Discourse XXVIII The Resurrection
[Lincoln’s Inn, 11th Sunday after Trinity (Afternoon), August 3, 1856.]
St. John XX. 30, 31.
And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
This morning I went through the narrative of our Lord’s Passion, which is contained in the 18th and 19th chapters of this Gospel. I propose to examine, this afternoon, the narrative of the resurrection, and of the events that followed it, which is contained in the 20th and 21st chapters.
Those who have formed a vague notion of the fourth Gospel, as the Gospel according to the Spirit, the other three being represented as Gospels according to the flesh, will expect that St. John should attach far less importance than his predecessors did to the resurrection of our Lord’s body out of the grave. They will suppose that he must have sympathised much more in those passages of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in which he speaks of our being risen with Christ, than with the 15th chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he makes that resurrection, which many among them denied, the very centre of his message to mankind.
I hope we have not gone thus far in the study of St. John without discovering that this conception of his character and purpose is an entirely false one. In whatever sense St. John’s Gospel is a spiritual one, he has spoken of Christ’s presence at feasts, family and national, of His hunger and fatigue, of His friendship for special persons, of actual bodily suffering in the hour of death, at least as much as any of the four. He takes more, not less, pains than the others, in recording incidents. No plain person ever felt that his story, if it is ever so divine, is not human. I may have made this observation very often, but I will repeat it even to weariness, rather than that it should be forgotten, since upon the recollection of it depends all hope of our understanding the beloved disciple, or of our gaining anything from him. It is true that he has carried us back to the beginning of all things, instead of introducing us to the manger in Bethlehem, or telling us first of the preaching of John in the wilderness. It is true that he has told us of the Word who was with God, before he has used the name of Jesus Christ. It is true that throughout his Gospel he has been presenting to us Jesus Christ as the Word of God, the Giver of light and life to men. It is true that this has been his explanation of the signs which Jesus did when He fed the multitude, or healed the sick, or raised the dead. It is true that this has been his explanation of those parables in the natural world, by which the Creator of that world revealed to men the mysteries of the kingdom of God. It is true that, by following this method, St. John interprets to us those names, Son of God and Son of Man, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, which occur so continually in the previous Gospels. It is true that he brings out in its fulness their declaration, that the office of the Christ was to baptize with the Holy Spirit, and to deliver men from the spirit of evil. It is true that the Name in which St. Matthew declares that the disciples were to baptize all nations, is unfolded to us by St. John with a distinctness and fulness with which it had never been unfolded before.
And therefore I think St. John must be even more careful than the other Evangelists to speak of the resurrection as a distinct, definite event: to set it before us in language which shall give us no excuse for supposing that he is merely talking of our spiritual nature, or of Christ’s spiritual nature; in language which shall fix it upon our minds as a fact that was accomplished upon this earth. Of evidence, as I have remarked to you before, the other Evangelists give us very little. They assume that it was not possible that the Son of God should be holden by death, that the marvel which angels desired to look into was that He should have submitted to death. Only so far as that conviction took hold of men’s minds could they believe in a resurrection, though a body of the most incredulous and learned witnesses should conspire to affirm it. St. John cannot have attached more weight to this kind of evidence than they did. His whole Gospel has been showing that it is an evidence which the living Word presents to the hearts and consciences of men, that alone produces any practical conviction. He must have felt, even more than his brother-disciples did, that the Word of life could not be overcome by death; that the great contradiction of all, which could only be explained by the truth that the highest life is the life of love, was in His undergoing death. He, therefore, more than any one else, must have felt the resurrection to be necessary, to be implied in the relation of Christ to his Father. He has again and again told us that the return of Christ to the Father was that to which He looked forward as the return to His natural state and proper home; at the same time as the consummation of the work He had done upon earth. He is so impressed with this conviction, it was so much his work to impress us with this conviction, that he will not relate, as St. Luke does, the fact of the ascension in the sight of the disciples. That is taken for granted. All that he has written would be unmeaning, if his Master were not gone to the Father to prepare mansions for His disciples. But the victory of the Spirit over the flesh, the proof that He who was united to the Father and united to a mortal body, overcame, in virtue of His divine fellowship, his fellowship with dust, and made that body free from its bondage—this must be spoken of as the proper termination of His earthly conflict. For by this He justified fully the feeling of mankind, which all the teaching of Scripture had confirmed, but which no prophet or saint had been able to justify to himself, that death is an intruder into this world of ours; that it is not less an intruder because all have yielded to it, and must yield to it; that there is a law of life which is higher than the law of death; that we cannot be satisfied till that law is promulgated and vindicated, not for one here and there, but for the whole race in the person of its Head.
With these thoughts in our minds, let us consider the following verses: ‘The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him. Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.’
The points wherein this narrative differs from those in the earlier Gospels, are those which refer to the Apostle himself and to St. Peter. There is more, you will perceive, not less, of detail than elsewhere. The Apostles look into the sepulchre; they see the linen clothes and the napkin. We are told where the napkin is lying. These are not points of evidence, in the sense in which we commonly use that word. If we repeated them ever so often, or multiplied them ever so much, they would not establish the fact. They have served a much higher and more practical purpose. They have brought the fact home to the minds of multitudes as a fact. They have taken it out of the region of mist and shadow. They have connected it with a Person. Their very minuteness leads us to think of Him, not of them. They say to us, as they said to the Apostles, not ‘There is a resurrection,’ but ‘He is risen.’
By speaking of himself, St. John is able to make us acquainted with the process of conviction in one mind. He does not indeed, dwell upon any mental struggles. He just hints at the dull unbelief with which he began; at the eagerness, more of curiosity than of hope, with which he ran to the sepulchre; at the timidity or awe which hindered him from going in; at the dawn of faith when he saw the clothes. It is all very simple and childlike. What surprises some of us most is, that he should blame himself for not having known the Scriptures, ‘that He must rise again from the dead.’ What Scriptures could have told him this so clearly? Are there any which positively and formally announce it to us who read them in this day,—any, at all events, which we could blame a plain wayfarer for not connecting with it? Have not learned men of our own, able and vehement opposers of infidelity, affirmed that there are no traces of a belief in a future state among the writers of the Old Testament, nay, urged the absence of such traces as a proof of their divine legation? And has not St. John himself produced evidence enough that those who pored over the Scriptures most could not identify Jesus as the Person in whom their prophecies were to meet? We must go back, I believe, to the language of which I have spoken so often, if we would see our way through this difficulty. If the old Scriptures said nothing of a Word of God, of a divine Lord of men’s spirits and bodies, it was impossible to conclude from them that He, or any one, would rise again from the dead. As long as St. John was blind to the fact that they did speak of such a One, that they were speaking of Him from beginning to end, that He only gave any unity to their histories or their prophecies; so long the most incessant diligence could not enable him to discover in these Scriptures more than dark hints of a triumph over death,—hints which never could support a practical belief, could never overcome the objections of sense and experience. The moment they found this Word speaking in all the words of the Bible, the moment they believed that Jesus was the Word made flesh, the Scriptures became full even to overflowing with these tidings. Not to see them there was to see there only dead letters.
‘But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, saith unto Him, Sir, if thou have borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things unto her.’
There had been differences in the reports of the Evangelists respecting the appearance of the angels to the women. St. Matthew had said:—‘And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead; and, behold, He goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see Him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring His disciples word.’ St. Mark had said:—‘And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen; He is not here: behold the place where they laid Him. But go your way, tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.’ St. Luke had said:—‘And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: and as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered His words, and returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.’
