Bible Commentaries

The Parable of the Sower

[An Analysis]

Mark 5:40).

The Unknown Quantity In Christ

Mark 4:41

There was, of course, no doubt upon the mind of the disciples that Jesus Christ was a man, yet there was something about him which very often made them look upon him with surprise and even bewilderment. For a time things would go on in an ordinary course, and then, quite suddenly, Jesus Christ would utter a tone unlike all other tones, and the disciples would be startled by the unusual music. For days together they would be able to look upon his face as the face of a gentle brother, pensive, indeed, and much worn, yet quite human, and most tender. Then, in an unexpected moment, there would come into that brother's face a look, unlike all other looks; a gleam of spiritual light,—a flush and colour showing that through his heart there had just passed a wave of more than mortal life, and he would look more like an angel than a man. He was a man; no doubt at all about that; yet there was something about him that there was about nobody else; even when he appeared to be but a common stranger, there was a power in his speech which made men's hearts burn. He was a man, but a man plus, to say the least of it. There was in him an unknown quantity, and it is about this unknown quantity that I propose now to say one or two things that may help our wonder to become reverent and loving homage.

We shall get a bolder and clearer aspect of the whole case if we begin on common ground, and look at it through one or two earthly parallels. Take, for example, a company of poor, uncultivated, unpretending men; let them all be of one sort, all thoroughly familiar with each other; they talk without restraint; all their remarks proceed upon the same low level; all their language is marked by the same commonness or vulgarity. Into this company let a gentleman by some means be introduced; let that gentleman disguise himself by putting on the plainest possible clothing; let him adapt himself with the utmost care to his new circumstances; his one object is to resemble most closely the men whose society he has sought. His own familiar friend would not know him through the disguise he has assumed. Given such a case, that man, by one tone, by one movement of his hand, by one glance, may cause all eyes to be turned upon him in wonder, in suspicion, in anxiety! It is felt there is something about him that there is not about any of the others,—he looks plain enough, takes upon himself no airs, sits on a level with the whole company, yet a tone thrilled them, one remark shot through their murky conversation like lightning flashing through darkness. Instantly there is felt to be an unknown quantity among them; they cannot quite recover themselves; there is a stranger in the house,—to each other they would fain say, "What manner of man is this?"

Take a very different scene. Here is a company of educated and most polished gentlemen. They speak various languages; they are at home upon every question of the day; their information, standard and current, is considered extensive and profound. Suppose that by some means they should be brought into contact with a man, clothed in the plainest garb, without pretence of bearing, or one outward sign of superiority, yet, when he speaks, he adds to the information of the most learned, to every discussion he contributes something unique, yet obviously pertinent; to the polish of learning he adds the vigour of originality. Precisely the same result would follow in this case as in the other. By so much as he was superior to others, and yet concealed his superiority under an exterior which denoted the utmost lowliness of condition, he would excite and justify the inquiry, "What manner of man is this?"

Now we find that Jesus Christ was constantly puzzling and bewildering men by the action, sometimes subtle and remote, sometimes almost visible and approachable, of an unknown quantity in his nature. He was quite close at hand, yet he could separate himself from men by an immeasurable distance; when familiarity seemed to be completing itself, one look would recall the old reverence and awe; when equality was just about to be established, a single question would prove the depth of men's ignorance, and send them away to learn the merest alphabet of knowledge.

The argument which comes out of the unknown quantity in Christ may take some such shape as this: It was beneficent, and therefore not from beneath; it was intensely spiritual, and therefore not of the earth, earthy; it was wholly self-sacrificial, and therefore different from ordinary human policy and purpose; it set aside canons, traditions, and standards established and valued by men, and therefore claimed a wisdom superior to the ripest wisdom of all human teachers. All this was the more obvious and impressive, because he was without form or comeliness; he was as a root out of a dry ground; he bore the form of a servant; he made himself of no reputation,—yet out of him there went virtue which healed the incurable, and light which made the saddest lives take heart again. There was in him more than could be quite concealed. The disguise was most wonderful, yet not altogether complete. The cloud was vast and dense, yet it was pierced now and again by shafts of the supreme glory. What was the meaning of this? We boast that no social humiliation can conceal a gentlemen,—through rags and poverty and weakness, there will come signs of gentle blood or noble spirit; be it so, we rejoice in it as one of our most pleasant and gratifying social truths; what if we carry our own reasoning one point higher, and inquire whether, as no disguise can conceal a gentleman, it is possible that any condescension can put God in total eclipse.

