“And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And His fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy. And He healed them.” This is the announcement in St. Matthew’s Gospel which immediately follows the call of the disciples. If you turn to the passage in St. Mark, from the 21st to the 35th verses of the first chapter, you will find that he speaks especially of one man in a synagogue who had an unclean spirit, and who cried out, “Let us alone; what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God;” that he then alludes to the cure of Simon’s wife’s mother of a fever, then to His healing many who were sick of many diseases, and casting out many devils. If you turn to the passage in St. Luke, from the 16th to the 44th verses of the fourth chapter, you will find continual allusions to cures and healings, the same account of casting out the unclean spirit in the synagogue which we had in St. Mark, the same reference to the cure of Simon’s wife’s mother, concluding with the words “Devils also came out of many, crying out and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God.”
If you read and compare these different passages carefully, you will be struck, I think, with nothing more than the close blending of what is called the miraculous part of the story with that which refers to the preaching. “He preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healed all manner of sickness,” says St. Matthew. “He taught them,” says St. Mark, “as one having authority, and not as the scribes; and there was in their synagogue a man having an unclean spirit, etc. And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority commandeth He the unclean spirits, and they do obey Him.” The same, or nearly the same words, are repeated in St. Luke, in nearly the same connection; and the whole narrative in his fifth chapter assumes and illustrates, even more than those in the other two Evangelists, the connection between the “doctrine,” and the “word,” and these acts of “authority.”
Now, supposing the words, “preaching the Kingdom of God,” were taken as I have taken them literally, supposing the actual King of the world was coming to claim and assert His Kingdom, supposing He who by His word had given life and breath to all creatures, was really come to show Himself to His creatures, and to claim their homage; such a connection as this would surely be most natural. You would not expect the Evangelist to say, as we are wont to say, “Christ delivered this beautiful and touching discourse, and then to make it known that He had a high commission, and that He ought to be listened to, He put forth strange, novel, unwonted powers.” You would expect them to say just as they do say, He declared His kingdom, and He healed the sick. He used the powers which He had always been using; He declared who it was from whom all healing had always come.
There would be many other indications which would show which of these two views of our Lord’s character and objects was the ruling one in the minds of the Evangelists. If they were writing the legend of a great hero or saint, who was to be exhibited as doing things more extraordinary than man had ever done, the acts represented would be of as outward and glaring a kind as possible. The common physician labors by getting at the secret source of diseases to overcome the outward symptoms. The legendary miracle-worker by touches and charms acts upon the direct, palpable malady which is presented to him, and lets all the world admire how rapidly it has disappeared. Supposing, on the other hand, a writer to represent one who had the dominion over all the secret powers and springs of human life, whose servant the physician had been, by whose wisdom the physician had acted, when he sought to trace the sign home to its principle, you would not wonder if he told you that this Person spoke to something within the man, and set that right first, that when he had given the blessing He did not care that it should be made known; that He referred to the disappearance of the external symptoms or manifestations of disease merely as proofs of a radical cure. These are characteristics of the Evangelical narratives; every one knows that they are; every one is more or less struck with them. They are taken notice of as indications of the simplicity of the writers, as signs of the absence of strain and effort at display in their narratives; they are not dwelt upon, I think, as marking the very purport of these narratives.