I thank God that we belong to a Church which is not afraid to bring these diversities before us, as it does those in the reports of the Passion; a Church which believes so strongly in God, that it can leave Him to interpret these differences to us without making any awkward attempts at reconciliation. Our faith in the Resurrection is not affected by them so long as we live upon God’s word, and not upon the letters of a book. When we change the one for the other, it must perish; no arguments or explanations will keep it alive. St. John, in some respects, differs from them all. I think many would have been glad if he had differed more widely. There is a dislike in our day, in Protestant countries, to any notice of angelical visitations. Romanists, and some who are not Romanists, would denounce the feeling as a sign that we are losing all faith in the spiritual world. I am not willing to interpret it so harshly. I think there is a feeling amongst us that we ought to be connected with the spiritual world now as much as in the days of old, and that these reports seem to keep us at a distance from it by drawing a line between us and former ages, by affirming communications to have been made to them which are not made to us. I partly considered this subject when I was speaking of the angel who is said to have troubled the Pool of Bethesda; but I must refer to it again, because we all feel, I think, that the angels who sang to the shepherds of the Child who was born in Bethlehem, and the angels who spake to the women at the tomb of Joseph, must have had a different message to deliver from all others. What was the difference? Surely this, that they came to tell of a union of earth and heaven, of the spiritual and the visible world in the person of a Man. If there were no such news to bring, we should indeed be left under the dominion of angels; for we should not be able to get rid of the thought—no nation ever has been able—that we are surrounded by invisible creatures, and that they do in some way communicate with us. But if there was such a truth to be told, should we not be rather startled to find that there was none to tell it? Would not the absence of these stories leave a blank, not in our imaginations, but in our hearts and in our reason? Was not the appearance of these angels a witness to men that we do not need, as former ages may have done, special messengers to come from behind a veil which the Son of God has rent asunder, but that hosts of such creatures may be working with us, and ministering to us, and joining with us, the sinful spirits, who present the sacrifice that was made once for all before the Father of spirits?
St. John tells us, at once, of another apparition to Mary, which was immeasurably more to her than the apparition of any angels. An actual human form stood before her, the one which she had known best and loved best in the world, and yet she took it to be the gardener’s. It was not, therefore, that it was too radiant for her to look upon, that it had lost the signs and marks that belong to her race. But it was not the figure or the countenance which revealed Him to her. It was the voice calling her by her name, it was the voice which had bidden the seven devils depart out of her, that brought her to own Him as her Lord.
Then came those wonderful words which contain the deepest and most blessed of all truths in the form of the most startling contradiction. She was not to touch Him, for He was not ascended. That which appeared to invite intercourse was the bar to it; that which would appear to put them at a hopeless distance would be the beginning of a fellowship that could not be interrupted. The weak, penitent woman was to learn the lesson which the Apostles had been taught at the Paschal supper. He must go to His Father that they might know Him. The private and exclusive communion into which they had entered so imperfectly, must be merged in one in which all should share who would take up their lot as brethren of each other and of Him; for He was to dwell with His Father and their Father, with His God and their God. This was a risen life indeed; and we see at each turn how a risen life implies an ascension.
‘Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when He had so said, He shewed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.’ You think of these as sudden apparitions, glimpses granted and withdrawn, of the Teacher who had once walked with them by day and sat with them by night; and you think rightly. St. John’s words give us that impression of them. But do they give us no other at the same time? Is it not the apparition of an actual Person, of an actual human body? He may be seen, and may disappear; but He is. We are not among shadows more than we were before. The air is freer, the light is clearer. He only does not tarry in that room where the disciples are assembled for fear of the Jews, because they are to learn that wherever two or three are assembled in His name, there is He in the midst of them.
And consider His words to them. The last time they had met at the Paschal supper He had said—‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. And these things I have spoken to you that in me ye might have peace.’ Since they heard that language, they had known more of fightings without and within than in all their lives before. And now He repeats it again, and shows them His hands and His side. Now it comes with power. If there was a moment of intense agonizing excitement, you might have fancied it would have been that. There is no excitement. There is perfect quietness in them all; in him who had forsaken the Master, in him who had denied Him. He has spoken peace to them, and they are at peace. The beloved disciple can only describe what he felt, what all felt, in the simplest, calmest words—‘Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.’
What had happened to them? He with whom they had been at war had declared Himself at one with them. Christ had brought that message from the grave. His hands and side assured them of it. Their consciences were absolved. They were freed men.
‘Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.’
The connexion between the two passages is too obvious to be overlooked. He had come in His Father’s name to bring them peace. He sent them forth in His name with the same gift. The Spirit of peace should go with them, that they might execute their commission. The pierced hands and side, which had been the witness and pledge of it to them, should be the witness and pledge of it to the world. Their conscience had been absolved. A chain had been taken from them. They should, in the name of Christ and of His Father, break the chains which bind the consciences of others. They should remit, or send away, the sins which keep men the prisoners and slaves of an evil and accusing spirit, which prevent them from serving their Father in heaven. But since it was consciences they were to unbind—since they were carrying a message of peace to voluntary creatures—the liberty might be refused, the rebellion might be persevered in. The very word which looses becomes then a word to bind. It is a tremendous fact, asserted again and again in Scripture, certified by experience. The message of reconciliation and deliverance holds in an iron gripe those spirits which it does not emancipate. They cry out that it has come to torment them; they have a sense of evil which they had not before; they are bound by it as they were not before.
I cannot see less in the words which were spoken that night—or in the commission which was then given to the ministers of Christ—than I have expressed. If you say that I ought to see more, I submit willingly to the rebuke. But I deny that it is more to talk of some power of the keys being entrusted to the Apostles or their successors, if by that power is meant only some outward authority to withdraw the punishment for sins, or to enforce it. I cannot, in any case, read ‘punishment,’ where I find ‘sin’ written. I must regard remission of punishment as a very poor and miserable substitute for remission of sins. If it is said that we cannot imagine ministers who have received such a power, for that remission of sins must belong to God only, I answer, ’Most assuredly ministers can neither remit sins nor punishments in their own name.’ If they assume to do either, they violate the charter upon which all their authority rests; they claim to be what Christ did not claim to be, to do what He did not claim to do. For He said that He was nothing, and could do nothing without His Father. His glory was that He did not come in His own name. But if the ministers of Christ do confess that they are sent in His name, as He was sent in His Father’s name, then I say they can, in His name, speak to the conscience and absolve the conscience, not from its punishment but from its sin. And I say that the consciences of thousands and tens of thousands have waited in all ages, do wait in our age, to receive this blessing, and have actually received it, and are receiving it. And I say that when it is spoken to them, and they do not receive it, they bear testimony to the other half of the sentence; they are bound more closely, because they will not be loosed. Therefore I fear it is because Christ’s ministers do not care to exercise His powers, but wish to exercise some powers of their own, that they fight so stoutly for these rights to punish or forego punishment, to curse or to take off curses, which, when they were most fully acknowledged and produced most terror in the minds of men, were generally very feeble for any good moral purpose, and were very dreadful temptations to tyranny and lying in those who exercised them.
