Bible Commentaries

John 8:3-11

"And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No John 8:39

THIS is an apparently novel test of kinship and pedigree. If a man is really in the line of Abraham, how can he be in any other line? or how can he be genealogically displaced? There are circumstances under which kinship is not a question of physical relation, but of mental and moral sympathy. Jesus Christ was always leading us out into wider and larger definitions. Presently, he will make us all, if we be obedient, into one family. He will begin where he can, or where we will allow him to begin: but judge not the Lord's end by the Lord's way of beginning; judge not the harvest by the handful of seed which is sown. "Abraham" is not the name of a mere individual. When it is pronounced by Jesus Christ it is the type of a special kind of life—the life Abrahamic, the faith-life; the life that takes its staff and goes out not knowing whither it goeth because a voice divine hath said, "I will give thee a land." When does Jesus Christ adopt a narrow signification? When does he lose an opportunity of amplifying words into their largest meaning? Thus may we know who are Christians, who have learned of Jesus, who have been steadfast and reverent scholars in his school; men who enlarge all things beautiful and true and good, and see in symbols whole heavens of beauty and rest. We speak of children in various senses ourselves; we say they are children of evil, or we say they are children of light. Sometimes we describe a man as a "child of genius," and there is a common phrase, namely, "children of grace." We must get this word "children" out of its narrow roots and small limitations, as if it were a mere term of animal life, and must set it in the true light, and in its proper spiritual relation.

The great law which Christ here lays down John 8:42

Then are not all men the children of God? It would seem, indeed, as if they surely were—as if, indeed, the necessity of the case excluded every other possibility. Did not God make man in his own image and likeness? He did not make him as the beasts that perish; but he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and talked to him and confided to him high responsibilities. It was not a mimic creation. God was not playing at John 8:42

Shall I startle you if I say, notwithstanding the multitude of books written upon the life of Christ, there is yet not only room but necessity for a volume to be written on that unexhausted theme? We have had outward lives of Christ enough, perhaps more than enough—lives that tell us about places and dates and occurrences; books of beautiful colouring, high description of locality and scenery, and the like. All the circumstantial occurrences of the life of the Son of God have been given us with tedious and painful minuteness and repetition by bookmakers of various degrees. What then is this other book we want? A complement, a completion, and an explanation of all other books, viz, "The Inner life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Not a life of circumstances, but a life of thoughts, purposes, feelings, aspirations, desires; the inward, spiritual, metaphysical, eternal life of Christ. Can it ever be written? It will be often attempted—it will never be done, for no limited book can exhaust an illimitable subject.

Until we study this inner life of Christ deeply, all the outward life of Christ will be a plague to our intellect and a mortification to our heart; we shall always be coming upon things we cannot understand and cannot explain; not only John 8:43-59

This section of Holy Scripture contains a very vivid example or specimen of plain speaking. The frankness would necessitate one of two things: either revenge or submission. We need not tell the name of the speaker in this dialogue. There are no words like the words of Jesus. We might risk the whole Christian controversy upon the tone and scope of this conversation. Let any frank-minded man stand by and listen to the colloquy, and then let him say by the music only where the truth is. We never know what the words of Jesus Christ are until we have laid down our greatest author, and then opened the New Testament. Christ always sounds like a speaker of music, but he sounds the best always after the greatest man has finished; he then proves his deity—not when answering some wild and embittered Jew only, but when following in succession earth's brightest speaker, earth's chiefest poet; then do we see his stature. The sayings of Christ are unfathomable. How well he maintains his own if this be taken as merely a dramatic dialogue! How calm he is! How strong in positiveness, how clear in statement, how assured in the possession of every qualification that can dominate the history of men! Yet he surprises us by the use of startling language. We speak of the meek and lowly Jesus; but cannot that claim to meekness and lowliness now be set aside by quotations from Christ's own speeches? Jesus Christ called the men who were looking at him—when did he speak to absentees like modern preachers?—fools, hypocrites, liars, murderers, thieves, whited sepulchres, wolves in sheep's clothing, devourers, children of the devil. What wonder that he had not where to lay his head? He might have had a downy pillow could he have talked the other way. Yet this is the meek and lowly Jesus! What wonder that he sent a sword upon the earth, dividing whole families, and making relations strangers and aliens? We have associated a tone of passion in connection with such words as fools, hypocrites, liars. Who could call another man a liar in cold blood, as if he were merely making a remark? We have to be stung into the use of such descriptives. Jesus Christ had not. We should have heard the very tone in which he called men by these dishonouring but accurate names. He was not scolding, merely upbraiding, or trying to exasperate his hearers; he was revealing spirit and character and purpose, and doing it with the calmness of philosophy. We could not call a man a child of the devil without being angry, and our anger would spoil the revelation. Never believe an angry man. It was the solemn, calm, serene manner of the speaker that made the terms so truly awful.