In close relation to this subject stand the allusions to the casting out of devils, which recur so frequently in all the passages I have quoted. You cannot help perceiving that the Evangelists connect particular kinds of sickness with diabolical possession; but that they do in some sort leave the impression upon our mind, that all sickness has this origin. At any rate, they direct our attention to this exercise of power as the most characteristic of Christ, as that which explains all His other exercises of it. This is a point which the commentators on the Gospels are in general rather anxious to pass over. They regard it as a difficulty to be got rid of in one way or another. Some may take the way of saying that the Evangelists adapted themselves to the Jewish mode of speaking, some may say that possession belonged to that particular age, some may urge cases to prove that it has not been quite unknown in any age, some may talk of the anthropomorphism and superstition which were natural in such writers. These last are plausible and high-sounding words; whether those who use them glibly and habitually have ever really considered their meaning, is another question. By anthropomorphism I understand conceiving that which is spiritual under a human shape; I do not find the Evangelists speaking of the devils as having any human shapes. By superstition I understand the setting that above us which is properly beneath, or making our object of worship an object of fear. I find the Evangelists not setting up the devils as powers above, but as powers working within; I find them representing the Christ, not as teaching men to fear them and worship them, but as delivering men from them, and teaching men to worship God. And if that be the object which all these acts of power and majesty aim at, I submit that they are at least in marvellous accordance with the story which stood at the commencement of these Gospels, and seemed a preface to them. He who was proclaimed to be the Son of God, and was endued with the Spirit of God, was led up by that Spirit into the wilderness, and was tempted of the devil. He warred with that radical Spirit of disobedience which had asserted dominion over human creatures, and had sought to make them his servants: He now wars with all the forms in which that evil power is working for men’s mischief. That power is most directly, personally manifested in whatever concerns man personally, in whatever affects him morally whether it be mixed with physical disease or not. The unclean spirit, the spirit of despair which drives a man into the tombs, and makes him cry, and cut himself with stones, and become a terror to his fellows, who cannot bind him, no not with chains, is the most essential and inward tyrant. Christ in asserting lordship over him, in bidding him come out of the man, proclaims that every thing which is unhealthy, diseased, corrupt, whether it affects body or mind, or both in their mysterious unity, is not from above, but from beneath, is not according to the original order and constitution of the universe, has not come from God, but has come from rebellion against God; is therefore to be redressed and abolished by the Holy One of God, the Son of God, who comes to preach and to establish the Kingdom of God.
Instead therefore of dwelling upon the other miracles with great earnestness, as the only satisfactory evidences of our Lord’s mission, and endeavoring to pass over the stories of the casting out of devils as perplexities to be avoided, we shall, if we follow the Evangelists, seek in these for the general law and principle of the miracles, considering that they explain, more than any of the others, the nature of His operations and the end of his coming. At all events, the Evangelists, whatever others they may omit, or report differently, all agree in fixing our attention upon these, and in using language which continually suggests their relation to the rest. All three, though with some diversity of circumstances, report the cure of the man or the men among the tombs, as if it seemed to them the most characteristic and remarkable. All three speak, St. Matthew more than once, of the way in which the Pharisees explained these miracles, “He casteth out devils by the Prince of the devils.” All record His argument in answer to that charge, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” All record these words, two of them in direct connection with this charge, “Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven:” words which even without St. Mark’s divine explanation, “because they said he had an unclean spirit,” would lead us naturally to the conclusion, that their sin consisted, not in denying the power of Christ, but in calling good evil, and evil good; a state of mind implying a hatred of God’s character and essence. All the Evangelists again agree in attributing to our Lord these words, which are so utterly perplexing and baffling to any one who regards the signs and powers which Christ exhibited merely as startling portents, “If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore shall they be your judges.” In what possible senses could their sons be their judges? Was the power with which they wrought then like His power? If he was the true King of the world, all power which had ever been exerted was His power; He was come to show from whence such power was derived; and therefore if His power was evil, all the power which was ever exerted by any Jewish physician for the healing of diseases, or the removal of madness, was evil also.
Lastly, all the Evangelists agree in connecting faith in the subject, with most, if not all, these acts of power. Now if the miracles were merely, or chiefly, evidences of a divine mission, unconnected with the nature and character of that mission, one would rather have expected that the displays would have been most startling and overwhelming where the unbelief was most obstinate. In most legendary records it is contrived so. The faith is the effect of the surprising spectacle; it is wrought in the most reluctant. Whereas if these signs and powers were but the tokens and manifestations of the presence of One who came to claim the human spirit as His subject, and to raise it out of subjection to other masters, we perceive at once that there is something more regal and more mysterious in an act which calls out the man himself into trust and hope, than in that which merely rectifies the energies of his body or even of his mind. Not only the limb is straightened, not only the issue of blood is stanched, but the person who wields the limb, through whose veins the blood flows, is called into existence and health by the voice of the life-giver.
