Bible Commentaries

Chapter86

Prayer

Almighty God, we know thee by our love: our hearts go out after thee in a great search, and come back with all thy grace glowing the soul and making the life new. We do not know thee by the mind, we cannot lay hold of thee by the senses, thou dost come secretly into the heart and speak to our meekness and love and modesty and waiting patience. Thou hast revealed thyself unto us in Jesus Christ, Son of Matthew 26:1-5

Completeness of Divine Teaching

"When Jesus had finished all these sayings." Why not before? Why not have broken off the eloquent discourse midway, so that its latter music might never have been heard by the ages—why not? Consider that question soberly and profoundly, and tell me, is there not an appointed time to man upon the earth, and can any great speech be interrupted until so much of it has been delivered as the ever watching and ever beneficent God deems to be enough? He punctuates our speeches: if it is better that they should be broken off at an intermediate stop, so be it: if it is better that they should go on to a full period and be sphered and rounded in logical and rhetorical completeness, so let it be. Do not live the fool's life and suppose that any man can kill you when he pleases. The very hairs of your head are all numbered: not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father. Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, is a sweet and gracious promise, which has its detailed application to every honest man and every faithful worker.

Jesus Christ brings into his history this word finished more than once. In this instance he had finished the Sayings. When he offered his great priestly prayer, he said, "I have finished the work thou didst give me to do." When he bowed his sacred head upon the cross in the last intolerable agony, he said, "It is finished." Does he leave anything in an incomplete state? Has he left any star half-moulded, any planet without the last touch given to its infinite circumference? He works well. I am persuaded that he which hath begun a good work in you will continue it until the day of redemption and completion. If we had begun, we might never have finished, but he who began the work is pledged to complete it, and the top stone shall be brought on with shoutings of "Grace—grace" unto it. Build with such stones as you are able to lift: do your little masonry as faithfully, as lovingly as you can, but he that buildeth all things is God.

Here the office of the Teacher ceases, and here the office of the Priest is about to begin. Correctly and deeply interpreted, the Teacher was the Priest, and the life was the death; and the doctrine was the atonement as well as the death. But for the sake of convenience, we divide the functions into Prophet, Priest, and King. The Prophet has closed; the great solemn peroration, broad as thunder, has ceased; he has just said, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." That was his last word, according to the history which is before us, and when he had spoken of life eternal, his lips closed. There was nothing more to be said of a doctrinal kind—the priestly function was to succeed the prophetical. What an air of repose there is about the statement. It reads like a great plan: there is nothing hurried, nothing tumultuous—the uproar is on the outside; within, and specially in the central Matthew 26:2, "Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified." He never made a more characteristic speech. Here you have the very heart of the man talking. Look at that word "betrayed," and find the whole soul and purpose of Christ. To be betrayed was the agony—to be crucified was nothing to the man who would take such a view of betrayal. It was the sin he looked at, not the butchery. That such truth could be met by such falsehood killed him. We look at the outward and vulgar aspect of things, we cry around the cross of wood as we see the sacred blood trickling down the beam. "Tis childish. When we are older and wiser we will cry over the betrayal. It is one of the impossibilities of ordinary history: it would be a total, absolute, incredible impossiblity, if it did not take place in our own heart and in our own house day by day. That such purity, such truthfulness, such beneficence, should have made no deeper impression than this, killed the Son of God! The atonement was offered in Gethsemane, when he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood and said, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." Then he redeemed the world. The rest was commonplace, the killing, the slaughter, the mean revenge, the triumph of hypocrisy and priestism.

All the great work in life is done in solitude, with the loved ones a few paces behind, with the dearest out of sight, with no one there but the soul and God. Win your battle there, and other fighting becomes quite easy, and if you seem to fail in the other fighting, it is only as a seed fails that dies in the earth to repeat itself in manifold productiveness and utility.

Jesus Christ always took the spiritual view of an action. He did not ask to be spared the nailing, he took meekly the spitting, for it went no deeper than the cheek—but to be betrayed was more than he could bear. To be smitten on the face, what was it but to endure for a moment the ruffianism of the basest men of his day?—but to be betrayed—that was the mortal agony, and if we took a right view of life, we should see it precisely as Jesus Christ did—not the robbery but the plot to rob, not the blow upon the face but the wound upon the heart, not the crime but the sin, would impress us most deeply and pain us most cruelly.

