Bible Commentaries

Christ Under Criticism

[An Analysis]

Mark 2:4

The idea is that if you want to get at Christ you can do so. That is all. If you do not want to get at Christ you can easily escape by excuse. That is true. We all know it: we have been partakers of that shameful trick. If you do not want to go to church you can find pleas enough for not going—lions in the way by the thousand: if you want to go the lions may be ten thousand in number, but you will be there. So we come back upon a homely but expressive proverb which says, "Where there's a will there's a way." We can do very much what we want to do. This is true in all things. See if the fault be not in the will. What a weak point is here; what a very fickle constitution is there; what an irrational sensitiveness puts in its plea at another point. How selfishness plays a subtle but decisive part in the tragedy or comedy of life! Whoever knew an earnest man permanently baffled? But how difficult to be earnest about religion! It is invisible, impalpable, imponderable; it is so largely distant, so truly spiritual; it cannot be weighed, measured, looked at; it does not come within the range of observation to any extent which appeals to a competitive selfishness. So men fail, and blame the devil; so men do not go to Christ, and say they were fated to keep away; thus men tell lies until they shut out the light of noonday by their shadow. The men in question could not get easily at Christ: but what is worth having that can be easily got at? When they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they tore off the roof, they broke it up. They meant to succeed, we do not; they did succeed, we fail; they ought to succeed, we ought to be defeated. Shame upon the economy of the universe if the coward ever won a battle, if the lazy man ever came back with a sheaf of corn! Do we really want to get at Christ? Our answer will contain everything that explains our success or our defeat. Is it the heart that wants to see the Saviour? or is it some adventure of the imagination that wants to catch his profile and then vanish, because it is a profile that ought to be seen? Is it the soul that says, "I will"? If Mark 2:8

Then there is an unspoken life. Then silence may be eloquence. This is mysterious, and this is alarming. Here are words found for our silence. We thought our silence was sacred; we said, Our words being spoken belong to us exclusively no more, they are common property, but our silence is our own; that never can become public property; we can have a heart-life quite solitary, and of that life we may be absolute monopolists. All this is broken in upon suddenly and ruthlessly by this new voice. There is now no secrecy; privacy is a term of very limited application. The new voice is very explicit; it says, Whatsoever is spoken in secret shall be proclaimed from the housetop. That which was supposed to have been done under the cover of darkness shall stand forth in the blaze of noonday. It will be well to take this fact into consideration in studying man's history and action. By neglecting this fact, who can tell how much we lose of intellectual reality and spiritual beneficence? By omitting this fact as an element of reality in the government of mind we may soon come to live a fool's poor life. We should be greater men, built on another scale, sustaining new and higher relations, if we realised the fact that there is nothing in our minds or hearts that is not perfectly and absolutely known. It will be difficult for some men to believe this; but it is difficult for some men to believe anything. The difficulty may arise from want of mental capacity and spiritual sensitiveness, or that general faculty which lays hold of things subtle and impalpable. Did you hear the tinkling of that bell? No. I did; that is the difference between you and me. Did you hear that footstep? I did not, but you did; I should have said there was no footstep, but you heard it. Ignorance must not stand in the way of wisdom; speculation about probability and improbability must not stand in the way of realised fact. Here is a piece of soft pensive music; listen: did you ever hear anything quite so exquisite? You say you cannot heal; why can you not hear? Because of the infirmity of deafness. Then is your deafness to be the measure of other people's sensitiveness of hearing, or is the sensitiveness of other people only to show you more clearly the reality and the pitiableness of your infirmity? Christian believers say—and you must ruin their character before you can destroy their evidence—that they see the unseen, endure as seeing the invisible, fasten their eyes upon things not seen and eternal, realise the nearness of spiritual intelligences and ministries; and you want us in an age of advanced learning and culture to set up ignorance against wisdom, and to oppose insensateness to that sensitivity which hears the footfall of God in the wind. That cannot be done. We are anxious to accommodate every capacity and degree, but we cannot allow boundless ignorance to urge its immensity as an argument for its acceptance.