We have said that the unknown quantity in Christ was beneficent, and therefore not from beneath. The proof of this is open to any reader, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." "The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." "I came not to judge the world, but to save the world." Look at the idea of saving the world! Regard it in what light we may, there is no other idea which can compare with it in point of sublimity of goodness. If we had met with it in any heathen writer, we should have been constrained to point it out as the most marvellous conception of the human mind. The father says, Save the family; the citizen says, Save the city; the patriot says, Save the country. So far good: this is beneficent, this is noble; yet, when these voices have ceased, the Son of man says, Save the world! There is the unknown quantity—the subtle, mysterious, inexplicable something, which separates the man from all other men, and causes us to exclaim, "What manner of man is this?"

Observe, with special care, that it is not needful that we should even make a profession of religion in order to know somewhat of the value of this idea of saving a world. We take it merely as an idea; we take it as if we had found it written by an unknown hand in the obscurest of pagan books; we claim for it no sectarian interpretation; we put aside all sectarian interpretation; we put aside all Church mediums of vision as standards of measurement: there stands in its own simplicity the fact that some man, somewhere, at some time, proposed to save the world! To save it, and therefore his heart was full of mercy—to save the world, and therefore his mind was as comprehensive as his heart was generous. And this he proposed to do, not when great ideas had become familiar, but when exclusiveness was predominant, when lines hard and fast had mapped off the little provinces of human regard and trust. And more than this: he came into the world to save it; this was his original purpose: it did not gradually lay hold upon him: it was not something that grew imperceptibly, and at last was found to be a ruling passion. It was a complete thought from the first. Sometimes men surprise themselves by the greatness of their achievements: warriors conquer more provinces than they originally intended to attack; inquirers are led from little to much, in carrying out their great schemes; discoverers, travellers, and projectors of all kinds learn the possible from the actual, and by the help of the known grope their way to the unknown: but here is a man who came with a complete plan, who never amended his scheme, who owed nothing to human suggestion—a man who at the first said, "I came to save the world," and at the last commanded, "Preach the Gospel to every creature"; and this in the face of opposition the most relentless, and of death the most ignominious. What manner of man is this?

We say that Alexander conquered the world, and then cried because there was not another world to conquer. But Alexander's notion of the world would now excite the smile of a schoolboy. Alexander was as much surprised by his exaggerated successes as were the soldiers whom he led; and lastly, his rapacity can be accounted for on principles neither very profound nor very creditable.

The unknown quantity in Christ was spiritual, and therefore not of the earth, earthy: "My kingdom is not of this world." "Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world." "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." "They that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth." We feel that these words are not earthly: they are ghostly; they are spiritual; they are full of mystery, mystery which would affright us, but that the speaker came to save the world. He reveals himself as a contradiction: he is here, yet he is not here; he is on the earth, yet he is in heaven; he was alone, yet not alone; Mary was his mother, yet before Abraham was, he was; he needed no sword, for more than twelve legions of angels were within call; he revealed the Father; he told men of heavenly things; he spoke of faith as man's supreme power; he treated all earthly things as of less than secondary consideration. How all this involves the presence of an unknown quantity! Whence was this spiritual Christ? How came he to have at his girdle keys which could open invisible kingdoms? Whence his power to give men wider and clearer vision in the empire of truth? How is it that Christ always saw farther than the men who were around him? Why should he have been more at home in the spiritual than in the material? These questions are not to be treated carelessly. In the consideration of so extraordinary a life as Jesus Christ"s, they are vital, and every honest student will linger upon their anxious and reverent consideration. Jesus Christ's earthly course as a public worker was intensely excited; yet every day was made serene by "the power of an endless life." There is foam on the stormy billow, but the earth itself flies in silent and tranquil speed through its appointed course, though seas be tempest driven. The volcano shakes with terrible agitation, but its uproar never flutters the peace of the great globe. So in Christ, there was a life within life—a mystery, a quantity unknown—so that when the storm was angriest, through all the thunder of men's vengeance, he breathed the peculiar benediction of peace: "My peace I give unto you." What manner of man is this? The wonderful conjunction of unequalled trouble and unspeakable peace, seen in the life of Jesus Christ, cannot be figured except by the greatest works of the hand of God: as the fierce wind desolates the forest, maddens the sea, and throws down the fabrics of men, yet never arrests for a moment the velocity of the earth, so the tempests of human opposition, battering with incessant fury upon the life of Christ, never touched the eternal calm of his infinite peace.

