The Fig-Tree.

The Fig-Tree.

The hosannahs of yesterday had died away—the memorials of its triumph were strewed on the road across Olivet—as, early on the Monday morning, while the sun was just appearing above the Mountains of Moab, the Divine Redeemer left His Bethany retreat, and was seen retraversing the well-worn path to Jerusalem. Here and there, in the “olive-bordered way,” were Fig plantations. The adjoining village of Bethphage derived its name from the Green Fig.[29]Indeed, “fig-trees may still be seen overhanging the ordinary road from Jerusalem to Bethany, growing out of the rocks of the solid mountain, which, by the prayer of faith, might ‘be removed and cast intothe (distant Mediterranean) Sea.’”[30]An incident connected with one of these is too intimately identified with the Redeemer’s last journeys to and from the home of His friend to admit of exclusion from our “Bethany Memories.” These memories have hitherto, for the most part, in connexion at least with our blessed Lord, been soothing, hallowed, encouraging. Here the “still small voice” is for once broken with sterner accents. In contrast with the bright background of other sunny pictures, we have, standing out in bold relief, a withered, sapless stem, impressively proclaiming, in unwonted utterances of wrath and rebuke, that the same hand is “strong to smite,” which we have witnessed so lately in the case of Lazarus was “strong to save.”

The eye of Jesus, as he traversed the rocky path with His disciples, rested on aFig-tree. (Mark xi. 12, 13.) It seems not to have been growing alone, but formed part of a group or plantation on one of the slopes or ravines of Olivet. Its appearance could not fail to challenge attention. It was now only the Passover season (the month of April);summer—the time for ripe figs—was yet distant; and as it is one of the peculiarities of the tree that the fruit appearsbeforethe leaves, a considerable period, in the ordinary course of nature, ought to have elapsed before the foliage was matured. Jesus Himself, it will be remembered, on another occasion, spake of the putting forth of the fig-tree leaves as an indication that “summerwas nigh.” It must have been, therefore, a strange and unusual sight which met the eye of the travellers as they gazed, in early spring, on one of these trees with its full complement of leaves—clad in full summer luxuriance. While the others in the plantation, true to the order of development, were yet bare and leafless, or else the buds of spring only flushing them with verdure, the broad leaves of this precocious (and we may think at firstfavoured) plant—the pioneer of surrounding vegetation—rustled in the morning breeze, and invited the passers-by to turn aside, examine the marvel, and pluck the fruit.

We may confidently infer that Jesus, as the Omniscient Lord of the inanimate creation, knewwell that fruit there was none under that pretentious foliage. We dare not suppose that He went expecting to find Figs; far less, that in a moment of disappointed hope, He ventured on a capricious exercise of His power, uttered a hasty malediction, and condemned the insensate boughs to barrenness and decay. The first cursory reading of the narrative may suggest some such unworthy impression. But we dismiss it at once, as strangely at variance with the Saviour’s character, and strangely unlike His wonted actings. We feel assured that He literally, as well as figuratively, would not “break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.” He came, in all respects, “not to destroy, but to save.” Some deep inner meaning, not apparent on the surface of the inspired story, must have led Him for the moment to regard a tree in the light of a responsible agent, and to address it in words of unusual severity.

What, then, is the explanation? Our Lord on this occasion revives the old typical or picture-teaching with which the Hebrews were to that hour so familiar. He, as the greatest of prophets, adopts the significant and impressive method, notunfrequently employed by the Seers of Israel, who, in uttering startling and solemn truths, did so by means ofsymbolic actions. As Jeremiah of old dashed the potter’s vessel down the Valley of Hinnom, to indicate the judgments that were about to befall Jerusalem; or, at another time, wore around his own neck a wooden yoke, to intimate their approaching bondage under the King of Babylon; or, as Isaiah “walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia,” so did our Lord now invest a tree in dumb nature with a prophet’s warning voice, and make its stripped and blighted boughs eloquent of a nation’s doom!

On the height of their own Olivet, looking down, as it were, on Jerusalem, that fig-tree becomes a stern messenger of woe and vengeance to the whole house of Judah. Often before had he warned by Hiswordsandtears; now He is to make an insignificant object in the outer world take up His prophecy, and testify to the degenerate people at once the cause, the suddenness, and the certainty of their destruction! Let us join, then, the Master and His disciples, as they stand on the crest aboveBethany, and, gazing on that fruitless leaf-bearer, “hear this parable of the fig-tree.”[31]

Jesus, on approaching it (it seemed to be at a little distance from their path), and finding abundance of leaves, but no fruit thereon, condemns it to perpetual sterility and barrenness.

A difficulty here occurs on the threshold of the narrative. If, as we have noted, and as St Mark tells us, “the time of figs wasnot yet”—why this seeming impatience—why this harsh sentence for not having what,if found, would have been unseasonable, untimely, abnormal?