Every man, then, is really two men. He is, first, viewing him from an external point, a speaker; then he is a thinker. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Not a word you have said is worthy of a moment's attention if it has not expressed the reality of your heart. The smile upon your face is a lie if it express not a finer smile on the heart. Here we are a perplexity and a mystery to ourselves. Sometimes we hardly know whether we are on the one side or on the other; so subtle is the whole action of life that there are points in consciousness when it is almost impossible to say whether we are leaning towards the reality or the semblance. There are other times when we want to speak out everything that is in the heart and mind. We are checked by fear. We are disabled for want of language; a hundred considerations instantaneously flash themselves upon the judgment, and want to be umpire over the conflicting processes of our own mind. We carry things in the soul by majority. One man is not one vote in any case of real intellectual and spiritual excitement; nor is one mind one decision regarding many practical outgoings, reasons, and responsibilities of life. In your own soul, the silent parliament of the spirit, you carry things by majorities. You say, On the whole this is better than that; taking a large view of the case, there are seven reasons why I should do it, and I can only discover four why I should not do it; I will obey the indication of the larger number. But whilst we are willing to grant that there are spheres and sections of life in which it is almost impossible to tell whether it is the thinker or the speaker that is about to act; yet there is difference enough amongst the sections of life to excite our spiritual jealousy, lest we should be telling lies to ourselves in the very act of speaking them so loudly as to delude the conscience into a belief in our sincerity. We have employed emphasis to cheat the conscience. Here is the mystery of man: what he thinks is one thing, what he says is another. Christ wants to bring these two hemispheres of mental action into unity, harmony, and identical expressiveness. He would make us so clean of heart that we cannot be foul of lip; he would so exalt the soul in love of truth that it could not speak a lie. Any religion that proposes to work this miracle is a true religion, wherever its Author came from; and its Author has a right to be heard by the moral grandeur of his purpose.

What is Christ's relation to this mysterious dual relation of man? It is a relation of perfect knowledge. The scribes and others round about him were reasoning, saying, "Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only, and immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit...." "He needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man." How could he do otherwise? He made man, he redeemed man; he sends forth the Paraclete to sanctify man. He knows us therefore creatively, experimentally, sympathetically, and by every process that can possibly be applied to the knowledge of human nature. He hears our heart beat; he knows how the pulse stands; he writes down in his book the history of the day—not the history of the deceptive, often self-deceiving, hand, but the history of the heart, the soul, the mind, the spirit, which is the real man. The hand is but the glove of the soul. We must penetrate to inward realities before we can know how much Christ knows. He searches us through and through. This is the prerogative of God: he searches the heart and he tries the reins of the children of men. He knows our thought afar off. We speak of plasm, of things remote, small, microscopical, growing, accumulating upon themselves, ever rising in capacity and expressiveness of life; in talking so we talk according to fact. It is said therefore of God that he knows our thought before it is a thought; he knows the plasm of it, he knows it in its first, its earliest, its invisible conception. Before we know it he knows; before we dare find words for our thought he has written that thought fully down in heaven. Unless we stand in this consciousness—let me recur to an early point—we shall live a fool's life, quite lineal, superficial, without cubic measurement, depth, value, worth. And are we to live such a life when we can escape it? Are we to live externally when we can live metaphysically, internally, spiritually? Are we to be content with things on the surface when we may penetrate and bring up things from the very depths of the wisdom and grace of God? To this higher life we are called, and God the Holy Ghost is pledged to accomplish our education in this development if we will yield ourselves to his gracious ministry.

Christ sustains a position of fearlessness in regard to the whole internal economy of the human mind and human life generally and particularly. He need not have challenged these men. A false teacher would not have challenged them; he would have said, If they raise no objection I shall suggest none; they look very troubled and doubtful, but I shall not trouble them to express their trouble or their doubt; it is not for me to encourage men to express scepticism or unbelief; I will therefore close this subject, and swiftly turn to another. That is not Christ. Christ said, "Why? "—let us have nothing hidden about these mysteries; speak out your objection, give it word that we may consider it openly, and for the advantage of yourselves and others. This fearlessness of the Son of God is no small consideration in estimating the quality of his character. He will have nothing hidden away in the heart that can be brought out of it, and used helpfully in the Christian education of the soul. Preachers are sometimes blamed for raising doubts; whereas in reality they are only answering them. Let us beware of a self-considering and cowardly ministry that says in effect, If the people do not know these things I shall not tell them; if they do not express the doubts I will not answer them; in fact, I may flatter myself with the observation that perhaps I may raise more doubts than I can settle. I may suggest more questions than I can answer; I think, therefore, I will live on the sunny side of my work, and do as little as possible towards encountering the unspoken tumult and conflict of the human soul. It is perfectly true that we may raise more doubts than we can settle, we may ask more questions than we can answer; at the same time every ministry ought to address itself to the realest part of the life. Do not address mere fancy or taste or sentiment, but get at the unspoken heart-thought. The people are quite content in numberless cases that we should address their fancy: How lovely, how bird-like some of the notes of the voice; how fascinating and enchanting altogether in manner! Some are perfectly content that we should address their taste; they say, How polished, how quiet, how very beautiful, how classic; how vividly the speaker recalled the best of days of Attic eloquence! Away with this intolerable and indescribable rubbish! We meet in the house of God to talk reality, to get at life in its inmost thought, to address not the decoration of the face, but the disease of the heart. The Lord send us, if need be, rough prophets, Elijahs and John the Baptists, who will speak out thunderously and boldly, and sweep away from the debased pulpit all attempts to please mere sentiment, and gratify pedantic and therefore perverted taste. When we are revealed to ourselves it may be found that we are altogether inverted, and that we have been making a false impression upon society, if not actually upon ourselves. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and therefore it is perfectly possible for a man to be imposed upon by himself,—to be, in other words, his own impostor. He wants to look well in his own eyes, and he is willing to overlook a little here and overlook a little there, and may promise himself concessions of divers kinds; upon the whole he will recommend himself to himself. Let us not fear the scathing, searching process, the cruel analysis of Christ. Then the matter may stand thus: For such and such reasons I proceeded in this course. Then the Lord will say, You call them reasons; now let me show you that they are all excuses. You defrauded your own soul by talking euphemistically, by speaking of reasons as if they were points wrought out by logic and fact and a right connection of events properly interpreted; whereas in reality they are all excuses, vain pleas, selfish arguments; you wanted to reach such and such a conclusion, and you laid the stepping-stones accordingly.

