'Now my spells are all o'erthrown,And what strength I have's my own;Which is most faint.'
A mournful conclusion, and yet one to which many a man of high genius has been brought, and out of which, perhaps, in the end he has derived very precious lessons. Was this to be the result of theprophet'smeditation also? No! it comes forth in quite other words, which were a reply both to the questionings in his own soul, and the shallower perplexities and speculations of his disciples. 'A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from above.' As if he had said: 'You need not be careful of my fame. If I have ever spoken a word which has entered into you, and shown you your ownselves, and has made you truer, better men, that word was given me by the Lord of your spirit and mine; He enabled you to take it in. Out of the bosom of God, where that Word is whose life is the light of men, did these quickening, illuminating words proceed. Just so far as my words have led you to turn tothatWord who is always with you, and who has promised that He will come and manifest Himself to you,—just so far have they been wholesome and effectual. "You yourselves bear me witness, that I said I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him." As I never pretended to be that unseen Light, which I told you was struggling with your darkness, so—you know it well—I never pretended to be the Christ, the Anointed One, the King of Israel. For my message was that this Christ must be that Light of the world, that Word made flesh. I told you that He alone would baptize with the Spirit, because He alone would be fully baptized with the Spirit. I am sent before Him,—sent, as I said, to baptize with water, that so He might be made known to Israel who has the higher baptism.' And then, as if he were caught away by a new and diviner inspiration, as if the very meaning of that word, Christ the anointed, were revealed to him,—as if, in the light of that meaning, a thousand old songs and symbols were interpreting themselves to him,—he goes on, 'He that hath the bride is the bridegroom.' The vision of a king was before him; of a king, the direct contrast to the tyrants of the earth. In place of a Deioces, hidden in the recesses of some Median palace—in place of a Tiberius, governing the world by spies—he sees One 'who is fairer than the sons of men, upon whose lips grace is poured, whose sword is on His thigh, and who rides on in truth and righteousness.' He sees Him coming to woo and claim His bride, 'whose beauty He greatly desires, who is all-glorious within, whose clothing is of wrought gold.' Such a Bridegroom all the prophets had, in one form of speech or another, been discoursing of. They had proved that they were dealing in no metaphors—pouring out no Oriental rhapsodies; for their revelation of Him had been connected with the homeliest exhortations to domestic union and purity; they had affirmed the relation of the particular husband and wife to have its foundation in this higher relation; they had treated all breaches of the marriage-vow as indications and results of the adultery of the race to its unseen Husband. And though the race meant in their minds Israel; though the people whom God had chosen, and with whom He had made a covenant, were those whom they taught to regard themselves as united in this eternal bond, of which covenants were but the outward expression, which existed long before Abraham or Noah; yet their language was always too large for even these limitations—was continually breaking through them. The King who was to reign over the Gentiles must be represented as their Husband; whensoever He should be revealed as the glory of His people Israel, He would certainly be revealed as the Light to lighten all the nations; that is to say, whensoever he appeared as the Christ of God, He would certainly appear as the Bridegroom of Humanity.
To speak of Him, then, by this name, was not, as some would make out, to anticipate the discoveries of New Testament Apostles. It was expressly to endorse and unfold the discoveries that had been made to Old Testament Prophets. It is only when he speaks of his own office in relation to this Bridegroom, that John looks at all beyond the previous teachers of his land; and then, that he may make their office also more intelligible.
'The friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.' I know scarcely any words in all the Scriptures which have a deeper and diviner music in them than these, or which more express all that a Christian minister and a Christian man should wish to understand and feel; and should hope that some day he may understand and feel as he who first spoke them did. That may seem to us a high ambition; we ought to consider it a poor ambition. After eighteen hundred years we should be able to understandbetter, to feelmoreintensely than John did, that all the joy which is intended for a human being—nay, in the strict sense, which is possible for a human being—comes from hearing this Bridegroom's voice. I do believe, brethren, that by sore experience, shameful experience, those of us who have had fewest saintly aspirations may learn that lesson. We have listened for the echoes of our own voices; we have longed to know what impression they made; we have tried to feast on the outward praise or the inward consciousness of their power or sweetness. Has it not been very miserable, unsatisfying food? has not the day's gluttony brought nausea and disgust on the morrow? Has not the gratification of that vanity gradually formed in us a craving, which no indulgence could appease, which every disappointment made intolerable? How much better has it been, if we have striven to take delight in the words and deeds of other men, to feel the praises of them as our own! 'As our own! Then we still are intended to connect what is outside of us with ourselves; we must, in some sort, refer them to a standard within us?' Here is the puzzle; one always recurring; one infinitely more tormenting in the practice of life than it ever can be in speculation; one that affects all our judgments of our fellow-men; one that never deserts us when we are alone. It never can be set at rest till we confess a Lord, from whom all that is good and dear and worthy to be admired in any human being is derived—a root of all mutual understanding and genial sympathy—a centre of life and joy. If we think that there is a Bridegroom who is ever bestowing His own treasures and loveliness upon the creatures who were formed after His likeness, whose nature He has taken, who is ever drawing those creatures out of their own narrow and dark prison-houses, to come and claim their rights as spirits, and to share with Him the free air and light in which He dwells, then we may begin to claim the place of His friends, and in our own hearts, as well as in those who have been most estranged from us, to hear Him speaking. That speech will not be monotonous; we shall know why it is said in the Apocalypse to be as the sound of many waters. In the accents of humiliation and penitence, in the accents of thanksgiving and praise, in the confessions upon sick-beds, in the laugh of children, in the stillness of the churchyard, in the noise of cities, in the cries upon the cross, in the message, He is risen,—we shall hear the Bridegroom's voice. It testifies that He has come and is coming to us and to all. Our joy is fulfilled only if we learn to welcome Him, and to bid our brethren welcome Him also.