In this apparent difficulty lies the main truth and zest of the parable. The doom of sterility, be it carefully noted, was uttered by Jesus, not so much because of theabsence of fruit, but because the tree, by its premature display of leaves, challenged expectations which a closer inspection did not realise. “It was punished,” says an able writer, “not for being without fruit, but for proclaiming, by the voice of those leaves, that it had such. Not for being barren, but for being false.”[32]

Graphic picture of boastful and vaunting Israel! This conspicuous tree, nigh one of the frequented paths of Olivet, was no inappropriate type, surely, of that nation which stood illustrious amid the world’s kingdoms—exalted to heaven with unexampled privileges which it abused—proudly claiming a righteousness which, when weighed in the balances, was found utterly wanting. It mattered not that the heathen nations were as guilty, vile, and corrupt as the chosen people. Fig-trees were they, too—naked stems, fruitless and leafless; but then they made no boastful pretensions. The Jews had, in the face of the world, been glorying in a righteousness which, in reality, was only like the foliage of that tree by which the Lord and His disciples now stood—mocking the expectations of its owner by mere outward semblance and an utter absence of fruit.

The very day preceding, these mournful deficiencies had brought tears to the Saviour’s eyes—stirred the depths of His yearning heart in the very hour of His triumph. He had looked downfrom the height of the mountain on the gilded splendours of the Temple Courts beneath; but, alas! He saw that sanctimonious hypocrisy and self-righteous formalism had sheltered themselves behind clouds of incense. Mammon, covetousness, oppression, fraud, were rising like strange fire from these defiled altars!

He turns the tears of yesterday into an expressive and enduring parable to-day! He approaches a luxuriant Fig-tree, boasting great things among its fellows, and thus throughitHe addresses a doomed city and devoted land,—“O House of Israel,” He seems to say, “I have come up for the last time to your highest and most ancient festival. You stand forth in the midst of the nations of the earth clothed in rich verdure. You retain intact the splendour of your ancestral ritual. You boast of your rigid adherence to its outward ceremonial, the punctilious observance of your fasts and feasts. But I have found that it is but ‘a name to live.’ You sinfully ignore ‘the weightier matters of the law, judgment, justice, and mercy!’ You call out as you tread that gorgeous fane—‘The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord! The Templeof the Lord are we!’ You forget that your hearts are the Temple I prize! Holiness, the most acceptable incense—love to God, and love to man, the most pleasing sacrifice. All that dead and torpid formalism—that mockery of outward foliage—is to me nothing. ‘Your new moons and Sabbaths—the calling of assemblies—I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting.’ These are only as the whitewash of your sepulchres to hide the loathsomeness within—‘the rottenness and dead men’s bones!’ If you had made no impious pretensions, I would not, peradventure, have dealt so sternly with you. If like the other trees you had confessed your nakedness, and stood with your leafless stems, waiting for summer suns, and dews, and rains, to fructify you, and to bring your fruit to perfection—all well; but you have sought to mock and deceive me by your falsity, and thus precipitated the doom of the cumberer. ‘Henceforth, let no man eat fruit of thee for ever!’”

The unconscious Tree listened! One night only passed, and the morrow found it with drooping leaf and blighted stem! On yonder mountain crest it stood, as a sign between heaven and earthof impending judgment. Eighteen hundred years have taken up its parable—fearfully authenticated the averments of the August Speaker! Israel, a bared, leafless, sapless trunk, testifies to this hour, before the nations, that “heaven and earth may pass away, but God’s words will not pass away!”[33]

But does the parable stop here? Was there no voice but for the ear of Judah and Jerusalem? Haveweno part in these solemn monitions?

Ah! be assured, as Jesus dealt with nations so will He deal with individuals. This parable-miracle solemnly speaks to all who have only a name to live—the foliage of outward profession—but who are destitute of the “fruits of righteousness.” It is not neglecters or despisers—the careless—the infidel—the scorner—our Lord here addresses. He deals with such elsewhere. It is rather vaunting hypocrites—wearing the garb of religion—the trappings and dress of outward devotion toconceal their inward pollution; like the ivy, screening from view by garlands of fantastic beauty—wreaths of loveliest green—the mouldering trunk or loathsome ruin! We may well believe none are more obnoxious to a holy Saviour thansuch. He (IncarnateTruth) would rather have the naked stem than the counterfeit blossom. He would rather have no gold than be mocked with tinsel and base alloy! “Iwould,” says He, speaking to one of His Churches at a later time, “I would thou wert cold or hot.” He would rather a man openly avowed his enmity than that he should come in disguise, with a traitor-heart, among the ranks of His people. Oh that all such ungodly boasters and pretenders would bear in mind, that not only do they inflict harm on themselves, but they do infinite damage to the Church of God. They lower the standard of godliness. Like that worthless Fig-tree, they help to hide out from others the glorious sunlight. They intercept from others the refreshing dews of heaven. They absorb in their leaves the rains as they fall. Many a tuft of tiny moss, many a lowly plant at their feet, is pining and withering, which,butforthem, would be bathing its tints in sunshine, and filling the air with balmy fragrance!

