God will never manifest to men, how He can
govern, and show in actual history the perfection of His kingdom and the benign
influence of His laws? Who believes that He will never let us know how right and
how salutary a thing it is to obey Him only?

Nay more, who does not at least sometimes feel that this kingdom ought to be
now, that now we ought to be living under one Supreme, together owning Him,
seeing that He is not king elect, heir to the crown, but eternal King? Those at
least who acknowledge the name of God, and who believe that He is, and that He
is what He has revealed Himself to be, heartily utter this petition: “ Our
Father which art in heaven, Thy kingdom come “. That it may be intelligently and
earnestly uttered, we need to see distinctly what it is. In common with all
kingdoms, it is a community, an organised fellowship of men, the bond of whose
fellowship is that they all obey the same living Head. It differs from all other
kingdoms in this, that its King is the most high God. The subjects of it are all
men who are willing to become its subjects, all who desire to obey the will of
God, rather than any other. No men, therefore (it need scarcely be said), are
subjects of this kingdom by birth. “ Except a man be born again, he cannot enter
the kingdom of God.” Natural or fleshly birth introduces us to the privileges of
nature and of flesh. Birth in time and for time, which has in it the seed of
eternal death, introduces us to the advantages of time, and among others to the
external and temporary advantages of the kingdom of God. Spiritual birth gives
us the internal and spiritual advantages. Born of the Spirit of God, we are
introduced to the eternal and peculiar privileges of this kingdom. For “the
kingdom of God is not meat and drink”; does not secure the mere protection and
help which the kingdoms of this world make all their aim and effort; but it is
within us. It begins not at the outside, but within; alters not our
circumstances, but our selves. And therefore we are introduced to it, not by
some accident of our position in this world, but by our own voluntary surrender
to a Person, by yielding the allegiance of the whole soul and nature to a King,
whom we choose as our King for evermore. This may well be called a birth, then,
if for no other reason than this, that it alters the whole character. It is
called a birth because it is the beginning of a new life; a life which meets
with no death, nor needs any third birth to carry the man to a yet higher
condition. It is called a second birth, because it breaks off the life which the
first birth began, and swallows up the death to which it exposed us. It is a
birth in which our own wills struggle to life, but only because such is the will
of God.

It could not be called a birth, if we were our selves the sole or the first
agents in the matter; but can only be called (without absurdity) a birth,
because we thereby become through the generation of another something which we
were not before. If we are to know it as a birth, then it should be quite
unnecessary to reiterate that it is not of our own originating. We are born
again, because “ the seed of God “ is quickening us. One might have supposed
that it would have been readily believed that we cannot give birth to ourselves;
and how a man can at once believe that the life to which the second birth
introduces is a real, new, and eternal life, and that the person born into that
life is his own begotten, is hard indeed to comprehend.* It is of God’s
children, then, that His kingdom is composed. It is our Father’s kingdom

* It may here be observed, that “ the will of man “ (John 1:13) refers to the
will of man begetting, and not to the will of man begotten. The opposition, “
but of God,” becomes thus more clear and telling. we desire the advent of. It is
the renewed will which gives us entrance to it. But while this kingdom is
established within, it makes itself felt and visible without. Finding its
subjects in us, it makes its laws be obeyed in all our doings. It takes
possession of every department of activity, of every region of actual life.
These external things, are they our doings? This society, is it made of us?
Then, if the kingdom of God be within us, it will find expression there. As it
is impossible for any great earthly dominion to be solitary, uninfluential, but
is appealed to and must interfere, is imitated and must mould others; so it is
impossible for this kingdom of God to be side by side with other influences, and
not reverse, increase, or some way operate on them. As little is this possible
as it is possible to carry a light through a dark room and scatter no darkness,
but confine the light to the flame. This is the mode of the kingdom’s increase,
and the promise is that it will so increase. It will grow till there is no room
for any opposing dominion on earth. It will express itself, and in this
expression will be found so to excel the kingdoms of this world, that it will
make for itself new heavens and a new earth. “ For the kingdom of heaven is like
unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the
whole was leavened.” And these two features of the kingdom cannot be separated,
its spiritual, internal character, and its outward manifestation and progress.
But the name by which it is spoken of in the words just quoted may suggest to
some the idea that “heaven” must be waited for, that this prayer may be
answered. And no doubt the kingdom to be revealed, when the King appears in the
glory of His own person, will surpass any thing that can be otherwise attained.
But the name seems to be used not because the kingdom has heaven for its
ultimate destination and sphere, but because it is of heavenly origin and
character.

It is for this earth we seek a blessing, when we pray, “Thy kingdom come “. We
know that this kingdom ought to be now. We do not look to the future to
accomplish that which is eternally right. We do not expect that death will
transfer us or others into a condition which Christ and His Spirit can alone
transfer us into. And being distinctly conscious that we ought always to have
been subjects of God, and grasping at the provision for our entrance into it,
which is now put within our reach, we do not wait, but pray and labour that all
may be brought into this kingdom, that its laws may affect all earthly
arrangements and earthly governments. This prayer in all its parts is
emphatically from earth and for earth. And what we express in this petition is
the desire that a heavenly state of things be established on earth, that the
King and laws of heaven be acknowledged on earth. Is it not a right thing and a
possible thing, that all men should in their hearts yield allegiance to God? And
were this allegiance yielded, would it not naturally result that all our
relations to one another would be hallowed and leavened by our common spirit of
obedience? Would it not necessarily result that the whole constitution of the
world, in all its domestic, social, and political arrangements, would be guided
by the Spirit of God, and would show, if not uniformly and in every particular,
yet generally, and, on the whole, that God was ruling? It is not required for
this that all forms of government be changed, but that the spirit of those who
administer be changed. It probably is not needful that many employments or
relations of life be altered, but it is needful that we ourselves be altered,
The desirableness of this kingdom is obvious. The appearance of the King Himself
among us, and His manner of founding the kingdom, the blessings it yields to its
subjects, and the final glory to which it is destined, all teach us to pray for
its coming. When we look to its actual founding, it is not without significance
that this was achieved at the most brilliant age of the most powerful earthly
monarchy; a monarchy which may be viewed as the ultimate specimen of what earth
can accomplish in the matter of government. For extent it was unrivalled. The
world was the Roman world. For polity it was unrivalled, the system of its laws
being yet received as the basis of law in the most civilised and well-ordered
communities. It was when this empire was in all the flush and pride of youth
that the King of God’s anointing came and established His empire.

He came with no noise and with little proclamation, no thunder of the captains
and shouting.

He came as if it were quite a simple matter to establish His kingdom, though the
firmest earthly empire was in possession already, and though a firmer than all
earthly monarchies possessed the hearts of those whom He came to rule. And how
was this done? Most kingdoms have acquired power by violence and wrong, this by
righteousness and grace and mercy. To no other conqueror can these words be
addressed, “ Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O Most Mighty, with Thy glory and
Thy majesty; and in Thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness
and righteousness”. Sometimes the good done by conquerors has well-nigh atoned
for the evils of war; and their greatest glory has been to raise the subdued, to
overcome their barbarism, to conquer and to reduce them to civilisation. But the
glory of our King is, that He conquers us for no other purpose than to raise us;
that He seeks us not because the fame of our wealth and skill and power had
excited His envy or ambition, but because the cry of the oppressed reached to
heaven, and the sighing of the prisoner came before Him whose ear is delicate to
catch the feeblest and most distant, and to understand the most confused desire
of them that are in trouble; who saw that there was none to govern us, but
rulers who led us through tyranny to destruction; He saw that there was no man,
and wondered that there was none to come between us and those who had us at
their will, and therefore His arm brought salvation. He saw that by His
government alone could we be rescued and raised, and He determined, through His
own humiliation, to exalt us. He became one of us, that He might be our King; He
clothed Himself in our dust, that we might wear His royal robe; He lay in our
grave, that we might sit on His throne; He founded our joy in the deep
bitterness of His own soul, our kingdom in His own obedience and subjection. Has
He not claim to reign over us? A government, once firmly established, goes on
for the most part easily enough, sometimes quite independently of the throne;
but it takes a man of kingly qualities to found a kingdom under the most adverse
circumstances, and out of the most unlikely material. What was the case with
this kingdom? This was no case of quiet, undisputed succession, nor was it one
of easy and rapid conquest. Of men wildly rebelling against all righteous and
conscience-binding authority, Christ took in hand to make a people so submissive
that they may be called “ living sacrifices “. Of men who scorned His rule with
a special scorn, He has to make subjects, who gladly lay down their lives for
their King; of men hating one another, envying, maligning, and despising one
another, He has to form a community so attached that all possessions, and even
life itself, are held as common property, and willingly yielded for the good of
the whole; of men who, as soon as He leaves them, are invaded by His enemies,
tempted, threatened, bribed, allured to disaffection, He undertakes to create
faithful and staunch sup porters; of those who are emphatically “ not a people,”
He has to form a peculiar people, a people of God. And this He actually does.
Men begin life wicked, selfish, profligate, with a strong revulsion of soul from
all good, and a headlong proclivity to whatever is sinful, their spirits all in
disorder, and seeking no higher condition; they acknowledge Christ as King, and
His laws bring harmony and orderly purpose into their lives; in the strength of
loyal love to Him, they make successful war upon their own fatal desires, and
have often so well understood what is due to Him, that they have spent their
substance and their lives in toilsome and bloody service. And does it say
nothing for the reality, the force, and the wisdom of His government, that He
can leave His newly reduced enemies to administer it, and Himself return to the
seat of His dominion, sure that this distant province which He leaves will be a
nursery of faithful servants, and ever send up to Him trained and efficient
rulers? Does it not, at least, very sufficiently show that He is a King, though
unseen; and that His kingdom is real, though not of this world?

Besides its origin, the difficulty and success of its establishment, there are
many other features of it which evince its fitness to take precedence, and its
worthiness to be desired. One of the most patent is its universality. It affords
a meeting-place for all men, is capable of embracing all within it, and fusing
them in one fellow ship. Founders of kingdoms have not lacked ideas of
universality. Their ambition has been very catholic. They have taken steps also
to wards the realising of their ideas; they have been careful to discover
geographical centres, commercial centres, from which they might reach to all,
and to which all, by natural leanings and interests, might incline; but so far
as experiment has hitherto shown, it takes something more than worldly interest
to bind the world together. By this, nations may work together for a while, but
feeling that they are widely different, and that at any moment their interests
may conflict. The bond is still without them, and not within. But in the kingdom
which Christ has founded, there is a fellowship which does not recognise any
distinction among nations. In it “ there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, because Christ is all,
and in all “. All own one King, all receive common rights, and all are actuated
by the same spirit. In this kingdom we can claim nothing as being of this nation
or of that, but only as be longing to the one family in heaven and on earth.

We stand upon a common ground with all, and enter a kingdom which excludes none.
In it we learn the deepest affinity, and are drawn together by the only bond
that is wide enough to encircle the world, and strong enough to draw together
the unlikest. Whoever enter this kingdom resemble one another in the thoughts,
feelings, and hopes that lie deepest within them, and which they count the most
promising and permanent features of their character. Loyalty to their King
possesses all alike, and this lies at the centre of the heart of each, working
outwards and transforming all; and no difference, however great, can outweigh
this resemblance, nor so in crease as to obliterate and outlive it; for in this
kingdom we are brought into communion with the “ one Spirit, the one Lord, the
one God, and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all “.
And here, too, is bridged over that wide distinction between dead and living,
and are knit in closest bands with those who are advanced to the higher offices
of trust, for “ God is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live
unto Him “. Shall we not, then, pray that this kingdom come, obliterating all
hostile distinctions, using all diversity of gifts for one common Lord, and
putting one language and oath of allegiance in the mouths of all, “ We are
Christ s, and Christ is God’s “? The advantages which the kingdoms of earth
offer are commonly summed up in these three, Liberty, Security, and Plenty. A
man outside of every community can assure himself of none of these. The simplest
form of government is that in which a number of men choose one in whom they can
trust, and who is expected to look after the common interests, while they attend
to their special callings. There may be among them one so wise in counsel, so
far-sighted, so large hearted, so weighty, and so bold, that each member of the
community feels “ I am better in his keeping than in my own “. And unless the
subjects of a kingdom can thus trust the governing power for the leading
advantages just named, it is not a kingdom to be desired. But we must beware how
we compare the kingdom of God with earthly kingdoms, lest we thereby not merely
see what blessings are to be expected in a kingdom, but learn to expect
blessings of similar nature. A man may feel that he is safe as to many things,
but what can he know of absolute trust till he has trusted in Christ? What can
he know of any of the blessings of the subject till he becomes subject to
Christ? Is not the liberty, the security, the plenty we know, very shadowy and
precarious, until we possess the eternal reality and substance of these in
Christ? Until we possess that security which has heard the gates of the city of
God shut behind, and has found the feet standing on a rock; which can view every
contingency without dread, knowing whose will it is that is done in the army of
heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; which can say, “Although the fig
tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the
olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off
from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in
the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation “; that security which is secure
in God, which rests in Him and knows that “ greater is He that is for us than
all that can be against us”; that liberty, wherewith the Son of God makes free
when He delivers us from our sins and from all that drags us down from high
apprehensions of our calling in God; when He gives us entrance into the wide and
lasting love of God, bringing us to the very brightness of His countenance, to
that love which casteth out fear, and to that peace of God which passeth
understanding; when He renews the mind to the persuasion that God is on our side
against sin and all that comes of sin, and enables us to accept of all that God
has been doing and does to free us from the curse; that plenty which is supplied
by the fulness of the Godhead, and can only be enjoyed in a kingdom where there
are no unknown and sunken masses; but where the King knows all and rules by
personal influence over each; that plenty which provides not for a few wants of
some, but for every want of all; which provides enlightenment of mind, renewal
of heart, comfort, strength, and every grace that is needed to bring us to the
measure of the stature of the perfect man. So that to become a citizen of this
kingdom is just to reach the highest position a man can occupy, and to enter
into everlasting blessedness. As among earthly kingdoms there are some so
superior to others that it becomes a point of ambition to be enrolled as their
citizens, because in them our rights are protected and our safety secured,
because our labour receives its fullest recompense, and our liberty its freest
exercise; so there is this kingdom of God, founded from everlasting, and
destined to endure when time shall be no longer, the which if we enter into, we
shall at once be installed in a secure liberty, which is protected by the
Almighty, cared for by that King, the meanest of whose subjects knows no
grievance, certified of our eternal well-being, associated with all that is
joyous and with all that is holy in the universe, and confirmed in every good
resolve and rewarded for every good service by the favour of a loving King. This
is the one kingdom which all others will be seen only to have pointed towards
and taught us to hope for; a kingdom so free that the law of it is love, so
great that none are excluded and none unthought of, so righteous that murmur is
never heard through all its borders, so stable that when heaven and earth are
shaken this will “ not be moved “: a kingdom so wisely administered that in it
each one of us shall find his right place, when we shall learn the blessedness
we have in common with all the nations of the saved, and that peculiar property
of bliss, with which a stranger cannot intermeddle, and which is prepared for us
by Him who has written our names among His subjects, and gives to us that new
name which no man knoweth save Him that receiveth it; a kingdom which we shall
then only begin to learn the glory of, when we shall see it triumphant, and when
the kings and nations of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And
this is the one perfect kingdom, because He who reigns is the perfect King,
alone able to found a kingdom in the deepest love and broadest righteousness. He
is King of kings and Lord of lords, He is the blessed and only Potentate; but
His special right of dominion over us is grounded in this, that He has taken our
nature upon Him.