Is it not from the quietest that the severest always issues? Does not lightning leap forth in a time of sullen silence? We praise the majestic tranquillity of Science. Science, unlike Theology, we say, is serene, never ruffled, most tranquil, lake-like in its sunny serenity. Is that true? We might speak of the meek and lowly Science: but Science is the most desperate character that is now abroad. There is nothing so tremendous as the Science which you praise as tranquil, dispassionate, altogether devoid of the odium theologicum which embitters all religious fellowship. Science is very calm, but very murderous. Picture some ancient battle with bows and arrows, with catapults and stones, battering rams and huge cumbrous weapons of war; picture a modern battle-field, with its arms of precision, with its devastating forces: what did it? Calm, impartial, tranquil Science. Look at that ship—torn, shattered, started out of the water, as if a ghost had struck it: what did it? Calm, impartial, tranquil Science concealed a torpedo, and went home to brood upon the ignorance of mankind, and retired to rest with the reputation of being so different from theology, so dispassionate, so tranquil, quite a meek and lowly thing. What tore the building in twain? What frightened the Parliament? What shook the bridge? Science—by nitroglycerine, by dynamite; tranquil, dispassionate, lowly-minded Science, never agitated by her theological tumults, threw the Metropolis into a panic. Science is the greatest murderer known in history. Yet all done so tranquilly, leaving all fighting to be done in the Church.

We must look at this conversation, then, in another light. It comes up from behind Abraham's time; it looks upon Abraham as a very modern instance. This speech is delivered from the platform of eternity. There is no modern word in it; there is nothing of yesterday's paint or decoration or enamel about its high eloquence, its sharp glittering rhetoric; it is calm as eternity is calm. Jesus Christ says—

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it" ( John 8:44).

This was not spoken in an excited tone. This is a philosophy, not an insult. That is the difference between a man who speaks superficially, and a man who speaks with the background of eternity. How familiarly he speaks of their father, who was a murderer from the beginning! How well he knew ancient history—because there was no history ancient to him. A man who is the contemporary of all ages knows nothing about the meaning, in a technical sense, of what to us is ancient history. He was present at the birth of the devil; he has watched all his tricks and policies ever since he was born,—nay, the devil claims a kind of grim eternity. Jesus Christ thus adopts the principle of heredity, and starts it from a new point, and traces it up with scientific precision. He says, You are not yourselves only, you are a progeny; you had fathers, ancestors, and he takes them into the college of heraldry, and he makes them find out their crest and their motto and their father's image. "The lusts of your father ye will do." He speaks calmly of this fate. He does not upbraid the men as if they themselves were so much to blame; they express a historical moral necessity. There is a kind of ghastly consistency in their malice and obstinacy and hatred of truth; they keep up the family name well; there is no bar sinister on this diabolical escutcheon unless it be altogether in its very self a bar sinister on the escutcheon of the universe. Would that good men were as consistent as bad men; their consistency might accumulate into a pleasing and conclusive argument. We are worsted by our inconsistency, though the term inconsistency itself is not always fully comprehended and justly applied. Christians can falter a good deal; they have the gift of hesitation, they have the genius of incertitude; they spoil their prayers for want of emphasis.

But if this reading of heredity be true on the one side it will be equally true on the other; hence we have this declaration, completing the former, and giving hope to men—

"He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God" ( John 8:47).

Here is a mystery which cannot be explained, but it is a plain simple fact. There are some men who cannot be religious, from any point that is obvious to our thinking. There are some ministers who cannot pray; they are scholars, they are expositors, they are earnest men, but they do not know how to pray. "He that is of God heareth God's words": he that is of music knoweth music when he hears it; he that is a child of art knows the painter's touch from the daub of the unskilled hand. We are born what we are—musicians, poets, artists, housewives, merchants, lamplighters, journalists, leaders, heroes, cowards,—it is of birth, not of choice. This may seem to ruin a good deal of hope. It does nothing of the kind, properly accepted. Awaken yourselves; who can tell what angel sleeps in your dulness? Who knows what bright spirit has taken up its residence for a time in the hostelry of your soul? Arise, awake, put on thy strength! You cannot tell what you are, until all the awakening ministries have been brought to bear upon your indifference and your obstinacy.

When were deep sayings intelligible to corrupt hearts? The Jews did not understand this man's speech. They blundered in every remark they made upon it. They continually took it from the wrong end, and they so mingled the words that they lost all their philosophy and all their music. Blessed be God, therefore, that there are men who can teach alphabets. The Beatitudes are mysteries. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." The world heard and passed on to its merchandise, saying that some fanatic had taken possession of the mountain, and was raving there, harmlessly but most incoherently. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." In that one sentence there is a whole library of the deepest, holiest thinking, an infinite philosophy of life. But the people who listened to Jesus knew absolutely nothing of what he was talking about. When he gave away loaves and fishes his congregation amounted to some thousands; when he began to give away his own flesh, and to hand out in cups of gold his heart blood, his congregation amounted to twelve persons, and even they stood with their backs half to him as if they would go away; in fact, he asked them if they were going. Blessed is he who can talk to men of his own kith—to poets who see a universe through the slot of a single proverb. Jesus Christ never had such hearers in his own day in the flesh, but they are gathering around him now, and calling his sayings ineffable in suggestiveness and sublimity.

The Jews thought they caught Jesus now and then. How little they became! How microscopically small!

"Then said the Jews unto him" (in a tone which can never be reported), "Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death" ( John 8:52).