These remarks cannot be new to any one; they are of worth only so far as they set in order thoughts with which we are all familiar. No reader of the Gospels has ever doubted that the graciousness or benignity of Christ’s miracles was part of their very nature. That quality has been brought forward by writers on evidence with more labor and particularity than was at all needful; for the heart receives such impressions the more readily, and the more deeply, if they are not forced upon it. The apparent exceptions in the curse upon the fig-tree, and the destruction of the swine, have been accounted for with painful ingenuity, as if our consciences required to be convinced that a moral lesson, which is to work for the cure of human beings, may be obtained by the death of a tree or an animal. What I desire is that we should follow out the conviction which such expressions imply, and should acknowledge that the Evangelists looked upon these miracles as methods by which the great Deliverer was revealing himself in that character, was actually breaking the fetters by which human bodies as well as spirits were bound. In that way all the other miracles which the Evangelists record will be felt, I think, to have their own wonderful suitableness in the divine economy, for the after as well as the immediate instruction of men, especially to emancipate them from their superstitions. For the disciples to learn that the winds and waves were subject to their Master, for the multitude to feel that it was He who gave them their bread, was as needful as that they should feel that He restored the decayed powers of the body and the soul. Jews required such a lesson, for they were as prone now, as in former days, to tremble before the powers of nature, and to think that man lived by bread alone, and not by the word of God. But what a lesson was also in reserve for the worshippers of Neptune, Ceres, Æsculapius! what a witness to them that the powers which they supposed were divided amidst different capricious deities, were really gathered up in the one Lord and Friend of man!
Publicans and Pharisees. The New and Old Garment
All the three Evangelists give the following narrative nearly in the same order, the name of Matthew in one being exchanged for that of Levi in the two others: “And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and He said unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed Him. And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold many publicans and sinners came and sat down with Him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto His disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, He said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye, and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Then came to Him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast. No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish. But they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.” I may seem to be joining together two passages which have no direct relation to each other. But I am endeavoring to follow the Evangelists strictly; and where I find them all agreeing in the same order, I take it for granted that they felt the connection in the parts of their story, and wished to make us feel it. I think the minds of their simplest readers have responded to their intention. They have perceived that the question of John’s disciples naturally rose out of our Lord’s answer to the Pharisees, and that His similitudes of the new and old garments, and of the new and old bottles, were intended to explain a very deep ground for the difference between the position of His disciples and that of the disciples of the Pharisees or of John.
I. In the call of Levi, or Matthew, we discover at once the same assertion of a power over the will of the person spoken to, which was indicated in the call of Andrew and Simon, James and John. The words used do not in the least answer to our notion of a disciple attaching himself to a master, from some preference; they convey, in the plainest manner, the idea of One speaking who had authority,—an authority which the conscience and heart recognized, though there was nothing in the outward appearance to support it.
II. But Matthew is not a fisherman; he is a rich tax-gatherer. As soon as he has obeyed the call, he gathers about him men of his own class, and invites his Master to eat with them. The members of this class had not merely a bad reputation. A number of them must have been extortioners; and the general dislike felt for them must have thrown them into the company of people deserving to be called sinners. To suppose that Matthew’s company consisted merely of persons who had acquired that name through the prejudice of the Pharisees, is to twist the letter of the Gospel, and I conceive still more entirely to set aside its meaning. Now the Pharisees do not complain of our Lord for showing kindness or condescension to these wrongdoers, but for mixing with them as if they were friends, for eating and drinking with them. Did not the analogy of the Law justify them in doing so? Was it not a part of righteousness to avoid the contact of impurity? The Evangelist does not suggest any answer to these questions. He over-reaches them all with the words, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that be sick.” If he looked upon his Master as the King of Men, who had come to restore an order which had been violated, such language was natural. If he believed that in Him dwelt that righteousness which all the precepts of the Law were trying to set forth, and that He was come to establish that righteousness in the hearts of those who had gone furthest astray from it, the proverb had a most true and obvious application. If, in other words, he felt that the Kingdom of our Lord was that kingdom over men which had been lying beneath all legal rules and ordinances, and which was to assert its own power, by fulfilling their purpose, even when it seemed most to dispense with them, one can feel how consistent this story is with all that has gone before. Upon any other view of the case it would seem as if the Pharisees’ objection was unrefuted.