Solemn, then, ought to be the question with every one of us—every Fig-tree in the Lord’s plantation—How does it stand withme? am Inowbringing forth fruit to God? for remember what we arenow, will fix what weshallbe when our Lord shall come on the Great Day of Scrutiny! We are formingnowfor Eternity; settling down and consolidating in the great mould which ultimately will determine our everlasting state; fruitlessnow, we shall be fruitlessthen. Theprinciplein the future retribution is thus laid down—“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.” The demand and scrutiny of Jesus will on that day be, not what is the number of your leaves, the height of your stem, the extent of your branches? not whether you have grown on the wayside or in the forest, been nurtured in solitude or in a crowd, on the mountain-height or in the lowly valley: all will resolve itself into theone question—Where is yourfruit? What evidence is there that you have profited by My admonitions, listened to My voice,and accepted My salvation? Where are your proofs of love to Myself, delight in My service, obedience to My will? Where are the sins you have crucified, the sacrifices you have made, the new principles you have nurtured, the amiability and love and kindness and generosity and unselfishness which have supplanted and superseded baser affections? See that the leaves of outward profession be not a snare to you. You may be lulling yourselves to sleep with delusive opiates. You may be making these false coverings an apology for resisting the “putting on of the armour of light.” One has no difficulty in persuading the tenant of a wretched hovel to consent to have his mud-hut taken down; but the man who has the walls of his dwelling hung with gaudy drapery, it is hard to persuade him that his house is worthless and his foundation insecure. Think not that privileges or creeds, or church-sect or church-membership, or the Shibboleth of party will save you. It is to theheartthat God looks. If the inner spirit be right, the outer conduct will be fruitful in righteousness. Make it not your worthless ambition toappearto be holy, butbeholy! Live not a“dying life”—that blank existence which brings neither glory to God nor good to men. Seek thatwhileyou live, the world may be the better for you, and when you die the world may miss you. Unlike the pretentious tree in our parable-text, be it yours rather to have the nobler character and recompense, so beautifully delineated under a similar figure three thousand years ago—“He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf, also, shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”[34]

Let us further learn, from this solemn and impressive miracle, how true Christ is to His word. We think of Him as true to Hispromises, do we think of Him, also, astrue to His threatenings? Judgment, indeed, is His strange work. Amid a multitude of other prodigies already performed by Him, this “cursing” of the fig-tree formed the alone exception to His miracles ofmercy.[35]All the others were proofs and illustrations ofbeneficence, compassion, love. But He seems to interposethisone, in case we should forget, in the affluence of benignity and kindness, that the same God, whose name and memorial is “merciful and gracious,” has solemnly added that “He can by no means clear the guilty.” He would have us to remember that there is a point beyond which evenHislove cannot go, when the voice of ineffableGoodnessmust melt and merge into tones of stern wrath and vengeance. The guilty may, for the brief earthly hour of their impenitence, affect to despise His divine warnings, laugh to scorn His solemn expostulations. Sentence may not be executed speedily; amazing patience may ward off the descending blow. They may, from the veryforbearanceof Jesus, take impious encouragement to defy His threats, and rush swifter to their own destruction. But come Hewillandmustto assert His claims as “He that isholy, He that istrue.” The disciples, on the present occasion, heard the voice of their Master. They gazed on the doomed Fig-tree, but there seemed at the moment to be no visible change on its leaves. As they took their final glance ere passing on their way, no blightseemed to descend, no worm to prey on its roots. The fowls of Heaven may have appeared soaring in the sky, eager to nestle as before on its branches, and to bathe their plumage on the dew-drops that drenched its foliage. But was the word of Jesus in vain? Did that fig-tree take up a responsive parable, and say, “Who made Thee a ruler and a judge over me?”

The Lord and His apostles passed the place a few hours afterwards on their return to Bethany.[36]But though the Passover moon was shining on their path, the darkness, and perhaps the distance from the highway, veiled from their view the too truthful doom to be revealed in morning light. As the dawn of day (Tuesday) finds them once more on their road to Jerusalem, the eyes of the disciples wander towards the spot to see whether the words of yesterday have proved to be indeed solemn verities. One glance is enough!Thereit stands in impressive memorial. One night had done the work. No desert simoom, if it had passed over it, could have effected it more thoroughly. Its leaves were shrivelled, its sap dried, its glory gone. Everand anon afterwards, as the disciples crossed the mountain, and as they gazed on this silent “preacher,” they would be reminded that Jehovah-Jesus, their loving Master, was not “a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent.”

Ah! Reader, learn from all this, that the wrathful utterances of the Saviour are no idle threats. Hemeanswhat Hesays! He is “the Faithful and True witness;” and though “mercy and truth go continually before His face,” “justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne.” You may be scorning His message—lulling yourself into a dream of guilty indifference. You may see in His daily dealings no sign or symbol of coming retribution; you may be echoing the old challenge of the presumptuous scoffer—“Where is the promise of His coming?” The fig leaves may have lost none of their verdure—the sky may be unfretted by one vengeful cloud—nature, around you, may be hushed and still. You can hear no footsteps of wrath; you may be even tempted at times to think that all is a dream—that credulity has suffered itself to be duped by a counterfeit tale ofsuperstitious terror! Or if, in better moments, you awake to a consciousness of the Bible averments being stern realities, your next subterfuge is to trust to that rope of sand to which thousands have clung, to the wreck of their eternities—an indefinite dreamy hope in the finalmercyof God! that on the Great Day the threatenings of Jesus will undergo some modification; that He will not carry out to the very letter the full weight of His denunciations; that the arm which love nailed to the cross of Calvary will sheathe the sword of avenging retribution, and proclaim a universal amnesty to the thronging myriads at His tribunal!