It is as one of us, as our Head, as the Son given to us, that He takes the
government upon His shoulder, and brings us to the kingdom of the Father. And do
we need to pray that His kingdom may come, or do we not? Are we sufficient for
our own need, for our own future, or are we not? Do we need some one to rule us,
to help us against our enemies, to help us against our selves, or do we not?
Have not our eyes opened to the fact that thick between us and God there stand
those that bar the way, sins and hindrances of all kinds, that must be swept
away or over come? Have we not tried to do this for our selves, and found again
and again that when the shout of victory was on our very lip, we were prostrated
in the dust of shameful defeat? Have we not felt at such times that all might
yet be well with us, if some one, strong and mighty in righteousness, would only
take possession of us, take us out of our own hands, and rule and command us by
an authority more suasive than our own, and, imbuing us with a power that we
have not of ourselves, make well-doing possible to us; if some one would take up
this cause which our feebleness is making nothing of, and would see to it, as
for his own glory and as his own interest, that we be delivered, and conquer,
and reach the peace of God? What we daily find our need of is a ruler, and a
ruler loving enough to give us all confidence in Him; firm enough to support us
when we weary, and compel us to the right path when we waver, powerful enough to
do what man cannot do, to change our hearts and deliver us from evil.

Such a ruler God offers to us, and such a ruler we choose when we pray, “ Thy
kingdom come “. The reason why this petition should be used with a special view
to the extension of the Church, and the encouragements there are so to use it,
are so fully before the thoughts of all praying persons at the present time that
less need be said on these points. Of course, the first ground of hope that this
petition is now to be answered, more fully and visibly than hitherto, is just
this, that it is being prayed more earnestly and believingly now than hitherto.
Prayer is not the only means of bringing in the kingdom of God; but if it be, as
we believe it now is, earnestly prayed for, the other means will also be used.
And without prayer, earnest and sustained, what can we look for? Even the first
descent of the Spirit as the Spirit of the kingdom of Christ, though certainly
sufficiently provided for by the ascension of our Lord, was vouchsafed only to
anxious and reiterated prayer. And in these latter days there is no desire more
common to all Christians than that the Church may extend her influence; nor are
there any more conspicuous features of modern Christianity than missionary zeal.
No doubt there is much in these desires and efforts that is merely selfish and
earthly, but unquestionably there is also much that is of heaven, and much too
that is hopeful, because it is not the unrooted product of a year or two, or the
mushroom growth of a passing excitement, but the fruit of a steady growth which
many a year has nourished. This desire does not require to be fostered by any
special theory of prophetical interpretation, nor can it in any time cease to be
among the most ardent desires of the Christian. But no one can fail to draw some
encouragement from what he sees, nor can any one fail to see that much of the
progress around him is in directions which prepare a way for the kingdom of God.
Increased intelligence and a more general and careful education, attention to
the outcast, the distressed, and the criminal, more liberal ideas of civil
liberty, the cordial, frequent, and increasing reference to union among
different sections of the Church, and many other features of the age that are
continually mentioned, all make our prayer more hopeful. But while hope is our
duty, prophecy is beyond our province. Neither shall we be much inclined to
prophesy, when we consider these three things; * how very different God’s
thoughts must be concerning His kingdom and the whole plan of its advance, from
ours who see but the merest glimpses of His purpose; when we think how often in
past times there has been every prospect that now at last the Church would just
steadily grow; and when we turn from speculation about the future to present
fact, and think of “ the millions afar off that know not the Revelation of God,
or of the thousands at hand that hold it in contempt “. Yet these things only
the more plainly show us that it is of God to grant that His kingdom may come.
Of the consummate glory of this kingdom it is very difficult to speak. We know
that for earth the best condition would be the kingdom of God, but what earth
will be when this prayer is fully answered, who would undertake to say? It is
ours to pray without ceasing, and to maintain fidelity to our King. We must
cleave loyally to Him. He is coming in glory and will reign whose right it is.
Let us, if need be, endure hardness for a little that we may evermore reign with
Him. No one can take from us His words, * See Isaac Taylor’s Saturday Evening
throughout.

“ He that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, as I also
overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne “. And for those who
desire some detail of future glory to attract their hope, no words can be more
suitable than the following, written by one who spent his life in the service of
his heavenly King, and has now enjoyed many lifetimes of reward. “ O kingdom
everlasting, kingdom enduring throughout all generations, where is never-failing
light, and the peace of God, which passeth under standing; in which the souls of
the saints securely rest, crowned with eternal gladness; whither the ransomed of
the Lord shall come, and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy
and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

O how glorious is the kingdom in which with Thee, O Lord, all the saints shall
reign, clothed in white raiment, and with crowns upon their heads.

O kingdom of eternal blessedness, where Thou, Lord, the hope of the saints and
the diadem of their glory, art seen face to face, gladdening them every one, and
embracing them on every side with the comforts of Thy peace. There is joy
unbounded, gladness unbroken, health untouched by woe, progress without pain,
light without darkness, life without death, every good sifted from its ill, and
enjoyed without alloy or interruption. Where youth never grows old and life
never dies, where beauty never pales and love never cools, where health never
languishes, where joy never wanes and where grief is never felt, where no moan
nor sigh is heard nor any tear is seen, where gladness is ever enjoyed, and
where there is no evil feared, because the highest good is possessed, which is
to be always beholding the face of the Lord of righteousness and strength.”


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  CHAPTER 51: 04.04.     THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH,  IN HEAVEN
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Chapter IV. “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” IN the second
petition of this prayer, we have prayed “ for God’s spiritual kingdom, that it
may be set up and established in our hearts; for His visible kingdom, or Church,
that it may increase and spread, until it fill the whole earth; and for His
heavenly kingdom, that it may soon drive away and put an end to every kind of
sin and sorrow, and leave nothing to be seen in the new heavens and the new
earth but a glorious God, filling all things with His presence, and ruling with
a Father’s love over His dutiful and holy children “. Already, therefore, we
have desired that those things be fulfilled which are contained in this third
petition. We cannot desire that He be King over the earth, without desiring that
His will be done on earth. We do not sincerely own Him as King, unless we set
His will above our own and every other. For a kingdom where there is not one
guiding will is a distracted kingdom, doomed to fall: a king whose will is not
done is a mocked and virtually dethroned king. How ever, to add this petition is
not to repeat, though it be to develop and follow out the preceding. The three
petitions are to one another as root, stem, and fruit; as beginning, middle, and
end. In the hallowing of God’s name the foundation is laid for the establishment
of His kingdom; it is the first opening of the human eye to the majesty of God.
Then the kingdom is established, the heart of man prostrates itself before its
King, forgetting and cancelling its old laws, and rejoicing in its new
allegiance. But this is not all; no one praying would stop here. It is not
enough that the kingdom be established, that its boundaries be enlarged, and its
glory delighted in; there is an end for which all this is brought about; and
that end is, that the will of the Ruler may be done. We desire that God may
assert His dominion over us and all men, and may give us to know that He is a
living and near God by the force of His will upon us. From the “ name “ we pass
to the work (as displayed in His kingdom), and from the work to the will. From
the outskirts of His personality we pass to its heart. And we do not use this
petition aright, till we fully apprehend that, besides names and outward show of
authority, God has a will. This, of course, requires no proof nor theoretical
explanation, but every one who is trying to pray knows how much need there is
that it be practically enforced. How does his prayer seem to wander about
searching for an ear, until the living will of God presents itself! When we
think of God’s name as left with us to make up for His absence, and keep us
mindful of an authority which is resident in a person far distant from
ourselves, we cannot pray. When we think of God’s kingdom as established
originally by Himself, but now left under viceroys or under a mere code of laws,
we cannot pray. We need to meet behind the name a present will, and under all
forms of authority and symbols of power to recognise an active will. From day to
day, from one act of our wills to another, this we are to bear in mind, that God
also has a will; that as by our wills we plan and set ourselves resolutely in
one direction, so there are plans which have their origin in a will that is not
of earth, but are yet to be carried out on earth; that alongside of our desires
there are the things which God is desiring to be done.

Everywhere and in all things we are to meet this will of God. This kingdom of
God we speak of, we have to learn to look upon as an absolute monarchy, wherein
one will is supreme, and be yond which is the outer darkness, where all is
confusion and dismay. And the peculiar discipline we have each of us to go
through in this life is to learn submission to the supreme will; a hard and
distasteful lesson, though so plainly reasonable and necessary. Hard and
distasteful, for a man does not find within him a will piously and wisely
regulated by the will of God, but diverging to his own evil desires, murmuring,
struggling, and only in the end, after long and painful teaching, coming to
desire that in all things it be the will of God which is carried out.

It seems a strange thing that a lifetime should be spent in this, and that the
very highest employment of the will of man is to surrender willingly to God’s
will; but so it is. And when can a man’s will show its strength, if not when he
wills the same things as God? It is not that a man gives up willing, nor resigns
any property of his being whatsoever, when his will is conformed to that of God;
it is not that he be comes either the unwilling victim or the passive tool of
another will, but that the whole strength and bent of his will now lead him in
God’s direction. This yielding to the will of God, being a will so different
from our own, is a great difficulty.

We yield to-day, and to-morrow it seems as hard as ever. We gather together all
the reasons there are for yielding, and at length we are able sincerely to pray
“ Thy will be done “; we are very peaceful and very glad, and do not doubt that
this is a final decision; but an hour undeceives us, and shows us that the
decision has to be made again, and in still more trying circumstances. If any
petition needs to be daily repeated it is this. But have we ever once as yet
thrown all the will we are masters of into this petition? Have we so much as
recognised that it is the will of a person we ought all to be obeying here? Are
we satisfied with some loose ideas of right and wrong? Do we go by custom,
habit, fashion, impulse, our own wisdom, or are we led by this will? There is no
question about this, whether God’s will or my own has most claim to my service:
which is getting most of it? Let me, if possible, see my true position; God has
a will, a will about me as well as about other things; it is not, then, with
mere rules of direction I have to do, but with an active and authoritative will;
I will not hide from it, nor distribute its force over the whole face of the
earth, but I come out personally face to face with God; will to will with God;
and now what is it to be opposing this will? This is a will which has always
been planning and accomplishing good a will limitless in its embrace, and
incomprehensible in its love a will reaching to the most distant and stooping to
the most forgotten and sunken, bending over distress, and raising the fallen
with ineffable tenderness, and I cannot pray that this will may be done. This
will, which has not ceased to “ work for the deliverance and blessedness “ of
myself and all of us, which has still been that all men should be saved, in
spite of untold hindrances and at infinite cost this will it is that I have been
resisting. This will into which no evil purpose ever entered, and the love of
which man’s heart fears to conceive, because it is above him, and seems unreal
and impossible; this supreme and marvellous will, of which it seems akin to
profanity to say that it is worthy to rule, I have scanned and misinterpreted,
and against it I have set up my own private desires, objecting to the plans of
God, not knowing my own nothingness before it, nor trembling before the great
and loving Ruler in whom it resides. And unless we add to this the definite
persuasion that this is an Almighty will, we shall scarcely pray in hope for the
performance of God’s will on earth. For we have done much to engender quite an
opposite persuasion by neglecting and opposing the will of God. If, however,
there be not infinite power to execute this will, then how is it to be done on
earth?

What we see on earth is not readiness to accept and execute it, but opposition,
unflinching, full grown, consolidated wickedness; and if there be not an
Almighty will in opposition to this, where is our hope? But He to whom we pray
is not a God that sleeps, or is on a journey, or talking, engaged with and
absorbed in other matters, but a willing God, a God already attending, and whose
own purposes they are that we desire to be fulfilled. The aid we have to expect
is not the very precarious aid we might receive from dexterously availing
ourselves of the power that resides in the laws of God’s kingdom; we do not
bring influences to bear on this earth which may or may not reform it; it is the
will of the Almighty we appeal to. It is a new hope which possesses us, when we
come to the persuasion that the will which we have opposed, and which is yet our
sole hope for ourselves and all men, is powerful as it is loving. And it is a
new resignation which possesses us, when we see God, our Father, the living,
loving, ordaining will, in the midst of our lot, and can say, “ Thy will, Thy
will then it is altogether good. Thou hast been the Author, Mover, Orderer
throughout. Thou hast planned and begun and watchfully carried on, and therefore
it is good. This Thou hast done not by compulsion, but by Thy will, whose will
is done in heaven, whose will is leading me to heaven.” Who shall say what may
be thus contained in this petition, or predict how, using it, we shall be led
from one degree of grace and blessing to another, become more and more conformed
to the guiding will? Who shall penetrate the purposes of the only wise God, and
tell the glory which lies there in the seed, and which we shall see with our
eyes when God manifests what His will is? And are we to fall out of this blessed
track of His will, are we to be cast sadly ashore out of this river of life?
Shall we be found dropping this petition from careless lips, as if the
accomplishment of God’s will had little to do with us or with the world we are
in? Are we not already enjoying the fruits of that will? Am I not the child of
this will? Is it not this which has made me myself and not another? “ My
substance was not hid from Thee, yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my
members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was
none of them. How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God; how great is
the sum of them.” But in our petition there seems to be an emphasis on this,
that the will of God is to be done. For as, when we have willed a thing, we do
not sit down and expect to see it take place of itself, but set about the
carrying out of our will by our work, so the will of God is not a thing to be
spoken of, contemplated, waited for, but a thing to be done. And this will of
God is to be done by us. For as a monarch does not rise from his throne to
execute his own will, but has it executed by servants, to whom are allotted
their several spheres of duty, so the will of God is given to us to do. It is
still He who does it, but through our doings. The actual performance of His will
has still been by the words and works of men. God has not been working in one
place, man in another; but what God has done on earth, He has done by men on
earth. And here it is to be observed, that in order to our carrying out the
mightiest schemes of God, it is not necessary that we know what these are.

