“The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired Him that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day; for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.” In the eighth chapter of St. Mark, at the 11th verse, we have this account of the same transaction: “And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with Him, seeking of Him a sign from heaven, tempting Him. And He sighed deeply in His spirit, and said, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? Verily I say unto you, there shall no sign be given unto this generation.” The following passage in the eleventh chapter of St. Luke, at the 29th verse, evidently corresponds to these two: “And when the people were gathered thick together, He began to say, This is an evil generation; they seek a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall the Son of Man be to this generation.” This subject of signs occurs so often, and is dwelt upon so emphatically by the Evangelists, that it requires a serious consideration. The Pharisees evidently thought that they were asking for some proof altogether different from any our Lord had furnished them with. To heal the sick, to cast out devils, was not in their minds at all an adequate attestation of His power. It proved, no doubt, that he had some power, but was it a power from heaven? To establish that fact there must be some visible token in the heavens showing that He had come from thence, and derived His power from thence. Here is the test, the experimentum crucis by which we discover what their notion of heaven was. However their rabbis might distinguish between the first, second, and third heaven, all had really the same sensuous character. However they might denounce the heathen idolatry, they were worshipping a cloud-compeller, a mere God of nature, as much as any Greek was. It was a visible sign in a visible heaven that they wanted: Such, and such only, was recognized by them as a sign from God. Must not He who came preaching the Kingdom of heaven, the Kingdom of His Father, have sighed deeply when the people who were chosen out of all lands to witness of the true God, gave this proof that they had lost the power of acknowledging any God but a God of sense. How exactly do His words convey the meaning of this sigh, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign;” a generation utterly sensualized, self-seeking, without the power of looking upon heaven, except as a shadow cast from the earth, which seemed to them alone real and substantial! How exactly, too, do the words, “No sign shall be given them but the sign of Jonas the prophet,” correspond to all that we have found in the preaching of the Baptist, and in the preaching of Jesus himself. Whatever else may be implied in the sign of Jonas, the first and simplest idea of it unquestionably is that which is conveyed in the passages I have quoted, that which St. Matthew and St. Luke are agreed in putting forward most prominently, that which explains the “no sign” of St. Mark; for if the only sign given was that of Jonas, no sign would be given in the sense in which the Pharisees desired one. Jonas came preaching repentance to the Ninevites, he called to them to turn from their evil ways, else the city which had stood for generations would be destroyed. That proved him to be a prophet from heaven. The people owned him because he spoke to their consciences, because he discovered to them their evil. The scribes and Pharisees did not acknowledge this sign of a prophet. The other would assuredly come to them in due time. Signs there would be in heaven and earth that the city of David was to be left desolate, and an astonishment and a hissing to all people of the earth. So important is this discourse respecting signs in illustrating the purpose of the three Evangelists, and in showing how far they were the vulgar materialists which the wise men of this day suppose them to have been.
The Leaven of the Sects
“Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.” St. Mark states the injunction somewhat differently, chap. ix. ver. 15, “And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod.” St. Luke, chap. xii. ver. 1, limits it to one of these sects, “He began to say unto His disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” In St. Matthew and St. Mark the admonition is connected with the disciples forgetting to take bread. The disciples fancied that He was afraid of poison. In St. Luke the words are parts of a general discourse. The reason which enforces them is, “for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.”