“Nay! O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” Come to the fig-tree “over against” Bethany, and let it be a dumb attesting witness to the Saviour’s unswerving and immutable truthfulness! Or, passing from the sign to the thing symbolised, behold that nation which God has for eighteen centuries set up in the world as a monument of His undeviating adherence to His Word. See how, in their case, to the letter He has fulfilled His threatenings. Is not this fulfillment intended as an awful foreshadowing of eternal verities:if He has “spared not the natural branches,” thinkest thou He will sparethee? “If these things were done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?”

Mourners! You for whose comfort these pages are specially designed, is there no lesson of consolation to be drawn from this solemn “memory?” Jesus smote down thatfig-tree—blasted and blighted it. Never again did He come to seek fruit on it. Ten thousand other buds in the Fig-forest around were opening their fragrant lips to drink in the refreshing dews of spring; but the curse of perpetual sterility rested on this!

He has smittenyoualso, but it is only toheal! He has bared your branches—stripped you of your verdure—broken “your staff and your beautiful rod;” but the pruning hook has been used to promote the Vigour of the tree; to lop off the redundant branches, and open the stems to the gladsome sunlight. Murmur not! Remember,but forthese loppings of affliction you might have effloresced into the rank luxuriant growth of mere external profession. You might have rested satisfied with the outward display ofReligiousness,without the fruits of trueReligion. You might have lived and died unproductivecumberers, deceiving others and deceiving yourselves. But He would not suffer you to linger in this state of worthless barrenness. Oh! better far, surely, these severest cuttings and incisions of the pruning knife, than to listen to the stern words—“Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone!” It is the most terrible of all judgments when God leaves a sinner undisturbed in his sinfulness—abandons him to “the fruit of his own ways, and to be filled with his own devices;” until, like a tree impervious to moistening dews and fructifying heat, he dwarfs and dwindles into the last hopeless stage of spiritual decay and death!

“If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?”

“He purgeth it (pruneth it), that it may bring forthmore fruit.”

Closing Hours.

The evenings of the two succeeding days seem to have closed around our adorable Lord atBethany. We may still follow Him in imagination, in the mellow twilight, as He and His disciples crossed the bridle-path of the holy mountain from Jerusalem to the house and village of His friend.

Much has changed since then; but the great features of unvarying nature retain their imperishable outlines, so that what still arrests the view of the modern traveller, in crossing the Mount of Olives, we know must have formed the identical landscape spread out before the eyes of the Incarnate Redeemer. It is more than allowable, therefore, to appropriate the words of the same trustworthy recent spectator, from whose pages we have already quoted, as presenting a truthful and veritable picture of what the Saviourthensaw.

From almost every point in the journey, therewould be visible “the long purple wall of the Moab mountains, rising out of its unfathomable depths; these mountains would then have almost the effect of a distant view of the sea, the hues constantly changing; this or that precipitous rock coming out clear in the evening shade—therethe form of what may possibly be Pisgah, dimly shadowed out by surrounding valleys—herethe point of Kerak, the capital of Moab, and future fortress of the Crusaders—and then, at times all wrapt in deep haze, the mountains overhanging the valley of the shadow of death, all the more striking from their contrast with the gray or green colours of the hills through which a glimpse was caught of them.”[37]

We have no recorded incidents in connexion with these two nights at Bethany. We are left only to realise in thought the refreshment alike for body and spirit our Lord enjoyed. Exhausted with the fatigues of each day, and the advancing storm-cloud ready to burst on His devoted head, we may well imagine how grateful repose would be in the old homestead of congenial friendship.

The last evening He spent at the “Palm-clad Village” must in many ways have been full of sorrowing thoughts. He had, in the afternoon, on His return from Jerusalem, when seated with his disciples “over against the Temple,” gazing on its doomed magnificence, been discoursing on the appalling desolation which awaited that loved and time-honoured sanctuary. This had led Him to the more sublime and terrific theme of a Day of Judgment. Not only did He foresee the grievous obduracy of His own infatuated countrymen, but His Omniscient eye, travelling down to the consummation of all things, wept over the fate of myriads, who, in spite of atoning love and mercy, were to despise and perish.

He left the threshold, consecrated so oft by His Pilgrim steps, on the Thursday of that week, not to return again till death had numbered Him among its victims. On that same morning He had sent His disciples into the city to make preparation for the keeping of the Passover Supper. He Himself followed, probably towards the afternoon, and joined them in “the Upper room,” where, after celebrating for the last time the old Jewishrite, he instituted the New Testament memorial of His own dying love. Supper being ended, the disciples, probably, contemplated nothing but a return, as on preceding evenings, by their old route to Bethany. Singing their paschal hymn, they descended the Jehoshaphat ravine, by the side of the Temple. The brook Kedron was crossed, and they are once more on the Bethany path. They have reached Gethsemane; their Master retires into the depths of the olive grove, as was often His wont, to hold secret communion with His Father. But the crisis-hour has at last arrived! The Shepherd is about to be smitten, and the sheep to be scattered! Rude hands arrest Him on His way. In vain shall Lazarus and his sisters wait for their expected Lord! ForHimthat night there is no voice of earthly comforter—no couch of needed rest;—when the shadows of darkness have gathered around Bethany, and the pale passover moon is lighting up its palm-trees, the Lord of glory is standing buffetted and insulted in the hall of Annas.