I am far, indeed, from saying that absolution consists only in preaching the Gospel. The words, ‘Peace be to you,’—the hands and the side,—spake to the consciences of the disciples. At what time more than when we are kneeling and confessing, is the conscience likely to receive the message, ‘He pardoneth and absolveth?’ What has been more effectual than the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ in carrying home the words to each heart, ‘Son, thy sins be forgiven thee, rise up and walk’? And in both these cases it is not merely to single hearts that the blessing is imparted. The gathering together in Christ’s name is a witness that we meet as a family just as the Apostles did; and that, as a family, we want the peace and reconciliation which a Father only can send us through His Son. Did we understand the worth of that communion more, and how all individual blessings are associated with it and rise out of it, the power of excommunicating would not be something to boast of, or to fight for, or to play with. To cut a man off from the Church would then, indeed, be to deliver one who had sold himself to the service of evil to the master he has chosen, that he may feel the bitterness of his yoke, and so may return to his true Lord, and his spirit be saved when that Lord appears. But till we know more of that Spirit which Jesus breathed on His disciples, on that first day of the week, we shall be as little competent to administer censures as we are to testify of reconciliation and absolution.
‘But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe. And after eight days again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord, and my God! Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’
By one class of readers, Thomas is described as a doubter, impatient of all evidence but such as amounts to demonstration. By another class, he is described as a man with the idolatrous tendency which insists upon sensible tokens, because it has no apprehension of that which is spiritual. By a third, the moral is drawn from his story, that those who forsake the fellowship of their brethren, miss the presence of their Lord and the grace of faith. There may be much of truth in each of these observations, and they do not contradict each other. We are all, at different times of our lives, greedy for proofs that shall satisfy the logical understanding, and for signs that address themselves to the senses. We have all thought that we should gain more by lonely study than by intercourse with our fellows and by common worship, and have been punished for our pride. But I do not think that Thomas should be accused of asking for too complete a demonstration. He asked for too weak a one. He wished to put his hands into the print of the nails. That would not have convinced him. It was another evidence addressing itself not to his eyes, but to his heart, which forced him to cry, ‘My Lord, and my God!’ And I cannot believe that we have any right to cast stones at those who require outward tokens to assist their faith; for Christ vouchsafed to this Apostle the very tokens which he desired. And we ought to remember that we do not bring Christ amongst us, or procure graces from Him, by frequenting the assemblies of His disciples, but that we should go to them because He is there speaking peace, and revealing Himself to those who are willing to be members of a body, and who wish for no privileges which all cannot share with them. Whatever reproof Thomas needed, whatever encouragement we can desire, is gathered in our Lord’s last words to him. If he required the aid of seeing to sustain his belief, it might be afforded him. But faith itself is a higher evidence. Things not seen present themselves to it with a force and demonstration as great as that with which the things seen present themselves to the eye. The invisible Person who is the Light of men, makes Himself known to that organ which is created to receive His light. His life, His peace, are as near to us as they were to those to whom He showed Himself alive after His Passion. Our knowledge that He is risen may be as certain as theirs, and essentially of the same kind.
With this sign to the unbelieving Apostle, I suppose St. John’s narrative originally closed; for he adds immediately: ‘And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.’
I have taken these words for my text, because they express with peculiar terseness the characteristics of the Gospel as they have come out gradually before us. It is a book of Signs. Every event that has been recorded has been significant. It has been the index to a truth. These signs have been selected out of many others, all bearing the same import. Each of these signs declares—all of them together declare—that Jesus is the Son of God. Their design is to awaken belief in Him as the Son of God. Those who have this belief have life through His name. He does not, then, merely compile a story of certain acts; he honours all previous Gospels which do not bring forth a collection of stories, but make known a living Person; he desires to remove the confusions which had beset those who believed in a Son of God, but not in an actual man; in a man who was not a Son of God. He desires that that Son of God should speak to the spirit of man, to that in man which exercises faith. He wishes us to feel that the Son of God is the one Source of life, that only through Him as the Son of Man can men receive life.
When St. John had been enabled to give this perfect explanation of what he had written, he might well think that his task was done. If he had been an artist instead of an evangelist, he would have been afraid to disturb the symmetry of his work by making any additions to it. But he was under other guidance than his own judgment; what it was good for the world to hear, the Spirit within him would not suffer him to keep back. Another vision rose before him, a vision so clear and bright, that he knew it could not have been given to him for his own sake; men in distant lands and ages were to be blessed by it. He was again by the Lake of Tiberias, amidst old friends. ‘There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples.’ We ask ourselves for what great purpose they were assembled there. The very names are for us full of wonder and mystery. Those who bore them had been witnesses of the death and resurrection of the Son of God. He had breathed on them; as His Father had sent Him, He had sent them; they were to loose and to bind. The next verse answers our question: ‘Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.’ We thought that when Jesus called them from mending their nets, that occupation was for ever abandoned. Who would have dreamed of their resuming it now? They had been admitted behind the veil; One from the grave had come back to them. Were they to become common fishermen again? They evidently go into their boats with no misgiving of conscience. They set about their toil as freshly and earnestly as ever. As freshly and earnestly? Was there nothing in that lake, and in all that had happened to them upon it, which made every labourer more free and joyous? Did not the water speak to them of Him who had walked upon it? Did not the shore beyond tell them of the bread which He had blessed? Was not the still night full of voices that echoed the voice which had said to them, ‘Peace be with you; my peace I give to you’? Had not the curse been taken from the earth and from the labour of man, since He had been called ‘the carpenter’s son,’ since He had been proved to be the Son of God with power?
There must have been the sense of His presence everywhere; and it was not merely the sense of a presence: He was there. ‘But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered Him, No. And He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.’
The old sign is given again. They had been taught that He cared for their craft and blessed it, when they had only a dim notion of Him as a great Prophet and King. They find that He cares for it and blesses it still. The risen Christ is the same as the Christ who told them words, hard to believe, about rejection and crucifixion. Only He does not sit with them in the boat, as if He were caring for one particular band of fishermen. He has chosen them to tell all workers everywhere, that He is watching over them, that their work is not a barrier between them and Him, but a means of grace, a road to intercourse with Him. ‘Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher’s coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask Him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise.’
We must not suffer ourselves to be cheated of the blessing which lies in this simple and minute narrative, by vulgar efforts of the fancy to give it what is called a spiritual signification. Our spirits want to know that they have a Lord who has shared earthly food, and does not disdain us for partaking it, but who Himself bestows it and blesses it. Our spirits do not want to know why the number of fishes caught was one hundred and fifty-three; they cannot live upon meagre, childish analogies about those who were to be caught in the Gospel net. Our Lord had promised His disciples that they should be fishers of men, and they were speedily to become so. But He was teaching them and us that the higher duty glorifies, instead of degrading, the lower; that every business in which men can be engaged is a calling and a ministry; that the bread which sustains the eternal life in man hallows the bread which sustains the life that is to pass away.
Our Lord did not allow His disciples to forget that grander office to which He had destined them, while He was putting this honour upon the one to which for a time they had returned. But instead of taking His comparison from the work of the fisherman, He takes another, with which His own lessons and the lessons of the old Scriptures had made them quite as familiar.
‘So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.’
