Chapter IX: Part VII: Christ’s Ministry. Act III

“By the light of burning martyr-fires Christ’s bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back.”

LOWELL.

WE have now reached the critical point, the third act in the world’s greatest drama. All chance of the speedy triumph of the kingdom of God, humanly speaking, in this lake country of Galilee—the battle-field chosen by Himself, where His mightiest works had been done and His mightiest words spoken—the district from which His chosen companions came, and in which clamorous crowds had been ready to declare Him king—is now over. The conviction that this is so, that He is a baffled leader, in hourly danger of His life, has forced itself on Christ. Before entering that battle-field, face to face with the tempter in the wilderness, He had deliberately rejected all aid from the powers and kingdoms of this world, and now, for the moment, the powers of this world have proved too strong for Him.

The rulers of that people—Pharisee, Sadducee, and Herodian, scribe and lawyer—were now marshalled against Him in one compact phalanx, throughout all the coasts of Galilee, as well as in Judæa.

His disciples, rough, most of them peasants, full of patriotism but with small power of insight or self-control, were melting away from a leader who, while He refused them active service under a patriot chief at open war with Cæsar and his legions, bewildered them by assuming titles and talking to them in language which they could not understand. They were longing for one who would rally them against the Roman oppressor, and give them a chance at any rate of winning their own land again, purged of the heathen and free from tribute. Such an one would be worth following to the death. But what could they make of this “Son of man,” who would prove His title to that name by giving His body and pouring out His blood for the life of man—of this “Son of God,” who spoke of redeeming mankind and exalting mankind to God’s right hand, instead of exalting the Jew to the head of mankind?

In the face of such a state of things, to remain in Capernaum or the neighbouring towns and villages, would have been to court death, there, and at once. The truly courageous man, you may remind me, is not turned from his path by the fear of death, which is the supreme test and touchstone of his courage. True;—nor was Christ so turned, even for a moment.

Whatever may have been His hopes in the earlier part of His career, by this time He had no longer a thought that mankind could be redeemed without His own perfect and absolute sacrifice and humiliation. The cup would indeed have to be drunk to the dregs, but not here, nor now. This must be done at Jerusalem, the centre of the national life and the seat of the Roman Government. It must be done during the Passover, the national commemoration of sacrifice and deliverance. And so He withdraws, with a handful of disciples, and even they still wayward, half-hearted, doubting, from the constant stress of a battle which has turned against Him. From this time He keeps away from the great centres of population, except when, on two occasions—at the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of the Dedication—He flashes for a day on Jerusalem, and then disappears again into some haunt of outlaws, or of wild beasts. This portion of His life comprises something less than the last twelve months: from the summer of the second year of His ministry till the eve of the last Passover, at Easter, in the third year.

In glancing at the main facts of this period, as we have done in the former ones, we have to note chiefly His intercourse with the twelve apostles, and His preparation of them for the end of His own career and the beginning of theirs; His conduct at Jerusalem during those two autumnal and winter feasts; and the occasions when He again comes into collision with the rulers and Pharisees, both at these feasts and in the intervals between them.

The keynote of it, in spite of certain short and beautiful interludes, appears to me to be a sense of loneliness and oppression, caused by the feeling that He has work to do, and words to speak, which those for whom they are to be done and spoken, and whom they are, first of all men, to bless, will either misunderstand or abhor. Here is all the visible result of His labour, and of His travail, and the enemy is gathering strength every day.

This becomes clear, I think, at once, when, in the first days after His quitting the lake shores, He asks His disciples the question, “Whom do the world, and whom do ye, say that I am?” He is answered by Peter in the well-known burst of enthusiasm, that, though the people only look on Him as a prophet, such as Elijah or Jeremiah, His own chosen followers see in Him “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

It is this particular moment which He selects for telling them distinctly, that Christ will _not_ triumph as they regard triumphing, that He will fall into the power of His enemies, and be humbled and slain by them. At once the proof comes of how little even the best of His own most intimate friends had caught the spirit of His teaching or of His kingdom. The announcement of His humiliation and death, which none but the most truthful and courageous of men would have made at such a moment, leaves them almost as much bewildered as the crowds in the lake cities had been a few days before.

Their hearts are faithful and simple, and upon them, as Peter has testified, the truth has flashed once for all, that there can be no other Saviour of men than this Man with whom they are living. Still, by what means and to what end the salvation shall come, they are scarcely less ignorant than the people who had been in vain seeking from Him a sign such as they desired. His own elect “understood not His saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” Rather, indeed, they go straight from that teaching to dispute amongst themselves who of them shall be the greatest in that kingdom which they understand so little. And so their Master has to begin again at the beginning of His teaching, and, placing a little child amongst them, to declare that not of such men as they deem themselves, but of such as this child, is the kingdom of heaven.

The episode of the Transfiguration follows; and immediately after it, as though purposely to warn even the three chosen friends who had been present against new delusions, He repeats again the teaching as to His death and humiliation. And He reiterates it whenever any exhibition of power or wisdom seems likely to encourage the frame of mind in the twelve generally which had lately brought the great rebuke on Peter. How slowly it did its work, even with the foremost disciples, there are but too many proofs.

Amongst His kinsfolk and the people generally, His mission, thanks to the cabals of the rulers and elders, had come by this time to be looked upon with deep distrust and impatience. “How long dost Thou make us to doubt? Go up to this coming feast, and there prove your title before those who know how to judge in such matters,” is the querulous cry of the former as the Feast of Tabernacles approaches. He does not go up publicly with the caravan, which would have been at this time needlessly to incur danger, but, when the feast is half over, suddenly appears in the Temple. There He again openly affronts the rulers by justifying His former acts, and teaching and proclaiming, that He who has sent Him is true, and is their God.