The word “leaven” might naturally suggest a suspicion to the disciples which perhaps was not wholly unjustified by what they knew of the practices of these sects, and of their special malice against Jesus. Still the use of this word in their own Scriptures, interpreted by the Paschal feast, if they had entered into the meaning and spirit of their Master’s teaching, would have led them to feel that this was not the signification of leaven which He was most likely to intend. He rebukes them directly for not trusting Him to give them such bread as was needful and healthful for them, after the evidences they had had of His power: He rebukes them implicitly for seeing nothing according to its inward meaning, every thing in its coarse and carnal application. And hereby He seems also to explain more distinctly what that mixture was which Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians, all alike introduced into their doctrine, though they differed so greatly among themselves, though technically and dogmatically they were opposed to each other. The leaven of the Pharisees was especially, as St. Luke says, hypocrisy. As the ordinary bread was leavened, and yet leaven is always presumed to make it less pure,—to be that which gives the other elements consistency, but in some sense by the destruction of their proper qualities,—so the Pharisee mixed that which is earthly with that which is heavenly, till the whole substance was changed. God’s Law and Covenant were meant to separate a man from his evil nature, to bring him under a new power and principle. The Pharisee incorporated the Law and the Covenant with the evil nature; the motives, influences, tendencies of that nature were used to bind together the maxims of the Divine Law, to make it operative. Thus his whole life, outwardly consistent and coherent, became a great practical contradiction. He was an actor. A mask made in imitation of the real, living, divine Form, supplied its place. His inward being perished more every day: for that which should have kept it alive was itself turned into an instrument of its destruction. To the Pharisee the words especially applied, “That which is hidden shall be known, that which is covered shall be revealed.” The secret ground of the heart, the inner man, which was becoming more and more unknown unto itself, which was buried under a mass of outward practices and formalities, which was concealed by the darkness of fleshly desires and religious self-deceits, would come forth into the light of day. The man would stand forth discovered to himself, discovered also by his open evil acts to the world. On the other hand, there would be a clear, broad distinction between the Divine bread which he had defiled, and the leaven which he had mixed with it. All this applied most characteristically to the Pharisee. He was emphatically the hypocrite. Divine spiritual principles were not recognized, and were therefore not perverted in the same way, or to the same degree, by any other sect as they were by him. But the Sadducee and the Herodian were also, each in his own manner, leavening the divine food which had been given them for the nourishment of themselves and of the whole people of Israel. The one by the maxims of mere earthly and prudential morality, the other by the rules and maxims of state-expediency, were transforming the righteousness of God into a human system, utterly ineffectual for the guidance of man, ministering to his pride, favorable to dishonesty. They also were hypocrites, though not religious hypocrites, like the Pharisee. Each had to keep up a name and a character; the Sadducee for wisdom and superiority to vulgar prejudices, the Herodian for political sagacity, and for desire to preserve Jewish customs and religion along with subjection to the Cæsars. Each was trying to blend contradictions, to bring the traditions of their forefathers into harmony with their own partial, corrupt, grovelling objects. Of this leaven then the disciples had to beware. It did not belong exclusively to one sect or form of opinion or another. It was sure to debase all persons who were not taking pains to exclude it. No notions or practices were a protection against it. They could only be saved from it by remembering that they had a Lawgiver and King always with them, who was seeking to separate the chaff from the wheat, that in them which desired right and truth from that which was cleaving to earth and nature, the divine seed from the evil seed which an enemy had sown in their hearts.
Peter’s Confession
“When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Thus far the accounts of all the three Evangelists are very nearly the same. The answer in St. Mark ix. 29, is simply, “Thou art the Christ;” in Luke ix. 20, “Thou art the Christ of God.” All the three agree in saying, “Then charged He His disciples that they should tell no man that He was Jesus the Christ.”
There can be no question in any one’s mind as to the importance which each of the Evangelists attaches to this narrative, nor, I think, is there much difference of opinion as to the main object and interpretation of it. St. Peter, so all the Gospels intimate, St. Matthew only with more clearness than the rest, had by some means arrived at a conviction which the people generally, even those who had the highest notion of Jesus, did not entertain. They could believe that He was a prophet, even a miraculous person, the apparition of one who had been long dead, or John the Baptist returned from the grave with new powers. But there was something which they did not admit. The idea of a Son of God, of the Christ of God, had not dawned upon them. They could not say He is this. And the narrative goes on to say, they were not to be told that He was this. The discovery was one which the Apostles were not to publish; He straightly charged them that they should not: Why was this? Was it not the very purpose of John the Baptist’s coming to declare the Christ? Was it not the object of the miracles, the parables, the life of Jesus? Assuredly; to declare the King who was ruling invisibly over men’s hearts and spirits. And therefore while He was visibly among them, He was not to be proclaimed as the Christ. The whole power and mystery of the words would have been lost in such an announcement. In acts of healing love, in the Gospel to the poor, in his most trifling acts, in His countenance, the truth came forth as truth. It would have been turned outwards, it would have been made a falsehood by the carnal hearts to which it was addressed, if it had taken the form of a proposition. It was to take that form hereafter; a time would come when this would be the main topic of the preacher, “Jesus is the Christ.” Now he was to say, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand;” now he was to make the character and nature of this kingdom felt. If he did more it would be the kingdom of a Herod or a Cæsar, not of a Christ, that he would be setting up. Every one will perceive how consistent the words of St. Matthew, “Flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven,” are with this view of the case; how equally consistent the reproof, “Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men,” when the same Peter who made the confession showed that it was still impossible for him to reconcile the King with the sufferer. I shall not, of course, go into the memorable words about the rock, because they constitute one of the peculiarities of St. Matthew. I shall not even allude any further to the censure of the Apostle who had just received so high a benediction, because St. Luke does not speak of it. So much it was right to say on the subject, because the very next passage which is common to all the Evangelists, and is connected by them all with the question at Cæsarea Philippi, contains the essence and spirit of the rebuke. I hope I have shown, without introducing the least novelty into the explanation of the passage, that it proves the first three Evangelists to have been possessed by the feeling that the Kingdom of which they spoke was, in the highest sense, a spiritual one; that they never thought of Jesus as other than the Son of God.
