Chapter VII: Part V: Christ’s Ministry. Act I

“This perfect man, by merit called my Son,
To earn salvation for the sons of men.”

MILTON, Paradise Regained, Book I.

IT will be necessary for our purpose to follow in outline the events of our Lord’s ministry as a consecutive narrative. If I do so without calling your attention to the endless difficulties and questions which have been fairly raised as to the occurrence and sequence of many or those events, it is not because I wish to ignore them myself, or to lead you away from the examination of them. In our time, which is, perhaps, before all things an age of criticism, much has been done towards the creation of a science of history, and therefore of a science of religion, which is the highest part of history. We have discovered, or at any rate have done much to perfect, the use of new and searching methods of investigation, and have applied, and are applying, these to every department of human knowledge and human life.

It was not to be expected, or indeed to be wished, that the new criticism should pause before that history, or the books containing it, which our forefathers held too sacred to be looked upon or treated as ordinary history. It has not paused, and—while respecting our fathers’ reverent feeling for the books which have done so much for our nation, and for the world—we may rejoice that it has not; and that friend and foe in this generation have been alike busy in turning all the light which recent research has placed within their reach upon the story of our Lord’s ministry, and the gospel narratives in which it is contained.

We English were in danger of idolatry in this matter—of putting the Book in the place of Him of whom it testifies—and it is well for us that we have been shaken, however roughly, out of a habit which fostered unreality in the very centre of our lives. We were inclined to claim for Christ’s religion, and for its evidences, immunities which neither He nor His apostles ever claimed. That position has been abandoned, and the best representatives of every school of religious thought amongst us (so far as I am aware) now challenge the freest inquiry, and lend their own aid in carrying it on. And amongst the first, and not least formidable, difficulties which have met Christian writers has been that of harmonising the writings of the four evangelists so as to make the several narratives fit into one continuous whole.

Whether it is possible that this can ever be done completely, in the absence of the discovery of new evidence, which there is no reason to look for, seems to be very doubtful. At any rate it has not been accomplished hitherto. But the general outline comes out clearly enough, and this is all we need in order to pursue our own particular inquiry satisfactorily.

Turning, then, to the point at which we have arrived, we shall find ourselves at once met by questions of detail as to our Lord’s return from the wilderness after His temptation. Whether He returned to the scene of John’s baptism, on the Jordan, and remained there for some days, or went straight back into Galilee from the desert; whether He commenced His active ministry at once, or even yet postponed it until John had been put in prison—are questions about which there is as yet no general concurrence of opinion.

You may each of you judge for yourselves of the difficulties by comparing the passages in the four Gospels which relate to this period.

Taking this warning with us, we need trouble no further about the harmonies. Indeed, for our purpose, they are of very little consequence, for, take the narrative how we will, it divides itself beyond all question into several distinct and clearly marked periods. The first of these is that between the temptation and the formal opening of Christ’s ministry in Galilee, (marked by His first great discourse at Nazareth), the abandonment of His home, and the selection of the five first apostles for special and continuous service. This first period extends at most over a few months, or more probably weeks, beginning a few days before the feast of the Passover, and ending in the early summer; at the time, not (so far as I am aware) exactly ascertained, when Herod Antipas seized John the Baptist and put him in prison. We must run through it shortly, noting the principal events, and then applying our test to such of them as seem to come within the scope of our inquiry.

The temptation over, Christ appears to have returned by Bethabara on His way to His Galilean home. The crowds were still pressing to John’s baptism, and a group of the most earnest amongst them had already gathered round the Baptist, and were attaching themselves to his person, as the sons of the prophets round Elisha, the apostles round Christ Himself, the companions of Medina round Mohammed.

To two of these disciples John points out Christ as that Son of God, of whom he was sent to bear record. They follow Him, spend a few hours of the afternoon with Him, and recognise Him as the Messiah. One of them, Andrew, brings his brother Simon Peter to Christ. He Himself calls Philip, who in his turn brings his friend Nathanael. With these five Christ starts for His home in Galilee.

These earliest followers, we may note, are almost certainly of the twelve apostles. As to Andrew, Simon Peter, and Philip, who are expressly named, there is no question; and there is good reason to believe that the companion of Andrew, whose name is not given, was John, the son of Zebedee, and that Nathanael was the apostle Bartholomew, whose name is constantly coupled in the Gospels with that of Philip. Nathanael was of Cana of Galilee, of what trade we do not know; the other four were of Bethsaida, a suburb of Capernaum, fishermen on the Sea of Galilee.