III. But if this explanation is adopted, the difficulty of John’s disciples, though a very different one from that of the Pharisees, admitted of a similar solution. John’s disciples might remember that their master had gained a more ready hearing from publicans and sinners than from scribes and Pharisees. They could not forget the phrase, “generation of vipers,” which they had heard applied to those of the last class who came to his baptism. But then was not his most obvious characteristic, self-restraint, indifference to the good things of the flesh? Was not this the characteristic which he would especially have wished his disciples to imitate, even though in imitating it they might adopt the rules and practices of the Pharisees? The eating and drinking of the new Teacher, was it not directly at variance with this lesson and these habits? It was not so much the character of the company which startled them, as the fact that a Teacher of righteousness should lead his followers into places of entertainment at all. Why was not fasting as much to be the sign of them as of the schools which had preceded them? The first answer is, “The bridegroom is with them.” A strange expression surely for the teacher of a school to use, one altogether perplexing and beyond the circle of the associations which such a character suggests. Yet not a novel association to those who had read the forty-fifth Psalm, to those who had heard of a King greatly delighting in the beauty of his affianced Bride, of his riding on because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness, of her forsaking her father’s house that she might dwell with him. I do not now examine into the force of these expressions. I merely say that the effect of the phraseology upon the mind of a Jew would inevitably be to connect the person who applied it to himself with mysterious ideas of royalty and divinity. The disciples could not fast because they had attained the end for which the fasting was ordained, the apprehension and discovery of the Lord and Ruler of their spirits. There would come a time when there should be a sense of being deprived of that object, and then would they fast in those days.
But the idea is much more fully brought out in the second part of the answer. No one, I believe, has ever doubted that the old garment and the old bottles referred to the institutions of the ancient economy; the new garment and the new bottles, to those which Christ would establish. Every one has seen that in some way or other our Lord meant to say, that it would be mischievous merely to re-enact the forms and customs which had belonged to the past, until the substance and the life, of which customs and forms are the outside, had been brought out and revealed. But surely if His Kingdom was not the everlasting Kingdom, which all Jewish institutions had been imperfectly exhibiting, these comparisons, and the argument which is founded upon them, would not hold good. He would be substituting new bottles for the old, not expressing the wine which was to fill the bottles. No more beautiful illustration could be conceived of the assertion that the Kingdom of God, when it had once unfolded itself, would work out a drapery fitted for itself, and that it would not merely make use of that drapery which belonged to it when it was yet undeveloped. But if that were not the intention of the Evangelists, one must feel that they used illustrations, apparently of the most simple and natural kind, with most artificial and unreal signification.