How can you talk to such men? What interest can you have in men who think that Abraham is dead? There is nobody dead. The Protestant says, What, worship a dead woman, the Virgin Mary! There is no dead woman. That is the mistake we make. Abraham is dead. No, he is not. You are wrong at the foundation. "I am the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob": God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Who can teach this doctrine properly? Who can feel it in all its heavenliness? Who can find house-room in the heart for this immortality? We might dwell long upon this and find it nutritious. To the Jews, people did die. To fools, people die now. There are even people who are wearing mourning. It will be a long day before Christianity kills Paganism. There are Christians who are going out to-morrow to buy mourning. You would not think it possible, but it is a fact. "Abraham is dead, and the prophets": what an empty world they lived in who spake thus! How hollow their voices sounded in the chambers of the past! You can never teach such people anything. They think they are the only living people in the world. No man dies. The little child is not dead; it is like a dewdrop that has gone up to the sun to be used in the fashioning of a rainbow. The friend is not dead; he lives and waits; he is now half out of heaven looking for some of you: do not disappoint him.

"Jesus answered, If I honour myself"—if I have no water but that which flows on the surface, it can be scooped up with a cup and used, drunk at one meal, and there would be nothing afterwards but burning thirst; only that water is sure which comes up out of the rock—spring water, living water, water that the heat can never get at to dry it up. Then Jesus came upon them with a revelation which was too much for their ignorance:—

"Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am" ( John 8:58).

How good it is to come near this divine teacher! How he soothes us and blesses us, yet how he excites and inspires us! When did he say, All things are very little, and not worth looking at? Herein he taught from the other end than that which was adopted by John 8:42

Shall I startle you if I say, notwithstanding the multitude of books written upon the life of Christ, there is yet not only room but necessity for a volume to be written on that unexhausted theme? We have had outward lives of Christ enough, perhaps more than enough: lives that tell us about places and dates and occurrences: books of beautiful colouring, high description of locality and scenery, and the like. All the circumstantial occurrences of the life of the Son of God have been given us with tedious and painful minuteness and repetition by bookmakers of various degrees. What then is this other book we want? A complement, a completion, and an explanation of all other books, viz, "The Inner Life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Not a life of circumstances, but a life of thoughts, purposes, feelings, aspirations, desires; the inward, spiritual, metaphysical, eternal lite of Christ. Can it ever be written? It will be often attempted—it will never be done, for no limited book can exhaust an illimitable subject.

Until we study this inner life of Christ deeply, all the outward life of Christ will be a plague to our intellect and a mortification to our heart: we shall always be coming upon things we cannot understand and cannot explain; not only so we shall be coming upon things that seem to confront the understanding and to defy the intelligence of men. But if we get into sympathy with the inward spiritual life of Christ, then we shall do what Christ did—move out upon these outward and visible things and see them in their right relations and colours and proportions. The inward always explains the outward; why should it not be so in this greatest case of all? Come to the outward only, and you will have controversy, difficulty, discrepancy, intellectual annoyance, moral surprise, and perhaps spiritual disappointment. But begin at the other end—get to know the man's soul, get into sympathy with his purpose, see somewhat of the scope and the outlook of his mental nature, and then you will take up the miracles as a very little thing.

Let me now give you, roughly, some hints of the kind of thing that is wanted. Suppose we saw one of the miracles of Christ. So far control your mind as actually to realize that you are present at what was called, in the days of Christ, the raising of the dead. Let us make this as realistic as we can: the dead man is here, the living Christ is here, the mourning friends are here—and presently the dead man rises and begins to speak to us, and we have seen what is called the miracle of resurrection. But now, is it trick or miracle you have seen? Is it an illusion or a fact? How am I to determine this question? I cannot determine it in itself. Why? Because my eyes have been so often deceived. I have seen what I could have declared to have been the most positive and absolute facts, and yet when the explanation has been given I have been obliged to confess that I was deceived and befooled by my own vision. If it has been so in a hundred cases, why not so in this? At all events, there is that suggestion which may be pressed upon me until it becomes a temptation, and the temptation may be urged upon me so vehemently and persistently as almost to shake and destroy my faith. I can declare that I saw a man get up—but the conjurer comes to me and says, "I will show you something equally deceiving." I go, and I see his avowed trick: it does baffle me and surprise me exceedingly, and if he then shall follow up that conquest, and shall say, "It was just the same with what you thought the raising of the dead," he will leave me intellectually in a state of self-torment. I shall still think I saw the event, but he will continue to perplex my vision by a thousand tricks, and show me how impossible it is for any man to trust his eyesight.

Then what am I to do? Leave the outward altogether. Watch the man who performed the miracle—listen to him: if his thoughts are deep and pure, if his mental triumphs are equal to his physical miracles, then admire and trust and love him. Take this same conjurer just referred to. When he is on the stage, and, so to speak, in character, he seems to be working miracles: they are miracles to me. Therefore, indeed, I go to see them, and have no other reason than to be baffled and surprised and confounded, and to have my keenest watchfulness returned to me without the prize which it coveted. His tricks outrun my vision—my eye cannot follow his supple hand. How then? When he comes off the stage and begins to talk on general subjects I begin to feel my equality with him rising and asserting itself. On the stage I could not touch him—watching his hand I could not follow its manipulations at all. But when he comes away from his official character and his professional region, and begins to speak upon subjects with which I am familiar, I sound the depths of his mind, and get the exact measure of his character, and then he becomes clever, artful, surprising, delightful—but only a wizard, only a conjurer: wonderful with his wand in his fingers, nothing without it.