The Remembrances of Bethany are here absorbed and overshadowed for a time by the darkermemories of Gethsemane and Calvary. Jesus may, indeed, afterwards revisit the loved haunt of former friendship; but meanwhile He is first to accomplish that glorious Decease,but for whichthe world could never have had on its surface one Bethany-home of love, or been cheered by one ray of happiness or hope.

In vain do we try to picture, as we revert to the peaceful Village, the feelings of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary on that day of ignominious crucifixion!wherethey were—howthey were employed! Can we imagine that they could linger behind, unconcerned, in their dwelling, when their Best Friend was in the hands of His murderers? We cannot think so. We may rather well believe that among the tearful eyes of the weeping women that followed the innocent Victim along the “Dolorous way,” not the least anguished were the two Bethany mourners; and that as He hung upon the cross, and His languid eye saw here and there a faithful friend lingering around him while disciples had fled, Lazarus would be among the few who soothed and smoothed that awful death-pillow! Perhaps even when death had sealed His eyes, and faithlessapostles gave vent to their feelings of hopeless despondency, “We trusted it had been He who should have redeemed Israel,” the family of Bethany would recollect how oft He had spoken of this very hour of darkness and bereavement which had now come; Mary would, in trembling emotion, (in connexion with the humble token of her own gratitude and affection,) remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, “Let her alone, against the day of myburyinghath she done this.”

We need not pursue these thoughts. We may well believe, however, that when the first day of the week had come—and the glad announcement spread from disciple to disciple, “The Lord is risen indeed,”—on no home in Judea would the tidings fall more welcome than on that of Lazarus of Bethany. Martha and Mary had, a few weeks before, experienced the happiness of a restoredBrother. Now it was that of a restoredSaviour! Whether He revisited these, His former friends, the days immediately after His resurrection, we cannot tell. It is more than probable He would. May not some hallowedunrecorded“Memories of Bethany” be included in the closingwords of John’s gospel—“There are also manyotherthings which Jesus did?” On the way to Emmaus He joined Himself to two disciples, and “caused their hearts to burn within them as He talked by the way.” So may He not have joined Himself to the friends with whom He had so oft held sacred intercourse during the days of His humiliation—breathing on them His benediction, and discoursing of those covenant blessings which He had died to purchase, and which He was about to bestow, “set as king on His holy hill of Zion.” With what a new and glorious meaning to Martha must her Saviour’s words have now been invested, “I am the Resurrection and the Life—he that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

As the God-man, He had power over her brother’s life—He had now demonstrated that He had “power over His own;”—“power” not only to “lay it down,” but “power to take it up again.” Her Lord had “spokenonce, yeatwicehad she heard this, thatpowerbelongeth unto God.”

The Grave of Bethany was thus in her eyes inseparably connected with the grave at Golgotha. But for the rolling away of the stone from a moreaugust sepulchre, her brother must still have been slumbering in the embrace of death. “But now had Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.”

The Almighty Reaper had risen Himself from the tomb, with the sharp sickle in His hand. In the person of His dearest earthly friend He presented an earnest-sheaf of the great Resurrection-reaping-time—when the mandate was to be carried to the four winds of heaven, “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe;—Multitudes—multitudes in the Valley of Decision.”

Can we participate in the joy of the family ofBethany? Have we, like them, followed Christ to His cross and His tomb, and listened to the angelic announcement, “He is not here, He is risen?” Have we seen in His death the secret of our life? Have we beheld Him as the Great Precursor emerging from Hades, and shewing to ransomed millions the purchased path of life—the luminous highway to glory? Let our hearts be as Bethany dwellings, to welcome in a dying risen Jesus. Let us not expel Him from our souls by our sins—crucifying the Lord afresh, and puttingHim to an open shame. Let not God’s restoring mercies be, as, alas! often they are to us,unsanctified;—receiving back our Lazarus from the brink of the tomb, but refusing, on the return of health and prosperity, to share in bearing our Lord’s cross—to “go forth with Him without the camp—bearing His reproach.” If He has delivered our souls from death, and our eyes from tears, be it ours to follow Him through good and through bad report. Not alone amid the hosannahs of His people, or amid the world’s bright sunshine, but, if need be, to confront suffering, and trial, and death for His sake. Like the Bethany family, let us mourn His absence, and long for His return. It is but for “a little while” we “shallnotsee Him”—“again a little while and weshallsee Him.” Oh, blessed day! when the words of the old prophet will start once more into fulfilment, and a voice from Heaven will thus address a waiting Church—“Rejoice, O daughter of Zion, behold thy King cometh!” He cometh!—but it is now with no badges of humiliation—with no anticipations of sorrow and woe to mar that hour of glory. “His head shall be crowned with many crowns”—all His saints with Him toshare His triumph and enter into His joy. May we be enabled to look forward to that blessed season when, arrayed in white robes, with golden crowns on our heads, and palms of victory in our hands, these shall be cast at His feet, and the feebleHosannahsof time shall be lost and merged in the rapturous Hallelujahs of eternity!

