Chapter I: Midnight 342 (3)

Not in Virgil alone, but scattered also here and there through all antiquity, do we find vague, half-prophetic aspirations after the divine Teacher who should interpret God to man, console under the sorrows of life, and charm away the fears of death. In the Phædo, when Socrates is comforting his sorrowful disciples in view of his approaching death, and setting before them the probabilities of a continued life beyond the grave, one of them tells him that they believe while they hear him, but when he is gone their doubts will all return, and says, "Where shall we find a charmer then to disperse our fears?" Socrates answers that such a Charmer will yet arise, and bids his disciples seek him in all lands of the earth. Greece, he says, is wide, and there are many foreign lands and even barbarous countries in which they should travel searching for Him, for there is nothing for which they could more reasonably spend time and money.

And in the discourse of Socrates with Alcibiades, as given by Plato, the great philosopher is represented as saying, "We must wait till One shall teach us our duty towards gods and men."

Alcibiades asks, "When, O Socrates, shall that time come, and who will be the Teacher? Most happy should I be to see this man, whoever he is." The Sage replies, "He is One who is concerned for thee. He feels for thee an admirable regard."

When one reads these outreachings for an unknown Saviour in the noblest minds of antiquity, it gives pathos and suggestive power to that emotion which our Lord manifested only a few days before his death, when word was brought him that there were certain _Greeks_ desiring to see him. When the message was brought to him he answered with a burst of exultation, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified! Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit, and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me!"

He was indeed the "Teacher" who had been "concerned" for Alcibiades, who had cared for Socrates. He was the "Charmer" whom Socrates bade his disciples seek above all things. He was the unknown bringer of good for whom Virgil longed. He was the "Star" of Balaam, the "Benefactor" of the Chaldee astrologers, the "Saviour" predicted by the Persian Zoroaster. He was, it is true, the Shepherd of Israel, but he had a heart for the "other sheep not of this fold," who were scattered through all nations of the earth. He belonged not to any nation, but to the world, and hence aptly and sublimely did the last prophecy proclaim, "The desire of all nations shall come!"

VII

THE HIDDEN YEARS OF CHRIST

One great argument for the divine origin of the mission of Jesus is its utter unlikeness to the wisdom and ways of this world. From beginning to end, it ignored and went contrary to all that human schemes for power would have advised.

It was first announced, not to the great or wise, but to the poor and unlettered. And when the holy child, predicted by such splendid prophecies, came and had been adored by the shepherds and magi, had been presented in the temple and blessed by Simeon and Anna--what then? Suddenly he disappears from view. He is gone, no one knows whither--hid in a distant land.

In time the parents return and settle in an obscure village. Nobody knows them, nobody cares for them, and the child grows up as the prophet predicted, "As a tender plant, a root out of dry ground;" the lonely lily of Nazareth.

And then there were thirty years of silence, when nobody thought of him and nobody expected anything from him. There was time for Zacharias and Elisabeth and Simeon and Anna to die; for the shepherds to cease talking of the visions; for the wise ones of the earth to say, "Oh, as to that child, it was nothing at all! He is gone. Nobody knows where he is. You see it has all passed by--a mere superstitious excitement of a few credulous people."

And during these hidden years what was Jesus doing? We have no record. It was said by the Apostle that "in all respects it behooved him to be made like his brethren." Before the full splendor of his divine gifts and powers descended upon him, it was necessary that he should first live an average life, such as the great body of human beings live. For, of Christ as he was during the three years of his public life, it could not be said that he was in all respects in our situation or experiencing our trials. He had unlimited supernatural power; he could heal the sick, raise the dead, hush the stormy waters, summon at his will legions of angels. A being of such power could not be said to understand exactly the feelings of our limitations and weaknesses. But those years of power were only three in the life of our Lord; for thirty years he chose to live the life of an obscure human being.

Jesus prepared for his work among men by passing through the quiet experience of a workingman in the lower orders. The tradition of the church is that Joseph, being much older than Mary, died while Jesus was yet young, and thus the support of his mother devolved upon him. Overbeck has a very touching picture in which he represents Joseph as breathing his last on the bosom of Jesus; it is a sketch full of tenderness and feeling.

What balance of mind, what reticence and self-control, what peace resulting from deep and settled faith, is there in this history, and what a cooling power it must have to the hot and fevered human heart that burns in view of the much that is to be done to bring the world right!

Nothing was ever so strange, so visionary, to all human view so utterly and ridiculously hopeless of success, as the task that Jesus meditated during the thirty years when he was quietly busy over his carpenter's bench in Nazareth. Hundreds of years before, the prophet Daniel saw, in a dream, a stone cut out of the mountain without hands, growing till it filled the earth. Thus the ideal kingdom of Jesus grew in the silence and solitude of his own soul till it became a power and a force before which all other forces of the world have given way. The Christian religion was the greatest and most unprecedented reform ever introduced.