We are wont to dwell, perhaps, too much upon the thrice-repeated questions to him who had thrice denied. There is a meaning in all such correspondences; every hint to the conscience is worth something. But the meaning is always subordinate to a higher one; the hint brings a train of thought, or it fails of its purpose. Peter had boasted of his love; his sore discipline had been to show him how little it was good for, how utterly it must fail. Now he was asked, ‘Lovest thou me more than these?’ He had loved Christ just as he had loved other people; more intensely, it might be, but with a love going out from himself. Had he learnt yet that he needed One who could bestow love upon him, One in whom he must trust and to whom he must cling, because he was so poor in that wherein he had fancied he was rich? Did he love his Master now with this dependent, trusting love, instead of that self-confident love? with a love that sought to be always replenished from the Fountain whence it proceeded, instead of with a love which he could call his, and which therefore must continually run dry? Simon Peter appears to answer boldly; he does answer humbly. He would have said in former days, ‘I know that I love thee.’ He now says, ‘Thou knowest that I love thee.’ It is an appeal from himself to his Master. It is saying, ‘My love is but the fruit of that knowledge which thou hast taken of me. I love thee so long as thou knowest me, and no longer.’
And then comes the command which shows that the loving Him more than these implied anything rather than loving these less. He had been told at the former supper, that if he loved Christ, he was to keep His commandments. To obey a loving Being is to love Him. His love works in the man who is content to do His will. That love must go forth to His sheep. Here, then, was the minister’s commission and his power. The Chief Shepherd had taken care of the sheep, and had died for them; the under shepherd was to do His work for them. So far as he did it, he would feel how scanty and wretched his own love for them was. He could not feed them at all unless he was possessed by his Master’s love.
You see how remarkably these commands are in accordance with the doctrine which our Lord set forth in the conversation which is recorded in the 10th chapter of this Gospel, and also with that language which He addressed to the disciples generally, to Peter especially, at the Passover, because he had in the highest degree that trust in his own love which was infecting them all: ‘Ye have not chosen me; but I have chosen you.’ And you will see how the idea which is contained in that sentence, is expressed and expounded in the words that follow the command to feed the lambs and the sheep.
‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.’
This doctrine of a divine compulsion acting upon the heart and will of a man, of a wisdom ordaining every step for him, of a love imposing upon him duties which of himself he would be least willing to undertake, bearing him on to sufferings from which he would most shrink, is the one which St. Peter needed to learn, which every minister of Christ and every Christian man must, by one discipline or another, be taught. St. John intimates that his brother-disciple was to be led along in the exact path which his Master had trodden before him.
‘This spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow me.’
But the Evangelist goes on to show, by another example, that Christ prepares the most different lots for different men; that two may be standing close to each other, may be intended during a part of their lives to work together, who may in the close of their earthly pilgrimage be the most remarkable contrasts to each other, though they may be following the same crucified Lord, and one may be bearing as heavy a cross as the other.
‘Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter seeing Him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?’
St. Peter was not to know what was intended for his brother-Apostle; that Apostle was to know as little himself. Some meaning there was in that intimate communion which he had had with his Lord on earth. So great a gift could not have been bestowed upon him for his own sake; it must have been meant to fit him for a work that he had to do in the world. What it was he may have waited long to know. He was not to stay in Jerusalem with St. James; he was not to travel to the dispersed among the Gentiles with St. Peter; he was not to raise up Churches among the Gentiles, like St. Paul. He was to stay upon the earth till Jerusalem had been trodden down by the Gentiles; till St. James and St. Peter, and all who had been most dear to him, had glorified God by their deaths; till a Gentile society had seemed about to displace the old Hebrew society; till the new Christian Church had been threatened by the same discords, the same sins, the same unbelief, which were undermining his country and the empire of the world. In some sense he was to tarry till his Lord came. Was he then not to die? That had not been said. Yet the words had been spoken by Him who did not deceive, and they must be fulfilled. Did he not tarry till his Lord came? Was He not revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance of the unrighteous nation, of the evil world? Was He not revealed as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, as the faithful Witness, as the Prince of all the kings of the earth, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, as the Son of Man standing in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, as the Lamb that was slain in the midst of the throne, as the Word of God? Was it not for this revelation that St. John had tarried on earth? Was it not that he might declare Who is the foundation of the new heaven and the new earth which should arise out of the wreck of the world that was perishing?
It appears as if the elders of the Church of Ephesus had added their attestation to the Gospel in the words of the 24th verse: ‘This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.’ I do not profess to decide whether to them or to the Apostle we should ascribe the last verse. ‘And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.’ Some have wished that the verse were omitted altogether, because it seems to them a conclusion scarcely worthy of so divine a record. I accept it as a simple and childlike testimony to the truth of which the whole Gospel has been bearing witness, that the acts of the Son of God do not belong to the few years in which He dwelt visibly upon earth, but to all ages from the beginning, when He was ‘with God, and was God,’ even to the end ‘when He shall put down all rule and all authority and power, and when the Son also Himself shall be subject to Him, who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.’ I accept it as a testimony that all the books in the world cannot contain the things which Jesus has been doing and is doing, in the hearts of human beings, in the world which He made, in the kingdom which He rules. I accept it as a warning to us, that we can know nothing of the Book which explains other books, unless we ask that it may be explained to us by Him who is, and was, and ever shall be, the Word of God.
Notes
DISCOURSE I.
The scheme of Baur, to which allusion is made in this sermon, is set forth in his ‘Kritische Untersuchungen über die Kanonischen Evangelien.’ The part especially relating to St. John is contained between pages 79 and 389. In the First Part he maintains that there is a leading thought, a Hauptidee, in the Gospel. He traces this out, beginning from the prologue; notices the testimony of the Baptist, the comparison of Jesus with John, the first coming of Jesus into Jerusalem, the conflict between belief and unbelief in its different forms, the signs and works of Christ, the argumentative conflict with the unbelief of the Jews, the raising of Lazarus, the transition to the history of the passion and death, the final crisis of the nation’s unbelief, the discourses of Jesus with His disciples and the sacerdotal prayer, the history of the death and resurrection,—as different points and instances in the development of this idea. He then goes on, in the Second Part, to consider the relation of this Gospel to the synoptical Gospels; maintaining the absence of any leading idea in them, and the consequent evidence that, in spite of the historical confusions which he supposes to be in them, there is more mixture in them of simple facts related without a purpose. Next he enters upon the internal probability of the history in St. John. Then he considers the relation of the Gospel to the consciousness of the time. Finally, he maintains the identity of the Apostle with the author of the Apocalypse; dwelling especially upon his sympathies with the feelings of the Christians in Asia Minor respecting the keeping of Easter; and regarding the Apocalypse as the work of a Jew passionately attached to the traditions of his fathers, and vehemently opposed to the spiritual doctrines of St. Paul.
Perhaps I may be allowed to explain in what relation the view I have taken of the Gospels in these Sermons stands to that of this learned Tübingen Professor.
1st. I have maintained, as he has done, that there is a leading idea which may be traced through the whole of the Gospel; that what is called the prologue is not an idle introduction to a narrative with which it has no connexion, but is the key to the meaning of every part of it. ‘This leading idea’ I have further maintained to be the leading idea of the whole Bible, to be unfolding itself through all the Law and the Prophets, to be that which makes the history of the Jews a coherent history, to be that which makes that history the exposition of all histories. Supposing it entirely absent from the mind of any people on the face of the earth, I hold that people not to be a nation, but a mere herd of animals, and its records a mere collection of fragments, with nothing to bind them together. In proportion as any people has been possessed with this idea, in that proportion has it been a nation great in itself, one which could interpret the conditions and destinies of other nations. That the Jewish people were brought to know that they were under the guidance of a Divine Word—their ever-present Teacher, and King, and Judge—is what I mean when I speak of God calling out that nation, of God ruling it and educating it, of God making it a blessing to all the families of the earth.