Taking Up the Cross
“Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with his angels, and then shall He reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom.” The agreement of the three Evangelists is clearer in this passage than in almost any other. The only important differences are, that in Matthew Jesus speaks to His disciples, that in St. Mark He calls the people unto Him with His disciples also, and that in St. Luke “He speaks to them all;” the antecedent being apparently disciples; and that St. Mark and St. Luke introduce here the important words. “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed;” expressions which had already occurred in a somewhat varying form in the 10th Chapter of St. Matthew.
Though no passage is more frequently quoted than this, as if it were a solitary maxim or proverb, its meaning can hardly be ascertained, I think, if we forget the position which it occupies in all the Evangelists between the confession of Peter and the Transfiguration. There is something very emphatic in the manner in which the title, Son of Man, is introduced in each Gospel, when it is viewed in connection with the declaration, “Thou art the Son of God.” It appears to exhibit, more clearly than any language could, the very nature and essence of our Lord’s own self-denial, and therefore to point out that which He is demanding of His followers. He receives His Apostle’s confession, adopts it as true, rejoices that he has made it; but He takes that very moment to show that the glory of the Son of God consists in renunciation of all self-subsisting greatness, in choosing to have nothing of his own, in sharing the sufferings and the death of man. The harmony of this passage with the history of the Temptation, and the way in which it illustrates its relation to the Baptism, will, I think, commend itself to the conscience of every one. But the point to which I would chiefly draw your attention is, the difference between the morality of the passage when it is thus looked at, or when it is considered as an independent maxim, enjoining Christ’s disciples to take care of their souls, and not to consider any thing so precious as they are. That the effect of obeying our Lord’s words in their true and fullest sense is, that the soul is saved, that the effect of forgetting them is, that the soul is lost, no one who reverences Him can venture to deny. But we cannot overlook his express language in order to bring out the result of it more quickly according to a notion of ours. We are told in this very passage, that he who saveth his soul shall lose it. I do not say in what way we are to construe ψυχή; but I do say that as it is construed in one part of the paragraph so it must be in another. We cannot make it animal life where our Lord speaks of losing it, and something wholly different from animal life, something opposite to it, where He speaks of saving it. In some sense or other, He tells us that every thing which belongs to us, animal life, intellectual life, spiritual life, our own very selves, are to be given up and lost, if we would have them saved, or if we would be His disciples. To make this passage the ground for continual exhortations to men, simply and nakedly to be seeking after the security of their souls, must involve a perilous contradiction, must put us in hazard of setting at nought the letter as well as the spirit of the Divine command. Whereas, if the whole context is considered, if Christ, the King of men and the Son of God, is really regarded as the great self-denier, not because these glories did not belong to Him, but because they did, and because He could only assert them and set them forth as they were by glorifying His Father and giving up Himself, the self-denial of his disciples is seen to consist likewise in the giving up of every thing which is individually theirs, the acknowledgment of it as altogether their Lord’s, as realized, possessed, enjoyed only in Him.