In the present age of the world, the whole movement and uneasiness and convulsion of what is called progress comes from the effort to adjust existing society to the principles laid down by Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount was, and still is, the most disturbing and revolutionary document in the world.

This being the case, what impresses us most in the character of Jesus, as a reformer, is the atmosphere of peacefulness that surrounded him, and in which he seemed to live and move and have his being.

Human beings as reformers are generally agitated, hurried, impatient. Scarcely are the spirits of the prophets subject to the prophets. They are liable to run before the proper time and season, to tear open the bud that ought to unfold; they become nervous, irascible, and lose mental and physical health: and, if the reform on which they have set their heart fails, they are overwhelmed with discouragement and tempted to doubt divine Providence.

Let us now look at Jesus. How terrible was the state of the world at the time when he began to reflect upon it in his unfolding youth! How much was there to be done! What darkness, cruelty, oppression, confusion! Yet he, knowing that that was the work of reorganizing, showed no haste. Thirty years was by Jewish law the appointed time at which a religious teacher should commence his career. Jesus apparently felt no impulse to antedate this period; one incident alone, in his childhood, shows him carried away beyond himself by the divine ardor which filled his soul.

Even then, his answers to his mother showed the consciousness of a divine and wonderful mission such as belonged only to one of the human race, and it is immediately added, "And he went down to Nazareth and was subject to them." Eighteen years now passed away and nothing was known of the enthusiastic spirit. When he appears in the synagogue at Nazareth, he is spoken of simply as "the carpenter." "How knoweth this man letters?" was the cry of his townsmen.

Nothing shows more strongly the veiled and hidden and perfectly quiet life that Jesus had been leading among them. He had been a carpenter, not a teacher. The humble, calm, unobtrusive life of a good mechanic, who does every day's duty in its time and place, is not a thing that calls out any attention in a community. There are many followers of Jesus in this world who are living the same silent, quiet life, who would not be missed in the great world if they were gone, who, being always in place and time, and working without friction or jar, come to be as much disregarded as the daily perfect work of nature.

The life of Jesus must also have been a silent one. Of all the things that he must have been capable of saying we find not one recorded. And the wonder of his townsmen at his capacity of speech shows that there had been no words spoken by him before to accustom them to it.

In our Saviour's public career we are surprised at nothing so much as his calmness. He was never in haste. His words have all the weight of deliberation, and the occasions when he refrains from speech are fully as remarkable as the things he says.

There seems to be about him none of the wearying anxiety as to immediate results, none of the alternations of hope and discouragement that mark our course. He had faith in God, whose great plan he was working, whose message he came to deliver, and whose times and seasons he strictly regarded. So, too, did he regard the mental and spiritual condition of the imperfect ones by whom he was surrounded. "I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now," he said even to his disciples. When their zeal transcended his, and they longed to get hold of the thunderbolts and call down fire from heaven, his grave and steady rebuke recalled them: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of."

We see his disciples excited, ardent,--now coming back with triumph to tell how even the devils were subject to them, now forbidding one to cast out devils because he followed not them, now contending who should be greatest; and among them sits the Master, lowly, thoughtful, tranquil, with the little child on his knee, or bending to wash the feet of a disciple, the calmest, sweetest, least assuming of them all.

This should be the model of all Christian reformers. He that believeth shall not make haste is the true motto of Christian reform.

And these great multitudes, to whose hands no special, individual power is given--they are only minute workers in a narrower sphere. Daily toils, small economies, the ordering of the material cares of life, are all their lot. Before them in their way they can see the footsteps of Jesus. We can conceive that in the lowly path of his life all his works were perfect, that never was a nail driven or a line laid carelessly, and that the toil of that carpenter's bench was as sacred to him as his teachings in the temple, because it was duty.

Sometimes there is a sadness and discontent, a repressed eagerness for some higher sphere, that invades the minds of humble workers. Let them look unto Jesus, and be content. All they have to do is to be "faithful over a few things," and in his own time he will make them "ruler over many things."

VIII

THE PRAYER-LIFE OF JESUS

The Bible presents us with the personality of a magnificent Being--the only-begotten Son of God--who, being in the form of God and without robbery equal with God, emptied himself of his glory and took upon him the form of a servant; and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself and became obedient to death--even the death of the cross.

This great Being, we are told, entered the race of mortality, divested of those advantages which came from his divine origin, and assuming all those disadvantages of limitation and dependence which belong to human beings. The Apostle says, "It behooved him in all respects to be made like unto his brethren." His lot was obedience--dependence upon the Father--and he gained victories by just the means which are left to us--faith and prayer.