They accompany Christ to Cana, Nathanael’s home, where they meet Christ’s mother, and are present at the marriage feast, at which His first miracle is wrought. From thence they follow Him to Capernaum, and some of them go on with Him to Jerusalem to the Passover, at which He drives out the cattle-dealers from the outer court of the Temple, and overthrows the tables of the money-changers.

This act fixes the attention of all Jerusalem upon Him, and brings Him at once under the notice of the Sanhedrim. One of its members, a Pharisee, seeks an interview with Him by night. He commits Himself neither to the mob, nor to the nobleman. After the feast He remains for some time in the northern part of Judæa, where His fame attracts followers, whom His disciples baptize. He then passes through Samaria, still attended by his followers, stopping some days in the city of that name, and preaching there. They then go into Galilee, and, while the disciples, apparently, separate for the time to their own homes and pursuits, He returns to Nazareth, to begin His formal ministry amongst those who had known Him from His childhood. They turn upon Him in the middle of His first discourse, and attempt to murder Him. He leaves His old home for the neighbouring village of Cana, where He is found by the ruler whose son is sick at Capernaum. He heals the child, and follows the father to that city, where He hears of the imprisonment of the Baptist, and at once enters on the second stage of His public career.

And now, following the narrative step by step so far, see if you can find any trace in it of a failure of courage, even for a moment. In the first place you will find, generally, that there is no wavering or hesitation at any point. The time for these is past, and, the call once recognised and accepted, there is no shrinking, or looking round, or going back. The strain and burthen of a great message of deliverance to men has again and again found the weak places in the faith and courage of the most devoted and heroic of those to whom it has been entrusted. Moses pleads under its pressure that another may be sent in his place, asking despairingly, “Why hast thou sent me?” Elijah prays for death. Mohammed passes years of despondency and hesitation under the sneers of those who scoff, “There goeth the son of Abdallah, who hath his converse with God!” Such shrinkings and doubtings enlist our sympathy, make us feel the tie of a common humanity which binds us to such men. But no one, I suppose, will maintain that perfect manliness would not suppress, at any rate the open expression of, any such feelings. The man who has to lead a great revolution should keep all misgivings to himself, and the weight of them so kept must often prove the sorest part of his burthen.

But let us pass on to the particular events of this period. As to many of them the question of whether they are courageous or not, perhaps, does not arise, except in so far as it arises on every act in our lives, each of which may, and indeed must, be done either manfully with perfect directness, or unmanfully with more or less adroitness. The man whose “yea is yea and his nay nay,” is, we all confess, the most courageous, whether or no he may be the most successful, in daily life. And He who gave the precept has left us the most perfect example of how to live up to it. And this quality you will find shines out at once in these early conversations with Nathanael, Nicodemus, and the woman of Samaria, as much as in the discourses of His later years.

Before considering them we may glance at the purification of the Temple, an act which at any rate should satisfy those who think courage best proved by physical daring. At this time, we must remember, He had no following, such as the crowd that swept after Him on Palm Sunday, three years later, into the Temple courts. But, leaving the act to speak for itself, look at the rare courage of the speech by which that act is justified when it is challenged. He, not even a Levite, a mere peasant from a despised province, had presumed to exercise authority in the very Temple precincts! Jerusalem was full of worse idolatries, but the idolatry of the Temple buildings was, perhaps, the strongest. The Jews seem to have regarded them as Christians have sometimes regarded the visible Church, or the Bible—as an object of worship; to have thought that if they perished God Himself would perish. And so Christ’s answer goes straight to the root of their idolatry. His words were not understood by the crowd, or even by His own disciples, in their full meaning—that His body, and the body of every man, is the true temple of God. But they understood enough of them to see that He had no superstition about these splendid buildings of theirs, and was trying to lift all of them above local and national prejudices. Those who would not be lifted brooded over them till their day of vengeance came.

But there were those on whom the daring acts and words of Christ were already taking hold. Many of those who had come up to the Passover believed in Him, some even amongst the rulers. One of these we hear more of at once.