2d. Next, with reference to the synoptical Gospels. It follows, from what I have said, that if I did not trace any of this ‘Hauptidee’ in them, I should regard them not as histories, not as Gospels, but as that collection of fragments, partly mythical, partly historical, which Baur and his school suppose them to be. I have contended, in a book on ‘The Unity of the New Testament,’ that there is a ‘Hauptidee’ in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; that they are not biographies of a certain Man called Jesus of Nazareth, whom His disciples supposed to be endued with supernatural powers, or to be actually divine; but that they are the history of the way in which that King, whom the Jewish prophets had been declaring as the invisible Ruler over them, manifested Himself visibly to His subjects, and claimed their obedience. By a careful examination of all the passages which these Evangelists have in common, by an equally careful examination of their differences, I have endeavoured to show that they were all setting forth this King of men, that each was setting Him forth under a distinct aspect. There may be very little of what is called the higher criticism in such an examination as this. To that I do not aspire. We English may be content to work on in the stupid old Baconian method, trying to find out the meaning of facts, and not quite indifferent to this fact, that these Gospels have exercised an influence over eighteen centuries of human beings in different lands, which it is not very easy to understand how they could have exercised, if they had contained a few doubtful records of journeys between Nazareth and Capernaum, of miracles imagined by superstitious wonder-hunters, of discourses some tenth part of which may possibly have proceeded from a Nazarene Prophet. If they set forth a Person who has been, and is now, and will be for ever, the King over men, there is at least an explanation of the secret of their power; whether it is the right one may be at least worth some consideration.
3d. In the book to which I referred, I carefully abstained from any comparison of the three Gospels with the fourth. I have, throughout that book and this, admitted that they are widely different, and that it confuses our impressions of all four to blend them together as the Harmonists attempt to do. I have maintained, indeed, that the first three Gospels assert, as distinctly as the fourth, that the King of men whom they are proclaiming was the Son of God. I have maintained that they would not have proved themselves to be the Jews that they were, if they had begun with the records of the life of a Man, seeing that every book of the Old Testament begins with God, and treats of men only as they testify of God or are related to Him. But I have said that in the commencement of the three Gospels, in their incidents, in their whole framework, there is a marked and characteristic difference from the fourth, which no faithful expositor can overlook or try to explain away. There can be no doubt about the nature of the difference. The prologue, as Baur truly says, at once denotes it. St. Mark speaks of Jesus as the Son of God in his opening sentence. The use of the name Word of God, as identical with Son of God, is found in St. John, and perhaps in St. John only. That name belongs, the Tübingen Professor tells us, to the consciousness of the next age. Of course, we are liable to make mistakes about the meaning of that phrase. It is not a native or natural phrase to us; and some of us are not eager to import it, seeing that our home manufacture of cant is quite prolific enough. But if the consciousness of an age is what I take it to be, I have maintained that the first century, even from its very commencement, was the age which showed itself peculiarly conscious of the truth which is denoted by the expressions ‘Word,’ ‘Life,’ ‘Light,’ and all the others which characterise this Gospel. The evidence of this fact is so notorious, that nothing but an elaborate theory could force a man of Baur’s extraordinary learning to cast it aside. Supposing all he says of the absence of Gnosticism in the Christian Church in the first century were as true as I apprehend it to be unfounded, would that prove that no such man as Philo ever existed; that chronologers have been mistaken by a hundred years about the date of his birth and his teaching; or that he was a solitary phenomenon, a person who exercised no influence, and indicated no consciousness in the country and period to which he belonged?
4th. The question, I am aware, when once Philo is mentioned, is how far so learned and accomplished a man could have affected, by his thoughts, humble fishermen like the Apostle John? The question is raised and answered by two different classes of people. One set is eager to maintain that what they call the Logos-idea must have been derived from a great mystical speculator, and cannot have presented itself naturally to an ignorant man. The other is utterly scandalized that an inspired Apostle should be supposed to have anything to do with that which was passing in the minds of his uninspired contemporaries. On the question of simplicity I have spoken at considerable length. Whether the writer of the fourth Gospel was simple or not, whether his doctrine respecting the Word affected his simplicity, must be ascertained from the book itself, and cannot be learnt from any theories of mine or of any one else. But if I am right in thinking that this (so-called) Logos-idea is that which gave simplicity and clearness to the lives of prophets and patriarchs, because they did not think of it as an idea at all, but believed that they were ploughing, and keeping sheep, and eating and drinking, under the eye of a living Person, then it was surely not an unnatural thing that an Apostle should be taught to bring out that truth in its simplicity which had been mixed with conceits and phantasies. If it is inconsistent with our notion of the teaching of the Spirit of God that He should enable a Jewish Apostle—living in a heathen city, amidst Jews and Heathens who were both confused with thoughts upon this very subject, among Christians who did not know how to connect their thoughts of Jesus with the Divine Word—to bring forth a Gospel which should have this special object; I cannot find that it is inconsistent with the promise of the Comforter which our Lord Himself gives us, or that that promise could have been more perfectly fulfilled to His own generation than by such an illumination of an Apostle’s mind and memory. And for those who do not believe that that promise is withdrawn, who think that the Spirit which was given to dwell in the Church dwells in it still, I do not know that there can be a more cheering thought than this, that His revelations of Himself were gradual to His own Apostles; that He taught those who were nearest to the time of His ascension to present Him as the risen Son of God; that He taught His disciples who lived at the end of the age to see in that Son also the living and eternal Word who was before all worlds, who would be manifested as the Centre of all society, as the final Conqueror of all enemies. For there surely may be a gradual unveiling, in the later times also, of Him who has been with us from the beginning; and it may be given to these later ages, when kingdoms are falling down, and ecclesiastical systems are wearing out, and scholars are finding nothing solid remaining in heaven and earth except their own criticisms and their own conceptions, to see the Word of God coming forth in His living power and majesty as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the foundation of that heaven and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
5th. I have touched, in these last words, on Baur’s doctrine respecting the identity of the Apostle with the author of the Apocalypse, and the essential differences between the Apocalypse and the Gospel.
It is notorious that many in the Alexandrian Church agreed with Baur in separating the author of the Apocalypse from the author of the Gospel; but that they gave the Gospel to St. John, and the Apocalypse to some other author. I am quite willing, with the German Professor, to consider the Apostle as first of all the ‘Apocalyptiker;’ to believe that he was regarded specially in that character by the Churches of Asia Minor; and to take the vision of the Son of Man, in the first chapter, as the explanation of that confused tradition respecting John which represents him as in some manner keeping alive the office of the high-priest after its representative in Jerusalem had disappeared. I am most willing, also, to admit that the author of the Apocalypse does regard himself as a true Jew, in contradistinction from those who called themselves Jews, but did lie and were of the synagogue of Satan. What I contend is, that the writer of the fourth Gospel is an ‘Apocalyptiker,’ in the strictest sense of the word; that the unveiling of the Son of God and the Son of Man is the subject of one book as well as of the other; that the meaning which is given to revelation or unveiling, in both, is not at variance with the meaning which it bears in St. Paul’s Epistles, but is the expansion and illustration of that meaning; that the Jews who do lie in the Apocalypse, as well as in the Gospel, were those who were content with a visible high-priest, and were not asking as their high-priest for Him whose eyes were as a flame of fire, who died and was alive; that as the Epistle of the Hebrews, whether written by St. Paul or not, explains the very ground of all St. Paul’s Epistles and their unity, so the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse show what is the underground of the doctrine of that Epistle, viz. that the High-Priest of the universe is that Word of God who was with the Father before all worlds, in whom men may ascend to His Father and their Father, to His God and their God. I have expressed, in this Sermon, a hope that the Apocalypse may some day be proved to be a revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and not of certain dates and mystical numbers, because I believe that its radical and essential harmony with the Gospel will be more and more discovered to those who read it, and because the two books and the Epistle will then, I think, explain to us all the former books of the Bible—how they are related to each other, how they are related to Him in whom alone God is unveiled to man. I have spoken of the Gospel as a book of theology, the Apocalypse as a book of politics, not because I believe that these artificial distinctions of ours can represent satisfactorily their different objects, but because I am convinced that theology will be a mere hortus siccus for schoolmen to entertain themselves with, till it becomes associated once more with the Life of nations and humanity; that politics will be a mere ground on which despots and democrats, and the tools of both, play with the morality and happiness of their fellow-beings, till we seek again for the ground of them in the nature and purposes of the eternal God.