The Transfiguration
“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with Him. Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and, behold, a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.” However commentators may have striven to arrange the Gospels according to some theory of passovers, and of our Lord’s journeyings to and from Galilee, it has been impossible for them not to perceive that the event recorded in these verses, though of so strictly a supernatural kind, is one of the great landmarks in the writings of the three Evangelists, one of those events which all felt themselves bound to record; and which they looked upon, not as standing out of the history, but as explaining what goes before and what follows it. No wonder the Straussian should seize such an event as this, as demonstrating the mixture of mythical with ordinary earthly narrative. Upon the hypothesis with which he starts, it must be at once thrown aside as having nothing whatever to do with the life of Jesus of Nazareth, as being only one of the superb inventions in which the human spirit has expressed its sense of its own dignity, has glorified and deified itself. Only this question will occur to any one who has followed me through the inquiry on which I have entered, whether every single narrative which we have considered hitherto does not rest upon the same principle as this one, and must not stand or fall with it. And this further question will occur to those who study the narrative itself, without any prepossession in favor of the Straussian scheme or of mine, whether the human spirit ever found out so strange a method of expressing its veneration either for itself, or for a favorite hero, as that which comes forth in these verses. No pomp of words in one Gospel or in the other, no attempt to excite the reader’s astonishment by the starts of the writer; the language orderly, calm, simple to nakedness, yet such a description as the highest painters have felt embodied an awe and reverence which they might dare with a trembling pencil to express through their art; a vision preceded by words speaking of humiliation and nothingness, followed by words and acts of the same import—a vision in its outward form transitory, almost momentary, leaving behind it only the words which were heard at the Baptism, “This is my beloved Son,” with those others which betokened that His Word, which spake to the inward heart and spirit, was mightier, diviner than the countenance shining as the sun, than the garments shining as the light: yes, that it was the invisible, inward glory which produced that transformation of the bodily form which the eye could scarcely behold. If this passage were one of those exaggerated deviations from the ordinary story which the Straussian supposes, it is strange by what art the vulgar and blundering Galilæans, the earthly sense-ridden Hebrew, contrived to preserve so entirely the style of his common discourse, to abstain from all inflation and exaggeration; stranger still that he seems afraid to dwell upon this transcendant outward manifestation, eager to prove that the greatness of the Son of God could establish itself by higher proofs than these. But if we admit that the setting forth of the Son of God is the purpose of all these narratives, that He is declared throughout them all as possessing a power which, beginning from the inmost region, was meant to penetrate and pervade the most outward and sensible,—renewing and transforming the human form, and ultimately the whole earth with the heavenly life which was poured into it,—then the omission of a passage like this would be a sign of weakness and incompleteness; the heart would ask for something which it did not find, the Gospels would not be truly and fully Gospels of the Kingdom of God.
The Epileptic Boy
“And when they were come to the multitude, there came to Him a certain man, kneeling down to Him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son; for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, Oh! faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour.” The exquisite instinct of Raphael perceived at once the necessity of combining this event with the seemingly incongruous one of which we have just spoken. He felt that the unities of space and time were both to be sacrificed for the sake of the deeper and more mysterious unity which all the three Evangelists had perceived, and which had compelled them to exhibit the earthly crowd and faithless disciples at the bottom of the mount, as part of the same picture with the still and awful scene upon its summit. The painter, if he transgressed the formal rules of his art, will be admitted, I should conceive, to have done so in submission to a higher principle of art; not for the sake of a broad and glaring contrast, but that he might give a reality to our feeling of the Transfiguration, that he might connect it with ourselves, he made his daring experiment. All laws of art rest, I suppose, on some ground deeper than themselves, which they indicate, but cannot touch. Certainly the theological truth which this meeting of contraries embodies is one which belongs to the very heart of Christianity, one which words cannot express, which is never seen fully but in the life of Christ, which we can only apprehend, even in the faintest degree, when we acknowledge that the fellow-sufferer with man, the deliverer of man, is primarily and in His inmost being the well-beloved Son of God. This illustration of the principle I am seeking to enforce is too remarkable to be passed over. But as I have already spoken of our Lord’s miracles in general, I have no excuse for dwelling in detail upon this one, striking and memorable as the circumstances of it are.
Prophecy of the Passion
With this narrative is connected another of our Lord’s prophecies, of His death and resurrection, which is preserved by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and apparently referred by all to the same time. “And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him, and the third day He shall rise again. And they were exceeding sorry.” The language of all the evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke even more than of St. Matthew, leaves us no room for doubt, that the Transfiguration seemed to them the appointed prelude, not to a single discourse, but to a series of discourses on this topic; that from this time forth, in fact, it became the leading subject of our Lord’s teaching when He was among His own disciples; that so they were prepared for His final entrance into Jerusalem. Any one who compares the short passages which refer to this time will have no doubt, I think, that, even for the chronology of the Gospels, they are the most important which we can find. I do not profess to throw any light upon that chronology, but I am persuaded that the light must come where commentators have looked for it least, from the portions of the narratives which have the most evidently supernatural and celestial character.
The Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven
“The same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth Me.” The parallel passage in St. Mark is at the 33d verse of the ninth chapter. There the occasion of the discourse is stated somewhat differently. “Being in the house He asked them, What was it that you disputed among yourselves by the way? And they held their peace; for by the way they had disputed among themselves which of them should be the greatest.” St. Luke, ch. ix. ver. 46, follows St. Mark with a slight variation, “Then there arose a reasoning among them which of them should be the greatest; and Jesus perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child,” etc. The discourse in St. Matthew beginning from the face of the little child, flows on for some time with many windings; it is terminated speedily in St. Mark and St. Luke by the words of St. John, “Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy Name, and we forbade him,” etc. Allusions both to the dispute of the disciples and to the subject itself, occur, I need not say, often in the Evangelists—a very memorable one in St. Luke’s account of the Paschal Supper. But the face of the child proves that these three narratives refer to the same conversation, even if all circumstances of time and place were not in accordance.
That the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, had been the proclamation of John, of our Lord, and of the disciples whom he sent forth. Every one would expect such an announcement to act powerfully upon the minds of those who had heard it, still more of those who had uttered it. The Kingdom of Heaven has been for a long while at hand, is it not now actually coming? The Transfiguration preceded by the words, “Verily I say unto you, there are some standing here who shall not taste of death till they see the Kingdom of God coming with power,” must have mightily increased the expectation of its speedy appearance, the warnings which the Apostles found it so impossible to understand respecting the rejection and death of their Master, would only in a slight degree allay it. Hence every one has perceived in the evangelical narratives indications of a growing impatience in the minds of the disciples to know when the promise should be fulfilled, and what their places, when the new reign commenced, should be. Nearly all, I say, have perceived this, and have perceived that the character of our Lord’s discourses, especially when He set his face to go to Jerusalem, were directed especially to this feeling in the hearts of His followers. But the point specially deserving of notice is, that He never for a moment changes the language which He had before employed. He never intimates that it is not a Kingdom in the strict ordinary sense of the word, which He has come to set up. He only disabuses the minds of His Apostles of certain vulgar but perfectly natural notions respecting a kingdom, which they, in common with the majority of their countrymen, of Pharisees as much as Publicans, in common with the majority of men in every age and country, were cherishing. With the idea of a kingdom they connected the triumph of the few over the many, rivalship among those few, the ascendancy of one. All these have been no doubt the accidents of every earthly kingdom, but they had been the destructive accidents of it. No kingdom subsisted by the ambition of the few, by the weakness of the many, by the rivalship of the great among themselves, by the ultimate tyranny of the sagacious or fortunate chieftain. It subsisted by the power which it possessed of resisting these influences, that were always working to overthrow it, by the higher and nobler impulses and objects which stirred in the minds of even its selfish citizens, and led them to seek its prosperity even at the sacrifice of their own. If the rule of the single tyrant was felt to be better than the anarchy which led to it, the reason is that the tyrant was less selfish than the multitude, that he did more work for the whole, was more the servant of the whole. The law then that the greatest of all is the servant of all, had been really the law of all society, had been implied in its very existence. All confusion and wrong had come from the transgression of it. The fondness for that transgression, the readiness to recognize it as the principle of human life and fellowship, was precisely the lie of the evil nature, the lie of the evil spirit, that which all tyranny and falsehood sustained itself upon, that which the Son of God must come to cast out. When then he took a child and set him in the midst of his disciples, He did not say that He was going to found a kingdom, which should be called the kingdom of Jesus, or the Christian kingdom, and which should have a right to set itself up, and boast itself that it was different from all kingdoms, that it came to subvert them; but He did say, in consistency with all that he had said hitherto, that He came to reveal that kingdom which lay beneath all other kingdoms, which was implied in the existence of all, that the true King, who was the true servant of all, had appeared to show what He was, what the meaning and nature of His own government had been, and to make a portion of those who ruled under him conscious of their own true position, conscious that true rule implies subjection, conscious that all selfish rivalship involves a contradiction; ready therefore, to feel with Him, that the becoming little children, the abandonment of supremacy, the acknowledgment of weakness, is the one method of making that government which he is exercising through them, feared, loved, and obeyed.