Now, there are many good people whose feeling about prayer is something like this: "I pray because I am commanded to, not because I feel a special need or find a special advantage in it. In my view we are to use our intellect and our will in discovering duties and overcoming temptations, quite sure that God will, of course, aid those who aid themselves." This class of persons look upon all protracted seasons of prayer and periods spent in devotion as so much time taken from the active duties of life. A week devoted to prayer, a convention of Christians meeting to spend eight or ten days in exercises purely devotional, would strike them as something excessive and unnecessary, and tending to fanaticism.

If ever there was a human being who could be supposed able to meet the trials of life and overcome its temptations in his own strength, it must have been Jesus Christ.

But his example stands out among all others, and he is shown to us as peculiarly a man of prayer. The wonderful quietude and reticence of spirit in which he awaited the call of his Father to begin his great work has already been noticed. He waited patiently, living for thirty years the life of a common human being of the lower grades of society, and not making a single movement to display either what may be called his natural gifts, of teaching, etc., or those divine powers which were his birthright. Having taken the place of a servant, as a servant he waited the divine call.

When that call came he consecrated himself to his great work by submitting to the ordinance of baptism. We are told that as he went up from the waters of baptism, praying, the heavens were opened and the Holy Ghost descended upon him, and a voice from heaven said, "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased."

Might we not think that now the man Jesus Christ would feel fully prepared to begin at once the work to which God so visibly called him? But no. The divine Spirit within him led to a still farther delay. More than a month's retreat from all the world's scenes and ways, a period of unbroken solitude, was devoted to meditation and prayer.

If Jesus Christ deemed so much time spent in prayer needful to his work, what shall we say of ourselves? Feeble and earthly, with hearts always prone to go astray, living in a world where everything presses us downward to the lower regions of the senses and passions, how can we afford to neglect that higher communion, those seasons of divine solitude, which were thought necessary by our Master? It was in those many days devoted entirely to communion with God that he gained strength to resist the temptations of Satan, before which we so often fall. Whatever we may think of the mode and manner of that mysterious account of the temptations of Christ, it is evident that they were met and overcome by the spiritual force gained by prayer and the study of God's word.

But it was not merely in this retirement of forty days that our Lord set us the example of the use of seasons of religious seclusion. There is frequent mention made in the Gospels of his retiring for purposes of secret prayer. In the midst of the popularity and success that attended his first beneficent miracles, we are told by St. Mark that, "rising up a great while before day, he went out into a solitary place and there prayed." His disciples went to look for him, and found him in his retirement, and brought him back with the message, "All men are seeking for thee." In Luke v. 16, it is said: "He withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed;" and on another occasion (Luke iv. 42), he says: "And when it was day, he departed and went into a desert place." Again, when preparing to take the most important step in his ministry, the choice of his twelve Apostles, we read in Luke vi. 12:

"And it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued _all night_ in prayer to God; and when it was day, he called unto him his disciples; and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles."

It was when his disciples found him engaged in prayer, and listened for a little while to his devotions, that they addressed to him the petition, "Lord, teach _us_ to pray." Might we not all, in view of his example, address to him the same prayer? Surely if there is anything in which Christ's professed disciples need to learn of him it is in prayer.

Not only in example but in teaching did he exhort to prayer. "Watch and pray" were words so often upon his lips that they may seem to be indeed the watchwords of our faith. He bids us retire to our closets and with closed door pray to our Father in secret. He says that men "ought always to pray and not to faint," though the answer be delayed. He reasons from what all men feel of parental longings in granting the requests of their little children, and says, "If ye, being evil, are so ready to hear your children, how much more ready will your Father in heaven be to give good things to them that ask him." Nay, he uses a remarkable boldness in urging us to be importunate in presenting our requests, again and again, in the face of apparent delay and denial. He shows instances where even indifferent or unjust people are overcome by sheer importunity, and intimates how much greater must be the power of importunity--urgent, pressing solicitation--on a Being always predisposed to benevolence.

By all these methods and illustrations our Lord incites us to follow his prayerful example, and to overcome, as he overcame, by prayer. The Christian Church felt so greatly the need of definite seasons devoted to religious retirement that there grew up among them the custom now so extensively observed in Christendom, of devoting forty days in every year to a special retreat from the things of earth, and a special devotion to the work of private and public prayer. Like all customs, even those originating in deep spiritual influences, this is too apt to degenerate into a mere form. Many associate no ideas with "fasting" except a change in articles of food. The true spiritual fasting, which consists in turning our eyes and hearts from the engrossing cares and pleasures of earth and fixing them on things divine, is lost sight of. Our "forty days" are not like our Lord's, given to prayer and the study of God's Word. Nothing could make the period of Lent so much of a reality as to employ it in a systematic effort to fix the mind on Jesus. The history in the Gospels is so well worn that it often slips through the head without affecting the heart.