The Appointment of the Apostles
“And when He had called unto Him his twelve disciples, He gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” Then follow the names of the Apostles. “These twelve Jesus sent forth and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey; neither two coats, neither shoes nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or house ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house salute it, and if the house be worthy, let your peace come on it; but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” This passage differs in a few particulars from those which correspond to it in St. Mark and St. Luke. The calling of the Apostles is separated by both of them from their designation to their work. Our Lord’s commands to them are much more minute and detailed in the tenth chapter of St. Matthew than in the sixth of St. Mark and in the ninth of St. Luke. Some of them are transferred by St. Luke to the seventy disciples. But the words which I have quoted, with the exception of those respecting the Gentiles and the Samaritans, belong to all three. I do not know that it is necessary to dwell on the importance which the Evangelists evidently attach to this commission. Every one feels it and admits it. It would be the greatest waste of time to argue or to prove that our Lord speaks to His Apostles constantly as the heralds of a Kingdom, as men entrusted with spiritual powers, as men who are to be the founders of a society, as men whose immediate task was to be the precursors of infinitely higher tasks which were to be committed to them hereafter. “All this, it will be said, is just what we might have expected; it is an ex post facto list of directions. The Evangelists wrote with the experience of what the Apostles had done, they antedated events which they themselves had possibly witnessed, or which were handed down to them.” What I wish to remark is simply, that this narrative is in exact keeping with all that has gone before. John the Baptist came announcing that a Kingdom was at hand. Our Lord preached, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand;” the twelve were sent forth with the same message. The Kingdom which John announced was evidently a Kingdom over the spirit of man. He said that the person who came after him would baptize with the Spirit. All the acts by which Christ is said to have testified of His Kingdom, were acts of spiritual power, acts of dominion over spirits. The same powers are said to be committed to the Apostles for the same purpose. Every thing certainly in the tone of thought, in the deliberate, and in the accidental expressions of the Evangelists, where they agree, and where they vary, intimate a settled persuasion in their minds, that they are describing the acts of a Ruler, of One who had ruled in times past, and would give mightier evidence of His rule in the times to come, who had called out the twelve tribes to be His national witnesses, who was now preparing men who should at once represent those tribes, and should carry out the purpose for which they were chosen, to all the families of the earth. There is no faltering in their statements on this subject, no occasional forgetfulness of this idea, and substitution of another; it is the assumption that pervades the whole narrative; it is not forced on our attention anywhere, it makes itself felt everywhere.
The Sabbath-Day
“At that time Jesus went on the sabbath-day through the corn; and His disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto Him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath-day. But He said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when he was an hungered, and they that were with him, how he entered into the House of God, and did eat the shew-bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye not read in the Law, how that on the sabbath-days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? But I say unto you, That in this place is One greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath-day…. And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered, and they asked Him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath-days? that they might accuse Him. And He said unto them, What man shall there be among you, which shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath-day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath-days.” The story of the corn-fields, and that of the man with the withered hand, occur in all the three Evangelists. Each one dwells with special emphasis on this and the other complaints of the Pharisees respecting our Lord’s neglect of the sabbath-day. All speak of it as the first great provocation which led them to hold a council against Him that they might destroy Him. St. Mark says this was the occasion on which He looked round on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts. St. Luke recurs again and again to the subject. The first narrative is in his fourth chapter, the next in the thirteenth, the third in the fourteenth. Considering the brevity of the Evangelical histories, it is surprising how much space is devoted to this subject, and how much the writers seem to have felt that it was necessary to the illustration of our Lord’s life. But why should this be so? The sabbath was undoubtedly one of the most memorable Jewish institutions. Supposing there was a pharisaical excess of extravagance in the observation of it, might we not have expected a great teacher to have pointed out the equal or greater danger of the opposite tendency to which the Sadducees probably were liable? This was no case of a tradition of the elders; it was a positive commandment, like that of honoring father and mother. And yet the whole weight of the example and authority of Jesus seems thrown into the scale of permission and toleration, which we might suppose would be already the heaviest.