There is all the difference in the world between light and darkness, between reasons and excuses. We have degraded our life by processes of self-excusing. We would not go out because—then we told a lie in measured language to ourselves. We would have gone out ten times that night if we could have made a thousand pounds; and we know it, and we shall have to face that challenge some day. We were afraid; whereas the fear was a selfish fear and a miserable cravenness, and ought to have been eradicated and blown away as if by contemptuous winds. And thus would the process go on: namely, I endeavoured to be amiable and gentle, and to put a good appearance upon things. And the Lord will say, Amiability is your word—insincerity is mine; it was not light that was on your face, but sheen, glamour, a calculated and manufactured thing. Amiability you call it—hypocrisy I name it; you ought not to have been amiable; you ought to have been stern, resolute, unbending, judicial; you ought to have insisted on right being acknowledged, even if right was not done. And thus will the process advance, namely: I was tolerant of men's weaknesses, I was charitable in relation to their prejudices and their actions; I endeavoured to take a large and tolerant view. Christ will say, Thou wicked servant! it was not toleration, it was self-defence; you allowed a man to do something wrong that you might do something still more deeply evil; you tolerated vice in others that you might practise it yourself; you call that toleration—it was not toleration, it was false judgment, bad character, rottenness of heart and soul. Why did you not speak to yourselves words of fire? Why did you not criticise yourselves with the judgment of God? If you had then spoken out boldly, fearlessly, the very action of so speaking might have lifted you into a higher spiritual manhood, and then you would have displayed a true courage. Do not talk of reasons when they are excuses; do not speak of amiability when it is insincerity; do not set up toleration as a plea for self-indulgence: be true in your hearts that you may be true in your speech.

We are entitled to believe that there is no objection which Christ cannot answer. Personally, I never heard a single objection against Christ that could not be completely answered and satisfied. Let us beware lest we call objections what ought to be called quibbles. The quibbler will do nothing for you in the extremity of your life. He is a very clever wordmonger; he has a great skill in verbal legerdemain; he can twist the words wondrously, he can play with them like so many balls thrown up in the air, and kept there in rhythmic movement; but if he be only a quibbler he will do nothing for you when the rain falls and the wind blows and the earth shakes under your feet. Quibbling cannot cover all the need of life. Let it have its half-day's sunshine and holiday; let it practise its little gambols on some little greensward, but let it know that beyond that it cannot go. When night darkens and the storm roars and the foundations of things are out of course, and death—pale, grim, cruel death—comes for his dole and tax, the quibbler will not be within earshot in that dark time. If you have objections to Christ, state them, state them in the plainest, simplest, directest terms; and distinguish between an objection and a quibble, and especially distinguish between a reason and an excuse, and still further distinguish between a solid objection to Christianity and a secret love of sin that would get rid of the Cross, that it might get rid of self-accusation. Thus, thou Son of God, thou dost call us to reality, faithfulness, candour. A voice so calling is like a great and mighty wind from heaven. It is not earth-wind, full of dust; it is heaven's gentle tempest, charged with love.