Jesus Christ will, in the judgment, take the spiritual view of every action. He is consistent with himself: he has not two standards or methods of judgment. What we would have done if we could will form our character at the last. We speak emptily and superficially about deeds and actions and conduct—we do not see the real deed. Not what my hand accomplishes, but what my heart would effect, is my character. Thank God for that. It may tell against us in this or that instance, but it may also tell for us in the supreme totalising and adjudication of life. God knows what it is in our heart to be, and what we can honestly say in our heart is what we really are. Not our outbursts of temper, not our occasional displays of lowness of disposition, but the supreme desire and passion of the heart will form God's basis of judgment. If we can say at the last, as many a poor misunderstood man can say now—but the church will not believe him—God is better and greater than the church—"Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee"—that love will burn up all the sin, and they shall come from the east and from the west and from the north and from the south, and from all quarters, sections, churches, and provinces of human geography and human thinking and human feeling, and the great surprise will be that Heaven is so vast.

"They consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety." Subtlety—that was their condemnation. Honest men know nothing about subtlety, honest men are fearless, honest men rely upon the instincts of the people, honest men never fear the instincts of a great nation. See how sin debases everything: it turns a grand magisterial function into a machine for the performance of little party tricks. Sin blights whatever it touches: if it looks at a flower, the flower dies: if it goes through a garden it leaves a wilderness behind it. It is a most damnable thing. See the Sanhedrim, the great council of the nation, that ought to be its pride and ornament and crown, and that ought to speak with a voice that would commend itself in every tone to the conscience and reason and inner heart of the people, conniving, arranging, temporising, trick-making—and that is the work of the fear which comes of conscious wrong. Fearlessness goes out by the front door, honesty speaks aloud in a plain mother tongue that every man can understand. Honesty may seem to be inconsistent here and there and again, but the inconsistency is apparent only and not real. Honesty can bear to be searched into, for all the parts belong to one another, and they come together and form a symmetrical and indissoluble completeness. Your trick is your condemnation, your subtlety is mere cleverness, it is not philosophy.

But they said, "Not on the feast day." That is an excellent resolution, not to take Jesus and kill him, and if the punctuation had been complete there, we would have said, "They have come to their better mind;" forgive them, they are going to abstain from their purposed slaughter, but instead of having a full stop after "day," we read, "lest there be an uproar among the people." A bad excuse, but any excuse will do for persons who are bent on villainy. We are quick at excuse-making, we have the genius of wriggling out of righteous positions and evading sacred duty. Our reasons often come afterwards, and our excuse is but a post hoc—it never would have occurred to us, if we had not found ourselves in danger of being ensnared and trapped and killed with weapons we had made for the slaughter of others. Our excuses may ruin us: our little pleas may become the sharp weapons that will penetrate our misspent life. One man thought he had an excuse which would make even the great man dumb; he said, "I knew thee, that thou wert an hard Matthew 26:6-13

No Waste In Love

In this incident we see Jesus Christ indebted to others. It seems to be a humble position: he is in another man's house, for he has no house of his own—at times he had not where to lay his head. The writers of his story are never ashamed to say Matthew 26:14-30

Sanctified Symbols

You remember the meaning of the passover: it was a feast of the Jews, established for the purpose of keeping in perpetual remembrance the passing of the Red Sea, the coming out of Egypt, the final deliverance from Egyptian bondage. This festival was kept up every year by the Jews, it was therefore the feast of memorial, its one purpose was to keep continually in view the power and goodness of God, displayed to ancient Israel in delivering the people from Pharaoh and in causing them to pass over the Red Sea as on dry ground.

Jesus, as a Jew, would keep this feast. You reform institutions best oftentimes by remaining within them. It is true that on many occasions assaults may be delivered from the outside, but as a general rule the great and beneficent revolutions and reforms come from within the institutions themselves, and are unmarked by the violence of external onslaught. Jesus Christ said, early in his ministry, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil,"—that Matthew 26:31-46

31. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written ( Zechariah 13:7), I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.

32. But after I am risen (unheeded words!) again, I will go before you into Galilee.

33. Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.

34. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

35. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee (so Thomas had said, John 11:16), yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples.

36. Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane (oil press), and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.

37. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy (weighed down).

38. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

39. And he went a little farther (about a stone's cast), and fell on his face, and prayed, saying O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

40. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?

41. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing (ready and eager), but the flesh is weak.

42. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.

43. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.

44. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

45. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

46. Rise, let us be going (not to flight but to danger): behold, be is at band that doth betray me.

The Culminating Sorrow

"Smitten,"—but Shepherd still. Strokes do not change character. The Shepherd was not deposed from his tender function; he was scourged, smitten, oppressed, and grievously tormented, but he was still a Shepherd. "Scattered abroad,"—but still the sheep of the flock. Understand that circumstances do not make or unmake you. You are not Christians because you are comfortable, you are not sheep of the flock because you are enfolded upon the high mountains and preserved from the ravening beast Sometimes the flock is scattered, sometimes the shepherd is smitten; but the shepherd is still the shepherd, the flock is still the flock, and the tender relation between the two is undisturbed and indestructible.

If I were a Christian only on my good behaviour, woe is me. If I belong to the flock only because of the day's calm, or the richness of the pasture, and because of the plentifulness of all I need, then is my Christianity no faith at all: it is a thing of circumstances, it is subject to climatic changes: any number of accidents may come down upon it and utterly alter its quality and its vital relations. I stand in Christ, I am redeemed with blood; the work is done; where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound. The church was just as much a church when she was in dens and in caves of the earth, destitute, tormented, afflicted, as when she roofed herself in and painted the roof with gay colours and lighted up the house with rare lights. Let us more and more understand that our election and standing are of God, and are not tossed about, varied and rendered uncertain, by the tumultuous accidents of time or by the sharp variations of a necessary and profitable discipline.

Jesus Christ stood always upon the written word. When the devil first tempted him, he answered, "It is written." Now when the devil has returned to him with the whole host of hell embattled against his trembling life, he begins to quote the Scriptures once more. What could we do without the writing? We need something to refer to, to stand upon, to quote—the positive and real word. When our mouth is filled with that, we feel as if we were equipped for battle. You must not have your Scriptures to extemporize when you need them suddenly: the Bible must be old, venerable, dwelling in your heart, ruling all your thinking, and must be quoted as a familiar expression, and not as a rare and curious saying with which the tongue is unacquainted, and to which it takes but unskilfully as to a tune not heard before. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly"—then, in the fight in the wilderness, you will be master, and in the night of smiting and scattering you will be able to speak of Resurrection and Reunion. Do not let us live in accidents, in transient circumstances and in variable and uncertain relations. We have a written word in which we may hide ourselves, we have a testimony cut up into sentences, so concise that a child can quote them, and written with so plain and keen a finger, that if they be quoted with the earnestness of the heart, the very tempter himself will reel under the shock of their quotation.

It is the Shepherd that is calm, though he is going to be "smitten." the rod is lifted up that will fall heavily upon him, and whilst he yet sees it uplifted in the air, he says to the flock, "But after I am risen again I will go before you into Galilee." This is not something unexpected or unforeseen: an ancient prophecy is about to be fulfilled, but after it is fulfilled in what we may term its harsher aspects and meanings, there will come the broad morning of Resurrection, and the infinite joy of renewed, continued, and endless communion.

I am afraid that some of us do but meanly live from day to day in this Christian life. In one sense that is right—that Matthew 26:47-75

47. And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.

48. Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.

49. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.

50. And Jesus said unto him, Friend (comrade), wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.

51. And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest"s, and smote off his ear.

52. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

53. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels (the possible and the impossible)?

54. But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

55. In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief (as against a robber with swords and clubs) with swords and staves for to take me? I sat (a sign of authority) daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me.

56. But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.

57. And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas (already committed to the policy of condemnation, John 11:49) the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled.

58. But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace, and went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end.

59. Now the chief priests and elders, and all the council, sought (a word which implies a continued process of seeking) false witness against Jesus, to put him to death;

60. But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At the last came two false witnesses,

61. And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.

62. And the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?

63. But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.

64. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power (the power), and coming in the clouds of heaven.

65. Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy: what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have hard his blasphemy.

66. What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.

67. Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands,

68. Saying, Prophecy unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee?

69. Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.

70. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest.

71. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth.

72. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man.

73. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewayeth thee (the Galilean patois was probably stronger when he spoke under the influence of strong excitement).

74. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the (the Greek has no article) cock crew.

75. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.

The Arrest of Christ

Our concern is to know the spirit and conduct of Jesus in this transaction. How does he hold himself, by what spirit is he animated, how does he stand the stress of his infinite trial? We have little to do with the rabble gathered around him: we have only to do with the ruffian band in so far as it shows, in luminous contrast, the spirit and service of Jesus Christ. Observe what a grasp of principles Jesus Christ displayed in this culminating hour of his life. There are crises in which men are obliged to look about them for their principles. There are occasions upon which men of wit can answer surprising assault; there are other days and nights wherein a man has no wealth if he be not rich in doctrine, principle, and conviction. Riches of an earthly kind make themselves wings and flee away, but there are unsearchable riches that reveal themselves in glittering brightness when the soul would otherwise be in its poorest and most painful condition.