The Last Visit.

What saddening thoughts are associated with our final interview with a Beloved Friend! He was in health when we last met; we little dreamt, in parting, we were to meet no more. Every circumstance of that interview is stored up in the most hallowed chambers of the soul. His last words—his lastlook—his last smile—they live there in undying memorial! Such was now the case with the disciples. They had their last walk together with their beloved Master. Ere another sun goes down over the western hills of Jerusalem He will have returned from His consummated Work to the bosom of His Father!

And what is the spot which he selects as the place of Ascension?—What the favoured height or valley that is to listen to His farewell words?Still it isBethany—the loved home of cherished friendship, where, so lately, hours of anticipated anguish had been mitigated and soothed. The spot which, above all others, had been witness to His tears and His Omnipotence, is selected as thatfromwhich, ornearto which, He is to bid adieu to his sorrowing Church on earth. Although there seem to be no special reasons for this selection, we cannot think it was altogether undesigned or insignificant. Our Lord was stillMan—participating in every tender feeling of our common nature; and just as many are known in life to express a partiality for the place of their departure, where they would desire their last hours to be spent, or for the sepulchre or churchyard where they would prefer their ashes to be laid;—so may we not imagine the Saviour, reverting in these, His last hours, to the hallowed memories of that hallowed village, wishful that He might ascend to heaven within view, at least, of the spot He loved so well?

Whether this be the true explanation or no, we are called now to follow Him, in thought, from His concluding visit in Jerusalem to the scene of Ascension. We may imagine it, in all likelihood,the early dawn of day. The grey mists of morning were still hovering over the Jehoshaphat valley, as for the last time he descended the well-known path. He must have crossed the brookKedron—that brook which had so oft before murmured in His ear during night-seasons of deep sorrow—He must have passed byGethsemane—the thick Olives pendant with dew, the shadows of early day still brooding over them. Their gloomy vistas must have recalled terrible hours, when the sod underneath was moistened with “great drops of blood.” Can we dare to imagine His sensations and feelings when passingnow? Would they not be the same as that of every Christian still, while passing through memories of trial, “It was good for me to be here?” Had He dashed untasted to the ground, the cup which in the depths of that awful solitude He had grasped six weeks before, His work would have been undone—a world yet unsaved! But He shrunk not from that baptism of blood and suffering. Gethsemane can now be gazed upon as a place of triumph. His Omniscient eye, as He now skirts its precincts, connects its awful struggles with theRedemption and joy of ransomed myriads through all eternity. He has the first realising earnest of the prophet’s words,—Seeing of the fruit of “the travail of His soul,” He is “satisfied.”

But vain is it to conjecture feelings and emotions unrecorded. It would, doubtless, not be on Himself the Great Redeemer would, in these waning hours of earthly communion, chiefly dwell. They would rather be occupied in preparing the hearts of the sorrowful band around Him for His approaching departure. He would unfold to them the glorious conquests which, in His name, they were on earth to achieve, as His standard-bearers and apostles, and the ineffable bliss awaiting them in that Heaven whither He was about to ascend as their Forerunner and Precursor. It must indeed have been to them a season of severe and bitter trial! They had in their hearts a full and tender impression—a gushing recollection of three years’ unvarying kindness and affection—sorrows soothed—burdens eased—ingratitude overlooked—treachery forgiven. Many others they could only think of in connexion with altered tones and changed affection.Hewasever the same! But the saddayhasreally come when they are to be parted fortime! No more tender counsels in difficulty,—no more gentle rebukes in waywardness,—no more joyous surprises, as on the shores of Tiberias, or the road to Emmaus, when, with joyful lips, they would exclaim,—“It is the Lord!” This dream of blissful intercourse, like a meteor-flash, was about to be quenched in darkness. Their Lord was to depart, and long, long centuries were to elapse ere His gracious face was to be seen again!

Whether, in this ever-memorable walk to the place of Ascension, the Adorable Redeemer visited the village of Bethany, we cannot tell. It is possible—it ismorethan possible—He may have honoured the home of Lazarus with a farewell benediction; but this we can only conjecture. All the notice we have regarding it is: that “He led them out as far as to Bethany;” that He there lifted up His hands and blessed them; and was from thence taken up to Heaven.[38]Honoured hamlet!thus to be alone mentioned in connexion with the closing scene in this mighty drama! He selected notBethlehem, where angel hosts had chanted His praise; norTabor, where celestial beings had hovered around Him in homage; norCalvary, where riven rocks and bursting grave-stones had proclaimed His deity; nor theTemple-court, in all its sumptuous glory, where for ages His own Shekinah had blazed in mystic splendour; but He hallows afresh the name of a lowlyVillage; He consecrates a Home of love.Bethanyis the last spotwhich lingers on His view, as the cloud comes down and receives Him out of sight.

Let us gather for a little in imagination on this sacred ground. Let us note a few of the interesting thoughts which cluster around it, and listen to the Saviour’s farewell themes of converse there with His beloved disciples.