I have not seen my way to adopt the punctuation of the 3d and 4th verses of the 1st chapter, (Χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. Ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν,) which many of the Fathers approve, which Lachmann has introduced into his text, and which Mr. Bunsen appears to regard as of very high importance. On the question of a various reading, I might have deferred to these authorities; on a question of pointing, their judgment is merely that of ordinary students. The simplicity of the Apostle’s style, it seems to me, is violated by the change. Nor am I yet aware what we gain by it. Is it the pleonasm in the 1st verse which is objected to? Surely we must strike out half the verses in the Psalms, if we complain of such pleonasms. I believe we shall find, when we have done so, that the force of that which we have retained has not been increased, but weakened. Or is it that the words, ‘in Him was life,’ are regarded as a mere commonplace? God give us such commonplaces in exchange for all the rarities and refinements that wise men can present us with! I do not mean that the difference between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ is not involved in all the doctrine of these verses. No one can read them thoughtfully without perceiving it. But need it be thrust upon us in the very terms of school philosophy? Does it not come out much more naturally and truly in the old simple Hebraic forms? Those who suppose these forms to be obsolete for us, cannot suppose them to have been obsolete for the writer of the fourth Gospel, unless they accept Baur’s theory concerning him.
I have also not been induced to depart from our version of the words, Ἠν τὸ φῶϛ τὸ ἀληθινόν, ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον, in spite of the many objections which have, in modern times and in old times, been raised against it. I do not think that I have what is called a theological interest in defending it. If the light is said to lighten every man, I can ask no more. Give what force you will to the coming into the world, connect it with what clause of the sentence you will, that assertion remains good, perhaps even less qualified than it is in our translation. Moreover, a single text would be a very poor ground on which to rest such a doctrine. A person who finds it in every line of St. John—nay, implied in the whole Bible—can afford to make a present of one passage to those who find it inconvenient. I contend for the fidelity of our version upon a different ground. If we construe the words, ‘The light which lighteneth every man was coming into the world,’ we destroy the order of the Apostle’s discourse, and we go near to make him contradict himself. He declares that the Word was in the world, and that the world knew Him not. The coming into it, in the sense of being made flesh, is reserved for the 14th verse. My great object in this Sermon has been to assert this order, and to show how much we mistake the purpose of the Evangelist when we substitute another of our own. Until some rendering of the passage is suggested which does not involve that great mischief, I must adhere to the one with which we are all familiar.
The notion of St. John as the teacher who possesses a higher lore than the other writers of the New Testament, which I have considered in this Sermon, may be traced especially to Origen. If the reader is at the pains to consider the opening of his Commentary upon St. John, he will discover in what sense this Gospel seemed to him a kind of quintessence of all the previous revelations of God. His own emblem is drawn from the first-fruits of a sacrifice; a better comparison in itself, but one which does not make its meaning at once evident to the modern reader. I cannot have any wish to speak disrespectfully or disparagingly of Origen, with whose mysticism some will accuse me of having only too much sympathy. Yet I cannot help thinking that his attempt to distinguish between the spiritual and the sensible Gospel, has been the source of infinite confusions in the study of the Evangelist. Its other evil consequences—as cultivating a morbid ingenuity in seeking for distant analogies, and in destroying the force of plain narratives—have been often dwelt upon. I allude to it in connexion with what I have said, in this Sermon and in the eighth, of our Lord’s forerunner.
Even the most earnest seekers after truth are continually perplexed by the question how John the Baptist could have been a guide into what Origen and his school have taught them to consider the most esoteric part of the Christian faith. ‘If the least in the kingdom of heaven,’ they say, ‘was greater than he, how can he have been possessed of a doctrine which even some of the great in the kingdom of heaven seem very imperfectly to have apprehended?’ The answer to this question, I believe, will come to such persons gradually,—at last decisively. What is called the doctrine of the Logos—the idea of the Logos—may have been seized and possessed by one here and one there, at different periods of the Church. The best of these, like Clemens of Alexandria, may have been driven to it by the necessities of their position, by their conflict with the false Gnosticism, by the impossibility of preaching the Gospel to Heathens without the belief in a universal Teacher. They may have been often dazzled with their own light—often tempted, if not to glorify themselves upon the possession of it, yet to denounce others as carnal or earthly who were without it. I cannot, indeed, say that I trace as much scorn of others and exaltation of their own wisdom in the Alexandrian school, as in that which was most opposed to it, in the hard dogmatist of Carthage. But they were tempted to make distinctions which interfere, it seems to me, most grievously with all that is truest in their teaching. If the Word is the Teacher and Light of men, as they represented Him to be, the vulgarest men must have been under His teaching; the commonest facts, the most simple forms of nature, must be instruments through which His learning is communicated. If the Word has been, as they say, made flesh, fleshly things cannot be despicable, but must contain those spiritual truths which the wise and prudent who despise them, and exult in their own intellectual superiority, cannot find. Therefore the simplest men, the preachers of repentance, those who have brought a message to the poor,—whether they have talked of the living Word or not,—have borne the best and fullest witness of Him. It is so now; it has been so always. The prophets of old spoke of a Word because they were preachers of repentance. I contend that John the Baptist spoke of Him just as they did, only with more clearness, with a stronger apprehension of His personality. But if John was the messenger of a Word made flesh, if the Incarnation is the beginning of a new world, the opening of a new heaven, it must needs be that the least of those who are born into that world, who are permitted to ascend into that heaven, is greater than John. If, indeed, he forgets the answer which was given to the disciples when they asked, ‘Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ if he begins to exult in his knowledge or in his privileges; if he scorns the world which Christ has redeemed; if he denies that Christ is the Light of the world; he not only puts himself below John the Baptist, but below every Jew, Mahometan, worshipper of Juggernaut; he more openly sets Christ at nought than they do. The Christian world may come to this utter denial of its Master; then will come a preacher of repentance,—a preacher of the living Word to publicans and sinners,—an Elias to witness of judgments upon Scribes and Pharisees, who will make it evident that the deepest lore is also the simplest; that that which is most divine has most power over those who have been most given up to the world, the flesh, and the devil.