So when I go to Christ as a mere stranger, I see him raising the dead, opening the eyes of the blind, and I say, "We have seen these things attempted before, and very wonderful successes have followed the wand of the wizard and the word of the enchanter. This man may be but cleverest of the host, prince of princes, Beelzebub of the Beelzebubs. I will, therefore, not go further into this case; I have no time to examine this man's credentials, I must be about another and a higher order of business;" but when he begins to talk I am arrested as by unexpected music. I say to him, "Speak on." His words are equal to his works. He is the same off the platform as on it. Not only do I say, "I never saw it on this fashion before;" but I also say, "I never heard it on this fashion before." I lister to his thoughts, to his purposes, to his desires, and I find that he is as inimitable in his thinking as he is in his working and acting. What then? I am bound to account for this consistency. All other men have been manifest exemplifications of self-inequality. We know clever men who arc fools, strong men who are weak, eloquent men who stammer, men who are great in this direction, small in some other, self-contradictions, self-anomalies; and this want of self-consistency and self-coherence is at once a proof of their being merely men. But if I find a Man in whom this fact of inequality does not exist, who is as great in thinking as in working, who says that if I could follow him still higher I should find him greater in thinking than it is possible for any mere man to be in acting; then I have to account for that consistency which I have met nowhere else, and to listen to this Man's explanation of it: "I proceeded forth and came from God;" "I am from above;" that explanation alone will cover all the ground which he boldly and permanently occupies.

It will be infinitely interesting to study the inner life of Christ; to make ourselves, so far as possible, as familiar with his thoughts as we are with his works. And if we do this, we shall come to set the same value upon his miracles that he himself did. What value did he set upon his miracles for their own sake? None. When did he ever say, "Behold this mighty triumph of my power, ye sons of men?" Never. When did he sound a trumpet and convoke a mighty host to see the loosing of a dumb tongue, and the opening of a blind eye? Never. When did he ever make anything of his miracles other than something merely elementary and introductory, and of the nature of example and symbol? Never. How was this? Because he was so much greater within than he was without. If he had performed the miracles with his fingers only, he might have been proud of them; but when they fell out of the infinity of his thinking, they were mere drops trembling on the bucket: they were as nothing before him. We might as well follow some poor breathing of ours and say, "Behold, how wonderful was that sighing in the wind!" It is nothing to us, because of the greater life. And these miracles are puzzles, enigmas, confounding surprises to people who will come to Christ, along the line which begins in the outward, in the visible, in the circumstantial. If ever they can get hold of his heart, and speak to him face to face for five minutes, they will feel the heaving of his great sympathetic bosom; they will see the miracles as he saw them, then they will appear to be very little things, momentary spasms, examples to guide children through the grammar of a higher law, mere exemplifications, symbols, types of the infinite and the inexpressible.

It is very remarkable that this Man once said, "Greater works than these shall ye do;" but I will ask you to find a passage in which he ever said, "Greater thoughts than these shall ye think." I cannot find such a passage. You must not forget that in your argument about Christ's divinity, when he piled up his miracles, raising the dead, opening the eyes of the blind, feeding the hungry miraculously, unloosing dumb tongues and unstopping deaf ears; when he aggregated them all into one sublime spectacle, he said, "Greater works than these shall ye do;" but never did he say, "Greater thoughts than these shall ye think, greater words than these shall ye speak, greater purposes than these shall ye conceive." There he touched the unsearchable riches of his own nature, as in the miracles he pointed to circumstances and to events which would receive larger unfoldment as the ages went on.

Now let us look at this inner life of Christ, from two or three points. I watch this Man day by day, and I am struck with wonder at his amazing power, and the question arises, What is the impelling sense of his duty? Why does he do these things? And he answers, frankly, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" Never did prophet give that explanation before. His working from his Father's point of view, in the light of his Father's will; it is the paternal element that is moving him. He has given me that as his key; I will put it into every lock of his life to see whether he has entrusted me with the proper key or not. I defy the world to find him wrong as to the use of this key. Put it where you like, the lock answers it; and is no credit to be given to a Speaker who, at twelve years of age, took the key from off his girdle, put it into the hands of inquirers, and told them to go round the whole circle of his life with that key in their hands? He was but a boy when he gave up that key—he was but twelve years old—approaching manhood by Jewish reckoning, but merely a child in years. Can he keep up the high strain? Listen: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." "I and my Father are one." Can he sustain that high key when he is in trouble? Listen: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Can he go higher still? Listen: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." O ye who know the modes of music, tell me, is this harmony?- The key-note is, "Father;" away the Anthem rolls, high as heaven, deep as hell, tortuous as the paths of the forked lightning, and yet with infinite precision it returns to its initial note. Give Christ credit for this. He was but a Galilean peasant; give him what honour is due for preserving his rhythmic consistency through a course, not rugged only, but most tragical and unparalleled.