There was one impetuous man on the side of Christ, who stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck a servant of the high priest and smote off his ear. That was a little man: he mistook the range and scope of energy—he was the victim of the continual sophism which debases our thinking and causes our action to palpitate with vicious life, that it is necessary to do something. Jesus found a place in life for Simon. Jesus Christ showed what could be done by submission. Peter was anxious to meet force with force, a sophism so plausible that statesmen have been victimised by it, and men of every age have fallen down to worship that golden calf. It seems to be born in us, does the feeling that force must be met by force. There is a force of passiveness, there is an energy of silence, there is the magnificent retort of non-resistance, which puzzles men of common mind and ordinary heart, the very mystery of heroism to those who mistake noise for music and tumult for power.

The answer which Jesus Christ made upon the occasion showed that he was not too absorbed to neglect even the trifling incidents connected with the infinite tragedy. "Put up again thy sword into his place." That would have been a mere instruction, but following that instruction is the philosophy of civilization, the key of all definite and lasting progress, the very glory of human statesmanship and political and spiritual security. Who then could have expected another gospel? who could have said that even upon so trifling an occasion Christ would have interjected a revelation that would gleam in ever-growing brightness upon the mind of the ages? Yet that was exactly what he did. Not only did he give the instruction, "Put up again thy sword into his place," but he gave the reason for the instruction, namely, "For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." If he had never said anything in his life but that one word, he would have laid down a rule that the world would have grown up lo in all its education, disappointment, falling, and failure which it has experienced. We pass over the words lightly as we pass over all the grandest words ever spoken by the human tongue. We are so occupied with the anecdote, the moving panorama, the startling incident, that we overlook the philosophy of the grand, moral revelation, and hasten on, like impetuous Peter, to "see the end."

Jesus Christ did not attempt to snatch a transient victory. "Suppose you, Peter, could cut down all these men to the ground, it would amount to nothing: their progeny will come up: evil has an indestructible posterity, if it be encountered only by force. There must be another method of attacking this disease: it cannot be cut down with cold steel, it must be met by heavenly ministries, by spiritual and regenerative influences—put up again thy sword into his place." It could do nothing in the spiritual kingdom; when force meets force, death falls upon all who use it. There are triumphs, there are defeats, and there are failures that are successes: do not suppose that to smite down an enemy is to overcome the enmity. One wonders that men, reading these great sentences, so great yet so small—that they do not instantly un-cover in the presence of a Peasant who laid down in terms so luminous and definite the philosophy which underlies every beneficent and stable civilization.

Jesus Christ reminded Peter that all that was happening was in fulfilment of the Scriptures. "But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" Connect yourself with Destiny if you would be calm: do not live in the spluttering and dying anecdotes of the passing day. Consider that all things are elect of God, and move you in the current of His foreknowledge and forearrangement of things. You will be troubled, tossed about with every wind of doctrine, if you are living only from day to day, and upon the breath which is breathed from the human mouth. We must live in the eternity of God if we would be quiet amid all the storm and stress of life. There are some who resent the idea of a supreme will, or must boast of the predominance of Fate. This is a doctrine you cannot escape: your life is either gripped and driven by Fate, or must be ruled and blessed and sanctified by a Supreme Will.

But observe how evilly do they think and speak, who suppose that, having ignored the reigning will of God, they can rush into the cold and chilling sanctuary of impassable and inexorable Fate. Life, come upon me as thou wilt, I live in the will of the Father; whatever happens to me happens that the Scriptures must be fulfilled. The writing is old, and is rewritten every day—every life is a revelation, every breath is a miracle. Stand thou, O living man, in this sanctuary, and no fool shall be able to throw a stone into the depths of thy peace. Do not suppose that men come around you accidentally with swords and staves: they know not what they do: if your purpose is right, if your prayer is pure, if your face is set steadfastly, even with hardness, towards the Jerusalem of your destiny, you will be an ever-quiet and all-quieting presence in life.