It is evidently on account of this new proof of daring that the people now again begin to rally round Him. “Behold, He speaketh boldly. Do our rulers know that this is Christ?” is the talk which fills the air, and induces the scribes and Pharisees, for the first time, to attempt His arrest by their officers.

The officers return without Him, and their masters are, for the moment, powerless before the simple word of Him who, as their own servants testify, “speaks as never man spake.” But if they cannot arrest and execute, they may entangle Him further, and prepare for their day, which is surely and swiftly coming. So they bring to Him the woman taken in adultery, and draw from Him the discourse in which He tells them that the truth will make them free—the truth which He has come to tell them, but which they will not hear, because they are of their father the devil. He ends with asserting His claim to the name which every Jew held sacred, “before Abraham was, I am.” The narrative of the 7th and 8th chapters of St. John, which record these scenes at the Feast of Tabernacles, has, I believe, done more to make men courageous and truly manly, than all the stirring accounts of bold deeds which ever were written elsewhere.

The report of what had happened at the Feast of Tabernacles seems to have rekindled for a moment the fitful zeal of the people of Galilee. Christ does not, however, avail Himself of this reaction until the time comes for another return to Jerusalem to the Feast of Dedication, when, probably in the month of November, or early in December, He returns once more to Capernaum, to prepare for His last journey. The Pharisees, impotent themselves for the moment, now hurry to warn Him that Herod is seeking to kill Him; but He passes on His way with perfect indifference.

The crowds seem, as of old, inclined to gather round Him again. He selects seventy from amongst them, and sends them on to prepare His route, following Himself, and, this time, it being His last pilgrimage, with the multitude.

And now, again, in the first days of this progress, the most trusted of the apostles show how little, even yet, they understand their Lord, or their own work. When they see their Master once more at the head of a throng of followers, the old spirit comes back on them as strongly as ever, and they are anxious to call down fire from Heaven to consume those who will not receive Him. His rebuke and warning, yet again, pass by them, and get no hold on them.

Rather, the incidents of the journey impress them more and more with the belief that, at last, the kingdom is coming with power. At length, at some point in the progress, they are amazed, and as they follow are afraid. Once more Christ takes them aside, and endeavours to dispel their dreams, repeating to them, in painful detail, what will happen to Himself at Jerusalem at the end of this journey: that He will be betrayed, delivered to the Gentiles, mocked, scourged, spat upon, crucified. In spite of this warning, and while it is yet ringing in their ears, we find James and John asking for the places of honour in the kingdom of their own imaginations!

At the feast he is met by the Pharisees and scribes in a somewhat different temper from that which they had shown at the end of His last visit. For He is once again at the head of a vast and eager multitude. They know that some, even of their own number, are inclined to believe in Him. They appeal to Him, passionately, to say who He is. He replies by referring to His former teaching about His Father, whom they claimed as their God, adding, “I and my Father are one.”

Such a reply He well knew could only have one result. He was alone; and in the ears of those who surrounded Him He was speaking blasphemy, which could only be expiated by instant death. Yet He neither hesitates nor temporises, but, when they seize stones to inflict the penalty, meets them with a bearing so calm and manly, that they can no more cast the first stone at Him than they could three months before at the woman taken in adultery.

He leaves Jerusalem once more after the feast, going across Jordan with His apostles to the country where John came preaching and baptizing, and remains there preaching to those who come to Him until the news of Lazarus’s death takes Him for a few days to Bethany. After the raising of His friend He returns to Peræa again, and leaves it only when the great caravan is passing by on its way to the Passover, in the early spring. He joins the caravan with His disciples, passing with it through Jericho, the city of priests, and selecting there the publican Zacchæus as His host,—a last lesson, by example, of the kind of material which will be used in building up His kingdom.

On the first day of the feast He rides into Jerusalem in apparent triumph, the city mob joining the pilgrim mob in greeting Him with loud Hosannas. Once more He cleanses the Temple, and rouses the covetousness of the money-changers into active alliance with the bigotry of the priests, and the wild anger and jealousy of the rulers, to sweep this terrible Galilean revolutionist from the face of the earth, before He shall ruin them all.

For two days He continues to meet them in the Temple and public resorts of the city, shaming, confuting, and denouncing them; and widening hour by hour that breach which was already gaping wide between the nation and city and their true Lord and King. The last scene in the Temple, recorded in John, brings the long struggle to a close.

The more carefully you study this long wrestle with the blind leaders of a doomed nation, which has now come to an end, the more you will recognise the perfect truthfulness, and therefore the perfect courage, which marks Christ’s conduct of it. From beginning to end there is no word or act which can mislead friend or foe. The strife, though for life and death, has left no trace or stain on His manhood. Fresh from the last and final conflict in the Temple court, He can pause on the side of Olivet to weep over the city, the sight of which can still wring from Him the pathetic yearnings of a soul purified from all taint of bitterness.

It is this most tender and sensitive of the sons of men—with fibres answering to every touch and breath of human sympathy or human hate—who has borne with absolutely unshaken steadfastness the distrust and anger of kinsfolk, the ingratitude of converts, the blindness of disciples, the fitful and purblind worship, and hatred, and fear, of the nation of the Jews. So far, we can estimate to some extent the burthen and the strain, and realise the strength and beauty, of the spirit which could bear it all. Beyond and behind lie depths into which we can but glance. For in those last hours of His life on earth the question was to be decided whether we men have in deed and in truth a brotherhood, in a Son of Man, the head of humanity, who has united mankind to their Father, and can enable them to know Him.

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