Arguing from that point, another question suggests itself. If this Man is about his Father's business, what is his supreme feeling? What answer would you expect to an inquiry like that, after the self-explanation which Jesus Christ has given? Is his supreme feeling a concern for the dignity of the law? Is he jealous with an infinite jealousy for the righteousness of God? Does he come forth from his hiding-place saying, "I am jealous for the holiness of my God; I must vindicate the righteousness of the Unseen and Eternal One?" No. What is the dominant feeling of this Man Christ Jesus? It is named again and again in the New Testament. No change ever occurs in the term, and I will ask you to say how far it corresponds with the first declaration, "Jesus was moved with compassion." Ye musicians, tell me if that be consonant and harmonious? "Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? Jesus was moved with compassion." It was always so; the word "compassion" occurs in no solitary instance alone, though its occurrence in one instance would still have been argument enough. But from beginning to end of his life he is moved with compassion. "Jesus, here are some thousands of people that have been with thee three days and have nothing to eat." Does he wait for us to say that? No. "But Jesus was moved with compassion when he remembered" that the multitudes were in that condition. Coming out once, and looking upon the crowds, "He was moved with compassion, for they were as sheep not having a shepherd." When he was walking after a funeral to the grave, "Jesus wept." And when people came to him they seemed to know this sympathetically, for they said, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon us, have compassion on us, thou Son of God." He speaks like a Son, and is thus faithful to a Father's message.

What explanation does he give of his own miracles? Once he gave us an explanation, as it were, incidentally and unconsciously, but we caught the word, and it saved us from unbelief and explained all mysteries. How was that long-ailing woman cured? "Virtue hath gone out of me." He did not say, "I have performed this with my fingers; this is an act of manipulation which no other man ever learned to do; it was by swiftness and suppleness and dexterity, and by a mysterious flashing of the fingers over certain parts of the affected body." No, but he perceived that virtue had gone out of him. No trickster, but a mighty sympathiser,—no manipulator, but infinite in the exercise and processes of his redeeming power. Whatever he did took something out of him. Behold the difference between the artificial and the real. What did our redemption cost? The healing of one poor sufferer took "virtue" out of him. What did the redemption of the world take out of him when he said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The last pulse gone. Is he self-consistent still? Still!

And to what are all his triumphs eventually referred? To his Soul. Not to his intellectual ability—not to his skill of finger—not to his physical endurance, but to his Soul—an undefinable term, the symbol of an infinite quantity. "He shall sec of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied." You know the meaning of the word in some degree. One man paints with paint—another paints with his soul. One is a clever mechanic—another an inborn and indestructible genius. One man speaks with his teeth and tongue and palate—another speaks with his soul: they use the same words, but not the same, as Hermon was not the same with the dew off; as the bush was not the same before the fire came into it. You say one man sings artificially, mechanically, correctly—every tone is right; the proper balance, the proper measure, the proper quantity: artificially the exercise is beyond criticism, but still the people sit unmoved. Another man takes up the same words and the same notes, and the people arc stirred like Lebanon by a wind, like Bashan when the storm roars. How is it? The one man is artificial, the other is real—the one man has learned his lesson, the other man had the lesson awakened in him—it was there before, and an angel passed by and said, "It is morning: awake and sing." This Christ, this dear Son of God, shall see of the travail of his soul, of the outgoing of his blood—he sows the earth with the red seed of his blood and he shall see the harvest and be satisfied. He was often wearied with his journeying: when was he wearied with his miracles? His bones were tired: when was his mind enfeebled? The instruments of articulation might be exhausted, but when did the word ever come with less than the old emphasis—the fiat that made the sun?

Let us now ask—What did this man claim for himself? It will assist us in our study if we hear from his own lips a distinct statement of what he does claim on his own account. Reading in the book of Exodus about the great God, I find that he gave his name as "I Am," that he amplified that name into, "I AM THAT I AM." We could make nothing of that name; it was too remote for us; our genius had never been in such high regions, never scaled altitudes so perilous. We could therefore but wonder. The name sounded grandly; it had in it all the boom of an infinite mystery, and we were content with it, because the condescensions which that same God made to this human life of ours were so mighty yet so pitiful, so wondrous in their sweep and yet so compassionate in their lingerings that we had begun to think, though the name was mysterious, the grace was familiar enough. A marvellous word was that spoken to Moses—"I AM" it seemed as if it were going to be a revelation, but suddenly it returned upon itself, came back to its centre, and finished with—"THAT I AM!" As if the sun were just about to come from behind a great cloud, and suddenly, after one dazzling gleam, hide itself behind a cloud denser still. The fulness of the time had not yet come. God's "hour" was not yet. He had said, "I Am," but what he was he did not further say. By-and-by more will be said. It will be interesting, therefore, to inquire whether Jesus Christ connects himself with that mysterious name, "I AM THAT I AM." If I can trace his talking, his thinking, his preaching, so as to find one point in connection between himself and that great name, then a new and large argument will take its inception, and a new and subtle evidence will be put in that this Man was more than man—as mysterious as the Name, perhaps as gracious. Let us see.