But if, retiring into solitude for a portion of each day, we should select some one scene or trait or incident in the life of Jesus, and with all the helps we can get seek to understand it fully, tracing it in the other evangelists, comparing it with other passages of Scripture, etc., we should find ourselves insensibly interested, and might hope that in this effort of our souls to understand him, Jesus himself would draw near, as he did of old to the disciples on the way to Emmaus.

This looking unto Jesus and thinking about him is a better way to meet and overcome sin than any physical austerities or spiritual self-reproaches. It is by looking at him, the Apostle says, "as in a glass," that we are "changed into the same image, as from glory to glory."

IX

THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS

Intimately connected with the forty days of solitude and fasting is the mysterious story of the Temptation.

We are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews that our Lord was exposed to a peculiar severity of trial in order that he might understand the sufferings and wants of us feeble human beings. "For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succor those who are tempted." We are to understand, then, that however divine was our Lord's nature in his preëxistent state, he chose to assume our weakness and our limitations, and to meet and overcome the temptations of Satan by just such means as are left to us--by faith and prayer and the study of God's Word.

There are many theories respecting this remarkable history of the temptation. Some suppose the Evil Spirit to have assumed a visible form, and to have been appreciably present. But if we accept the statement we have quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that our Lord was tempted in all respects as we are, it must have been an invisible and spiritual presence with which he contended. The temptations must have presented themselves to him, as to us, by thoughts injected into his mind.

It seems probable that, of many forms of temptation which he passed through, the three of which we are told are selected as specimens, and if we notice we shall see that they represent certain great radical sources of trial to the whole human race.

First comes the temptation from the cravings of animal appetite. Perhaps hunger--the want of food and the weakness and faintness resulting from it--brings more temptation to sin than any other one cause. To supply animal cravings men are driven to theft and murder, and women to prostitution. The more fortunate of us, who are brought up in competence and shielded from want, cannot know the fierceness of this temptation--its driving, maddening power. But he who came to estimate our trials, and to help the race of man in their temptations, chose to know what the full force of the pangs of hunger were, and to know it in the conscious possession of miraculous power which could at any moment have supplied them. To have used this power for the supply of his wants would have been at once to abandon that very condition of trial and dependence which he came to share with us. It was a sacred trust, not given for himself but for the world. It was the very work he undertook, to bear the trials which his brethren bore as they were called to bear them, with only such helps as it might please the Father to give him in his own time and way.

So when the invisible tempter suggested that he might at once relieve this pain and gratify this craving, he answered simply that there was a higher life than the animal, and that man could be upborne by faith in God even under the pressure of utmost want. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." How many poor, suffering followers of Christ, called to forsake the means of livelihood for conscience' sake, have been obliged to live as Christ did on the simple promise of God, and to wait. Such sufferers may feel that they are not called to this trial by one ignorant of its nature or unsympathetic with their weakness. And the same consolation applies to all who struggle with the lower wants of our nature in any form. Christ's pity and sympathy are for them.

All who struggle with animal desires in any form, which duty forbids them to gratify, may remember that God has given them an Almighty Saviour, who, having suffered, is able to succor those that are tempted.

The second trial was no less universal. It was the temptation to use his sacred and solemn gifts from God for purposes of personal ostentation and display. "Why not," suggests the tempter, "descend from the pinnacle of the temple upborne by angels? How striking a manifestation of the power of the Son of God!" To this came the grave answer, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,"--by needlessly incurring a danger which would make miraculous deliverance necessary.

Is no one in our day put to this test? Is not the young minister at God's altar, to whom is given eloquence and power over the souls of men, in danger of this temptation to theatric exhibitions--ostentatious display of self--this seeking for what is dramatic and striking, rather than what is for God's service and glory? Whoever is intrusted with power of any kind or in any degree is tempted to use it selfishly rather than divinely. To all such the Lord's temptation and resistance of it gives assurance of help if help be sought.

But finally came the last, the most insidious temptation, and its substance seemed to be this: "Why not use these miraculous gifts to make a worldly party? Why not flatter the national vanity of the Jews, excite their martial spirit, lead them to a course of successful revolt against their masters, and then of brilliant conquest, and seize upon all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them? To be sure, this will require making concession here and there to the evil passions of men, but when the supreme power is once gained all shall go right. Why this long, slow path of patience and self-denial? Why this conflict with the world? Why the cross and the grave? Why not the direct road of power, using the worldly forces first, and afterwards the spiritual?" This seems to be a free version of all that is included in the proposition: "All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it; for that is delivered unto me and to whomsoever I will I give it. If, therefore, thou wilt worship me all shall be thine."