God gives to each what each can do, and by the various gifts and labours of all
fulfils His own grand purpose. What we need to know is only the commands of God,
what He sees fit for us to do. And doing this we may be sure that, so far as we
are concerned, the secret purposes of God are being accomplished. He has given
to all of us the same general orders, but by putting us in different situations,
He does His will through each of us in different ways. One has little active
work, but much to suffer. One is freed from the cares and temptations of
eminence, but thinks his lowly condition not very suitable for doing the will of
God. Another excuses himself from much reference to the will of God, because he
is so distracted with the wills of men, and with their cares and burdens laid
upon him. All such murmuring and excusing is vain, for these three things, God’s
commandment, our circumstances, and God’s eternal purpose, are all of them
springing from one source, the will of God, and do therefore harmonise. Our
circumstances are allotted by the same will which commands us. And therefore let
no one say, “ I could do God’s will better somewhere else”. What is God’s will
you speak of? Is it not that you serve Him where you are; is not that His will?

You were not made by God to be another man, and fill his place, and do his work.
You were made as you are, to do your own work, and to fill the place in God’s
plan which He has appointed you. A weak monarch may mar his own design by
employing his servants in posts for which they are most unfit. But God does not
so mistake; He has “ given to all according to their several ability,” and so
brings about His own ends. So that when we pray, “ Thy will be done,” we pray
that God may so rule, that to the utmost ends of the earth, and in the minutest
actions of men, and in all the arrangements of life, there may be the easily
visible impress of God’s will. This we pray for, but more directly that our
circumstances may be so ordered as to enable us to carry out most effectually
the design of God with us, and that we may be so gifted with wisdom, courage,
and self-command, as to see and follow out the line of conduct most appropriate
to us where God has set us. Praying thus, we are strengthened for all duty,
whether it be active or sorely passive. We find in all that happens to us an
answer to this prayer; and instead of being dismayed, as those are who have not
prayed that the will of God may be done, we find, in every change and seeming
chance of life, new scope for carrying on the work of God, our share in His
plan; and for our ordinary days, which pass as yesterday passed, we find no
healthier influence to give them a uniform tone and character than to write on
the threshold of each, “ Thy will be done”. I cannot come thus before God
without some strengthening sense of the dignity and responsibility of a life
connected with God, and fulfilling His will. I come to Him as my Father and my
King, as if bringing my life in my hand, desiring that He would take it again,
and give it back to me moulded to His design. I stand alone with Him, not
confused by what other men are doing, not hidden from God’s will regarding me by
the practice of the world; I know that there must be something which God has for
me to do, else I would not have life to do it; and can I go straightway and
forget that it is not my own will and the world’s work I have to do, but these
only in so far as they are God’s will and God’s work? I cannot sincerely pray, “
Thy will be done,” and begin my day with no desire to know and execute God’s
commands; I am under orders, I have a purpose to live for, am no longer open to
every influence that may blow upon me, nor can I any more count this life a mere
vanity. And what higher purpose can a man have than this, to fulfil the will of
God with him, and satisfy the reason of his being what he is, and where he is?
Surrendering our wills thus to God’s will, we live with a determined strength of
will that nothing else imparts. We carry with us from God’s presence God’s
authority, and in the strength of it we make the world serve God; we fulfil His
will in the world and by the world, find this authority more suasive than the
solicitations and examples of men; find in it a commission which turns this
world into the material of God’s work. If not, we have only mocked God in
saying, “ Thy will be done,” mocked Him in a way which is most offensive to Him,
calling Him “ Lord, Lord! “ but not doing the things which He has commanded;
like the son of the parable, who said, “ I go, sir,” but did not the will of his
father. But very specially are we to dwell on the words “ in earth,” not
suffering them to pass our lips without a degree of emphasis; for so hard is it
to give ourselves, day by day, to the service of God, and to spend our whole
time in the carrying out of His purposes, that we are tempted to give up this,
and tempted by the most palpable delusions. And one of these delusions, which
seems absurd when stated in words, but which never theless affects our conduct,
is, that as in a future life we shall have opportunities of holiness such as we
do not here enjoy, we are therefore not called upon to be living as carefully
here as they do in heaven. Do we not find ourselves virtually saying, that
because we have to live by our own exertions, therefore we cannot be doing God’s
will; that we must defer doing God’s will till we get more time? Is there not
visible in our conduct the want of duly remembering that on earth we must do
God’s will; to-day in all we have to do, for to-morrow we may not be on earth
the want of once for all coming to the persuasion, that what we are here for is
to do God’s will, not just to struggle through and reach death, but to live now
as the servants of God; not to wait for holier times, but to redeem this time,
because the days are evil; not to live as if we thought that hereafter we will
be more bound to God as His subjects than now; and as if we thought that, though
hereafter we may be expected to do His will, yet here we must do much that is
not His will, much that is beside, and much that is contrary to His will; and
that in the whole we cannot live with much reference to the will of God? Have we
been praying with any true hope that God’s will may be done on earth, or only
believing that God’s will may somewhat and sometimes modify the evil of earth,
and may keep us from some of the grosser sins? Have we yet come to the strong
sense of our responsibility, not to ourselves, not to our friends, not to the
world, not to God’s law, but to God Himself; a sense which makes us say, “ Here
on earth I have something to accomplish, and that for God. This manner of life I
am choosing, is this that which best accomplishes God’s will? If not, how do I
pray, Thy will be done? In a thousand things I am choosing for myself, choosing
what I shall do to-day, what I shall do for a time, whom I shall see, how I
shall conduct my self towards this man and that; in all my choosing, am I
referring to God’s will, having resolved to do it? Or am I snatching my short
time of wretched self-government, before God calls me to account? Am I doing my
best to shape my life, so as to carry out God’s will, or, having schemed, a life
for myself, am I wresting God’s will so as to bring it near to my own? Am I
acting from God’s will as my reason, and motive, and guide, or from my own
untutored and unsubdued will? Knowing what the will of God is, am I considering,
Now how much of this can I possibly achieve? “And being so tempted to forget
that through all the employments, connections, and circumstances of this earthly
life, it is God’s will which must lead us, we must not cease enlarging this
petition in words though not in meaning, to pray and to desire “that we may be
filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding; that we may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being
fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience
and longsuffering with joyfulness”. And if ever tempted to relax our efforts, if
ever tempted to fall from the hope of this petition to the sluggishness which
says, “ It is impossible to do the will of God as it is done in heaven, and
therefore it is useless to pray for this “; let us remember that it is our sin
that it is impossible; that whether impossible or not, it is what we earnestly
desire when in a right frame of spirit; and that if it be so desirable, our part
is not to give up because we cannot attain perfection, but to strive all the
harder that we may come as near it as possible. It is one thing to attain
perfection, another to desire it. And he who does not desire it here will
certainly never attain it hereafter. So that the simple answer to the question,
whether on earth we may pray for the perfection which obtains in heaven, and if
it be not romantic or enthusiastic so to pray, is just this, that we pray for
what we desire, and we cannot but desire to be perfectly serving God. It is vain
to tell us we are too weak, too sinful, to reach perfection in this life; this
only incites us to put forth more earnest desire and effort, and more
beseechingly to implore the aid of “ that glorious power which hath delivered us
from the power of darkness,” “ that Almighty power which works (not indeed in
the doubting, but) in all who believe”. That there are things we cannot do is no
reason why we should not be doing all we can. And if no man has reached
perfection in this life, is there any man who has done all he could to reach it?
But over against the sad truth that we have omitted to make the most of this
life, and are therefore now not “perfect and complete in all the will of God,”
over against the truth that there are many parts of God’s will which, on account
of our weakness, we have been unable to perform as they in heaven do, let this
other truth be set, that there are parts of God’s will which can only be
performed on earth. And would that we could so understand this as to awake to
the value of this day we pray in, and bestir ourselves, and throw our whole
energies into this present life, living out its duties with our might, exerting
our selves so as to arouse efforts which will lift us out of our easy, natural
level and rate of living, and which will show that we have now one thing to do,
and one purpose to fulfil. To do the things God’s will now contains is not easy.
We could not expect it to be so. Often has it been seen that, even among men,
one dominant will has aroused thousands to hard, fatiguing activity, which,
through the whole course of it, seemed all but beyond human strength; and shall
we expect God’s will to be easy and natural to us? And this difficulty appears
very specially in what God has set before us all as our common aim and work, as
the one thing He would have all of us to do, so that He says of it, “ This is
the work of God “. This work is to believe on Him whom He hath sent. This we
cannot do hereafter; it is the work of this life, the will of God for earth.
This is that which will bring the best good to us, and the highest glory to God
out of the apparent poverty and woe and vanity of this life. Is there any use we
can make of our lives so profitable that, for the sake of it, we may neglect the
saving of our souls? And if not, what are we to do? are we to sit still, to let
ourselves be drifted we know not whither, when God has a definite will
concerning us, and has given us a definite work to accomplish? But this work,
easy though it seems, is found to be hard; it takes us to go out of our way, to
resist our inclinations, to pray as our life depends on it, “Thy will be done”.

Yet while the things to be done are different, the manner of our doing them is
to be similar to the heavenly. We, the younger brethren, are to look upon our
elders as they do the will of God in those higher posts to which we may not yet
be advanced. Letting our hearts dwell on the blessedness of those who serve God
and see His face, we are insensibly assimilated to their spirit, and are
prepared to become rulers over greater trusts than are here committed to us. And
since we cannot actually contemplate, and so imitate heavenly service, this
petition becomes a prayer for the spirit of that service. We know that if we be
animated by the same spirit, the manner of our working will resemble that of the
heavenly places. When, therefore, we pray, “ Thy will be done in earth, as it is
in heaven,” * we desire that God’s will be done on earth readily and cheer
fully, humbly and zealously, faithfully and con

* And surely it may be inferred from these words, “ as it is in heaven,” that we
are not to pray for the execution of God’s will in judgment, for this is not “
as it is in heaven”; not in opposition to and overturning the will of man, but
as converting the will of man, and operating through it. stantly. And in looking
to heaven as the model of our service, we need not pass by the visible heavens,
from which David so constantly drew lessons for himself. To see how God’s will
should be done, we have but to turn the eye to the “ unworn sky,” old in the
service of God, but fulfilling His will as at first. We see the precise
regularity which should characterise our service also. We see how unweariedly
all perform their parts, the great sustaining the small, the small reflecting
and enhancing the glory of the great; all as members of one system, obeying in
peaceful harmony Him who calls them all by their names. We see how the sun,
morning after morning, comes forth rejoicing to run his race; how the moon
observes her appointed seasons, and the sun knoweth his going down; how all,
though it be in an unvarying course, fulfil the will of God untiringly. And is
our glory to be our shame? Is the only result of our being gifted with will and
intelligence, to be that we rebel against God, and revolt from His will? Ought
not the order of nature, which we admire, and to which we trust, to be a
continual rebuke to us? But it is to the inhabitants of heaven we are mainly to
look, those “ angels who excel in strength, who do His commandments, hearkening
unto the voice of His word “. “ Hearkening unto the voice of His word,” for it
is this which makes them worthy of imitation, that all they do is done with
direct reference to the will of God; because it is God’s will, and not, in the
first place, because they have chosen it. The throne of God is in their midst.
They serve Him seeing His face, and what they see written there they haste to
execute. And when our Lord asks us to pray this petition, He does not ask us to
do what He has not done Himself. When He was on earth it was earth that taught
heaven how the will of God should be done. Angels stooped to learn new devotion
to Him whom they had already served without blame. And in the crisis of His
life, the crisis also of the world’s history, this was His petition, “ Thy will
be done “. And so also we are to pray, Order our circumstances so that we shall
have best scope for serving Thee, and reconcile us to our circumstances, and fit
us for them, so that with our will and heart we may serve Thee.

Preserve us from being conformed to this world; but transform us by the renewing
of our minds that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will
of God. Christ does not bid us pray that this good thing and that may be ours,
but that God’s will may be done; for this is at the back of all good, and
embraces now all the good that will ever be to any.


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  CHAPTER 52: 04.05.     GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
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Chapter V. “Give us this day our daily bread.” WHEN we set ourselves to fathom
the character of a man, we do not so intently observe the expression of his
thoughts, as their connection; we do not stand outside and listen just to what
he pleases to tell us, but, if possible, enter within and observe the workings
of his inner man; we do not care so much to know his ideas and sentiments in
detail as to trace the links between them; so as to see the man, not only when
he pleases to emerge to the surface, but in the entire current of his feelings
and thoughts. And, when we ascertain those minor connections of his various
utterances, and can trace all that appears back to that involuntary spring in
the heart which suggested it, we have a pretty accurate idea, not of what the
man desires us to think him, or even supposes himself to be, but of his real
character. Now, when we submit these two petitions, “ Thy will be done on
earth,” and, “ Give us this day our daily bread,” to this species of scrutiny,
we at once detect the character of their Author. We see that He only could have
thus passed from one to the other, who found it His meat and drink to do the
will of His Father. Many would pray, “ Thy will be done,” and many would pray, “
Give us bread,” but to how many of us would this have suggested itself as the
natural order of these petitions? Are there not few who have chosen the trade or
business they follow, because they thought that therein they could best work out
God’s will with them, compared to those who have made their choice as being the
most pleasant, or most rapid, or most secure way of earning their bread: few to
whom the supports and comforts of this life are practically of less importance
than the doing of God’s will? If we divide men into two classes, those who work
because they are hungry and have to work, and those who work because there is
something to be done; those who consider how they may best win a livelihood, and
trust that in it they shall somehow find opportunity of doing God’s will; and
those who make it their first consideration how they may best serve God, and
trust that in doing so bread shall be given them; we need not say which will be
the larger class, and as little need we say which will be the more Christlike
class. It is in truth a very advanced and enviable condition for a man to be in,
when he desires to be supported in this life mainly for the purpose of doing God
service. Yet not so advanced by any means that none attain to it, nor that we
should be content only to envy without striving to imitate those who have
attained it.