Divorce
“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” This sentence is connected in St. Matthew and St. Mark with a discourse on marriage; in St. Luke it comes in very remarkably between the parable of the unrighteous steward and that of Dives and Lazarus. I may examine hereafter, when I speak of the differences between the Evangelists, in what relation it stands to these discourses. I will only remark here, that, the Pharisees, in St. Luke, as well as in St. Matthew and St. Mark, called forth the observation, and that in all three it bears upon the nature and object of the Law. “Moses suffered us to give her a writing of divorcement, and to put her away,” say the Pharisees in two of the Evangelists; and our Lord answers, “For the hardness of your hearts he gave you this precept; but from the beginning it was not so.” St. Luke says, “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail. Whosoever putteth away his wife,” etc.
This then is evidently set forth as a notable case, illustrating the relation between the Law of Moses and the Kingdom of Heaven. The Pharisees, who often accused our Lord of departing from the strictness of the Law, suspected that in one instance He exceeded it in strictness. He does not deny the charge. He denounces the use of a privilege which they had allowed themselves, and which Moses had permitted. And He does this in perfect harmony with the principle He had laid down in the case of the sabbath, respecting which laxity had been imputed to Him so continually. There was no laxity in one instance or in the other. He asserted the principle and idea of the sabbath, as it was set forth in the commandment which enforced it. He insisted upon the observation of that meaning and principle as essential to the keeping of the commandment. When that was forgotten, it was not kept, though no single ear of corn was plucked upon the day. In like manner, He asserted the principle and meaning of marriage, which was implied and presupposed in the very law that sanctioned divorce. The permission was on account of the hardness of their hearts, a provision for an evil emergency which the Pharisees, mistaking decrees and statutes for laws, had confounded with one of the primary inviolable institutes of society. People were pressing into the Kingdom of Heaven, in hopes of finding an easier yoke than that which the letter-worshippers had imposed upon them. They would find it easier, because it was that yoke which the heart and spirit of man were created to wear, a yoke which is the pledge of freedom and not of servitude. They would not find it easier if they were seeking for mere licenses and exemptions. It would not cause one tittle of the Law to fail. It brought to light, re-established, placed on its deepest ground whatever belonged to the true order and constitution of humanity. The right acts which laws through their infirmity could not compel, would come forth out of the life of the Lawgiver. The irregularities which it was obliged to tolerate he would undermine.
Blessing the Little Children
“Then were there brought unto Him little children, that He should put His hands on them, and pray. And His disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. And He laid His hands on them, and departed thence.” There is a kind of sentimental interest attached to this record which I should be sorry were separated from it; and which I could wish had a more solid foundation. It is thought that the Evangelists, one and all, felt themselves constrained to introduce it because it was such a proof of the human sympathy and tenderness of Jesus. Such assuredly it was. And the higher our idea of Him, the more precious all such tokens of His actual humanity become. But we have no right to put another construction upon the object of these writers, than their own words express. They tell us that He said, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Because he said so, the incident deserves to be recorded in a record of the life of the Son of God upon earth. The blessing of little children was a part of the revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven. Of such would it consist, that is to say, not of men affecting the airs of little children, pretending to become children by giving up all the intellectual energies of men, pretending to be simple, and therefore being in the most inward and essential sense artificial; without any of the frankness, openness, trustfulness of children, full of craft and subtlety, because they will not, and dare not, be manly. Not such, but little children in very deed, ready to receive, and opening every pore and avenue of the spirit that they may receive, full of wonder, full of the sense of ignorance, craving for knowledge and light; believing that all treasures are intended for them, all treasures of earth and heaven, even the infinite wisdom and love of God Himself. As has been so often said, the man of profoundest science is, and must be, a little child; he must cease to see himself reflected in the things about him, he must be content to see every thing as it is revealed by its own light, not as it is measured and colored by his light. Of such then must be the Kingdom of Heaven; only those who can take every thing as a gift, who think of the object, not of their own sight or faith, of Him who works in them, not of their own acts, can be the real brethren and fellow-citizens of Him who glorified not Himself, but His Father who sent Him.
The Temptations of the Rich Man
“And, behold, one came and said unto Him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? And He said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but One, that is, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto Him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother, and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The young man saith unto Him, All these have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto His disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? And Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” There are very few important variations in the accounts which the three Evangelists give of this interview, and of the remarks which followed it. All readers have felt that the narrative occupies a most important place in the evangelical history. Much has been said about it; but its meaning has surely not been exhausted; it will still bear to be examined in its connection, and in its details.