The mistaken thinker is always caught in his own snare. Those who would escape from Will, fall into the arms of iron Fate, and those who decline to be guided by the Scriptures, which were fulfilled in the case of Christ, go straight over to another revelation which is incomplete without the written one. You cannot escape from prayer. You can run away from the altar of the church, red with blood glowing with fire, but you go to an altar of ice, and breathe out your soul's wish into a dead ear. Still you pray. You run away from the living paternal beneficent will, and try to quiet yourself with such narcotics as are handed to you by the iron hand of unpitying Fate.

One of the ablest minds that ever led the sceptical thinking of his time—I do not hesitate to say that I refer to Thomas Paine, a resolute and energetic thinker, and a man not without beneficence of purpose and patriotism of heart—has laid down the sophistical and monstrous proposition, that a revelation can only be made to one man, that no revelation has been made to us, therefore the revelation which Christ claimed to be fulfilled in his history was no revelation to after ages. How truly has every Achilles a vulnerable heel! A revelation granted only to one man? But there is a daily revelation, there is a lasting revelation of nature, providence, history, law, and when this lasting revelation, which comes to repeat its story every day, confirms the revelation that was given to minds and hearts in the ancient time, the revelation of today repeats in modern tones, and with present-day applications, all that was true in the immemorial time.

But the Scriptures must be fulfilled. Fulfilment of Scripture is the rewriting of Scripture. No promise can be realized without being written over again in its very realization. It is because human life takes up and repronounces divine words that the Bible keeps its hold upon human confidence and human love. Were it an old book, in the sense of speaking terms that have no immediate meaning, it would by mere lapse and effusion of time disable itself from holding supremacy over human thinking. It is because its words are old as eternity, yet new as the present morning, that the Bible is what it is and where it is.

So Jesus Christ rested in the fulfilment of Scripture. He laid his hand upon Destiny as ruled by a personal Will, and getting such hold of such principles, he was calm to apparent passionless-ness. Once indeed there was a ripple upon his placidity: said he, "Are ye come out as against a thief?" His soul was stung there. He knew that was the way thieves were taken, and to be thought a thief, to have all evil names fastened upon him, did seem to sting him into a question that might have in it one spark of sacred resentment. Or was he mocking the fools, was he showing them to what an unnecessary expenditure of strength and force they were going? Was he a man who would run away? Judas indeed said to those who were with him, "Hold him fast," probably not through any spirit of cruelty, but where a man lays hold upon the lightning he must hold it fast if he would keep it. Was there not some subtle tribute in this very exhortation addressed by Judas to the ruffian band? Did he not in this one exhortation seem to say, "I know his strength: I have seen his power: there is no limit to his resource. This is no ordinary culprit or criminal, if so we may describe him. Having touched him, surround him, draw a cordon round his life, or he will surely elude you?"

Sometimes men pay compliments unconsciously, as many men pray to a God they profess to ignore. Instinct may be relied upon more than argument: the inborn impulse of the heart will assert itself above all controversy and logic and intellectual creed. So the time will come when even Judas shall add a laurel to the chaplet which binds the temples of the Saviour, and therein shall the word be fulfilled, "His enemies will I clothe with shame, but upon himself shall the crown flourish." I know not but that when Judas himself will yet come to write the epitaph of Christ, we may find that grim monster of iniquity carving upon the marble rock—"INNOCENT BLOOD."

Then how grandly does Christ move between the possible and the impossible. When he said, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? I can, and yet I cannot. The possible is impossible." Have we not lived that strange experience? To the man who lives only in the letter the statement that the possible is the impossible will appear to be a contradiction in terms. It is the very key of life! you can do things which you cannot do: you cannot do things which you can do. Learn that lesson and life will have new aspects, and every day will have new experience. As a mere matter of "can," you could do the most outrageous and monstrous things this very day, and yet you could not do anything of the sort. You can burn your property, insult your friends, dismiss your servants, if it were a mere matter of literal ability, and yet you could not do one of these things! What keeps you back? Not force, not a sword—an invisible principle, a conviction, common sense, thought—all unknowable, unnamable, immeasurable qualities. As a mere matter of literal ability there is no length of absurdity to which you could not go, and yet you cannot take a single step in that direction—cannot, because of will, thought, sense of the fitness of things, because of the inspiration of righteousness, the dictation of justice and the regulation of common sense. So Jesus Christ says, "I could pray for angels—and yet I cannot: there is a pressure upon me which I will not resist: how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" How they tried to kill him: they wanted to be murderers without having the remorse of murder in their souls. That is what many men wish to be; if there were no hot blood in the case they would kill so quickly: it is the stain they cannot rub out, that they fear. Blood spouts out of the veins and splashes things that are a long way off; it is difficult to erase, it tells its burning story to scientific inquiry, falls in unlikely places, and comes up with speech of horrible eloquence to those who are in quest of the murderer.