I cannot read the life of Christ without constantly coming upon the expression, "I AM." Reading it, I say, I have met these words before, and wonder where. My memory bethinks itself, and I hasten back into the grey old pages of the ancient time, and find that the Lord revealed himself unto Moses as "I AM THAT I AM." I want to know, therefore, if this great ladder, the top of which is in heaven, can by any means find a place upon the earth; can it come down that I may touch it? Yes. Jesus adds to the "I AM" little words, simple earthly words, nursery terms, school ideas—brings down the "I AM" so that we may touch its lower meaning, and hear its earthly messages. It will, then, be most interesting to see how this is done, and to listen to this modified music of the Eternal.

What does Jesus say after the words "I am?" He says everything that human fancy ever conceived concerning strength, and beauty, and sympathy, and tenderness, and redemption. He absorbs the whole. He leaves nothing for you and me except as secondary owners, except as those who derive their status and their lustre from himself. Thus, "I am... the Vine." What a stoop! Could any but God have taken up that figure? Think it out. You have heard it until you have become familiar with it—forget your familiarity, think yourself back to the original line, and then consider that One has appeared in the human race, who says without reservation or qualification of any kind or degree, "I am the Vine." Thus is the mysterious simplified; thus is the abstract turned into the concrete and the inner into the visible, the simple, and the approachable. Will he ever say "I am" again? Many a time. Let us hear him. "I am the Light." Ah, we know what the light is; it is here, and there, and everywhere—takes up no room, yet fills all space; warms the planets, yet does not crush a twig. The "I am" fell upon us like a mighty thundering. "I am the Light" came to us like a child's lesson in our mother's nursery. Thus doth he incarnate or embody or personify himself—thus doth the ladder rest in the mean dust, whilst its head is lifted up above the pavilions of the stars.

Will he say "I am" any more? Often. How? Listen: "I am the Door." Dare any but himself have taken upon him so mean a figure? "Ah," said he, "it is not a mean figure if you interpret it aright. A door is more than deal. A door is more than an arrangement swinging upon hinges. A door is Welcome, Hospitality, Approach, Home, Warmth, Honour, son-ship — I am the Door." Still more: "I am the Bread, I am the Water, I am the Good Shepherd, I am the Way, I am the Truth, I am the Life." When I see how this Man absorbs all beauteous figures, all high and tender emblems, I begin to think that there is nothing left for us by which to distinguish ourselves figuratively and typically. If we take any of these words, they must be taken as with his signature upon them, having a first lien and a prior claim; we are but intermediary and temporary, and altogether subordinate in our stewardship and right of status. How any man could be a man only, and yet take up these figures, it is impossible for me to believe. It is easier for me to say, "My Lord and my God," than to say, "Equal with me; better only in the accidents of the case."

Seeing that Christ claims so much for himself, it will be equally interesting, and will be the complement of the same subject, to start a second inquiry, namely, What does he claim from men? He claims everything. Sometimes in mean mood of soul I have wondered at his divine voracity. For once, a woman came to him who had only one box of spikenard, and he took it all. I was amazed—half distressed. I never saw such impoverishment made before. He did not say, "Give me part of it," but took it every whit, and the woman had no more left of that precious nard. Could you have done that? Would your humanity have allowed you to do it? Surely, you would have said, "Part of it,—just a little; you are so kind as to offer me a donation out of your one box of spikenard, let me take a little myself—I must not have it all." But this man, what said he? He said, "Let her do it—I will have it all, substance and fragrance too." And another woman—she might have touched his heart as she came along, for she was poor and poorly clothed, and had on a widow's weeds—I expected that he would have said, "Poor woman, we cannot take anything from you." No; she came along, took out her two mites, which make one farthing, put them in, and he took them both! Is he man? Is that humanity? Strange man; marvellous exceeding above all other men; not only did he take them, but he said, "She hath done more than anybody else who came up to the treasury: she hath cast in all her living."

Is he doing the selfsame thing in our own day? Verily he is! Look at this family, father and mother, with a boy and a girl as their sweet children. How many things has that boy been, in his father's hopeful dreams! A lawyer and a judge; then a clergyman and a bishop; then a merchant, a politician, a statesman, and a prime minister! But one day the mother says that she feels "something is going to happen;" a vague expression, but full of deep and sad meaning to her own soul. She tells her husband that "something is going to happen," and he smiles at the shapeless and nameless fear. And what does happen? A proposal that the boy should become a missionary! What! the only son? Yes! "It cannot be," says the stunned father; "no, no, it must not be." For many an hour there is silence; ay, for days next to nothing is said, but many a wistful look is exchanged. At length the mother says, "I have been thinking and praying about this, and I remember that good Mr. Wesley used to open the Bible to see what answer God sent him to his prayers, and I have got my answer today. After prayer I opened the Bible, and my eyes could see no other words but these: "even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight." He must go." The father is silent. A great weight of grief burdens his heart. He, too, goes to pray—goes a hale man under fifty—comes back in an hour an old man, crushed, blanched, withered, and grey, "but more than conqueror," and he, too, says the child—the one son, the heir, the firstborn—must go. And Christ takes him! Humanity would have spared him when so many large families could have furnished a missionary, but God takes him; the God that took the spikenard and the mites.