(1.) He cheers their hearts with the promised baptism of the Holy Ghost.—“John,” He had said, a few hours before, at His last meeting with them in Jerusalem, “truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”[39]He, moreover, enjoined them to linger in the Holy City, and wait this “promise of the Father” which “they had heard of Him;” and now, once more, when on the eve of Ascension, He speaks of the coming of the same Holy Ghost to qualify them for their future work.[40]

This, we know, was the great topic of consolation with which He had often before soothed their hearts at the thought of parting.Hewas to leave them;—but an AlmightyParacleteorComforterwasto take His place, whose gracious presence would more than compensate for the withdrawal of His own. For when, on the intimation of His coming departure, He observed that sorrow was filling their hearts—“It is expedient,” said He, “for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”[41]

Now that the anticipated hour is come, He reverts to the same omnipotent ground of comfort;—that this Divine Enlightener, Cheerer, Sanctifier, would fill up the gap His own withdrawal would make. They were about to enter on a new dispensation—the dispensation of theSpirit—and the approaching Pentecost was to give them a pledge and earnest of His mighty agency in the conversion of souls.

Jesus, our adorable Lord, has ascended to “His Father and our Father—to His God and our God!” We, like the disciples, have to mourn the denial of His personal presence. His Church is left widowed and lonely by reason of His departure. But have we known, in our experience, thevalue of the great compensating boon here spoken of? Have we known, in the midst of our weakness and wants, our griefs and sorrows, the power and grace of the promised Paraclete? It is to be feared we do not realise or value His blessed agency as we ought. To what is much of the deadness, and dullness, and languor of our frames to be traced—the poverty of our faith, the lukewarmness of our love, the coldness of our Sabbath services, the little hold and influence of divine things upon us? Is it not to the feeble realisation of the quickening, life-giving power of this Divine Agent? “It is the Spirit that quickeneth.” Church of the living God! if you would awake from your slumber and apathy; if you would exhibit among your members more faithfulness, more zeal, more love, more unselfishness, more union—if you would buckle on your armour for fresh conquests in the outlying wastes of heathenism, it will be by a fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost! Another Pentecost will usher in the Millennial morning. The showers of His benign influences will form the prelude to the world’s great Spiritual Harvest. “Pray ye, then, the Lord of the Harvest,”that His Spirit may “come down like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth,” and that the promise regarding the latter-day glory may be fulfilled—“I will pour down My Spirit upon all flesh.” Or would you have Jesus made more precious to yourownsoul? Would you see more of His matchless excellences,—the glories of His person and work,—His suitableness and adaptation to all the wants and weaknesses, the sorrows and temptations, of your tried and tempted natures. Pray for this gracious Unfolder of the Saviour’s character. This is one of His most precious offices—as theRevealerof Jesus. “He shall glorifyMe; for He shall receive ofMine, and shall shew it unto you!”[42]

(2.) Another theme of Christ’s converse, when within sight of Bethany, wasthe nature of His Kingdom—“Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?” was the inquiry of the disciples. “And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power.”[43]

The thoughts of His followers were clinging tothe last to the dream of earthly sovereignty. How difficult it is to get even the renewed and regenerated mind to understand and realise Heavenly things, and to wean it from what is of the earth earthy! He checks their presumption—He tells them these are questions which they may not pry into. There is to be no present fulfilment of these visions of millennial glory. That day and that hour are to be wrapt in unrevealed and impenetrable secrecy. The Church may not attempt rashly and inquisitively to lift the veil. She is not to know thetimeof the Saviour’s appearing, that she may live every day in the frame she would wish to be found in when the cry shall be heard, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh.” The apostolic band are, in the first instance, to be cross-bearers, as He their Master was,—witnesses to His sufferings, earthen vessels, defamed, persecuted, reviled,—before they become partakers of His purchased happiness and bliss!

Nevertheless, it was a grand and glorious mission He sketched out for them. How worthy ofHimself—of his loving, forgiving, unselfish Spirit—was the opening clause in that wondrousMissionary Charter He then put into their hands. Even at the moment when all the memory of Jewish ingratitude was fresh on His heart, He inserts a wondrous provision of mercy and grace. They were to proclaim His name through the wide world; but wasJerusalem(the scene of His ignominy) to form an exception? Nay, rather they were tobegin there! The Gospel-Trumpet was to be sounded in its streets. The assassins of Gethsemane, the murderers of Calvary were to listen to the first offers of pardon and reconciliation—“And He said unto them ... that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations,beginningatJerusalem!” Precious warrant, surely, are these words to “the chief of sinners” to repair to this gracious Saviour. If even for “the Jerusalem sinner” there is mercy, can there be ground for one human being to despair?