“The Son of Man,” says St. Matthew, “is Lord also of the sabbath-day.” “The sabbath was made for man,” says St. Mark, “not man for the sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.” St. Luke repeats the last words, connecting them directly with the act of David in eating the shew-bread. Here we have an explanation supplied by the Evangelists themselves, of the importance which they attach to these dialogues. He who had instituted the sabbath-day, He of whom it had testified, was come to assert His own dominion over it, to declare what he had meant by it. That lordship was denied by the Pharisees, that meaning was wholly set aside. It was not an error of excess. It was a dreadful, fatal contradiction of the whole nature and essence of this commandment, and of all the commandments. They had no feeling that the sabbath was meant for man; how could they enter into the force of the words, “Thou shalt rest, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the stranger that is within thy gates?” What cared the Pharisee for the man-servant, or the maid-servant, or the stranger? What they cared for was the day, abstractedly, nakedly, divested of all its life and associations. To it the man-servant, the maid-servant, the stranger, were to be sacrificed. Then how could they look upon the Son of Man, who had come as the King and Deliverer of man-servants, and maid-servants, and strangers, as the Lord of this day? How could they welcome such a Person at all, coming with such an object, while their whole spirits were concentrated in the mere husk of the institution? I say the husk, not the letter; for they could not read the letter. The letter witnessed against them; it spoke of the relation between man and God, of God sharing man’s labor, and of man sharing God’s rest. It proclaimed the very truth which the Pharisees were denying when they called Christ a blasphemer. All the latent inhumanity, as well as the real Atheism of the Pharisee, lay wrapt in his feelings about the sabbath-day. Was it wonderful that he should hold a council against Christ for the acts and words which brought these feelings to light? Was it wonderful that the holiest and divinest anger should have been awakened by the awful contradiction of men turning the commandment of God into a practical denial of Him? But all this profound morality is inexplicable, all this wonderful assertion of the principle which the Pharisees were undermining is reduced to nothing, if the Gospels were not, as they pretend to be, primarily and throughout, the history of a Son of God, and a King of Men.
The Parables
Nearly the whole of the thirteenth Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel is devoted to our Lord’s parables. Many others occur in the after chapters of his Gospel; St. Mark records but few. There is nothing in which St. Luke is so characteristically distinguished from both the other Evangelists, as in his selection of parables. There are three which are common to all these Gospels, the parable of the Sower, the parable of the Mustardseed, and the parable of the Lord of the vineyard and the husbandmen.
I propose to consider each of them, with as much of the context as all the Evangelists have thought needful for their elucidation.
I. The Sower is treated in every Gospel as a specimen of this mode of teaching. The explanation of it is connected in all with the reason for speaking in parables. It deserves, therefore, very especial attention. We may hope to learn from it whether the teaching of our Lord confirms or weakens the conclusion which we have drawn from His Baptism, His temptation, His miracles, His arguments with opponents. We may, perhaps, begin our enquiry with our Lord’s answer to the disciples’ question, which was suggested by the parable of the sower, “Why speakest Thou unto them in parables? He answered and said, Because unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but unto them it is not given.”
These words at once connect the parables with the phrase which has already encountered us so often, and which thus far has borne a definite and uniform signification. Only we have here the word “mysteries” for the first time associated with the word “kingdom.” How associated? Were not the Apostles then to preach the kingdom of God? Was the information which their Master communicated to them respecting it esoteric, intended for their own use, or for that of a set of initiated disciples whom they should gather round them? If this were so, it would be difficult indeed to reconcile the use of parables with the other part of these records, a difficulty which would not be the least diminished by attributing any amount of imposition and self-glorification to the minds of the Evangelists. Everywhere else they are endeavoring to set forth their Master in contrast with the learned doctors of the Jewish schools, as the Teacher of the poor and the ignorant. Here they would be gratuitously admitting that they had received a peculiar and special instruction, which at the same moment they were with ludicrous simplicity divulging. But when we look at the discourse itself, we find it still more difficult to maintain this view of the case. The interpretation of the parable of the Sower was evidently that which they were by all possible means to make their hearers acquainted with. They were instructed themselves in the hinderances which prevented the Word from taking root and bringing forth fruit, on purpose that they might warn others of those hinderances. I speak to them in parables, because they cannot receive the lesson I wish to impart in any other way. The thing is hidden from them, and this my discourse will tell you why it is hidden from them, where the veil is, how, and by whom it has been drawn. Their own inner life was concealed from the multitude, because their hearts had waxed gross and their ears were dull of hearing. The secret operations which were going on there were just those which they had no perception of. The government which was exercised over themselves, over their own hearts and spirits, could only be made known to them through outward things with which their eyes were conversant. Even these they observed very imperfectly, often scarcely at all. It was a discovery, a revelation, to remind them of the secret processes by which the seed was transformed into the stalk, and the ear, and the full corn in the ear. The world of nature was to them almost as is a landscape to a blind man’s eye; still they could not be quite unconscious of facts with which they were every day occupied. They might be awakened to an observation of these; they might be led to perceive an order in the things about them, in the works of nature and of man, with which they were most familiar; thence they might be led to discover the traces of an order and dominion nearer to themselves, one working continually for their discipline and deliverance.