It will be curious and interesting now to start a third inquiry to this effect: How did the people who were round about, and who were not malignantly disposed, who constituted the better class of His contemporaries, regard Christ? Here is one typical man—a man of letters and of local renown, careful and exact in speech, somewhat timid in disposition, yet marked by that peculiar timidity which is capable of assuming the most startling boldness. He climbs his way up to Christ, opens the door in the dark, goes up to him, and says in an undertone, lest the enemy should hear—"Rabbi, thou art a teacher come from God." Evidence of that kind must not go for nothing. Send men of another type of mind to him—men of the world, shrewd, keen men. Here are several of them returning from an interview with the Son of God. I hail them in English terms, and say, "Gentlemen, what say you?" "Never man spake like this Man." Add that to the evidence of Nicodemus. Here are women coming back from having seen the Lord; tears are in their eyes. What will they say? Never yet did woman speak one word against the Son of God! Mothers, did you see anything to blame? "Nothing." Women of pure soul—sensitive as keenest life—what saw ye? "The Holiness of God." Pass him on to a judge—cold, dispassionate, observant, not easily hoodwinked. What sayest thou, Roman judge? "I find no fault in him." What is that coming to the man now, while he is talking? A message. What saith the message? It is a message from the judge's wife. "Have thou nothing to do with this just person, for I have suffered many things this day in a dream concerning him." Let him go—nail his right hand, nail his left hand, nail his feet, lift high the dreadful tree, crush it into the rock, shake every nerve and fibre of his poor body, let him writhe in his last agony, and will anybody speak about him then? Yes. The centurion beholding this, accustomed to the sight of blood, knowing how men deport themselves in judgment halls and in prisons and in the supreme crisis of existence, said—"Truly this Man was the Son of God." Observe what he claimed for himself—what he claimed from others. Put these testimonies of observers one after the other, accumulate them into a complete appeal, and then say whether it be not easier to the imagination and the heart and the judgment to say, "My Lord and my God," than to use meaner terms.

Another question arises: From such a Man what teaching may be expected? Given, a man distinguished by such attributes and elements as I have endeavoured simply to indicate, to find out what kind or manner of teaching and public ministry we may expect from him. I shall first expect extemporaneousness. He cannot want time to make his sermons, or he is not the man he claims to be. He is not an essayist. He will not be a literary speaker; there will be a peculiarity, a uniqueness, a personality about him not to be found otherwhere. Does he retire to his study, that he may write out elaborate sentences full of nothing but ink? Will he come before me as a literary artist, with well-poised sentences, beautiful periods, sounding climaxes, leaving the impression that he has wasted the midnight oil, and taken infinite pains to please those who went to hear him? There is nothing literary about the style of Christ; it is simple, graphic talk, much broken to our minds, occasionally incoherent, rapid in transitions, utterly wanting in all elaboration, and the balance prized by men who have nothing else to do than to live by their folly. I shall further expect instantaneousness of reply by Christ Jesus if He be God. God cannot want time to think what he will say. Does this Man ever ask for time; does he ever adjourn the interview? He answers immediately, and he answers finally. He never asks for time to bethink himself, to refer to the authorities, to consult and connote the precedents. He docs not say, "You have posed me by an unexpected question; I must retire and give this inquiry my profoundest consideration." Never; and he was but a carpenter. He had just thrown the apron from his waist; he was but a peasant. Rabbinical culture he had none, high connection disdained the mention of his name, and yet there was an instantaneousness about him to which I can find no parallel but in the "Let there be light, and there was light." Give every man credit for his ability; give this man, carpenter and peasant of Galilee, credit for having extorted from his enemies the acknowledgment, "Never man spake like this Man."

What do I find in this Man's teaching? High allegory, types of things unseen, incarnations of the spiritual, embodiments of the invisible, parables beautiful as pictures, wide as philosophies, lasting as essential truth. Strange man—marvellous productions of a barren soil. Why, he himself was an incarnation. What was his ministry? An incarnation too. What had he to do with the men who heard him, and all succeeding generations? He had to embody, to physicalise and bodily typify the kingdom of God: hence he said, "It is like a grain of mustard seed; like a net cast into the sea; like treasure hid in a field; like leaven hid in three measures of meal." "It is like unto"—when he said that, what did he do? He repeated his own birth. He renewed his own incarnation, he was born again in every parable that escaped his lips. To embody the bodiless, to typify in allegory and figure the infinite and the inexpressible, was the all-culminating miracle of this peasant of Galilee. Then I ask myself, "Is it consistent with all I have heard about him?" And I am compelled to say it is exquisitely in consonance with all we have yet seen of His character and studied of His speech. A Man like this coming up from unbeginning time must be extemporaneous in his speech, instantaneous in his reply, and allegorical and typical and symbolical in his method of presenting truth, for he knows the essential, and alone can give it beauty and expression, and movement and colour. Give him the credit due to his power!