How many reasons urge all of us to pray for continuance in life, besides this
simple one which led to the prayer of our Lord! When the mist that has long lain
gloomily on our earthly future begins to lift and scatter, and reveals a fair
and attractive prospect; when plans are entered into the full execution of which
will take years to accomplish; when we have found a useful and not unpleasant
way of employing our time; when we are surrounded with friends whose counsel
guides, and whose affection cheers and rewards our labour, we have evident
reason to pray, “ Give us still this day our daily bread “. But therefore ought
we the more carefully to consider, whether there be one reason stronger than all
these, whether there be one desire which at once and uniformly suggests this
petition, and would dietate it still, though the world were blank of comfort and
reward, and though natural feeling were prompting us rather to say, “ I would
not live alway “. Not, of course, that we should be afraid of cherishing
subordinate reasons for continuance in life, but that we should beware lest they
be come something more than subordinate, lest they oppose instead of aiding the
performance of the main purpose; not that we should be afraid of the enjoyments
and attachments of life, but that we should always give the doing of the will of
God so prominent a place in our intentions and desires, that we shall very
naturally pray, “ Thy will be done on earth,” and, therefore, in order that Thy
will may be done, for this end and reason mainly, “ Give us this day our daily
bread “. This petition, then, at once shows itself to be quite of a piece with
the whole prayer before us. A petition for temporal support, it is a spiritual
petition. It presents the world as the godly man sees it. Our meat and drink and
raiment first come into view here, and here we see them from the heavenly side.
This petition brings our whole earthly condition before God, and readjusts it
before Him and with His help. It brings it back every morning to its true
position, from which it veers and slides away in the forgetfulness and pressure
of the day’s employment. Instead, there fore, of being easy, this petition is
one of the most difficult to pray. It is the petition that least of all can be
prayed from an earthly mind, for it comes from the directly opposite quarter to
all earthly desires, and meets them on that very ground to which they most
tenaciously hold. This is the petition of those who seek first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness, who “ buy as though they possessed not, and use the
world as not abusing it “. Yet let us not fear to utter it, though we know there
is much that is selfish and earthly in the desire as we embrace it, for God is
very ready to forgive the evil that is in our asking, that so we may receive His
gift, and with His gift His blessing, which will purify us, and form our hearts
to heavenly aspirations through the know ledge of His love.

Here, first, in this prayer, we come upon this word “ Give,” the key to the
treasury of God’s riches; a word that opens over us the windows of heaven, that
wakes the omnipotence of God, and causes the fulness of His resources to flow
forth; a word which is as a rod of power in a man’s hand, if he knows to direct
it to the great Giver, to Him from whom all things have come, who has given all
out of Himself, and who continues to give not grudgingly, nor of necessity, but
freely and liberally, because it is of His nature so to do; a word that we must
use, be cause we are poor, but which is put into our mouths because we are
intended to be rich; a word which, however often and greedily we use it, will
still find its echoing “ receive “ in God. And there is no period when this word
must be uttered for the last time, for God does not tire of giving, nor, like
man, excuse Himself from giving more because already He has given so much, but
by the further and more bountiful outpouring of His gifts satisfies that
confidence in Him which His former gifts have inspired. And here this word “
Give “ stands in its simplicity, without apology, without circumlocution; in its
childlike boldness and straightforwardness of request. It is the wide opening of
the mouths of the young birds hungering round the parent. And it is remarkable,
that the only introduction of this word in the prayer is when we ask for that
which, of all things, we are most inclined to think may be got by our own
exertions. We allow that there are spiritual gifts, which it is of God to give.
Or at least there are graces which we are aware we cannot have without God’s
aid, and which we feel so helpless to procure apart from Him, that it seems
appropriate enough to call them “gifts”. But here we are taught to depend on the
simple gift of God, not for the well-being of our spirits, but for the
maintenance of our bodies. We are to say “ Give “ of that which our whole time
is spent in procuring. We are not to say “ Provide,” not “ Put us in the way of
acquiring “; but, however it is to be done, we are to say simply “ Give,” as if
direct out of Thine hand into ours. What is true of the beasts of the field is
equally, and almost as obviously, true of ourselves: “ These wait all upon Thee,
that Thou mayest give them their meat in due season. That Thou givest them, they
gather; Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with food.” Let society refine
and involve itself as it will, let it secure itself against all contingencies,
and provide regular labour and suitable returns for labour, still it is God
whose is our life and breath and all things. This security and plenty, which
make us feel less dependent on God than the savage is, who has to-day to find
to-day’s food, are only the more liberal opening of God’s hand to us, showing us
that we, if we are not more dependent, have more dependence on God than most.
And the nearer we come to the actual procuring of food, the more evidently do we
see God. We may stay at our work, engrossed by it; we may sit in our rooms,
chambers, or counting-houses, and plan, and there we may see no one but our
selves providing our maintenance, and may fail to discern any symptoms of God’s
work; but when it comes to the end of all this, to the eating for life, we meet
God and feel how utterly we are in the power of some other than ourselves.

It is not we who make the corn grow, nor by all the appliances of science could
extort one harvest from an unwilling earth. Must not the proudest and best
skilled among us, after doing his utmost, just simply wait on God for His bread?
This lesson, which one year’s famine so feelingly and unmistakably teaches,
seems an easy lesson to learn from the regular and ordinary supply which God
maintains by sending seed-time and harvest in the seasons of His appointment.
When we consider the vast number of lives to be maintained, the variety of food
by which they are maintained in all different parts of the earth, the numberless
contingencies, things that might so easily happen, but which, if happening,
would hasten multitudes to the grave, the remote and various causes which must
all of them be together regulated and ordered to this one end of life, are we
not convinced that God is no idle spectator of the earth He has framed for man?

One thing more very strikingly leads us to acknowledge that we are bound to God
as the giver of our daily bread; and a thing it is, apparently, intended for
this very end. We cannot make food, do what we will; and as little can we store
it up for years and centuries. Some things are given us in perpetual retention,
once for all, and not year by year; thus we possess the stone with which we
build, the coal we burn, and others of the most useful commodities. But the
actual food does not so exist, does not exist dead and stored up, so that we can
never run out of it. It is of earth’s annual production, and has its term of
life, after which it is useless to us. It differs from those things that the
earth already contains, and which have only to be taken and fashioned by us for
our use, inasmuch as it has to be called into being. That which shall sustain us
in the years to come has now actually no existence. It must itself be born and
grow, must itself receive life, before it can communicate life to us. And thus
are we very plainly unprovided for, except in the faithfulness of God. The
future is a blank to us except in so far as God fills it with His goodness. And
in what a light does this set the character of him who eats his daily bread, not
only as if it must infallibly and of some natural necessity yield him life, but
as if he had made it and given it the life which now it gives to him! “ Talk no
more, therefore, so exceedingly proudly, let not arrogancy come out of your
mouth, for the Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to the grave, and
bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich; He bringeth low and lifteth
up.” What we have by inheritance, and what we have by our own endeavour; the
abundance at hand, and the store laid up; all is the gift of God, and through
all our possessions we must pray to Him who is at the back of them all, to the
Fountain of Life from which they are drawing all that can give us life. For this
prayer is not a fanciful connecting of earth with heaven, an elegant way of
making our life of drudgery for bread a life sublime, nor a foolish, meaningless
homage to God, but it is an asking for what we need and can only have from God.
But there is another word in this petition which we must take in connection with
this word “ Give “. And it seems, at first sight, strange that we should say,
not only “Give us bread,” but “our bread”. The first truth which this suggests,
when we pray, is, that what we ask for must be ours and not another s. We must,
that is, ask for what God may give us without detriment to others. We are not to
expect to reap what others have anxiously sown, nor to enter into other men’s
labours. “ If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” The bread we pray for is
to be a gift so far as God is concerned, but it is to be ours so far as our
fellow-men are concerned. We are to be careful that, in asking God to prosper
us, we are not thinking of some other person’s prosperity, and wishing that some
of it were transferred to our lot. We are not to push our own interests
regardless of the interests of others; still less, so as directly to injure
others.

We are to keep within our own domain, and the limits of a fair and open
competition. This prayer, then, saves from dishonesty and cruelty. When we thus
pray, we see that our advancement is to run in the line of God’s pleasure; and
we are enabled to choose rather to wait to see His way of prospering us brought
to pass, than to take the matter into our own hands, and, by means pleasing to
Him or not, to make a competency for ourselves. It is bread provided honestly in
the sight of man that we are to look for, and not the bread of idleness, of
deceit, or of extortion. And, therefore, when we say, “ Give us our bread,” we
do not expect that God will lift us above the common and toiling ways of men,
nor loosen us from the hard and burden some conditions of this life, raining on
us bread from heaven; but we trust that He will find for us labour, such as
shall not only win us bread, but be otherwise beneficial to us.* And thus God,
in that word of His which Christ rested on in the time of His trial, says, “ Man
liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God “ that is, not by the simple and visible gift of God, but by His disposition
of our circumstances, and distribution of natural ability to labour, and scope
for exercising this ability.

But, again, this word “our” teaches us to be considerate in our desires, and
discriminating; to ask not blindly for the good things we see

* Stier quotes a striking proverbial saying, “ We lift our empty hands to
heaven, and God lays work upon them “. others enjoy, nor for all that for a
moment strikes us as desirable, but for “ our “ bread, for that which is suited
to us in our present position.

What others are receiving, and may be both delighting in and profiting by, might
be a very disastrous gift to us. This is, then, in other words, the wise prayer
of Agur, “ Feed me with food convenient for me “. And while there are hardships
in poverty, which none will make light of who knows anything of their variety
and their bitterness, yet, if this be the condition appointed to any, let these
also thankfully pray for their pittance from God, remembering that He who taught
us this prayer Himself lived from day to day, not knowing in the morning where
the evening meal was to come from, not knowing in the evening where He would
find shelter for the night, having while alive no home He called His own, nor
when dead a place provided to lay His body, possessing nothing while in the
world, and leaving behind Him no more than the raiment He wore. Though this be a
condition which we cannot desire, yet -it has its own blessing, and those who
find this allotted to them as their daily bread, will (if they are receiving it
thankfully from God) find in the end that no better condition could have been
assigned them, and that it has been no small inheritance to share the poverty of
their Lord.

Again, it is perhaps not straining this word to find in it a reference to, and
prayer for, others along with ourselves. In any case such prayer is very
suitable, but it is specially appropriate when we pray for the provision of this
life: inasmuch as in this we are all dependent one upon another, no one man’s
work sufficing for the actual accomplishment of his own sustenance, clothing,
and comforts. In the savage state, men may be excused for some selfishness,
where they can live in all things independently of one another, each man
building for himself and catering for his own wants. But we are inexcusable, if
we be not charitable, not only in prayer and intention, but in deed, we who
daily enjoy what has cost the labour of many. And the more we live in liberal
community with others, the better will our lives appear in the end to have been
spent. On the whole, then, this word “our” teaches us to desire to be laborious,
contented, and charitable; to work with our will and strength, doing our best in
our place; to wait on God for fruit of our work and returns for our labour; and,
receiving these, to be satisfied, if they be small, and willing that others
should share with us, if they be large. He who has to earn his bread is girt by
this prayer with a fresh and cheerful confidence for his daily duty: and he who
has abundance is admonished to be diligent in the right disposal or increase of
it, knowing, at least, that this prayer has not been from his true desire, if he
leaves to their hunger and misery any whom his further labour might relieve. For
our cause is a common cause with all mankind, as our Lord’s self-sacrificing
life stands ever teaching us; and while there is want in the world unsupplied,
there should be no faculty of labour in the world unexercised. If the healthy do
not work, what is to become of the sick? If the strong man do not labour, what
help is there for the child and the aged? And to those who are labouring to
their utmost, and yet not seeing the results they purposed and still desire, all
that can be said is, Wait and pray this prayer still. This is all that can be
said, not because your case is a desperate one, but because in this all
consolation is included, and all hope, as you well know already, if the Spirit
has taught you to say in simplicity, “ Give me this day my daily bread “. By
teaching us to ask for bread, our Lord indicates that our desires for worldly
good should not be passionate, but moderate; restricted to the supply of the
natural wants of our condition. For this the word bread naturally suggests to
us.

We say that we do not desire a great deal, but enough to enable us to do God’s
will effectively, to be the most we can.* It is not a burden of luxuries and
superfluous comforts, but the light equipment of a hardy abstemiousness, which
is aimed at by this petition. We acknowledge the propriety of leaning rather to
what is severe than to what is sumptuous; and while we by no means deprecate all
extras, all comforts and pleasures, these are not sought with the fervency of
prayer.

Here, accordingly, the question emerges: Can a man conscientiously pray thus,
and straightway proceed to his employment, resolving to acquire, if possible,
far more than enough for the maintenance of life? The answer to this has been
anticipated, when it was said, that the honest offering of this petition impels
a man to labour

* Clement of Alexandria cleverly compares a man’s possessions to a shoe. They
must fit him; being cumber some and uncomfortable if too large, as well as
painful if pinched. to his utmost. Let him make what money he can, if that be
fairly in the way of his calling, only let him, more than any other, keep
repeating to himself the reiterated warnings of God’s Word concerning the
entangling power of wealth.