And therefore John proceeds, most consistently and harmoniously: 'He must increase; I must decrease.' If the words had been spoken only of a new teacher who was baptizing more disciples than he, there would be a sadness and a kind of murmur in them, however they might denote a necessary submission. But when it is the Bridegroom of his own spirit, the divine Lord, from whom alone he had received light, in whom alone he could see light, who was to increase, the 'I must decrease' is not a qualification of the joy he had claimed as the Bridegroom's friend, but a principal part of it. How many a one has felt the misery of a self; has longed to become absorbed in the universe—to be nothing! It was a wish which a holy man such as John was did not dare to cherish, and yet which must have haunted him more than most. To have a glimpse ofthisannihilation; to see that it was possible to become less and less, while He in whom he was bound up, in whom was the spring of his life and joy, grew greater and greater; to feel that he might find his own personality in another;—was not this the consummation to which God had always been leading him? Was not this, too, the very meaning and explanation of the work in which he had been engaged? The Word, the Light of men, of whom he had told his countrymen, needed no longer his witness; for He was coming forth Himself to witness of that Father with whom He had dwelt eternally, to tell mankind of Him.
This higher testimony, this newer and grander revelation, is the subject of the verses which follow: 'He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: He that cometh from heaven is above all. And what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth; and no man receiveth His testimony.'
John had said before, that a man receives nothing but what is given him from heaven. He does not recal that language, but affirms it anew, when he says that every man in himself, every child of Adam, though a living soul, is 'yet of the earth, and speaketh of the earth.' He is tied to earthly measures and standards. If he applies even the faculties which he has derived from heaven to judge of heaven, he reduces it to the level of earth. But there is One who cometh from above, One who is above all, One who draws His light from the Fountain of light, One whose light in us is not a part of our darkness, but a divine power to scatter it. He testifies of that which He has seen and heard, of the heavenly things, of the will and nature and purpose of God. 'And no man receiveth His testimony.' Strange that John should say that! What he had heard from his disciples was that Jesus was baptizing, and 'that all men came to Him.' We are not told that he doubted their information; we are not told that he had any different information from more trustworthy sources. And yet he confidently affirms that His testimony is not received. Why? Because he was not speaking of what had happened in the few days or weeks since Jesus came to Jordan to fulfil all righteousness, but of the four thousand years during which He had come to His own, and His own had received Him not. That testimony which He had borne as the invisible Word of God He was bearing still, now that He was made flesh and dwelling among men. It was mightier in degree; it was not different in kind. It was still a testimony to the heart, to the inner man, and must be entertained or rejected there. What, therefore, the Baptist could say of the past, on the warrant of so long an experience, he could say surely of the present. The darkness would fight against the light. No man of himself, without an operation from above, without a higher baptism than that of water, whether administered by John or by Christ, would believe that which the Son of God came to tell him.
That this limitation to the expression 'no man' is involved in the very nature of the Baptist's discourse, is evident from the next verse: 'He that hath received His testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.' But what need of a limitation? Why should he have made a large assertion in one sentence, which is to be modified or contradicted in the next? The answer is contained in the words themselves: 'He who receives this testimony sets to his seal that God is true.' The Christ comes to baptize men with the Spirit, that they may receive that which of themselves they are both reluctant and unable to receive. The man who accepts that testimony, confesses his own reluctance and inability. He believes God to be strong and true, though he is weak and lying. And his mind becomes stamped with the impression of God's truth. The Spirit of God raises him above himself to know Him. It was necessary, then, to make the one assertion initsbreadth and fulness, that the other might not lose any of its breadth and fulness. It was necessary that no man should suppose himself capable of entering into the mind and kingdom of God—that all men might know that God was not deceiving them, when He promised to bestow that capacity upon them.