Most persons, I think, must have been struck with the connection between the form of the young man’s question, and the weakness which our Lord brought to light in him. “What good thing shall I do, that I may inherit eternal life?” This was precisely the thought of one who had been wont to try every thing by the standards of the market, and who naturally, inevitably adopted its language when he spoke of life, or of the kingdom of heaven. Our Lord’s answer, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but One,” was surely addressed to this state of mind. He takes advantage of a phrase which the young man used in a mere conventional way, to set before him that which he really wanted, that which could not be measured by any of his standards, “There is none good but God,” He is the good, To know Him is the life thou seekest. But how was that good, that life to be obtained? Here came in another humbling lesson, “You have got the commandments. These are given you for that end. They tell you of the things which keep you from the knowledge of God, of the acts and tendencies which put you at a distance from Him. Keep these, remember these, hold them fast in your mind, mould yourself according to them, and you will be in the way to the knowledge of Him who gave them, to the perfect Good, to the true Life.” But all these the young man had kept from his youth up. Was he wrong in this assertion? Was it a lying boast? We are not told so. Every thing would lead us to the opposite conclusion. He had kept them, but not with a view to that end which our Lord set before him. He had kept them from his youth up habitually, instinctively; and as he became more conscious of a purpose, as he began more deliberately to seek one, he kept them with a view to that result which he hoped our Lord might assist him in procuring. He thought obedience to them would buy him so many blessings in a future life, or would rescue him from so many punishments in it. Still he felt that more was wanted to give him the requisite security. Unquestionably he never put the thought distinctly before himself, that he was bargaining with the Almighty. His gentle and graceful, even gracious, mind would have revolted at such language. But this was his misfortune. He did not set the case clearly before himself; he was living in a dim twilight, not distinctly aware of his own feelings or objects, ignorant how entirely his thoughts of heaven were shaped and colored by his earthly circumstances. He was therefore willing to give so much over and above his observation of the commandments for the sake of making his title to the felicity of which he dreamed, and to a deliverance from the terrors of which his conscience spoke, absolutely clear and undoubted. Our Lord takes him at his word. “Thou wilt give up much to obtain heaven. Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me. You feel there is some hinderance to being all that you ought to be, all that you wish to be. You are right; there is such a hinderance. There is something which turns all your thoughts about right and good awry, which gives them a false direction and a false object. Give up the thing which thou lovest better than God, and thou wilt know what He is; thou wilt have treasure in heaven.” Here was the test. He had never known before what his heaven was; now he found it out. The life he was seeking was the earthly life, though he called it eternal life. By eternal, he meant the indefinite prolongation of that kind of good which he had been here dwelling in. It is not the Evangelist’s business to give us the issue of the story. One cheering hint they do give us, upon which we may build plausible conclusions respecting the history of the young man. He went away sad. He had learnt to know himself as he had never known himself before, to have a discontent with himself which he had till then never experienced. All good may have come out of that sadness. His past keeping of the commandments, the gracious dispositions which St. Mark says, “our Lord beheld and loved,” may not in any sense have been wasted. If he could not break his own idol to pieces, God may have broken it for him; or he may have been afterwards one of those who learnt to call nothing their own, to bring all their goods and lay them at the Apostles’ feet. Of him we know nothing. This fragment of his history is recorded, because upon it our Lord grounded the remark, “How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of God.” Why was this so hard? The Apostles were astonished beyond measure, for who then could be saved? The rich man had time to devote to the service of God. He had money to give for the help of the poor. If he could not fulfil the duties, practice the virtues, earn the prizes of the Divine Kingdom, who could? If the Kingdom of Heaven were not altogether something different from that which the young ruler, or the Apostles themselves at that time, were acknowledging, how perfectly natural and reasonable were his thoughts and theirs! If it was a kingdom such as John had spoken of, such as our Lord in all His parables and miracles had set forth, a kingdom nigh at hand, having its throne in the heart and spirit of every human being, the kingdom of the Son of God over the creatures who were made in his image, how certain it was that every thing which led them to seek in the world without for the treasures which were stored in Himself, were hinderances to the confession of His dominion, hinderances which it was impossible for man, though it was possible for God, to overcome. If the Kingdom of Heaven were a universal kingdom, into which all of every degree were to be admitted, how obvious it was that the external possessions which made one man think himself above another, and unwilling to take up his position among his brethren, were also all but insurmountable barriers. Unless the rich man could become in the most inward and essential sense poor, he could no more shrink into the dimensions which would fit him to enter the strait gate, than a camel could go through the eye of a needle.