Let him start right from the petition preceding this. Let him be sure that his
chief end in seeking gain be to do God’s will on earth. Let him be very certain
that his purpose is to employ his gains in a manner on which he can ask God’s
blessing; and let him through his whole career examine himself, to learn whether
the means be not becoming more to him than the end, whether his desires are
still going beyond the gold to the Christian expenditure he at first proposed.
No doubt this requires a strong and watchful spirit, but since commercial
ability, as well as every other talent, is to be consecrated to God, and since
money is needed on all hands for the best of purposes, let him who has the
ability to gain use this petition, and what he receives as God’s gift he will
use in His service. For do we not all feel, when we use this petition, that we
must not use what God may this day give us, for the pampering of appetite, for
the vanity of display, for waste, for anything which will not please God? We
know how it has grieved ourselves to see what has been besought at our hands put
to a use which the receiver knows we abhor or disapprove, and we determine to
show ourselves worthy stewards of the gift of God to us, and to justify (so far
as in us lies) our appointment to so many blessings. And as our prayers are
moderate, so let us be thankful for ordinary benefits. For wherever there is
material for prayer, there is material for thanksgiving. If we need to pray to
God even for our bread, then even for our bread let us give thanks to Him. If
to-day’s supply does not come by chance, nor because we were similarly supplied
yesterday and the day before, but because God regards our wants of to-day, and
for this day also grants us life; then this day ought we to thank Him for this
day’s mercies, though they be but the same as yesterday s, and what all other
men are enjoying. As each rising sun, touching the wing of the sleeping birds,
wakes through the woods a fresh burst of glad melody, as if sun had never risen
before; * so let each day’s mercies awake our hearts afresh to the sense of God
our Father’s smile, and turn our lives towards His * See Three Wakings, and
other poems. light. “ Where nothing is deserved, everything should be received
with thanksgiving; “ how then shall we ever discharge our debt of thanks, who
deserve to know the power of God’s anger, but experience the power of His mercy?

There is another essential of this petition. We are to pray for this day only.
And this is a point of so much importance to the right ordering of the godly
life on earth, that our Lord follows it out in the subsequent discourse, and
impresses it with a beauty and force of persuasion which have made this a marked
passage of Scripture. He anticipated the objection that we must provide for to
morrow as well as to-day, and reminds us that He who clothes the lilies of the
field, and makes provision for the birds of the air, knows that we also have
lives to be maintained, and constantly recurring necessities. By reminding us of
our helplessness, of the folly of distracting forethought, and of the
sufficiency of the care of God, He shames us into confidence. “ Is not the body
more than meat? “ He who has given you the greater, will He not also provide the
less? “ Is not the life more than raiment? “ He who can create and maintain the
one, may well be trusted to supply the infinitely less costly want. “ Are ye not
of more value than many sparrows? “ And yet is one want of one of these
overlooked, for gotten, or despised? Does God find pleasure in lavishing on a
flower which the eye of man never sees, a beauty which no forethought or effort
of yours could produce, and will He spend no care on you, O ye of little faith?
Does He not know what you have need of, so that you are constrained to be
fearful and anxious in your own behalf? Or can you really, by all your
pondering, provide one crumb beyond what He has provided for you? Does your
scheming by day and by night remove you out of the care of God into an
independent and self-supporting life of your own? “Take, therefore, no thought
for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Bring not, then, into this day’s
cares, and to confuse the duties which this day requires of you, to-morrow’s
cares and anxieties about its duties. I here ask God to take me through this
day; if to-morrow comes, He knows that I shall be as dependent on Him then as
now. But it forms no part of my care; I have cast it on Him. But does this
forbid planning of all kinds? Does this preclude all saving or storing?
Assuredly not. It forbids nothing which does not interfere with present duty. It
precludes nothing which does not indicate mistrust of God, and beget fearfulness
and depression of spirit. Any planning or storing of this kind is not for him
who prays this prayer. Any anxiety which says, What shall I eat? as if there
would be no God to-morrow; any thought of the unknown future which weakens us in
any way for plain, present duty; and any self-confident storing, as if we had
really more in our barns and banks than in the resources of God; all these are
certainly precluded. That there is a great difference between faithless, anxious
imagining and scheming, and godly prudence, every one understands who has given
a thought to the matter. From the former one sometimes wakes up, thoroughly
ashamed of it. Have I work for to-day, and strength for to day? Then let not
thought of to-morrow’s food, or how I shall get through to-morrow’s duties,
interfere with to-day’s duties, which require for themselves all my thought and
care. Let me prepare for to-morrow, so far as I can consistently with what I am
called on to do to-day. Let me, for example, lay up seven years corn, like
Joseph, if I am given to understand there will be need of it. Let me, like our
Lord Himself, gather up the fragments of to-day, that nothing be lost for to
morrow. Let me lay by whatever will in all human probability be needed for
simple maintenance; but let me do this, knowing that I am as dependent as ever
on God, and let me do it only in so far as it does not clash with present claims
of charity, hospitality, or station.

This, of course, is one of the cases in which a man’s own conscience must draw
the line; must say how much he is to spend or give, and how much to set against
a future call. There is no other rule than his own conscience to define this.
But of the principle on which all are to act, no one will be left in doubt who
is from day to day sincerely asking God for his daily bread. And of the two
extremes, trusting in gold to the utter exclusion of all confidence in God, and
trusting in God to the neglect of the rules of prudence which He has taught
(which God calls “ tempting Him “),no one needs to be told which is the more
dangerous, and few can safely dispense with self delivered warnings against it.
The answer, therefore, to this petition will be, that our spirits will be
cleansed from worldliness, covetousness, and hardness of heart; from
highmindedness, self-confidence, and dishonesty; from discontent, envy, and
indolence; and that we shall be enabled, without repining at what is past, or
fretting ourselves with thoughts of the future (though repenting of the past and
preparing for the future), to summon all the powers given us to this day’s duty.
And as we learn our place as dependants, we shall awake to the value of what is
consigned to us, and as we commit the past and the future alike to God, there
remains before us this day, a portion competent to our faculties, and
practicable, with no uncertainties to distract us from the “valuable
certainties” of the present. And this dependence should not be found difficult
by those who have an Advocate such as ours, who well understands human
necessities, Himself having hungered; whose earnest, purposing, and planning
love is the same now as when He “ be came poor that we might be rich,” and who
has so opened His riches to our poverty, that sufficiency is found in Him every
hungering soul finding enough in Him, every weary soul finding rest in Him,
every tossed and breaking soul for getting its sorrow in Him.


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  CHAPTER 53: 04.06.     AND FORGIVE  OUR DEBTS,  FORGIVE  DEBTORS
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Chapter VI. “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” No one who
uses this prayer can be surprised to find that to the petition for bodily
sustenance and the regulation of our earthly life, it is immediately added, “And
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors “. To ask for more puts us in
mind of what we have already received. To request the greatest favours from one
who may give or withhold at pleasure, forces us to consider our claim, and
calculate the probability of our being heard. And if our conduct towards any one
has been unworthy, never does conscience make more painful mention of this than
when circumstances bring us to acknowledge that we are dependent on this person.
Nothing but sheer necessity will induce us to seek the good-will, or implore the
aid of one whose past favours we have abused, whose person we have insulted, and
of whose excellence and power we cherish a grudging and irritable dislike,
rather than a frank and cordial admiration; but if necessity bids us seek the
presence and favour of such, we cannot do so without at least a form of apology,
which, though it be not willing nor true, is yet under stood to be requisite,
and felt to be humbling.

Prudence prescribes, though penitence does not prompt. But there are cases in
which the aid we seek is so vital, the gift we receive so munificent, that stiff
and hardened pride gives way before genuine humility and contrite gratitude. And
so it is when we ask from God our daily bread. “ Continue us in life,” we say to
God; and (not from heaven but) from within there comes an answering voice, “ Why
should God continue us in life? Is it to cumber His ground; to take up room
others might better occupy; to waste His goodness and abuse His forbearance?”
Give me this day my bread; but why to me? Am I so useful, so grateful, so
considerate? To me; to whom is it I attract the regard of God when I use these
words? “ Give me this day my bread; “ and why this day? Is it because yesterday
was so well spent? Were all my duties yesterday so discharged that I can with
some assurance ask another day? As every moment of it was charged with something
from God, was there on my part an unbroken rendering to God of His due? Do I
find in yes terday reasons for God’s maintaining me to-day, far outweighing
whatever might induce Him to withdraw His support? or, conscious of some
deficiency, do I say, “ Give me this new day,” that I may have some chance of
paying off the debt I have contracted; that I may this day do more than my duty,
and have a surplus to set over against yesterday’s deficit? Who needs to be told
that such hopes are vain, that all we can this day perform is already due; that
we cannot limit our service to God, nor by greater diligence part of the day
free the remainder from all claim; that we cannot serve Him so many hours, and
then say, “ Now I have done enough, now I may cease rendering obedience to God
“? All that we have for to-day is needed for to-day; it cannot over flow to
to-morrow, nor make up for the lack of yesterday. If we misspent yesterday’s
bread, we must to-day simply ask forgiveness; if we ran into God’s debt
yesterday by omission or transgression, then to-day we cannot make up for that,
but must ask His free pardon. And the more we seek for some reason for God’s
giving us this day’s bread, the more do we discover reason for God’s calling us
to account for what we have already received. Our “ give “ must ever be fol
lowed by “ forgive “. The goodness of God leads us to repentance. He overcomes
our evil with His good, and never more forcibly reminds us of our ungracious
past than when the present shines with His grace. The linking of this petition
to the preceding shows us further that forgiveness is a vital thing, as needful
for our daily life as the bread it is here connected with. Forgiveness is as
much the basis of a day’s duty as bread. If we are to serve on earth, we must
have bread; but if we are to serve either on earth or elsewhere, we must have
forgiveness. As surely as we faint and die with out bread, so surely do we faint
and die from all godly life, and for all godly purposes, if we have not
forgiveness. Bread supplies the personal capability and outward opportunity of
doing the things which please God: forgiveness supplies the inward condition in
which a man can do any thing pleasing to God. Until the matter of sin is finally
adjusted, and an understanding come to on this point between God and the soul,
there is no willingness, no heartiness, no constancy, nor any acceptance of
service. To serve God from any other motive than love has been proved impossible
by the lives of so many, that words need not be spent upon the matter. And that
a man cannot love God while he is heavily and inexcusably and hopelessly in His
debt, is what no one needs to be told who is really seeking for information
about service. I know this. Yes; but do I act upon my knowledge, or does not my
knowledge condemn my practice? Do I begin each day with a spirit free,
unburdened, and lively, running in the way of God’s commandments, as the healthy
body delights not in sluggish sauntering, but in vigorous and difficult
exercise? As I often take it for granted that the bread will come of itself
without any provident interposition of God, do I not also many a day pass by the
forgiveness of God as if it would come of itself? But if it comes at all, it
comes at my request. And if it do not come to-day, then this day is lost lost
for the service and glorifying of Him who gives it, and lost for my own best
good. For as bread not only satisfies the appetite which the past has begotten,
but also gives strength for time to come, so forgiveness not only clears away
what the past has accumulated, but lays the foundation for what is to come. And
other foundation than this there is none, as little as there is any way of
sustaining life besides eating and drinking. We can as little discover some
elixir which shall work in our spirits the same charm as forgiveness, as we can
discover some specific or private means of sustaining our bodies, which shall
put us beyond the necessity of taking meat like other men. And therefore are we
to be sure that we are obtaining this forgiveness, this daily spiritual
nourishment; not using this petition lightly, as if we could live quite as well
unforgiven as forgiven; as if it would make very little difference whether this
day be spent in God’s favour or under His displeasure. And how would God have us
view our sins when we seek their forgiveness? As debts. To get at the full
iniquity of sin, we need to consider it in various lights; and so in Scripture
we find it designated by a variety of names, each of which suggests some
peculiar quality of sin. It springs into life from such opposite parts of our
nature, and gathers strength from so many different motives; its heinousness is
darkened by so many aggravations, and its consequences run out in so many
directions, that it is impossible to gather up all its evil and express it in a
single word.

Sometimes it is transgression or trespass, and here we see our reckless
wickedness in departing from the straight path of God’s commandments, the “
everlasting way “ that runs on eternally into deeper blessedness. Sometimes it
is rebellion against God, as if we took delight in going contrary to Him,
irrespective of any pleasure or profit apparently to be gained. And sometimes it
is folly, showing us the weakness of our hearts, and their proneness to be
deluded, and to miss the aim and end of our being. But when we confess, we are
helped by viewing them as debts; an expression which leads us to consider, not
so much the evil dispositions from which our sins proceeded, as the relation to
God in which they have left us. And manifestly it is this which is most
appropriate to be on our minds (and which, in truth, must be on our minds), when
we come before God to ask His forgiveness. This view of sin takes us and sets us
down in our true position before God as His debtors. It throws into my soul the
confession, “ I am connected with God, and the connection is debt”. It is not a
word which directly points to the moral evil of sin, but it very distinctly
declares the position of the sinner. It may not be that view of sin which most
powerfully excites repentance; it is not introspection nor self-loathing which
it most directly induces; but it is a word which shows that our sins have to do
with more than our selves, which shows that they have connected me with God,
which speaks of God and myself in the same word, and at the same time exhibits
the relation I presently hold to God. And this is just what we need to see
clearly when we pray for pardon; that we are debtors, not only miser able
sinners, whose pitiable case may well move God to compassion, but His servants
who, in sinning and ruining themselves, have been most grievously wronging and
defrauding Him, and whose sins have done as much injury (so He represents it) to
Him as to themselves.

Sin, then, is a personal matter between myself and God. My sins have been
affecting God. It has been a matter that He has considered, and He has noted a
difference when I have done one thing rather than another. He has been
expecting, waiting for service at my hand. At great cost He has furnished me
with valuable aids and instruments, wherewith to further His purposes; and these
I have abused, squandered, or destroyed.

Again and again He has renewed my equipment as His servant, never casting me off
as hopeless, but carefully adjusting my circumstances, so as to make
opportunities of good easy; and what have I rendered Him again? All my life I
have been receiving at His hand; “ what have I that I have not received? “ What
should I have, were He to withdraw all the support He is now affording me? What
should I be, were He suddenly to banish me beyond His power? And for all I
receive (which I can as soon number the hairs of my head as reckon), He expects
a return. What return have I made? I hear His voice demanding of me, “ What
owest thou to thy Lord? “ I cannot tell; I have never so much as known what I
owed: have seldom so much as tried to form a careful, true, and honest estimate
of what is due from me to Him; have seldom set myself against the known
deceitfulness of sin, and determined that, at least, I should have a clear,
definite understanding of what I owe to God, and endeavour, as the one thing
which, at all events and at any cost, must be done by my life, to discharge what
is due to God, to whom I owe all.

“ Debt “ is a designation of sin which calls to mind a large class of sins,
which we are very prone to forget in seeking pardon sins of omission. These have
no palpable and visible existence, such as glaring acts of sin possess. While
they rival positive acts of wrong-doing in their iniquity, they outrival them in
their power of eluding conscience. So that, if there be a man who, when he draws
near to God with the purpose of confessing, is at a loss what to say; whose eye,
as it turns back to scrutinise his life, is arrested by no startling forms of
iniquity, is not glazed with terror, nor sinks in shame from the ghastly
phantoms that pursue him, and stretch forth quick and strong hands of vengeance
to seize him; let him look once more over that wide and void expanse, and let
him turn upon himself and ask what there ought to be there.