Those, on the other hand, who were feeling, however confusedly, after the light and knowledge which most nearly concerned themselves, who cared less for the earth, and its seeds, and its fruits than to be set free from their ignorance, than to be made right and true within, the hearts which craved for guidance and sought in their weariness for a resting place and a home, the children who were crying for a Father, had an immediate hold upon the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven; to them it was given to know them: the others saw them projected outwardly in the sensible world.
Some such view as this, I think, would be generally taken of this language. I am not the least desirous to suggest a novel one, but merely to show how exactly such a view accords with, and carries out the idea of a Kingdom which has the first and highest sphere of its operations in man’s inner being, but which extends into every part of his life, through the whole of society, thence through the whole intellectual and sentient universe. If we supposed the actual King of men come to make manifest the nature of his government to them, to show them what rule he had been exercising over them, and for what ends, how it was thwarted, why they were unaware of its presence; if we supposed that King of Men to be also the King of nature, the Creator and Lord of the world in which man is dwelling, if we supposed Him to have made that world especially for the habitation of man, to have placed him in the centre of it, to have ordered it according to laws which could only perfectly exhibit themselves when they bore upon his character and his acts, we should certainly feel why the parable of the Sower must be the key to all parables, why it is said to set forth a mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven, why it sets forth at the same time a mystery of the kingdom of earth, why it belongs to the life of each individual man, why it has the closest relation to the history of the race.
That the Son of Man deposits his word in a voluntary being who can prevent it from producing its regular and natural effects, this is the direct, obvious doctrine of the parable. The corresponding fact in the kingdom of nature is that a person puts a seed into the ground which certain qualities in the ground may make unfruitful. In each case we are reminded that productiveness is the law, that unproductiveness is the anomaly, the result of some perversity, and yet of a perversity which is most likely to appear, which it requires a power not existing in the human or in the natural subject to remove. Each is intended to receive that power, to submit to it; then all its latent capacities are discovered and unfolded; then the results become in their due season visible. In each case the processes are secret and orderly; in each case the disappointment arises from the productive power not penetrating deeply enough into the ground; in each case that which ultimately appears upon the surface is to the eye quite different from that which was the cause of it. Dwell upon these great lines and landmarks of the discourse, try to harmonize them in your mind, and you arrive, I conceive, at such a sense of the reality of the distinction and of the resemblance of the two great spheres which compose our universe, as no definitions or philosophical arrangement can give. But you feel at the same time that these spheres must be under the authority and direction of a Person, that the phrase “Kingdom” has a literal and not a metaphorical application to them, that you could not choose any other which would not be a feeble and awkward exchange for it.
II. I spoke of the parable of the Sower as relating to the life of the race as well as to the life of the individual. If it is the history of the operation of the Divine Will upon human wills, we cannot limit it to a number of particular experiences. The history of man must be contained in it. Nevertheless I can quite acquiesce in the common feeling that this parable less obviously concerns the movements and growth of human society than certain others. I can readily admit the parable of the Mustardseed to be, as it is commonly said to be, a prophecy of the future unfolding of the Church collectively. But then I must ask you to observe that the character of this unfolding is essentially the same with that which has been described in the former case. The mustard-tree cannot have been the greatest or stateliest of the trees of the forest. Its greatness and stateliness are not the subject of the parable. The subject is clearly the growth, first of a herb, then of a tree, out of the most insignificant of all seeds. Underground processes are here also implied. The Apostles had already heard the parable of the Sower, their minds had taken in to some extent the spirit and purport of it. They would needs apply the interpretation of it here also; they would suppose that the mustard-seed, like that which brought forth the corn, was sown and watched by a Divine husbandman, they would conclude that it was planted in human spirits, that these were by some process brought into such unity and fellowship that they could be represented by one great tree with many branches. Of course I do not suppose any elaborate process of reasoning to have gone on in the minds of the Galilean fishermen. It was the beauty of this scheme of instruction that such processes were not needful: the natural image united to the experience of the spirit within supplied the place of them. The Divine Teacher had already written His lessons upon the sensible world; He had only to open the eyes of His Disciples to read them there. The one tree with its different branches, and the fowls of the air at last lodging in them, though it was only an imperfect representation of spiritual unity and of all the diverse and living forms in which it exhibits itself, was still a far closer approximation to that reality than any discussions about unity in the schools could possibly give birth to. The image bore witness that no artificial or deliberate combination of different persons and wills, just as no combination of leaves and branches, could produce the oneness; that it must have a root underneath the soil, that an original unity must be the ground of the diversity, not the result of it. The Kingdom of Heaven then in the parable of the Mustard-seed presents itself to us under a new aspect, but as preserving the same essential characteristic. There is One who is ruling, One in whom it consists, One from whose secret life it receives all its different energies.