The unknown quantity in Christ was wholly self-sacrificial, therefore different from ordinary human policy and purpose. "I lay down my life for the sheep." "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself." "From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." He constantly moved towards the Cross. "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." "I am among you as he that serveth." "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." Thus we are taken out of ordinary motives, purposes, and methods. This is altogether a new music. We cannot follow this man, except we take up a Cross. Herein we see the deep truth of his word—"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." Never man spoke thus before. Hear him: If you would gain your life, lose it! If you would lose your life, gain it! If you would live, you must die first! If you would be crowned, you must be crucified! What manner of man is this? The severest of his critics has never established a charge of selfishness against Jesus Christ. His self-oblivion and self-expenditure have been left without explanation by the most determined of his opponents. Never did he accept such promotion as men could offer. Never did he consult his own ease at the expense of human suffering. Never did he turn aside that he might escape the Cross. By speaking falsehood he could have avoided humiliation; hypocrisy would have saved him many a frown; hesitation would have helped him out of many a difficulty. Our own selfishness wonders again and again that he did not speak the word of flattery, or tamper with the word of righteousness; yet, though a sentence might have saved him, he gave his back to the smiters, and his cheek to them that plucked off the hair. In a sense deeper than his revilers intended to express, "He saved others,—himself he could not save"; he so loved as to be lost in self-forgetfulness!

The unknown quantity in Christ set aside canons, traditions, and standards established and valued by men, and therefore claimed a wisdom superior to the ripest wisdom of all human teachers. "It hath been said by them of old time; but I say unto you." "Ye have heard that it hath been said; but I say unto you." This was his tone throughout. Nor was it a tone of boastfulness. Christ's word was not a word of mere antagonism He never abrogated a truth except by fulfilment, by carrying it to its widest and sublimest applications. "All bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?" Jesus taught truth, rather than mere fact; principles, not mere rules; he revealed the universal and the eternal, not merely the local and temporary.

Now look at these suggestions in their unity. The unknown element is of the same quality, so to speak, throughout. It is beneficent, spiritual, self-sacrificial, independent. Not only socially and relatively beneficent, but beneficent up to the point of salvation. Not spiritual, in the limited sense of intellectual, supersensuous, immaterial; it searched the heart, it revealed the invisible, it opened heaven. Not self-sacrificial in the spurious sense of well-calculated periods of self-assertion and self-with-drawment, but self-sacrificial even unto deaths—yea, the death of the cross. Not independent in the sense of defiant, self-sufficient, contemptuous, but in the sense of original, complete, omniscient.