Let him say to his soul, Ought there to be no thing more than you see? Was it to
do nothing more than you have done, that God gave you this life, and made you
what you are? Have you done all for yourself that you could, so that now you are
as like to Christ as possible? Have you done all for others that you could, so
that none are hungering now, who might have been fed by you; none in sorrow now,
whom a word or deed of yours might have relieved; none in bitterness of spirit
or enmity against you now, whom a slight humiliation on your part might have
saved from sin; none mistaken as to the character of Christ and His religion,
who might have known differently had you done what you could? But there is one
sin of omission that rises up * from every part of our life, and fills with
condemnation the expanse which, to the careless eye, might seem vacant. There is
one debt incurred which fills the soul with new and keener shame, however
overwhelmed it has been already with a sense of sin. God’s “ unspeakable gift “
has been abused by us. He has spent all upon us, the whole resources of Deity,
all that made this world and more, all the wisdom, and the glory, and all (if we
may say “all” of what has proved itself infinite) the love of God. Only when we
can fathom the humiliation of Christ, only when

*” As at the resurrection men will rise from empty wastes, where it would not
have been suspected that any were concealed, let a man look back on all his
omissions, and think what the divine law can raise from them against him.”

FOSTER’S Lectures, vol. 1, p. 348. f This idea will be found elaborated in the
Patience of Hope, with the usual felicity of the authoress, we can understand
what is contained in that expression “ He emptied Himself,” only when we can
measure the interval between the throne of God and the tomb in Joseph’s garden,
between “the living God” and a dead man, shall we be able to measure God’s gift
to us and our debt to Him. And is the world to go on as if the Son of God had
never been its inhabitant? Has Christ done all this for us, and is no return
expected from us? Is all this to be done before us, and no new feelings to arise
in our hearts, no new and wider thoughts, no lasting alteration of conduct? Can
one act so closely in our interest, and our relation to Him be as it was? Let us
take our stand before the cross, where we may see the freeness of God’s giving
at its height, and, standing there, let us say if we have rendered to Him His
due. Call sin debt to Christ, and the matter is brought to a very simple issue.
Had I myself spent my all upon another, put aside my own interest and prospects,
and given my whole life and labour to him; had I, in that life, met with the
sorest trouble on his account, and yet never turned aside, and had I been
tempted by the most alluring openings for my self, and yet held the interest of
the object of this life-long sacrifice so close to my heart, that I preferred
bitterness and disgrace for him, to pleasure and profit for myself; and had this
resulted in a successful issue, had I achieved prosperity and secure
satisfaction for him, should I expect no return, should I not expect so much as
some extra thought and regard; nay, would it not be the most unaccountable
ingratitude if he did not become my firmest friend, the man on whom I could
always count? How the world would hoot such a man; how the world would scorn his
excuses! And is all changed when I myself am that man, and Jesus Christ the self
sacrificing friend? Is all changed because the sacrifice becomes greater than
the most laborious words can describe, and the blessing conferred increasingly
rich through eternity? Can our hearts really deceive us thus; can any blindness
leave unobserved our debt to Jesus Christ? But for all our debts, what does God
demand of us? Are His demands anything like those of the human law of debt, of
that old law which claimed the person of the debtor, and handed him over to his
creditor, to be cut in pieces if he chose; to be sold with his family and
effects, if he chose; to be chained to a life of drudgery, if such were the will
of his creditor? Are we at least to suffer some penalty, to feel for a while
something of the bitterness of that poverty to which we have brought another?
Not so. All that is asked is, that we acknowledge the debt, and accept of its
remission. And what else can we do? We can find no way of evading our creditor:
“ Though they dig into hell, thence shall Mine hand take them; though they climb
up to heaven, thence will I bring them down; and though they hide themselves in
Carmel, 1 will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from My
sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall
bite them “. It is not, then, by any evasion of ours that our debts can be got
rid of; neither will they pass away by any forgetfulness or waiting of ours.
They are not fancies, which the changes of life may put to flight. They are not
mere names or suppositions which need not be regarded. They are real; entered in
the book of God’s remembrance to the utmost far thing. We cannot live our lives
over again; the sins are committed; the debts are contracted.

We cannot now make up for what we have already done wrong and left undone. All
our strength is needed for our present duty. The future will do well, if it
keeps itself solvent. But “ ask, and ye shall receive “. “ The word is nigh
thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart; “ will not the heart send to the lips
this one petition, “ Forgive me my debts “? For pardon is one of the things that
we can only have by asking. It is a thing which must come from another, from
Him, namely, whom we have wronged. It is His to forgive, and nothing we can do
can earn it. We cannot pass a free pardon upon ourselves, remit the debts we owe
to another, absolve ourselves. But God, whom we have offended, and in whose debt
we are, says, we may have pardon for the asking.

“There is forgiveness with God;” and were there not forgiveness with Him, then
to look for it elsewhere were absurd, for He being the party offended can alone
forgive the offence. Forgiveness is with Him, not as being provided by an other,
and now put into His power to administer, but as it is dependent on His will
solely, whether there shall be any such thing as forgiveness of sin or not. All
provision that could be made for our pardon, and all administration of that
pardon now, must of necessity depend on and originate in the will of God. And
that will is, that we be freely pardoned. And this being so, it is deep
dishonour we do to God’s will and word, if we say or think that something must
be added to the simplicity of this petition, or that we are not to expect any
very wonderful results from this prayer. These words are something more than an
appropriate acknowledgment that we owe God much, they are not a charm by the
mere repetition of which we win God’s favour; they are the petition of the soul
for what we do need and can only have from God. But how does God Himself
encourage us to use this petition in faith? He puts into our mouths these words,
“ As we forgive our debtors “. And for our encouragement, first of all, these
words are surely given us. For here we have the same argument as is elsewhere
expanded in that marvellous verse which is instinct with persuasion, and which,
as often as we read it, rekindles our faith: “If ye, being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? “ Here, with like force of reasoning,
we are taught to say to God, If we, being evil, can forgive our debtors, how
much more may we expect forgiveness of Thee, whose name is love, who art our
heavenly Father, with whom there is forgiveness, and who hast made Thyself known
as “ ready to forgive “? And to set us on the firmest ground, and in an
absolutely unassailable position, when we thus pray, there comes further in aid
of our plea the idea which God Himself has given us of human forgiveness; and we
plead with still greater power, “ If on us who are full of wickedness, and in
whom malice and bitterness congenially dwell, Thou Thyself hast laid the
injunction to forgive seventy times seven, if our brother offend, what limit
dare we put to Thy forgiveness, which is high above ours as heaven is above the
earth? “Certainly this is a strong argument which God puts into our lips. Will
not He do more than He has commanded us to do? Are we not to expect more from
Him than from one another?

Well may our Lord add, “ For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly
Father will for give you”. This clause, appended to our appeal for pardon, does
not exhaust the reasons there are for assurance of success; we might be
encouraged by many other considerations. The likelihood of our obtaining what we
ask is grounded on the actual and abundant provision that has been made for our
forgiveness, on the express offers of God, and on a number of circumstances made
known in Scripture; but the likelihood that is here alone considered is that
which arises from the nature of the person appealed to. It is simply God’s
matchless readiness to forgive that we here use for our encouragement. We are
reminded by the words we use that we are now appealing to one, the forgivingness
of whose character is such, that He has impressed this attribute of His
distinctly upon His law, and has commanded that, in order to please Him, it is
but necessary that we be loving and forgiving. And nothing can more effectually
maintain within us the confident boldness which He desires, than thus to under
stand the infinite depth of love and length of for bearance that reside in Him
with whom we deal, and on whose mercy we hang. It is (need it be said?) very
fitting that before we approach God, we should distinctly understand how
forgiveness has been prepared for us, and should, by the contemplation of the
infinite merit and inexhaustible efficacy of the blood of Christ, encourage our
selves to draw near to Him by whose- judgment we stand or fall; but when we
actually stand in His presence, and are at length explicitly asking Him for
pardon, no encouragement can be more fitting than that which arises from a deep
impression of the forgiving nature to which our appeal is made, and nothing can
more promptly and effectually create this impression than the remembrance, that
forgivingness of disposition is enjoined upon us by God as the prime requisite
of character, and that His one commandment is that we love one another. And it
is this remembrance which these words of the prayer recall as often as we utter
them with understanding. But is this an encouragement that all of us can use?
Have we in heart accepted the seventy times seven as our rule, and do we desire
to be found in its practice? Dare we thus reason from ourselves to God? Dare we
point God to our conduct, and say, “As we forgive, so forgive us”? The words of
the petition assure us that whatever may stand in the way of our forgiveness, it
certainly is not this, that God is a hard judge who would rather condemn than
acquit. But then they remind us of this, only by reminding us that even we
ourselves, imperfect though we be, delight rather in the forgiveness than in the
punishment of our enemy. But is this the fact? Of course, we expect God’s
forgiveness to be of a very different measure from our own; but have we any
forgivingness of spirit, even “according to the measure of a man,” from which we
can take courage to hope in the wide and perfect and infinite forgivingness of
God? Have we the little from which we can reason to God’s much? Or are not some,
when they use this prayer, in danger of turning it into an imprecation? Is it
not true that many of us are in danger of uttering that most terrible curse upon
ourselves, which has been put into language and named “the prayer of the
unforgiving man “? * “ O God, I have sinned against Thee many times from my
youth up until now. I have often been forgetful of Thy goodness; I have not duly
thanked Thee for Thy mercies; I have neglected Thy service; I have broken Thy
laws; I have done many things utterly wrong against Thee. All this I know; and
beside this doubtless I have committed many secret sins, which in my blindness I
have failed to notice. Such is my guiltiness, O Lord, in Thy sight; deal with
me, I beseech Thee, even as I deal with my neighbour. He has * By A, W, Hare.
not offended me one-tenth, one-hundredth part as much as I have offended Thee;
but he has offended me very grievously, and I cannot forgive him. Deal with me,
I beseech Thee, O Lord, as I deal with him. He has been very ungrateful to me,
though not a tenth, not a hundredth part as ungrateful as I have been to Thee;
yet I can not overlook such base and shameful ingratitude.

Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O Lord, as I deal with him. I remember and
treasure up every little trifle, which shows how ill he has behaved to me. Deal
with me, I beseech Thee, O Lord, as I deal with him. I am determined to take the
very first opportunity of doing him an ill turn.

Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O Lord, as I deal with him.” The encouragement of
this petition, then, is not a mere commonplace which any one may safely use. A
true cordial it is, but if applied to the wrong condition may prove deleterious
and deadly. The boldness we have before God must not be the superficial
presumption of sentimentalism, but it must be of a piece with the tenor of our
life. For there is one thing we need in prayer as much as encouragement, and
that is sincerity. We must be thrown back upon our real desires. That
encouragement which is not backed by our true state of heart, and which does not
consist with our conduct, is mere delusion. The only right confidence before God
is that which the Apostle commends, and which can only be enjoyed “when our own
hearts condemn us not “; that is, when we ask God, not for those things which we
know we ought to desire, but for those things which are ever floating before our
hopes, and drawing forth our hearts affections, and the efforts of our lives. If
it is a fictitious desire, or a desire got up for propriety’s sake, which we
present before God, our hearts condemn us, and we have no confidence. And what
is to be carefully marked as the key to the encouragement in this petition is
this: that in point of fact every one who is set upon obtaining forgiveness does
forgive his neighbour, and therefore every one who uses the petition in
sincerity, in the truth of the heart, as the expression of the fixed bent of his
soul, does receive the encouragement which is laid up in the appended clause.
This encouragement is not for those who have a merely occasional and passing
impression of their need of forgiveness; it is not for those who prize God’s
favour to-day but to-morrow forget it; it is not for the insincere, who hold
this petition as a veil between God and their souls; nor for the double-minded,
who love this life, but would also secure themselves against the next. It is not
for any who can thoughtlessly and almost flippantly ejaculate this petition
merely from the lip; but it is for all on whose heart God reads the deeply cut
consciousness of their immeasurable debt, and the earnest and abiding desire for
pardon. This appended clause has, therefore, a twofold use. Wrapt up in its
encouragement there is a check to conscience. We are not to be allowed to
present the petition at all, unless it be from the deepest sense of our need,
and of the greatness of the gift we seek; a sense which is in reality equivalent
to true repentance, and which brings with it, as its uniform and necessary
fruit, love to our neighbour. And every one who knows how apt we are to become
either hypocrites or careless formalists in prayer, will recognise the
suitableness of such a check, and will appreciate the propriety of its being
appended to this petition rather than any other. For this, more than any other,
has been a lip-deep petition, and has been shame fully abused by self-satisfied
or careless petitioners, by ourselves when we ask forgiveness, as we often ask
it, without any considerate remembrance of the cost of it, thinking it the
easiest thing for God to give, and forgetting that this has been prepared for us
at a far greater expense, at a more personal expense, than anything else we can
implore. It has been the endeavour of many teachers to persuade us, and yet we
need to be reminded, that a word would create and beautify a world, and “an act
of will bestow it upon us,” but it has cost God the humiliation and suffering of
His well-beloved Son to grant the boon which now we ask. And therefore we are
here suddenly startled out of all dreamy and indifferent prayer, and are aroused
by being brought face to face with our own real desires and our own real life;
we are reminded that our prayer had far better be unsaid, if it is not of a
piece with our state of heart; that we cannot pray as one person and live as
another; that we do not look as earnestly as we ought for the remission of our
debts (and therefore need not expect it), unless we be doing what we can to
avoid contracting new ones; that, in short, we have no encouragement whatever to
present this petition, unless conscience assures us that the love of God, on
which we hope, has entered our souls and changed them, and has become the
principle and law of our lives.