How the Saviour was watched, malignly watched, always watched, watched with eyes theological, eyes political, eyes of envy, eyes of passion. No wonder. He opposed himself to the religion of his times—whoever does that, dies. He opposed himself to the orthodoxy, the respectability, and the self-security of his age, and whoever does that, dies!

When they urged him, and sought to drive him to extremities, we read these wonderful words, "But Jesus held his peace." That was probably the crowning miracle this side the cross. The great Speaker dumb, the Man of eloquence without a word upon his lips—silence was then truly golden. What made him so quiet? The struggle in Gethsemane. There was nothing more to be said: the Man who had passed through such experience was bound to be quiet. This is no arrangement or trick or expedient: it comes up out of the philosophy of the case. When we return from some grave-sides we cannot speak. When we leave some altars after all-night prayer, we cannot speak for the next three days. We seem to our friends to be distrait, absent, lost,—with a singular shining in the face, a new gentleness in the hand: it is not derangement, it is the fulfilment of the unwritten Scripture that sorrow conquered must be followed by eloquent silence. Have we not sat together when the favorite child has been taken out of the house to come back no more, and have spoken to one another never a word? Have we not sat down with our smitten friends seven days at a time and never said a syllable because their grief was very great?

The battle was won in Gethsemane: to have spoken after that would have been to degrade the grandeur of all that made the life of Christ sublime. Yet when he did speak, under the pressure of the High Priest, he spoke in a fitting tone. "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven." What could you do to a man who talked so? You cannot smite that man to his hurt: he is above your touch. You smite, and he does not feel the smiting: the soul in that hour is so much greater and grander than the body, that the body is but as a dead surface to the hand that ill uses it. Live in heaven, live in the actual possession of God's blessing, have your tabernacle and your pavilion in Eternity, and not a hair of your head shall perish. What could death be to a man who talked so? He had abolished death: they met, they caught one another in their terrific arms, and Death was left where the blood-sweat fell!

Now the hounds of hell have their turn. Who could find such reading as this—"Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him, and others smote him with the palms of their hands?"—six fists fell on him in a shower, and the villains said, "Who smote thee, thou Christ?" Then all spat together, and asked him to name them one by one. But they touched him not! All bad men do this selfsame thing. This is not an old villainy, it is a daily crime. We sit in church and shudder at the old Pharisees and Romans and Jews, and therein do we put the Scriptures eighteen hundred years away from us and make them a storybook, whereas we all live in this sixty-seventh verse.

Something did grieve Christ more than the enemy. Peter cut his heart in two. The enemy cannot hurt a man: if it had been an enemy that had done this, he could have borne it, but it was thou, a man mine equal, my acquaintance; we went to the house of God together, and together kept holy day. That is the sting! Peter said, "I know not what thou sayest." Then he added, "I do not know the man." In the third instance he began to curse and to swear, saying, "I know not the man." That surely is an ancient anecdote? so it is—yet it is not a day old: it was done this morning, we do it in some instances day by day. We are orthodox in conviction, we are heterodox in spirit and action. No enemy can hurt Christ as a friend can hurt him. The enemy does not get at his heart, the friend does. Peter is living now, he is living perhaps in the very most of us—not in this rough* and violent form, but in some mood more subtle yet not less deadly in its expression. O Searcher of hearts, have I denied the Saviour—have I made light of his name in order to avoid the mocking sneer of some enemy? Have I pledged his name in order to sanctify some bad transaction? Yet there was one thing about Peter that gives one hope: this was the weakness of violence, and therefore it will have suitable reaction. When he began to curse and to swear, I began to have hope of him. If he had coldly said, "I know not what thou sayest," he might never have been recovered. The violence of some cases is their hope. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, "I know not the man." The lips now foaming with such madness will presently pray. We say it is never so dark as before the dawn. Have hope of your worst ones: they may come back yet. Backsliders return. Do not give up those who have left you as if they would never, never be seen at home again. You tell me their last words were so violent and so severe. That is my very hope of them. It is very dark just now: let us go to the door—open it—and perhaps, there in the darkness, we shall find the violent one, "weeping bitterly."

Note

At the end of this volume In the separate Reference Library Book, will be found a special examination of the character of Judas Iscariot. The line of thought which is there pursued may be novel to some readers.