The indignant answer of Jesus shows with what living energy he repelled every thought of the least concession to evil, the least advantage to be gained by following or allowing the corrupt courses of this world. He would not flatter the rich and influential. He would not conceal offensive truth. He would seek the society of the poor and despised. He taught love of enemies in the face of a nation hating their enemies and longing for revenge. He taught forgiveness and prayer, while they were longing for battle and conquest. He blessed the meek, the sorrowful, the merciful, the persecuted for righteousness, instead of the powerful and successful. If he had been willing to have been such a king as the Scribes and Pharisees wanted they would have adored him and fought for him. But because his kingdom was not of this world they cried: "Not this man, but Barabbas!" It is said that after this temptation the Devil departed from him "for a season." But all through his life, in one form or another, that temptation must have been suggested to him.

When he told his Apostles that he was going up to Jerusalem to suffer and to die, Peter, it is said, rebuked him with earnestness: "That be far from thee, Lord; such things shall not happen to thee."

Jesus instantly replies, not to Peter, but to the Invisible Enemy who through Peter's affection and ambition is urging the worldly and self-seeking course upon him: "Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto me. Thou savorest not the things that be of God but of man."

We are told that the temptation of Christ was so real that he suffered, being tempted. He knew that he must disappoint the expectations of all his friends who had set their hearts on the temporal kingdom, that he was leading them on step by step to a season of unutterable darkness and sorrow. The cross was bitter to him, in prospect as in reality, but never for a moment did he allow himself to swerve from it. As the time drew near, he said, "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But, for this cause came I unto this hour;--Father, glorify thy name!"

Is not this lifelong temptation which Christ overcame one that meets us all every day and hour? To live an unworldly life; never to seek place or power or wealth by making the least sacrifice of conscience or principle; is it easy? is it common? Yet he who chose rather to die on the cross than to yield in the slightest degree his high spiritual mission can feel for our temptations and succor us even here.

The Apostle speaks of life as a _race_ set before us, which we are to win by laying aside every impediment and looking steadfastly unto Jesus, who, "for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross." Our victories over self are to be gained not so much by self-reproaches and self-conflicts as by the enthusiasm of looking away from ourselves to Him who has overcome for us. Our Christ is not dead, but alive forevermore! A living presence, ever near to the soul that seeks salvation from sin. And to the struggling and the tempted he still says, "Look unto ME, and be ye saved."

X

OUR LORD'S BIBLE

The life of Jesus, regarded from a mere human point of view, presents an astonishing problem. An obscure man in an obscure province has revolutionized the world. Every letter and public document of the most cultured nations dates from his birth, as a new era. How was this man educated? We find he had no access to the Greek and Roman literature. Jesus was emphatically a man of one book. That book was the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament. The Old Testament was his Bible, and this single consideration must invest it with undying interest for us.

We read the Bible which our parents read. We see, perhaps, pencil-marks here and there, which show what they loved and what helped and comforted them in the days of their life-struggle, and the Bible is dearer to us on that account. Then, going backward along the bright pathway of the sainted and blessed who lived in former ages, the Bible becomes diviner to us for their sake. The Bible of the Martyrs, the Bible of the Waldenses, the Bible of Luther and Calvin, of our Pilgrim Fathers, has a double value.

I have in my possession a very ancient black-letter edition of the Bible printed in 1522, more than three hundred years ago. In this edition many of the Psalms have been read and re-read, till the paper is almost worn away. Some human heart, some suffering soul, has taken deep comfort here. If to have been the favorite, intimate friend of the greatest number of hearts be an ambition worthy of a poet, David has gained a loftier place than any poet who ever wrote. He has lived next to the heart of men, and women, and children, of all ages, in all climes, in all times and seasons, all over the earth. They have rejoiced and wept, prayed and struggled, lived and died, with David's words in their mouths. His heart has become the universal Christian heart, and will ever be, till earth's sorrows, and earth itself, are a vanished dream.

It is too much the fashion of this day to speak slightingly of the Old Testament. Apart from its grandeur, its purity, its tenderness and majesty, the Old Testament has this peculiar interest to the Christian,--it was the Bible of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As a man, Jesus had a human life to live, a human experience to undergo. For thirty silent years he was known among men only as a carpenter in Nazareth, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament were his daily companions. When he emerges into public life, we find him thoroughly versed in the Scriptures. Allusions to them are constant, through all his discourses; he continually refers to them as writings that reflect his own image. "Search the Scriptures," he says, "for they are they that testify of me."