Given such a character, to account for it! Say it was a dream: the difficulty is increased rather than diminished by the suggestion. Where is the dreamer? Who was he? Where is the man who had heart enough to dream such beneficence, soul enough to dream such spirituality, will enough to dream such self-sacrifice, wisdom enough to dream such originality? Find the dreamer; name him; account for his supremacy. Remember, you must find not only one dreamer, but many. You must find the dreamers of the most ancient prophecies, as well as of doctrines and theories historically Christian. You must, too, find dreamers whose dreams agree with each other, and dreamers who will unitedly, stubbornly, and lyingly avouch as facts what they know to be mere visions and eccentricities of fancy. Here we touch the moral nerve of the whole system. According to the dream theory, men told lies in order to reveal truth; they divested themselves of all honesty in order to save the world; they said, "Thus saith the Lord," when they knew that they were but relating a day-dream, or depicting a fancy! The moral tone of revelation is the decisive answer to the mythical theory; according to that theory, we are driven to the conclusion that the men who fabricated Christ and Christianity, not only dreamed the sublimest of poems, but the most splendid of falsehoods, and mistook those falsehoods as the very foundations of righteous and noble life. Not only so: they dreamed the lies, and then said to the world, If you believe this, you will suffer for it, you will have trials of cruel mockings and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; you will be stoned, sawn asunder, slain with the sword: we tell you our dream as a fact, our falsehood as a truth,—believe, and your life shall be a daily crucifixion. Nay, more! The dreamers themselves suffered for their dream! They were fed with bread of affliction, and with water of affliction. They wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. In every city bonds and afflictions awaited them. They were ready, not to be bound only, but also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus. And when host upon host of fiercest enemies pressed upon them, they exclaimed, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us." Such were not the men to suffer and die for a lying dream!

Say Jesus Christ was a good man, the best man, the man who realised most perfectly all that is meant by divine inspiration, yet after all was but a man. You aggravate the difficulty unspeakably. Not only have you to account for the most express claim of equality with God, and to explain language infinitely in excess of any inspiration which human capacity could realise or merely human excellence could justify—you have a harder task still to accomplish—you have a stupendous moral difficulty to overcome. If Jesus Christ was but a man, if there was nothing in him that may not in equal degree be in us, if he was only the perfect type of what any man may become—then God gave him an advantage which he has withheld from others, and the want of which occasions us sorrow intolerable, and apprehension the most agonising that can afflict the human mind. He made one perfect man, and left countless millions imperfect; he gave one man inspiration enough to save him from sin, and by withholding that inspiration from others he necessitated their ruin; he showed by one example what he could have made of all men, and yet has entailed upon all men the severest moral degradation and suffering, because something was lacking in the extent of their inspiration!

We find the only satisfactory explanation of the whole mystery of Christ in the facts of revelation. Those facts are many, unique, consistent, sublime. Jesus Christ was the only begotten of the Father: it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell: by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever: Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, Son of God, God the Son, One with the Father, and heir of all things! Take this view of the case, and the solemn mystery becomes filled with light. Standing on this high ground, when men exclaim, "What manner of man is this?" we can answer, Emmanuel! Wonderful! Counsellor! The mighty God! The everlasting Father! The Prince of Peace! There we answer the wonder of the finite with the wisdom of the infinite.

Prayer

Almighty God, thy riches are unsearchable. The hosts of heaven are thine, so are the gold and the silver and the cattle upon a thousand hills. The earth is the Lord"s, and the fulness thereof. As for thy love it is boundless, and we will say with thy Church in all ages, Thy mercy endureth for ever. We would therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and that we may find grace to help in time of need. Every time is a time of need. We humbly beseech thee therefore to dwell with us. Abide in our heart as in a redeemed and chosen house. Save us in the hour of temptation! Deliver us from all evil influences! Establish our hearts in the love of Christ, that we may never depart from the living God. Grant unto us now to know somewhat of the fulness of thy love, the infinitude of thy nature, the depths of thy heart, the tenderness of thy compassion! May we be filled with amazement, overwhelmed by visions of thy glory, encouraged and strengthened by assurances of thy goodness. We abide near the Cross; we lay our hands upon the one Sacrifice for sin,—Jesus Christ, Son of man and Son of God. As we look upon him crucified, we say with all our heart, God be merciful unto us sinners! Shed upon us the light above the brightness of the sun. Assure us of thy nearness by the interpretation of thy blessed word to our anxious hearts and inquiring minds. May we see the Lord's beauty, and feel that the Lord's hand is upon us. Unto the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, whom we adore as one God, be the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, world without end. Amen.