All difficulty vanishes from this clause, once we recognise the point of fact,
that a man humbled before God is invariably and necessarily charitable to his
neighbour. The spirit of pride and the spirit of hatred are one; they stand and
fall together. Do I find it hard to forgive the little offences of my
fellow-servant, the few pence he owes me? Then do I, indeed, understand what it
is I ask God to do, when I ask Him to cancel that debt of mine of ten thousand
talents? For how can I have the heart to challenge another with his offences
against me, when my own misdeed and sin against God is pressing upon my soul,
and forcing me to cry for pardon? Myself helpless and keenly sensible that I am
utterly dependent on the forbearance and free grace of God, alive to the
shamefulness of my wrong doing against Him, and crying for mere mercy without a
shadow of hope that I can make the slightest reparation, I cannot, I really
cannot, harbour hard and unforgiving thoughts against my neighbour, nor insist
upon my claims. The words of the evangelist Mark are therefore by no means
alarming to one who really longs for pardon of his great debt, though they, even
more distinctly than the words of Matthew, require that, before receiving the
forgiveness of God, we forgive others. He quotes our Lord as saying, “ When ye
stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any; that your Father also,
which is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive,
neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.” As if He
said, “ Your act of forgiveness must precede the act you hope that God will
perform “. There is some thing standing in the way of your forgiveness which you
must remove. Something is to be done before God can forgive you, which you must
do. But, then, it is a thing which you cannot but be doing, if you are compelled
to seek God’s forgiveness from any just sense of your own sin. For just in
proportion as your own sin against God appears great, so will the offences of
others against yourself appear small.

It is not that our forgivingness of spirit wins the forgiveness of God, but that
pure unforgivingness cannot accept the forgiveness of God. By for giving others
we do not earn our own forgiveness, but most assuredly we cannot receive that
forgiveness until we forgive others. We are not prepared to seek it; we have not
seen our own great debt, and are merely asking God for we know not what, unless
humility and joy in the hope of God’s pardon have excluded from our hearts all
malice against our neighbour. So that this clause merely forms a demand that,
when we ask God for forgiveness, we shall know what we ask for. If we know what
we ask for, we will ask it, and cannot but ask it, in the spirit here required.
We come approving the law of forgiveness; it is all our hope for our selves, and
we act upon it towards others. With divine skill and kindness these words, which
we are to repeat as often as we ask forgiveness, bid us think how great a gift
we seek, and forbid us to deceive ourselves with a merely verbal petition, and
so to defraud ourselves of God’s pardon.

They refuse to let us near God, until we realise the vastness of His gift, and
are prepared to claim it. When we feel unable sincerely to use this petition, we
are not to turn our attention to our neighbour, and endeavour to kindle love in
our hearts by extenuating his offences and magnifying his good deeds. Not at
all. We are to bend our thoughts to our own state, to count up our debts to God,
to set them in the light of His countenance, and thus measuring our own great
debt, and learning that marvellous love which gives ground of hope even to such
debtors, our hearts drink in a humility, a peace, and a joy with which hardness
towards our fellow-men cannot dwell. And so invariably does the one feeling flow
from the other, that we may learn the presence of the one from the fact of the
other’s presence. An infallible test is thus graciously put into our hands, by
which we may learn whether we are asking enough from God. If there is still in
our hearts any bitterness towards man, then there is too little desire for
pardon. If there is too vivid a consciousness of our claims upon others, there
is too low an estimate of God’s claims upon us.

If the wrong done us by others seems greater than we can forgive and forget,
then our own wrong-doing is affecting us less than it should; the mind of God
and our mind still view very different objects, when our sins are spoken of. But
God would fully pardon us. He would not have us live with a single debt
uncancelled, and therefore He gives us a test by which we may always learn
whether, when we use this petition, we are indeed seeking that all our great
debt be forgiven. He gives us these words, certainly not to make our prayer
impossible, but to preserve us from verbally asking for what He would have us
seek with our whole soul; and because He would have us, indeed, receive what we
ask, when we say,” Forgive us our debts”.

“Alas! alas!

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once, And He that might the vantage
best have took Found out the remedy. How would you be, If He, which is the top
of judgment, should But judge you as you are? O 1 think on that; And mercy then
will breathe within your lips, Like man new made.”


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 54: 04.07.     AND LEAD  INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER EVIL
========================================================================

Chapter VII. “ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” OUR
prayer, then, is not finished, when we have cast upon our Father in heaven all
the cares of our earthly life, and have been also freed from the burden of our
sins. It is pleasant to sit in God’s smile, and gather strength in the assurance
of His favour; but the future frowns terribly upon us, and we quail at the
remembrance that we are still surrounded by the world we have renounced, and are
still liable to the sins we have just deplored. Acknowledged as the children of
God, we do not yet enjoy the security of His home; and it is when we look
forward and see what lies between us and that home, that we become aware that
sin has not only stained but poisoned us; that the burden has not only weaned
but weakened us; that the debt has not only hampered but demoralised us. It will
not do to rest in the quiet calm of forgiveness, as if we had now attained that
for which we were apprehended. “Thy sins be forgiven thee “ is followed
forthwith not by “ well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy
of thy Lord,” but by “ go and sin no more “. But this “go,” what a bleak and
dangerous world does it launch us into; to what possibilities of disaster and
hurt, to what likelihood of ruin does it dismiss us! How contradictory * it
seems to add “ sin no more “! We cannot but turn and say, “ Do Thou, then, Lord,
lead us; and lead us not into temptation “. And as we continue to pray daily for
forgiveness, and find that it is mostly the same sins we have to confess, and
how the appetite that is in us for evil finds food in the most unexpected and
unlikely quarters, the sense of our weakness grows, and we should feel the
prayer to be in sufficient for us, did not our fears find some hope in it, and
our feebleness some security. Like those who have received a precious charge to
convey safely through a country infested with enemies, undermined with pitfalls,
or reeking with malaria, we go forth with spirits made rich by the favour of
God, to traverse that dangerous interval between this present moment and our
complete redemption. We fear to step out into * This idea occurs in a recent
volume of devotional poetry. the ways of this world, lest our garments, made
white in the blood of the Lamb, be again denied. The world has not changed to
suit our condition.

We would not now sin as once we did, but the world will still be as pressing in
its offers of easy helps to sin, as ever it was. There are our former companions
in sin waiting for us to join them again; there are our old haunts, and the old
seasons come round as before, and our familiar sins meet us again, and tell us
that all things are ready. They take the words of wisdom, and say, “ Come, eat
of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled “. The same business
awaits us, in which heretofore we have found such room for sinning; the same
hours of leisure, and the same pleasant ways of spending these.

All remains the same, ready as ever to make our old course easy, but with no
sympathy for our new condition, no rejoicing with us over our new-found
treasure, no friendly desire to enter into and prosper our new views. All the
world is as it was, and what disappoints us more than all, there is still in us
too much that remains as it was. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
weak as ever. It is still flesh. It is still so adapted to what the world
offers, that it clamours to be satisfied in the world’s way, hints that we wrong
ourselves and undergo unnecessary hardships in striving to subdue it, and that
it cannot be very criminal to do what our nature demands, and what our
circumstances not only permit, but induce and almost drive us to.

Those who have nothing to lose are (to a proverb) little put about by the
presence of thieves; and of those whose hopes are small, the fears also are few
and slight. The fear of defilement found no place in our souls, until the
grateful sense of purity introduced it. It seemed a small thing to risk all
temptation, before we experienced the grace and joy of the goodwill of God; but
now that we have tasted His goodness, and prize His favour as our choicest
possession, it seems a hazardous thing to venture into a sea of temptations, one
or other of which will almost inevitably sweep over our soul, and leave it bare
of its prize under the displeasure of God. I do not purpose to sin; I have no
present and special resolve which I know to be wrong, but am I therefore secure?
Or has it not often happened with me that, when least I expected it, evil was
very powerfully present with me? Besides sinning deliberately, have I not sinned
through ignorance, through weakness, through surprise, through habit? Did I not
sin, because I was tempted by such a combination of inducements, and hedged off
from the right path by so many difficulties, that I greatly fear to be placed
again in a similar predicament? Rather will I pray, “ Lead me not into
temptation, but deliver me from evil “. A person may use these words as two
distinct petitions; but, as they here stand, they are connected and form one
double request. It is one utterance of the soul. The soul does not first view
temptation and utter its desire about this, and then view evil, and utter a new
desire about that; but seeing at one view temptation and evil, and knowing,
moreover, how they are joined together, a prayer is uttered which, though it has
two parts, is one. There is no end that we can propose for ourselves short of
deliverance from evil, and no means can be suggested as more necessary to the
attainment of this than being kept from temptation. To be kept from disease,
from poverty, from loss of friends, from any ill that the soul dreads, would not
be so broad and effectual a petition as this, if our end be deliverance from
evil. From these and all other ills we desire deliverance j but if there be left
within us evil dispositions that will respond to temptation, then there is no
lasting deliverance for us. For this is the account of the whole matter which is
given by the Apostle James: “ Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his
own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and
sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Evil, then, is that to which
temptation leads, and to which sin binds. And there is that in every one of us
which, if left to itself, will bring us to the most evil form of evil. Only let
it have its way, only take no precautions against it, and gradually the evil
within will wed the evil without, and death will grow up around you. This will
as certainly result as death will result if you place an animal that lives by
breath into a poisoned atmosphere. But if the evil be within us, how will a
merely negative petition effect our cure? How will the mere absence of certain
outward objects destroy the evil that has its life within the soul? It will do
so by taking from that evil the food on which its life depends. Fire must have
fuel, must be active, in order to be living; it may smoulder long, but die it
must, if it be not fed. And so it is of evil dispositions and propensities. Give
them no opportunity, let neither sense nor imagination minister to them by
presenting their objects, and, finding no outlet, they will pine and die. This
at least is the grand external means of deliverance from evil. Plant a tree in a
congenial soil, and surround it with every advantage, it will grow and bear
fruit after its kind; and just as certainly will our desires find nourishment in
the world we are in, and so grow up to matured sins, and bring forth death, if
they be not checked. And therefore we pray that God would not suffer the
nourishment suitable to our fleshly and natural desires to be given, but would
so order our circumstances that we shall have the least possible temptation to
sin; that we may be put in positions in which there is least opportunity of
gratifying those of our inclinations to sin which are strongest, and in which
our opposite tendencies may be most easily and effectually matured. Here the
experience of our better mind arms itself against the law of the members. We
take precautions against ourselves. The first question that rises in most minds
concerning this petition is, “ Is there any likelihood that God would lead us
into temptation, or why do we pray that He would not? “ Is it not said that as
God is not tempted, so neither tempteth He any? But we do not present this
petition because we suppose that God ever stands on the side of evil, and
allures us to sin. This would be something more than leading into temptation.
What God often does, what He did in the case of Abraham, of Job, and especially
of our Lord Himself, is to expose a man in a very critical and precarious
position, to bring him in the course of his life into circumstances where sin is
very easy, holiness very difficult. We read that it was “ of the Spirit” that “
Jesus was led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil “; a very
instructive intimation, giving us in one view all the parties concerned. The
human nature, with its liability to temptation, its capability to suffer and to
enjoy; the divine nature, ordering the circumstances which may permit the
temptation to take place; and the diabolical nature, the tempter, exerting his
ut most to induce sin. (For this is the distinguishing characteristic of Satan,
that he desires that sin may be the result of every temptation.) Our Lord had
just passed through His own trial, when He gave this prayer to His disciples. He
remembered what it had cost Him, how His holy nature had seemed to be violently
driven within sight of sin, and He knew that were His disciples to be similarly
exposed, the result might be defeat instead of victory. It is He knows best what
temptation is, and who has most successfully overcome it, that bids us pray,
“Lead us not into temptation “. It became His own prayer before He entered on
that greatest of all temptations, “ Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass
from Me “. And how is this, that we see the soul of Jesus trembling in prospect
of temptation, while we brave it, fearlessly, confidently, and even boastfully?
He knows what Satan’s power is, and He knows the evil of sin. And he who has
some measure of the spirit of Christ, and fears above all else the Father’s
displeasure, will not go forth believing that he is proof against every assault
of Satan or the world, but will pray that God will so guide his path that he may
escape from those more violent or seductive temptations to which he sees others
yielding. He will not seek to change this petition into “ succour us when
tempted,” but, out of the consciousness of his own weakness, desires rather to
avoid temptation than to take the chances of overcoming it. And this raises a
second question, “ Can I pray thus with any hope, seeing that life is just one
series of temptations? “ Must we not meet temptations, whether we deprecate them
or no? Is there any such man on earth as an untempted man? Can God give us what
we ask for, and still keep us on this earth? How shall He guide us? Is there any
course through life free from all inducement to sin? Where shall He put us? Is
there any position where we shall no longer need constant vigilance, unflinching
constancy, and painful effort of soul? “ Lead me not into temptation,” how do I
expect that this will be answered? Is there some profession the members of which
find nothing in it to foster their own corrupt affections? Is there some
employment in which failure shall no more tempt us to murmur, nor success elate
us to forgetfulness of God? We know that, be a man’s occupation what it may, he
cannot be secure from all enticement. Various indeed are the temptations that
assail men, from the statesman whose name is in every man’s mouth, to the
invalid whom the world has long forgotten; but every one can tell of some part
of his lot that seems bordering on evil, from which at any moment he could pass
over into sin, and at which he is in constant danger of being urged by a sudden
impulse across the boundary. Every one can tell of something in his occupation
that seems to conspire with something in his character, and make sinning easier
to him there than elsewhere. He is passionate, and there is some constant source
of irritation; or he is covetous, and there is an unrighteous but prolific
source of gain always offering itself. He is ambitious, and there is a path open
to its gratification, which would also lead him to sin; or he loves the applause
of men, and that desire can be gratified. He is naturally despondent and
distrustful, and he is called to endure protracted suffering; or he is naturally
careless and worldly, and he enjoys unmingled prosperity. Or he is liable to
sullenness, or pride, or sensuality, or indolence, and whatever be his
infirmity, he will not be without drawings that way, encouragements in his
infirmity, opportunities of showing what manner of man he is. And shall we
therefore cease to use this petition?