The Psalms of David were to Jesus all and more than they can be to any other son of man.

In certain of them he saw himself and his future life, his trials, conflicts, sufferings, resurrection, and final triumph foreshadowed. He quoted them to confound his enemies. When they sought to puzzle him with perplexing questions he met them with others equally difficult, drawn from the Scriptures. He asks them:--

"What think ye of the Messiah? whose son is he? They say unto
him, the Son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David
in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit
thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool?
If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?"

So, when they ask the question, "Which is the greatest commandment of all?" he answers by placing together two passages in the Old Testament, the one commanding supreme love to God and the other impartial love to man's neighbor. The greatest commandment of all nowhere stands in the Old Testament exactly as Jesus quotes it, the first part being found in Deuteronomy vi. 5, and the second in Leviticus xix. 18. This is a specimen of the exhaustive manner in which he studied and used the Scriptures.

Our Saviour quotes often also from the prophets. In his first public appearance in his native village he goes into the synagogue and reads from Isaiah. When they question and disbelieve, he answers them by pointed allusions to the stories of Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Sarepta. When the Sadducees raise the question of a future life, he replies by quoting from the Pentateuch that God calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, for all are alive to him. He cites the history of Jonah as a symbol of his own death and resurrection; and at the last moment of his trial before the High Priest, when adjured to say whether he be the Christ or not, he replies in words that recall the sublime predictions in the Book of Daniel of the coming of Messiah to judgment. The prophet says:--

"I saw in my vision, and, behold, One like the Son of man came
with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days;
and there was given unto him dominion and glory and a kingdom,
that all people and nations and languages should serve him. His
dominion is an everlasting dominion, that shall not pass away or
be destroyed."

When the High Priest of the Jews said to Jesus, "I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be Messiah or not," he answered, "I am; and hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven."

So much was the character of our Lord's teaching colored and impregnated by the writings of the Old Testament that it is impossible fully to comprehend Jesus without an intimate knowledge of them. To study the life of Christ without the Hebrew Scriptures is to study a flower without studying the plant from which it sprung, the root and leaves which nourished it. He continually spoke of himself as a Being destined to fulfill what had gone before. "Think not," he said, "that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill." He frequently spoke of himself as of the order and race of Jewish prophets; like them he performed symbolic acts which were visible prophecies, as when he knew his nation had finally rejected him he signified their doom by the awful sign of the blasted fig-tree. Through all the last days of Jesus, as his death approaches, we find continual references to the Old Testament prophecies, and quotations from them.

And after his resurrection, when he appears to his disciples, he "opens to them the Scriptures;" that talk on the way to Emmaus was an explanation of the prophecies, by our Lord himself. Would that it had been recorded! Would not our hearts too have "burned within us!"

Now, a book that was in life and in death so dear to our Lord, a book which he interpreted as from first to last a preparation for and prophecy of himself, cannot but be full of interest to us Christians. When we read the Old Testament Scriptures we go along a track that we know Jesus and his mother must often have trod together. The great resemblance in style between the Song of Mary and the Psalms of David is one of the few indications given in Holy Writ of the veiled and holy mystery of his mother's life. She was a poetess, a prophetess, one whose mind was capable of the highest ecstasy of inspiration. Let us read the Psalms again, with the thought in our mind that they were the comforters, the counselors of Jesus and Mary. What was so much to them cannot be indifferent to us.

Nor did the disciples and Apostles in the glow of the unfolding dispensation cease to reverence and value those writings so closely studied by their Lord. They did not speak of them as a worn-out thing, that had "had its day," but they alluded to them with the affectionate veneration due to divine oracles. "The prophecy came not of old times by the will of man, but holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." St. Paul congratulates Timothy that "from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation," and adds: "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."

Even while the New Testament was being formed, its writers gave this complete testimony to the Old, as being able to make men "wise unto salvation," and to complete a man's spiritual education. This book, then, so dear to Christ and his Apostles, is something that should be dear to all Christians. Its study will enrich the soul. It is wonderful, mysterious, unique--there is no sacred book like it in the world; and in reading it we come nearer to Him who was foretold by it, and who when he came upon the earth found in it nourishment for his soul, instruction and spiritual refreshment by the wayside, comfort even in the extreme agonies of a dreadful death. However dear to us may be the story of his life in the Gospels and his teachings through his Apostles and their Epistles, let us in following his steps forget not "the Scriptures" which he bade us search, but diligently read and love the Bible of our Lord.

XI

CHRIST'S FIRST SERMON

The first public sermon of the long-desired Messiah--his first declaration of his mission and message to the world--what was it?