To return for a moment to the Alexandrian divines. I cannot acquit Clemens of having given encouragement to that esoterical doctrine which led Origen, it appears to me, into such dangerous refinements. But the spirit of his ‘Pædagogue’ is so personal and so practical, that many of the tendencies to which his pupil yielded were counteracted, if not wholly overcome, in him. Above all, there is one passage of Origen’s Commentary which shows him to have utterly departed from the principle which goes through all the books of Clemens. He considers (tom. i. c. 23) why the name Logos should have been especially chosen as a title of the Saviour. He has been extensively followed by persons who would not like to acknowledge that they have learnt anything from him, in this mode of speaking. But it is surely fatal to the humble study of St. John. We do not suffer him to tell us of the Word, and then to tell us how the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among men, and manifested forth His glory. We start from an assumption and speculation of our own; we chain the Apostle, as if he were a Proteus, that we may compel him to give forth, not his own oracles, but those which we have put into his mouth. If I could induce but one student of divinity to abandon this perilous and irreverent course, I should believe that God had permitted me to be an instrument of some good to His Church.
Mr. Alford has given it as his opinion that the sentence, ‘Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,’ does not refer at all to the Paschal feast, but to the words in the 53d chapter of Isaiah. He raises the natural objection, of which I have spoken in this Discourse, that the scape-goat bears away sins, but that no such association is connected with the Lamb except in the words, ‘Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.’ I do not venture to affirm that the words of Isaiah were not in the Baptist’s mind when he uttered this sentence, or that they did not suggest themselves to the minds of the disciples who heard him speak, and who followed Jesus. But supposing that to be the case, why did the Prophet connect the lamb that was led to the slaughter, and the sheep that was dumb before his shearers, with the exclamation in the fourth verse? Why did Isaiah, as well as John, think of a lamb instead of a goat? We are all agreed that the scape-goat was the most obvious image, one specially suggested, to a preacher in the wilderness. Why was it not the one to which that preacher in the wilderness resorted? Why did he industriously choose another image, which no tradition except that of one passage in a prophet seemed to justify? Why has all Christendom accepted and ratified that selection, the other being thrown quite into the background, only furnishing an occasional simile to divines, being scarcely brought within the range of our sympathies even by the earnestness and genius of an adventurous and devout painter of our own day, while the lamb has been the favourite subject of Christian art in all ages? Surely these questions require to be considered. The Passover, I admit, does not suggest the thought of a sin-bearer. That thought is suggested to the conscience by the sense of sin, or rather is that sense. But did not the Passover suggest to those who had that thought deeply fixed in their own minds and consciences, the sense of a deliverer? May not John have felt—may not all Christendom have felt—that the sin-bearer must, as I have expressed it in this Discourse, go into the presence of God to deliver us from our burden and bondage, not into a land uninhabited?
The intolerable burden which Luther had felt on his conscience leads him to speak of this verse with intense delight and satisfaction. (See Werke, b. vii. p. 1637, u. s. w. Walch.) Starting from his inward experience, he takes it for granted that Isaiah’s words were the exposition to the Jew of the inadequacy of the legal lamb offered day by day, or at the annual feast, to take away sin. St. John’s words, in that sense, become, for him, the interpretation of Isaiah’s words, ‘Surely the Lamb that was dumb before his shearers hath carried our sins.’ ‘Behold that Lamb of God!’ But it never occurs to him that the Jew could have separated the lamb at the feast from the consciousness of evil, or that it could have suggested any thoughts which did not point to a deliverer from the evil. On many subjects older writers or modern writers may see further than he does; on this no one, I think, is so entitled to bear witness.
Note 1.
Those who maintain that it is dangerous to attempt any revision of our present translation of the Scriptures are fond of two arguments especially. One is, that the language which would be substituted, in almost every case, for that of the divines in King James’s reign would be less simple and popular than theirs; the other is, that no vital or fundamental doctrine of our faith is affected by any errors or inadvertencies into which they may have fallen.
These arguments have been illustrated by a large amount of eulogistic and vituperative rhetoric; but plain readers would rather that they were brought to some practical test. Here is one. I have urged that we should put Signs in nearly all those verses of St. John in which we now find ‘Miracles.’ Is this change likely to affect the simplicity of our version, to make its ‘language not understanded by the people?’ Is ‘miracle’ one of their ordinary, homely, Saxon expressions? Would it be exceedingly difficult for a preacher to make his humble parishioners understand the use and purpose of ‘Signs?’
But there is the cui bono objection:—‘You unsettle a mode of speech to which we are accustomed. To what end? Is there anything “vital” in the difference?’ Vital means, I suppose, if it is rendered into our vernacular speech, that which affects life—the life of individuals or of societies. I venture to think that this change is important to the life of both. The habit of looking for wonderments, as the decisive and overpowering witnesses of Christ, has, it seems to me, been most mischievous to the life of the Church, is affecting the life of each one of us. Those who wish to think and speak of Him as not only born at a certain time into the world, but as living before the world, and as the founder of it, find themselves perpetually embarrassed by the notion which has worked itself into the minds of our people and of ourselves, that He established His claim to be an extraordinary person by doing extraordinary acts in the towns of Galilee and the city of Jerusalem, instead of showing by signs what He is and always has been. The Catholic doctrine is more undermined than we are at all aware by the feeling which this deviation from the original has sanctioned and promoted. We assume Christ’s simple humanity as the ground of our thoughts, and then add on to it an indefinite notion of divinity. The truth which was so dear to the earnest Evangelical teachers of the last century, that Christ is to be proclaimed as the Emmanuel, ‘God with us,’ that the whole Gospel is concerning a living Christ, suffers scarcely less from the same cause. And how much the whole argument of Protestants with Romanists about their miracles is weakened, and its practical effect destroyed, by the use of an expression which (such is the curious Nemesis upon those who, for any cause whatever, trifle with language) we have derived, not from the Vulgate, but from Theodore Beza, I fancy some of our professional anti-Romanist orators might discover, if they spent some of the time in studying the controversy and the history of the Church which they spend in constructing denunciations against the superstitions and apostasy of their opponents.
I offer these as proofs that in one instance, at all events, ‘vital’ benefits may be gained by an earnest and sober consideration of our existing translation, and that even deadly mischiefs may be averted by it. And I am inclined to think that it is a fair instance. Among those divines who are most earnest for a revision, and would be most competent to take part in it, there is not one, so far as I am aware, who would not watch with the greatest jealousy over the Saxon character of our version, who would wish to substitute for a single venerable phrase a nineteenth century equivalent, who would not sacrifice anything excepting truth to the preservation of that which is popular and human, who would not expect, as the reward of a steadfast adherence to truth, that the book would become more a book for the English people, and less a book for the schools. And I am satisfied that these honest and learned men may look for another—even, if possible, a higher—reward for their serious devotion to the book which they love and reverence most. Many delusions like that of which I have spoken are perpetuated, I am persuaded, through phrases which crept into our version from carelessness,—which have been repeated and turned into arguments by pulpit rhetoricians,—which often lead honest Englishmen to doubt the truth of the Bible. They will be, in the best sense, defenders of the faith if they rescue the words which the Psalmist speaks of as purified seven times in the fire from any earthly dross, and if they spoil the trade of those who wish it to be mingled with the genuine ore.
I will add one word in conclusion. Much is said in our day about verbal inspiration. Some accuse their brethren of superstition for maintaining it; some accuse their brethren of infidelity for not maintaining it. I suspect that a common name may cover the most opposite feelings and convictions. A believer in verbal inspiration, like Mr. Tregelles—who lives laborious days that he may discover the purest text, so that none of the inspired words may fall to the ground or be perverted—is one of the noblest witnesses for truth I can conceive of. May God give us more and more of such men, and hearts to honour them for their works’ sake! On the other hand, those who say they believe in verbal inspiration, whenever they wish to direct the wrath of their disciples or of a religious mob against men that are more righteous than themselves, and who then show that they are afraid of trying God’s words, and freeing them from insincere mixtures, lest the minds of the people should be disturbed, are not exactly those whom one can think of as ‘Israelites indeed, in whom is no guile.’