Jesus Christ's is the kind of teaching that survives all the changes of time. It is seminal teaching; it is not like a full-blown garden, it is like treasures of living seeds and roots, and therefore it abides for ever. Where are the grand and stately and polished sermons of the great doctors of the Church? Do you know? I do not. But they were grand, were they not? Why didn"t you keep them then? But they were stately, majestic, complete, cathedral-like, strong in base, exquisite in pinnacle, almost fluttering in the delicacy of their architecture; indeed, why didn"t you take better care of them? Where are they? Gone into a stately past—majestic shadows of a majestic oblivion. What lives? Suggestiveness, what is called incoherence, want of finish, want of polish; the great mighty oak, the everlasting Bashan; not the cabinet-makers" pretty and expensive fabrication.

Now I will come to the final point, and it shall be of the utmost severity in its relation to this argument. The question I put is this: Did this Man Christ Jesus live up to his own principles? I can imagine persons of a certain kind of mind suggesting that the speeches and parables, and conversations generally of Jesus Christ, conveyed very high theories, very sublime philosophies of things, but were too romantic to be embodied in actual behaviour. The question I press upon you is this, so far as the evidence in the Book goes, Did this Man Christ Jesus embody his own doctrine? What said he? "Bless them that persecute you." Did he do it? Let one of his disciples answer. "When he was reviled, he. reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not." What said he? "Pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." Did he do it? One of his historians says that in his last agony he prayed, when he had no hand to stretch out upward to his God, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Is this to go for nothing? Are we at liberty to dismiss this witness and say he does not know of that which he testifies, or that which he affirms? Be careful, for if you cannot confer a character you have no right to take one away.

I call you to this living Christ; I will try to go nearer to him than ever I have been before; I will call for him to come nearer to me, and I will press still nearer. He knows me, he speaks to me, there is a masonry between us for which you have no word or symbol: a grip of the hand he only can give, a symbol that hath morning in it, and hope and immortality, secret messages, transmissions in cipher which he makes the devil himself bring. Can I give him up? Can I sell him for thirty pieces of silver? Can I exchange him for some other master? Oh, then the sun would bring no morning with it, mid day would be but a great black cloud, and the summer a mocking promise without an answer. To whom, then, could I tell my sin; to whom could I pray my prayers; to whom could I empty my heart in darkness and in close and absolute solitude, after I have looked all round the horizon to see even if an angel be there to watch the secret interview? Nay, I must serve him still, preach him still, and if he say to me, "Wilt thou go away?" I will answer in words I cannot amend, "To whom can I go? Thou only hast the words of Eternal Life!"

Prayer

O that this day we might see the Lord and have our whole mind filled with his light and joy! Lord, dost thou ask us what we would have at thine hands? Our answer is, Lord, that we might receive our sight! When men cry unto the Lord in their trouble, thou dost deliver them out of their distresses; in this hope we come now before the Lord, and even whilst we speak our hearts feel the burden rising. Sweet is the day of the Lord, quiet and tender in its sacred peacefulness, opening into the very heavens and showing us the New Jerusalem as the city in which we shall no more be threatened by fear and humbled by weariness. For every blessing we offer thee our praise. Thou didst lead us through the solitary way, and thou hast spared us from the shadow of death. Our souls are thine, our bodies are thy habitation. Thou are mindful of us with great care, and thy banner over us is love. O that we knew how to praise thee aright, that our hearts might not suffer pain because of the weariness of our worship. Thy judgments are very terrible, but thy mercies are greater still. Our life is full of the mercy of the Lord, and our days are made bright by his goodness. Lord, let not our feet stray from the path of thy will. Lord, comfort us, encourage our souls in the day of fear, and let our weakness hide itself in thy great power. We lay down our own wisdom as ignorance, and run away from our towers as from defences that will crush the life that built them. We come to Jesus. We stand beside the Saviour. We know the power of his blood. Lord, help us. Lord, send upon us the blessing of thine infinite pardon. Lord, show us the light of thy face. We daily see how great a gift is life; we know it not, we have not seen the divine secret, we feel the pulse beat, but we see not the power by which it is moved. We are our own mysteries. Life itself is a religion. Life is a continual prayer. How weak we are, yet how strong! We cannot just now bear the full daylight, yet we shall pass the sun on our upward way to the glory to come, and his great lustre shall be as a spark vanishing in the ever-enlarging vastness of thy universe. When we think thus of thy kingdom our light affliction is but for a moment. Thy kingdom, Lord, how great, how bright, how strong! May we one and all have a place in that everlasting house. Thy mercy is greater than our prayer, and therefore do we hope even where we cannot reason. Send the gospel to our lost ones, and bring our wanderers home. Visit our sick chambers and whisper to our sick ones the messages of consolation, so that their very weakness may itself become a privilege, and their loneliness become the sanctuary within which thou wilt meet them. We put our own life into thy keeping. We lay aside our own poor help as a temptation, and we accept thy strength as our perfect ability. O thou God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when shall we be wholly swallowed up in thy great love! When will the devil leave us, and none but holy angels be at hand! How long the tempter tarries! He wears out our strength; he lures our fancy; he vexes our prayers; he tortures our very communion with thyself. Jesus of the wilderness, Jesus of Calvary, help us or the enemy will prevail. He is so strong, so swift, so wise; yet we can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth us, therefore do we pray—Jesus, save us, or we perish! Amen.