We will all the more perseveringly use it. For if temptations be so thickly
strewn around us, who shall say how soon we may be overtaken in a fault? At
first this petition may pass our lips with no quite definite expectation. It
only rises irrepressibly out of the sense of our own inability to cope with
certain temptations. But as it is used from day to day, side by side with our
daily life, it interprets itself more fully. We find in it the suitable
expression of a desire that grows up within us, that, whilst we must be exposed
to temptations, these may be proportioned to our strength; in other words, that
God would keep us out of situations in which, so far as we can judge, it would
be beyond our present strength to keep from sinning. The harder we purpose in
our souls to live to God, the more clearly do we see how we displease Him. We
begin to take account of this, that there are certain conditions in which we
almost invariably, if not invariably, sin, despite all our resolves to the
contrary. We remember our resolves, nay, we remember how a few hours ago we
besought pardon of similar sin, and yet we yield. There are persons whose
company always betrays us into slandering, or scoffing, or bitter envy, or
hypocrisy, or some evil passion; there are places in which we cannot maintain,
or have at least never yet maintained, even our usual regard to the will of God,
and from which we return less disposed than we ought to remember Christ, or
engage in any religious duty; there are books we read, or trains of thought we
indulge in, which lower our tone and unhinge the mind for serious, vigorous, and
devout exercise.

Now, it is very often the case, that it is quite at our option that we thus put
ourselves in the way of temptation. It forms no part of our duty to ourselves or
our friends thus to expose ourselves, and yet we find it very difficult to
disentangle ourselves from the habits we have formed by a voluntary and repeated
exposure to the same influences. So agreeable and fascinating have these
situations or employments which tempt us become, that it is beyond our strength
to give them up.

Surely in this case we may ask God so to order our circumstances that these
things may have less power of appeal than formerly. How the prayer may be
answered we do not know. We may be removed to a distance from the companions or
objects which most effectually tempted us; our attention may be strongly
diverted to some pursuit which dulls for a time the other attraction, and breaks
the habit we have formed. But how the answer shall come it is not for us to
decide.

God, in one way or other, may either make it a physical impossibility for us to
be in the way of temptation, or He may add to our condition some balance, which
keeps us from rushing into the arms of sin at every invitation. So that, whether
the temptations we have reason to fear be in the way of our callings, or have
been voluntarily and recklessly encountered by us, this petition is suit able;
and it will inevitably rise to our lips, if we be fearing sin. But there is a
third class of temptations against which we have urgent need to use this
petition. There are sudden surprises, which neither occur in the ordinary duties
of our employments, nor as we might have anticipated and taken precautions
against, but emerge unexpectedly. A special importance attaches to these, for it
is thus that many of our greatest sins have been committed; and, when resisted,
it is then that we have taken the greatest steps in advance Godwards. In short,
these are the temptations in which, beyond all others, it is evident that God is
making proof of us. To compare the temptation of David with that of Joseph,
similar in kind, but so opposite in result; or that of Adam in the garden with
that of Jesus in the wilderness, will sufficiently show us how critical these
times are, against which we can use no precaution but this prayer, asking that
God would not suffer us to be so assailed. Let a man choose some of his
memorable sins, those that conscience needs not to search for, but keeps
floating on the surface of the memory, and let him consider how it came about
that he fell into these, and he shall find that in very many cases it was
because he was suddenly tempted; an unexpected opportunity presented itself of
doing what he had long desired to do, or of getting what he had often coveted,
or of becoming what ambition or vanity had been set upon; and this opportunity
did not offer itself bare, but well supported by inducements and incentives from
every side. Was it an appeal to anger or hatred? Then something had first
occurred to irritate or embitter. Was it to licentiousness the allurement
appealed? Then something had first occurred to excite. Was it to love of gain
the temptation spoke? Then something had previously shown the desirableness of
wealth, or taught the bitterness of poverty.

Whatever it was that overran the soul and spoiled it, we think we could have
resisted had the temptation come in some other shape, at some other time, when
we had been under more wholesome influences; had there not, in short, been so
many things conspiring against us. Everything seems to have been prepared for
our sin; the train was laid, and the one little spark fell. Had we had any idea
of what was going on we should have been on our guard; had we seen the possible
sin we should have gone out of our way to avoid it. But so suddenly were we set
down in presence of the tempting object, that there was scarce a thought of
resistance. So wholly at a disadvantage were we taken, that we are inclined to
believe that, were we in the same circumstances again, prepared by the same
day’s pleasure or day’s business or night’s trouble, instigated by the same
company or by the same solitude, brought as suddenly face to face with the same
open gate to sin, or driven by the same urgency of motive, freed from the
outward restraint that is now upon us, and the reasons on the side of sin
equally manifold and thronging, we should now (judging of our own strength from
our present experience of it) sin again. And if so, what security have we (who
know not what a day may bring forth) against a similar or far more seductive
combination of circumstances, except in an appeal to God, whose will orders all
things, and whose will is our sanctification? In this petition, then, we pray
directly for this, that God in His consideration of our frailty would so order
our life day by day that as little as possible we may be exposed to temptation.
But it will be asked, “ Has this petition, then, no reference to the temptations
we do actually meet? Does it only avert possible temptations, and bring no
strength to help us in those that actually occur? “ Directly it does not ask
from God any such aid. And it seems a profitless exercise of ingenuity, to wrest
the words so that they shall include what is evidently included in the second
part of the petition, “ Deliver us from evil “. He who prays these concluding
words will surely be little concerned to make the former words mean “ bring us
out of temptation safely,” as well as “ lead us not into it “. Nevertheless, it
must not be overlooked, that this desire, “ Lead us not into temptation,” has a
powerful reflex influence upon the spirit of the petitioner, which enables him,
if tempted, to quit himself very differently from what he would otherwise have
done. It is a very different war we wage when we have prayed against it, from
that we wage when we have carelessly exposed ourselves. The soldier who is
steady in the din and carnage of battle which duty has led him into, will quail
and tremble at the little hazards to which a fool ish exploit or unadvised
adventure has exposed him. If we are engaged in plain duty when temptation
assails us, then we can appeal to God for help. And by the acknowledgment of our
weakness and fear of sin which is contained in this petition, we do indirectly,
but not the less effectually, appeal to the compassion and help of God. If we
have asked God to keep us from temptation, and still meet it, then we believe
that what we meet is of His ordering, and that good, and not evil, will come of
it. Passing through His fire, we are purified. Warring in His warfare, we are
rendered more hardy, faithful, and experienced. But if we have not asked His
guidance, but have gone forth at our own charges and risks, then how can we with
any confidence ask in temptation the help which very probably we should never
have needed to ask had we asked God’s guidance before? Trying enough it is to
fall into temptation after praying, but to fall into it without praying is a
confounding and disastrous thing. It may be good for us to meet temptations, but
it is never good to hope for them. It is God’s prerogative to lead us into them,
for He also (and He only) can bring us through them: it is ours to watch and
pray against them, knowing our own weakness. And if any one thinks that by using
this petition he resists the providence of God, let him ask himself the simple
question, “ Do I desire to be tempted? “ If not, then let me pray God to
preserve me from temptation. And if, after committing myself to God’s care in
this matter, I do meet temptations, I shall at least know by whose permission
they come, and whose discipline they bring. To view severe temptation as a
possible thing, and as a very dangerous thing, this is the best preparation
against it.

Out of these words there are continually rising one or two important suggestions
of a practical kind. The first is, that we must see to it that we make this an
honest request. For it is a pleasant thing to go so far with sin, and break
company before its terrible evil is consummated.

It is a narrow, but a most attractive path which separates actual, outward
transgression from the region whence sin can be contemplated. Few Christians
intend to sin, compared to those who only intend to place themselves in
dangerous circumstances. There is a pleasure in letting the thoughts dwell on
forbidden objects, which provokes us to tamper with sin, and prevents us from
resolutely shunning the avenues that lead to evil. Have I never asked God to
deliver me from evil, while a little deeper in my heart there lay the intention
of putting myself in the way of temptation without any call? To do so is
grievously to dishonour God. It is to expect that He will pander to my evil
desires and appetites, that He will suffer me to enjoy the excitement of
temptation, and preserve me from the outward disgrace and fully-formed evil of
the sin. It is to take the place of God, and say that it is better I should
pray, “ Let me so far into temptation,” than “ Lead me not into it “. And he who
can not comprehend how this should be the one prayer given us concerning the
special advancement of our own spirits towards complete redemption, has not yet
prayed it as he ought; is yet, under God’s word, hiding his own desires. For
this petition goes to the very core of our heart, and tries our real purposes
severely; makes us say, if we are really anxious to be cut off from all chance
of sin, all thought of it, and approach to it; brings us daily to decide whether
we should like a state where there was not only no sin, but no temptation. The
love of sin is pretty well broken within us, if we can use this petition always
and fully; if, considering the persons we shall this day meet, the things that
may be said to us, the gratifying offers that may be made to us, the
opportunities of pleasure or advancement that may occur, we can yet say, “
Rather let me meet none of these than that they should so much as tempt me to
evil”.

Happy indeed is the man who, in the fulness and depth of this petition, can say,
“ I this day wish to be far from everything which will nourish evil within me,
and I desire the presence of such things only as will mature a Christian
disposition. I do not desire success, if success is to minister to vain-glory; I
do not wish to make money, if money is to minister to covetousness; I do not
long for pleasant society, if that is to make me forgetful of God; I do not
yearn for leisure, if leisure is to loosen my bond to Jesus Christ.” What is
this but the entire surrender of our lives to God and for His purposes? What is
this but a profession of self denial, and a resolution to endure all hardness?

It is the prayer of a humble and holy spirit; of a spirit at least set on
holiness, and knowing that God only can guide us in this life, so that holiness
shall be the result. Often it calls us to give up (so far as our own purposes
are concerned) prospects of great attraction, but which, we fear, would be
adverse to our spiritual growth.

We see the beauty of the prospect, it allures us on, but we know not whether the
flowers wave and rustle with the healthy breath of heaven or with the subtle
windings of the serpent. We will not venture where there may be danger, and
where there is not a necessary call, but will pray still to God, “Lead us not
thither”. And this fear to go where we may offend God, is the same feeling as
gives us absolute courage to go wherever we may serve Him.

Another practical hint suggested by this petition is, to shun the beginnings of
temptation. It puts us on our guard against the earliest movements of sinward
inclination, and prompts us to deal vigorously with its faintest symptoms. All
evil is easiest checked in its rise, with less pain to ourselves, and with more
unalloyed result. To have parleyed with temptation is to have lost strength
already. Go a mile with the tempter, and the chances are that he will persuade
you to go two. He will first tell you that you are not going out of your way at
all, and forthwith he will tell you that you have gone too far to go back. The
first step may not be wrong in itself, but it is wrong if it be the first of a
succession of steps which lands you in sin. When we find ourselves very anxious
to discover reasons for going on, we may well suspect whither we are going. We
shall probably find reasons enough, and only after the sin is committed open our
eyes to their hollowness.

It is the former part of this petition which gives the tone to the latter. The
evil we chiefly aim at being delivered from, is that which comes of temptation
yielded to. Not that the words do not include every kind of evil, all that man
redeemed will at last be free from, but the evil primarily in view here is sin,
or what produces sin. By the words of Christ Himself we must interpret this
prayer; and His own petition for His people is, “ I pray not that Thou shouldest
take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil”.
Without being at once put beyond the reach of the ordinary privations of this
life, we may, then, be delivered from the evil. We can be kept from the evil
without being set above disappointments, sicknesses, distress, loss. We can be
delivered from evil without being delivered from this world. This evil,
therefore, cannot be in the world so much as in ourselves; cannot be in our
condition so much as in our character. All men have an idea that this world has
something wrong about it, that our condition here is not altogether satisfying,
but to be delivered from. And so we begin to deliver ourselves, and set to work
at the outmost branches of evil instead of at the root; we provide against loss,
guard against disease, while we ought to be asking God to deliver us from that
evil which is within us, and which, though all these outer branches of evil were
lopped off, would send forth fresh branches; which, though we were put into a
world where all was blessed, and well-ordered, and according to the best, would
soon spoil that world as it has spoiled this. It was by yielding to temptation
we ever became connected with evil of any kind; first with evil doing, and then
with all other evil. Through the heart of man did evil steal its way into this
world. And until it be expelled from the heart, it will find its way into all we
are connected with. Could there be a fairer world than this was when God
pronounced it very good, and “ when the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy “? Take from this world all that sin has wrought,
and you shall have a world fairer than your imagination, though not than God’s
purpose, can conceive. No doubt we inherit a troop of evils, and fall heirs to
the ills that men have been aggravating from the first; but there is that in
each one of us which, if we be not delivered from it, will turn the happiest and
most faultless inheritance into sorrow and confusion. Our evil dispositions do
not show all their deadly influence now, only be cause what they would do is
done already. They do not destroy the world, because the world is already
destroyed. And appalling as are the effects of the “ one man’s disobedience,”
and of that whereby all his descendants have ratified his act and approved their
parentage, more appalling still is it to find the hold and the power that sin
has over us.

Many of the effects of sin, and especially those of them which are most palpable
to us here, spend their force and pass away. That effect of sin which admonishes
us of a sinful future, the helplessness and bondage of sin, that effect of sin
which is sin itself, is the most alarming of its present results. We see no
prospect of accidental deliverance from this, nor of its merely wearing out.
With sin the law of age is reversed; and time, which weakens and consumes all
else, adds vigour and life to sin. And yet there is hope, near and bright.
However multiplied, involved, deep-rooted, or grievous be our sinful
propensities, there is a deliverance out of them all. There is a deliverance
from all their effects; but we can readily believe this, yes, and patiently wait
for it, when we find that there is a deliverance from our sinful natures
themselves. And this God has wrought, and now works, in all them that pray this
prayer; for “ God has raised up His Son Jesus, and sent Him to bless you, in
turning away every one of you from his iniquities”. It is He who “delivers us,
and doth deliver, in whom we trust that He will yet deliver “.

Therefore will our hearts together praise Him, and our own joy will dictate
these words, “ Thine is the kingdom, the glory, and the power, for ever. Amen.”

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

48284 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

Israel’s Iron Age: Sketches from the period of the Judges. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3/6
The Visions of a Prophet. Studies in Zechariah.

Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 1/6 Erasmus and other Essays. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5/ Mohammed,
Buddha, and Christ. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3/6 Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Crown 8vo,
cloth, 3/6 The Parables of our Lord. (Matthew.), Crown 8vo, cloth, 3/6 The
Parables of our Lord. (Luke.) Crown 8vo, cloth, 3/6 An Introduction to the New
Testament.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 2/6 The Book of Genesis. Crown 8vo, cloth, 7/6 The Gospel of
St. John/ Vol. I. Crown 8vo, cloth, 7/6 The Gospel of St. John. Vol. II. Crown
8vo, cloth, 7/6 The First Epistle to the Corinthians.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 7/6 LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER Row.

TENTH EDITION


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-marcus-dods/
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