III. Still it will be observed that one element in the Gospel-narratives seems to be wanting in both these parables. It is affirmed that the sower of the seed is the Son of Man; the growth of the mustard-seed is the growth of a kingdom; a king is implied in it. But is this Son of Man, this King of men, the Son of God? Can we say that such a person is declared to be the source whence all the agencies and instruments are derived, which are at work in human society and in the world of nature? I said there was a third parable which is common to the three Evangelists. Each one of them dwells upon it very emphatically, as that parable which told most directly upon the consciences of the chief priests and scribes, which they felt was spoken against them, and which stirred them up to seek for an immediate revenge. A vineyard, it is said, was let to husbandmen; the owner of it sent servant after servant to demand the fruits; one was beaten, another stoned. “Last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. Jesus said unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.”
This passage, I think you will perceive, is in very striking accordance with all we have considered previously. (1) A Son is represented coming forth after a succession of servants, but it is clearly intimated that the Son was before the servants. The first agent in all the works of God declared himself last. That power was revealed to whom all the rest were subordinate, and from whom they were derived. (2) He came, like all who had been before, to seek the fruits of the vineyard, or, as our Lord Himself interprets it, to see whether those to whom the Kingdom of God had been committed were worthy of such a trust. (3) The consummate act of rebellion arose from a wish to claim the inheritance. The husbandmen would not acknowledge the Son because they would not acknowledge a Father. They wished to appropriate as their own that which belonged to Him, which they could only hold, as the son held it, by faith in Him, by renouncing themselves. (4) Thus this parable, just like the preaching of John, like our Lord’s own preaching, like His other discourses, like His miracles, is looking forward to a judgment which was at hand, which would declare that the axe was laid to the root of the tree, and that since it did not bear good fruit, it would be hewn down and cast into the fire. The more then we look into these parables, those which belong expressly to the first three Gospels, and are wanting in the fourth, the more the truth seems brought home to us, that it cannot have been the first object of these Evangelists to exhibit to us a human teacher, or a set of maxims and examples which he presented; that it must have been their first object to declare a King of men and a Son of God, who came to show forth the kingdom which was implied in the Jewish kingdom, and to overthrow the one by establishing the other.
Herod Hearing of Christ
“At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, and said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him.” This announcement with some variations occurs in all the three Evangelists. In the first two the narrative of John’s death is appended to it. I introduce it because I do not wish to pass over any passage which is common to them, even if it seems insignificant. I do not think this is insignificant, especially when it is connected with a passage which we shall meet with presently, and with some which will be considered afterwards in the fourth Gospel. The question of the relation between our Lord and John the Baptist bears in a very remarkable manner upon the history of early Christian opinions, and has a close reference to the subject with which we are occupied. I shall say no more of it in this place, except that the desire of Herod to connect Christ with John, or with some old Prophet, indicates the restless fear which characterized all his family, lest the teacher should turn out to be a king. They would gladly indulge the people in any, even the highest fancy respecting a favorite instructor, to escape that perilous alternative.