It was delivered in his own city of Nazareth, where he had been brought up; it was on the Sabbath day; it was in the synagogue where he had always worshiped; and it was in manner and form exactly in accordance with the customs of his national religion.

It had always been customary among the Jews to call upon any member of the synagogue to read a passage from the book of the prophets; and the young man Jesus, concerning whom certain rumors had vaguely gone forth, was on the day in question called to take his part in the service. It was a holy and solemn moment, when the long silence of years was to be broken. Jesus was surrounded by faces familiar from infancy. His mother, his brothers, his sisters, were all there; every eye was fixed upon him. The historian says:--

"And there was delivered unto him the book (or roll) of the
prophet Isaiah, and when he had unrolled the book he found the
place where it is written (Isaiah lxi.):--

The spirit of the Lord is upon me.
He hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor;
He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted;
To preach deliverance to the captives;
The recovering of sight to the blind;
To set at liberty them that are bruised;
To preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

We may imagine the sweetness, the tenderness, the enthusiasm with which this beautiful announcement of his mission was uttered; and when, closing the book, he looked round on the faces of his townsmen and acquaintances, and said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears,"--it was an appeal of Heavenly love yearning to heal and to save those nearest and longest known.

It would seem that the sweet voice, the graceful manner, at first charmed the rough audience; there was a thrilling, vibrating power, that struck upon every heart. But those hearts were cold and hard. A Saviour from sin, a Comforter of sorrow, was not what they were looking for in their Messiah. They felt themselves good enough spiritually, in their observance of the forms of their law and ritual; they were stupidly content with themselves and wanted no comforter. What they did want was a brilliant military leader. They wanted a miracle-working, supernatural Lord and Commander that should revenge their national wrongs, conquer the Romans, and set the Jewish people at the head of the world. Having heard of the miracles of Christ in Cana and Capernaum, they had thought that perhaps he might prove this Leader, and if so, what a glory for Nazareth! But they were in a critical, exacting mood; they were in their hearts calling for some brilliant and striking performance that should illuminate and draw attention to their town. Although the congregation were at first impressed and charmed with the gracious words and manner of the speaker, the hard, vulgar spirit of envy and carping criticism soon overshadowed their faces.

"Who is this Jesus--is he not the carpenter? What sign does he show? Let him work some miracles forthwith, and we will see if we will believe."

It was this disposition which our Lord felt in the atmosphere around him; the language of souls uttered itself to him unspoken. He answered as he so often did to the feeling he saw in the hearts rather than the words of those around him. He said, "Ye will say to me, Physician, heal thyself. Do here in thy native place the marvels we have heard of in Capernaum. I tell you a truth; no prophet is accepted in his own country. There were many widows in Israel in the time of the prophet Elijah, but he was sent only to a widow of Sarepta, a city of Sidon. There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha, yet none of them was healed but Naaman the Syrian." It would seem as if our Lord was preparing to show them that he had a mission of love and mercy that could not be bounded by one village, or even by the chosen race of Israel, but was for the world.

But the moment he spoke of favors and blessings given to the Gentiles the fierce national spirit flamed up; the speech was cut short by a tumultuous uprising of the whole synagogue. They laid violent hands on Jesus and hurried him to the brow of the precipice on which their city was built, to cast him down headlong. But before the murder was consummated the calm majesty of Jesus had awed his persecutors. Their slackened hands dropped; they looked one on another irresolute: and he, passing silently through the midst of them, went his way. He had offered himself to them as their Saviour from sin and from sorrow in the very fullness of his heart. Heavenly tenderness and sweetness had stretched out its arms to embrace them, and been repulsed by sneering coldness and hard, worldly unbelief.

Nazareth did not want Him; and he left it. It was the first of those many rejections which He at last summed up when he said, "How often would I have gathered thy children, and ye would not."

But, though he thus came to his own and his own received him not, yet the lovely and gracious proclamation which he made then and there still stands unfading and beautiful as a rainbow of hope over this dark earth. The one Being sent into the world to represent the Invisible Father, and to show us the hidden heart and purposes of God in this mysterious life of ours, there declared that his mission was one of pity, of help, of consolation; that the poor, the bruised, the desolate, the prisoner, might forever find a Friend in him.

There are times when the miseries and sorrows of the suffering race of man, the groaning and travailing of this mysterious life of ours, oppress us, and our faith in God's love grows faint.

Then let us turn our thoughts to this divine Personality, Jesus, the anointed Son of God, and hear him saying now, as he said at Nazareth:--

"The spirit of the Lord is upon ME.
He hath sent me to preach good tidings to the poor;
He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted,
To preach deliverance to the captives,
The recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised!"