But “beginning” at Jerusalem, the Gospel Commission did notendthere? It was to embrace, first, “Judea,” then “Samaria,” then “the uttermost parts of the earth.”[44]Theascending Redeemer’s expansive heart took in with a vast sweep the wide circle of humanity. From the elevated ridge of Olivet, on which He now stood with the arrested group around Him, He might tell them to gaze, in thought at least, far north beyond the Cedar Heights of Lebanon and Hermon;—Southward to the desert and the Isles of the Ocean;—Westward to the fair lands washed by the Great Sea;—Eastward across the palm-trees of Bethany and the chain of Moabite mountains on unexplored continents, where heathenism still revelled in its rites and orgies of impurity and blood. With Palestine as their centre and starting-point, the vast World was to be their circumference. The Gospel was to be preached “as a witness to all nations.” The Great Mission-Angel was to “fly through the midst of Heaven,” having its everlasting truths to “preach to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”

Arewefaithfully fulfilling our Lord’s farewell Apostolic Commission? As members of the Church of God, component parts of the Royal Priesthood, are we doing what lies in our power,that His name, and doctrine, and salvation, be proclaimed to the uttermost parts of the earth? Or is it so, that we are looking coldly, suspiciously, indifferently on the Church’s efforts in the cause of Missions, suffering her funds to fail, and her schemes to languish, and her devoted servants to sink in discouragement? Or rather, are we prepared to incur the responsibility of heathen souls, through our neglect, passing hour by hour into eternity, with a Saviour’s name unheard of, and a Saviour’s love unknown? Go to the Rocky ridge aboveBethany, and listen to the parting injunction of our Great Master. His last words, ere the cloud received Him to glory, wereMissionarywords, aMissionaryappeal, a pleading for the Gospel being sent to heathen shores. Ah!our own Britainwas then among the number! If the Apostolic Company had in these days, like many among ourselves, refused, on the ground of thehome-heathenin Judea, to send any of their band abroad, where wouldwehave been at this hour? With our Druids’ altars, our bloody sacrifices, our cruel rites! But their best and noblest were commissioned to speed from port to port in theMediterranean and the Isles of the Gentiles, with the Gospel errand on their lips, and the blessing of God on their labours! All honour to these leal-hearted men, who, in spite of national and hereditary prejudices, implicitly followed the will of their Lord and Master, who had given to them, as He has given to us, a great Missionary motto—“The field is the world!”

And now His themes of instruction and comfort are over—He is about to Ascend! The symbolic cloud—(invariable emblem of Deity)—comes down to conduct Him to His throne. What a moment was that! Glory in view—the hallelujahs of angels floating in His ear—the air thronged with celestial hosts waiting as His retinue to bear Him upwards;—all heaven in eager expectancy for her returning Lord. And yet—how is He employed? Is the world, that had so disowned Him, disowned now in return? Are the disciples, who have so oft deserted Him, now deserted in return?—their name forgotten in the thought of the loftier spirits who are to gather around Him in the skies? Nay, His every thought is centered on the weeping bandof earth. “He lifted up his hands and blessed them!”[45]His last words are those of mercy—His last act is outstretching His arms to bless! It was an act replete with meaning to the Church of God in every age. Jesus, when He was last seen on earth, wore no terror on His lips—but He left our world pouring a benediction on His redeemed people.

There is something, moreover, significant in the recorded fact that “whileHe blessed them, He was parted from them!” The Benediction was unfinished when the cloud bore Him away! As they gazed upwards and upwards till that glorious form was diminishing in the blue sky above, still His hands were extended;—the last dim vision which lingered on their memories was the True High Priest blessing the representative Israel of God! It would seem as if He wished to indicate that the act begun on earth was to be carried on and perpetuated in heaven—that though parted from them, His outstretched arms would still plead for them on the Throne. Hisvoicecould no longerbe heard—but His blessing still would continue to descend till He came again!

Wondrous close to a wondrous life! We have traversed in thought many other memorials of Bethany. We have stood by the gate where Martha met her Lord—the silent sepulchre which listened to the voice of Omnipotence—the holy home where friendship was realised such as earth never before or since beheld. But surely not less sacred or hallowed than any of these is the scene presented on the green ridge rising to the west of the village, overlooking its groves of palm. Before superstition ventured to raise its cumbrous monument on the heights of Olivet, may we not think of the scene of the Ascension, rather in connexion with threelivingTemples? May we not think of it as oft and again visited by Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus? May we not well imagine it would form a hallowed retirement for solemn meditation! Amid more sorrowful thoughts, connected with their Lord’s absence from them, would they not there often muse in holy joy over the now fulfilled prophetic strains of their minstrel King?—“Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivitycaptive: Thou hast received gifts for men; yea,forthe rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell amongthem.”[46]

Dowelove also to linger in spirit on that spot, and listen to that benediction?—“Blessed,” we read, “are they that know the joyful sound.” In these words there is a beautiful allusion to the sound of the pendant bells on the vestment of the High Priest in the Jewish temple of old. When the assembled multitudes in the outer court heard their music within the holiest of all, it conveyed the assurance that the High Priest was there, actively engaged in his official duties—sprinkling the Mercy Seat with blood, and pleading for the nation. They felt “blessedness” in hearing andknowing“that joyful sound.” Beautiful type ofJesusthe Great High Priest within the veil! We seem, as we behold Him standing on the crest of Olivet, to listen to the first note of these gladsome chimes. He leaves His Church proclaiming nothing but blessings. As He rises upwards, and the diminishing cloud recedes from sight, still the music of benediction seems to float on the calmmorning air. The Golden Bells are sounding—and though the celestial notes cease, it is only distance which renders them inaudible. They are still pendant at His Royal Priestly robes, telling us that still He intercedes! Oh, let us now hear His benediction! Let the comforting thought follow us wherever we go—“Jesus is pleading for me within the Veil.” He left this worldblessing—He is engaged inblessingstill. “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.”

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