My attention has been called by a friend to a very interesting interpretation of the dialogue between Jesus and the Virgin, which is given by Gregory of Nyssa, Tom. ii. p. 9, B. c. He makes, it will be seen, the words of our Lord interrogative: ’Is not my hour yet come?’—
Τὴν γὰρ μητρῴαν συμβουλὴν, ὡς οὐκέτι κατὰ καιρὸν αὐτῷ προσαγομένην ἀπεποιήσατο, εἰπών⋅ τί ἐμοὶ μαί σοι γύναι; μὴ καὶ ταύτης μου τῆς ἡλικίας ἐπιστατεῖν ἐθέλεις; οὔπω ἥκει μου ἡ ὥρα ἡ τὸ αὐτοκρατὲς περιεχομένη τῇ ἡλικίᾳ καὶ αὐτεξούσιον;
I have spoken in this Sermon on two subjects, of which I have spoken at some length in my Theological Essays; the ‘Resurrection’ and the ‘Judgment.’ I am not the least anxious to correct any impressions which my remarks in that book may have made on the minds of religious critics. If they have misunderstood me, nothing which I could say would make me intelligible to them. If they have misinterpreted me without misunderstanding me, I am not the sufferer. But I shall be very glad if what I have said here should remove any difficulty from the minds of earnest and thoughtful men, some of whom have written their complaints to me in a most kind and friendly spirit, evidently regarding me as a fellow-inquirer after truth, and wishing that we should help each other in the pursuit of it.
I think they will perceive, from what I have said on the words—‘Those that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live,’—that I am not less zealous than they are to assert the absolute identity of the body of humiliation with the body of glory. That truth cannot be asserted in stronger language than it is asserted by St. Paul in the 15th chapter of the 1st Corinthians, and by our own Burial Service. God forbid that any one should make it weaker! What I affirm is, that we do not gain the least strength for this conviction by setting aside St. Paul’s assertion, that corruption shall not inherit incorruption; and that the Burial Service nowhere gives the slightest hint that what is committed as earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, shall be reunited to constitute that body which we have a sure and certain hope will be raised, and will be made like unto Christ’s glorious body. This attempt to identify the corruption of the body with the body, the effects of death with the substance which death is unable to destroy, I know has the sanction of great and venerable names. Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation have also the sanction of names which are most dear to the Church. But if Bonaventura and Thomas à Kempis cannot bind us to the one, or Luther to the other; if we have a right to feel that we partake with them of the sacrament of Christ’s risen and glorified body most completely when we forget the theories by which here on earth they limited it; we are surely not bound by the rhetoric of Donne or of Jeremy Taylor, however much we may reverence them both, to adopt what seems to us merely an earthly and sensual explanation of a glorious reality, directly interfering with the scriptural account of it, and with many of the most practical and consolatory truths which flow from it. I do not wish to get rid of any passage in the New Testament upon the subject, or to give it a forced construction. I do wish that we may look straight at all the passages in it, and not allow a conception which we have formed,—a very natural, but it seems to me a very low and grovelling conception,—to interfere with the full understanding and reception of them. I would not wish a better argument against the popular theory than the eloquent sermon of Donne in the support and elucidation of it. Let any one see how utterly unrestrained the fancy of a devout and excellent man becomes when it enters into this speculation, how entirely it loses sight of all scriptural guidance, how it revels amongst the images of the charnel-house. And then let any one ask himself whether this is the doctrine of that divine passage in St. Paul, which reaches indeed from earth to heaven, which is not afraid of the lowest objects when it is in contact with the highest; yet in which all is clear and awful, as if he knew that he was speaking of death and life, of God and man, and as if the Spirit who was guiding him abhorred all conceits and trifling. Only imagine Donne’s Sermon substituted for the 15th of Corinthians, when we meet in the church around the coffin of a friend! It is a very simple test; but I think any one who applies it fairly will know what is the worth of the additions which the fancy, even if it is not ordinarily a vulgar fancy, makes to the divine testimony.
Precisely on the same ground do I protest against the exercises of this same fancy respecting what is called, by a phrase which I have not met with anywhere in Scripture, the intermediate state of disembodied spirits. I am told by a gentleman, who seems to know, that they are placed in the moon, or in one of the fixed stars. Any one who can find consolation in such an opinion, I should be very sorry to deprive of it. But I must say plainly, that we are in a world of life and death; and that if we have nothing better than these dreams to sustain each other with, we had better hold our peace. In the words of our Lord in the 5th chapter of St. John, in the comment upon these words at the tomb of Lazarus, I find what I want, and what I believe every one wants, and more than we shall ever get to the bottom of, if we meditate upon them from this day till the consummation of all things. While I have them I will not, for my part, build up a world of fantasies which, seeing that it has no foundation in the nature of things or in the word of God, any physical discovery, any application of ordinary logic, may throw down in a moment. Da nuces puero. The boyhood of the Church, as of individuals, may have innocently occupied itself in cracking nuts, and eating the poor kernel in the inside. Our faith perishes in such experiments. Let us put away childish things, and try that we may know those blessed things which are freely given us of God.
That the declarations respecting a general resurrection at the last day are to me of infinite worth, and that they do not at all clash in my mind with the belief which our Lord’s words in this chapter appear very distinctly to justify,—that men, at all times and in all ages, who have been in their graves, have heard the voice of the Son of Man and have lived; that in their bodies, and not in their spirits only, they have awakened at His call; I think will be evident from what I have said on the resurrection of Lazarus. And this general resurrection I connect, as I think all men connect it, with a judgment-day. The only question is, whether we are to follow strictly the assertions of the Evangelists, and call that day an unveiling of the Son of Man—a discovery to all, wherever they are, in one part of the universe or another, quick or dead, of Him who is, and always has been, their King and their Judge, so that every eye shall see Him, and the secrets of all hearts shall be discovered; or whether we shall substitute for this notion of His advent to judgment, one which supposes a gathering together, in some certain space, of multitudes that never could be gathered together in any space,—one that reproduces all the pomp and solemnities of earthly courts of justice,—one that supposes Christ not to be the Searcher of hearts, not to be the Light of men, but the mere image and pattern of an earthly magistrate. What I call for, is the strict interpretation of the words of Scripture. What I denounce, is an attempt to substitute the forms and conceptions of our own carnal understandings for that which speaks to a faculty within us which is higher than our understandings, and which belongs to us all alike. Far from agreeing with those writers, immeasurably superior to me I own in learning and insight, who think that the words of Scripture do not fit the conditions of modern times, and that we need to adapt them to our stage of civilization, or else to cast them aside, I expect no deliverance from the superstitions by which we are tied and bound, from the confusions which a corrupt and money-getting civilization has introduced into our thoughts on the meanest and on the highest subjects, but in a return to the more accurate study of those Scriptural phrases which we use most familiarly, but in the attempt to bring our theology to the higher and simpler standard which they set before us. Earnestly would I implore those friends who have so kindly told me that they would gladly agree with me, in my views respecting the Resurrection and the Judgment, but that they find it impossible—not to trouble themselves about my views at all; to be sure that they can only be of use to them, that I can only be of use to them, just so far as I can help them to clear their minds of mists which hinder them from seeing that light which must throw all my opinions and those of far wiser men into the shade.