It is said of him in the prophets: "He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth. The isles shall wait for his law. Our Redeemer is mighty; the Lord of Hosts is his name--our Saviour, the Holy One of Israel!"

XII

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS

In turning our thoughts toward various scenes of our Lord's life, we are peculiarly affected with the human warmth and tenderness of his personal friendships. The little association of his own peculiar friends makes a picture that we need to study to understand him.

St. John touchingly says: "Now when the time was come that Jesus should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world he loved them unto the end." When we think that all that we know of our Lord comes through these friends of his--the witnesses and recorders of his life and death--we shall feel more than ever what he has made them to us. Without them we should have had no Jesus.

Our Lord, with all that he is to us, is represented to us through the loving hearts and affectionate records of these his chosen ones. It is amazing to think of, that our Lord never left to his church one line written by his own hand, and that all his words come to us transfused through the memories of his friends. How much to us, then, were these friendships of Jesus--how dear to us, for all eternity, these friends!

We are told that immediately after the resurrection there was an associated church of one hundred and twenty, who are characterized by Peter as "men that have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us."

The account of how these friends were gathered to him becomes deeply interesting. St. John relates how, one day, John the Baptist saw Jesus walking by the Jordan in silent contemplation, and pointed him out to his disciples: "Behold the Lamb of God." And the two disciples heard him speak and followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and said, "What seek ye?" They said, "Master, where dwellest thou?" He answered, "Come and see." They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day. We learn from this that some of the disciples were those whose spiritual nature had been awakened by John the Baptist, and who, under his teaching, were devoting themselves to a religious life. We see the power of personal attraction possessed by our Lord, which drew these simple, honest natures to himself. One of these men was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, and he immediately carried the glad tidings to his brother, "We have found the Messiah;" and he brought him to Jesus. Thus, by a sort of divine attraction, one brother and friend bringing another, the little band increased. Some were more distinctly called by the Master. Matthew, the tax-gatherer, sitting in his place of business, heard the words, "Follow me," and immediately rose up, and left all and followed him. James and John forsook their nets, in the midst of their day's labor, to follow him. In time, a little band of twelve left all worldly callings and home ties, to form a traveling mission family of which Jesus was the head and father. Others, both men and women, at times traveled with them and assisted their labors; but these twelve were the central figures.

These twelve men Jesus took to nurture and educate as the expounders of the Christian religion and the organizers of the church. St. John, in poetic vision, sees the church as a golden city descending from God out of heaven, having twelve foundations, and in them the names of these twelve Apostles of the Lamb. This plan of choosing honest, simple-hearted, devout men, and revealing himself to the world through their human nature and divinely educated conceptions, had in it something peculiar and original.

When we look at the selection made by Christ of these _own_ ones, we see something widely different from all the usual methods of earthly wisdom. They were neither the most cultured nor the most influential of their times. The majority of them appear to have been plain workingmen, from the same humble class in which our Lord was born. But the Judæan peasant, under the system of religious training and teaching given by Moses, was no stolid or vulgar character. He inherited lofty and inspiring traditions, a ritual stimulating to the spiritual and poetic nature, a system of ethical morality and of tenderness to humanity in advance of the whole ancient world. A good Jew was frequently a man of spiritualized and elevated devotion. Supreme love to God and habitual love and charity to man were the essentials of his religious ideal. The whole system of divine training and discipline to which the Jewish race had been subjected for hundreds of years had prepared a higher moral average to be chosen from than could have been found in any other nation.

When Jesus began to preach, it was the best and purest men that most deeply sympathized and were most attracted, and from them he chose his intimate circle of followers--to train them as the future Apostles of his religion.

The new dispensation that Jesus came to introduce was something as yet uncomprehended on earth. It was a heavenly ideal, and these men--simple, pure-hearted, and devout as they were--had no more conception of it than a deaf person has of music. It was a new manner of life, a new style of manhood, that was to constitute this kingdom of Heaven. It was no outward organization--no earthly glory. Man was to learn to live, not by force, not by ambition, not by pleasure, but by LOVE. Man was to become perfect in love as God is, so that loving and serving and suffering for others should become a fashion and habit in this world, where ruling and domineering and making others suffer had been the law. And Jesus took into his family twelve men to prepare them to be the Apostles of this idea. His mode was more that of a mother than a father. He strove to infuse Himself into them by an embracing, tender, brooding love; ardent, self-forgetful, delicate, refined. As we read the New Testament narrative of the walks and talks of Jesus with these chosen ones, their restings by the wayside, their family conversations at evening, when he sat with some little child on his knee, when he listened to their sayings, reproved their failings, settled their difficulties with one another, we can see no image by which to represent the Master but one of those loving, saintly mothers, who, in leading along their little flock, follow nearest in the footsteps of Jesus.