Nicodemus, we must remember, was a leading member of the Sanhedrim, a representative of that section of the rulers, who, like the rest of the nation, were expecting a deliverer, a king who should prevail against the Cæsar. They had sent to the Baptist, and had heard of his testimony to this young Galilean, who had now come to Jerusalem, and was showing signs of a power which they could not but acknowledge. For, had He not cleansed the Temple, which they had never been able to do; but, notwithstanding their pretended reverence for it, had allowed to be turned into a shambles and an exchange? They saw that a part of the people were ready to gather to Him, but that He had refused to commit Himself to them. This, then, the best of them must have felt, was no mere leader of a low, fierce, popular party or faction. Nicodemus at any rate was evidently inclined to doubt whether He might not prove to be the king they were looking for, as the Baptist had declared. The doubt must be solved, and he would see for himself.

And so he comes to Christ, and hears directly from Him, that He has indeed come to set up a kingdom, but that it is no visible kingdom like the Cæsar’s, but a kingdom over men’s spirits; one which rulers as well as peasants must become new men before they can enter—that a light has come into the world, and “he that doeth truth cometh to that light.”

From beginning to end there is no word to catch this ruler, or those he represented; no balancing of phrases or playing with plausible religious shibboleths, with which Nicodemus would be familiar, and which might please, and, perchance, reconcile, this well-disposed ruler, and the powerful persons he represented. There is, depend upon it, no severer test of manliness than our behaviour to powerful persons, whose aid would advance the cause we have at heart. We know from the later records that the interview of that night, and the strange words he had heard then, made a deep impression on this ruler. His manliness, however, breaks down for the present. He shrinks back and disappears, leaving the strange young peasant to go on His way.

The same splendid directness and incisiveness characterise His teaching at Samaria. There, again, He attacks at once the most cherished local traditions, showing that the place of worship matters nothing, the object of worship everything. That object is a Father of men’s spirits, who wills that all men shall know and worship Him, but who can only be worshipped in spirit and in truth. He, the peasant who is talking to them, is Himself the Messiah, who has come from the Father of them and Him, to give them this spirit of truth in their own hearts.

The Jews at Jerusalem had been clamouring round Him for signs of His claim to speak such words, and in the next few days His own people would be crying out for His blood when they heard them. These Samaritans make no such demand, but hear and recognise the message and the messenger. The seed is sown, and He passes on, never to return, so far as we know, and garner the harvest; deliberately preferring the hard, priest-ridden lake cities of the Jews as the centre of His ministry. He will leave ripe fields for others to reap. This decision, interpret it as we will, is that of no soft or timid reformer. Take this test again and compare Christ’s choice of His first field for work with that of any other great leader of men.

This first period fitly closes with the scene of Nazareth. Here He returns, while the reports of His doings at the feast at Jerusalem are fresh in the minds of His family and fellow-townsmen. They are excited and divided as to Him and His doings. A thousand reasons would occur for speaking soft things, at such a moment, for accommodating His teaching, here at any rate, to the wants and tastes of His hearers, so as to keep a safe and friendly asylum at Nazareth, amongst the scenes and people He had loved from childhood. It is clear that some of His family, if not His mother herself, were already seriously alarmed and displeased. They disliked what they had heard of His teaching at Jerusalem and on His way home, which they felt must bring Him to ruin, in which they might be involved. He must have seen and conversed with them in His own home before that scene in the synagogue, and have had then to endure the bitter pain of alienating those whom He loved and respected, and had reason to love and respect, but who could not for the time rise out of the conventional, respectable, way of looking at things.

To stand by what our conscience witnesses for as truth, through evil and good report, even against all opposition of those we love, and whose judgment we look up to and should ordinarily prefer to follow; to cut ourselves deliberately off from their love and sympathy and respect; is surely, I repeat, one of the most severe trials to which we can be put. A man has need to feel at such times that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him in some measure, as it was upon Christ when he rose in the synagogue of Nazareth, and, selecting the passage of Isaiah which speaks most directly of the Messiah, claimed that title for Himself and told them that to-day this prophecy was fulfilled in Him.

The fierce, hard, Jewish spirit is at once roused to fury. They would kill Him then and there, and so settle His claims, once for all. He passes through them, and away from the quiet home where He had been brought up—alone it would seem, so far as man could make Him so, and homeless for the remainder of His life. Yet not alone, for His Father is with Him; nor homeless, for He has the only home of which man can be sure, home of His own heart shared with the Spirit of God.

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