'For,' John continues, 'He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him.' He speaks the words of God. If He proclaimed a doctrine, a theory, a scheme of the universe—that might be taken in,—if some thought ill of it, others would embrace it. But He comes speaking the words of God—revealing the mind of the Eternal Being—showing forth Him who is truth and who is love. How can we grasp such a manifestation as this? What have our poor beggarly conceits to do with the idea of a Goodness without bounds? Let us understand it well, brethren. The Jews rejected the testimony of Christ, because it was the testimony concerning such a God as this. The difficulty of all difficulties, whatever we may fancy, is to believe inGod, in alivingandtrueGod, in a God who loves His creatures. It is a difficulty which no arguments can remove; a difficulty which the progress of ages does not diminish in the least, but makes stronger; a difficulty which is often most overpowering to the most religious men. The logician says, 'The understanding is finite; you cannot bring the Infinite within its range.' The philosopher of advanced civilization says, 'The belief in God was for little children; science is for us. Physical science does not reveal God; our worship of humanity dispenses with Him.' Religious men see evil all about them and within them. They can conceive of a punisher and avenger of evil; they can conceive that this punisher and avenger, if he has motive and compensation sufficient, may exempt some from the destruction which he has decreed for the majority. They cannot believe in Love.
The logician is right. St. John said, eighteen hundred years ago, that the Light had shined in the darkness, and the darkness had not comprehended it. If we think only of our understanding, if we refuse to believe that there is a Word always illuminating it, we think only of the darkness, and we may say boldly, 'It can know nothing of God; we have nothing to do with Him.' The modern philosopher of advanced civilization is right. We cannot discover God in the world; we cannot discover in the world anything higher than ourselves. If there is no Bridegroom of humanity, who witnesses to it of a Father, and binds it to a Father, we can only worship the world, or worship humanity—that is to say, worship ourselves. The religious man who exalts evil into the throne of the universe is right. All the witnesses of the conscience that there is a God infinitely good,—all the witnesses of the heart that man is made to be in conformity with that infinite Good, and can be satisfied with nothing else—are simply mockeries and delusions, which it is the business of the disciple and minister of Christ to trample upon, to confute with words taken out of the Bible, till he has succeeded in making young men profligates and atheists, old men worldlings and hypocrites,—if there has not been in the world an only-begotten Son full of grace and truth, who has come forth from the Father to testify of the Father, and to whom the Father has given His Spirit without measure, that He might baptize with it all who receive His testimony, all who believe that God is true, not false—good, not evil.
To this subject the last and most memorable words of this whole chapter refer, those in which John the Baptist looks into the promised land which he was not to enter, in which he winds up the old dispensation, in which he introduces the new. 'The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand. He that believeth on the Son ofGod hath everlasting life: he that believeth not the Son of God hath not life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.' Henceforth we shall hear no longer of a prophet discoursing of a Word who has come to him, and from whom his light and the light of all men has been derived. We shall findthatWord discoursing as a Son concerning a Father, conversing with a Father, showing forth a Father. We are to hear how this testimony is received, especially how it is received by the most religious portion of the Jewish people. We are to learn that, though their opposition to Jesus took many forms, there was one dark root of all their hostility and hatred. They could not bear to hear Christ speak of a Father—of a Father who loved the world. Whenever they thought of God, a dark image of wrath was present to them; that wrath abode upon them, settled in them. How was it possible for them, then, to see in Jesus the perfect image of the Father,—in His wrath against all baseness and vileness and hypocrisy, the true Divine wrath which is the expression of the deepest love,—in His sympathy with publicans and sinners, the self-same love? How was it possible for them to see in the Son lifted on the cross, the King whom prophets and holy men had desired, the Son of God in whom dwelt the fulness of the Father, because the fulness of love, bodily? And, therefore, the wrath which they had invoked upon all others, and cherished in their own hearts, came upon them to the uttermost. They rejected their King and Bridegroom, and all the national and spiritual life which had proceeded from Him perished inevitably.
I have come back to the subject of which I was speaking last Sunday. All Christian preaching should return continually to the Cross. It can never find any other object so central or so glorious. But the death of Christ and His resurrection are inseparable. I have been preaching you an Easter sermon to-day. For, if you think of Easter as apostles and martyrs thought of it, you will think of it as the witness that the Bridegroom of humanity has presented and justified humanity before His Father. You will pray for the Spirit of the Father and the Son, that you, believing in that justification, may rise with Him to newness of life. And you will join to these prayers another, that each of us, when the hour comes in which strength and heart fail, may be able to say with joy, 'I must decrease, that He may increase.' All that belongs to my own poor and selfish nature must decay and perish, that He, my Lord and Saviour, may be exalted,—that I and all His redeemed may see our own blessedness and glory only and for ever in Him.
[Lincoln's Inn, Sunday after Easter, March 30, 1856.]
St. John IV.10.
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.
The dispute between John's disciples and the Jew, of which I spoke last Sunday, was about purification. Apparently, John's answer to them, when they came to tell him that Jesus was baptizing, and that all men were coming to Him, had little reference to this subject.Reallyhis words threw the greatest light upon it. He did not say whether the baptism of Jesus had a more purifying effect upon those who received it than his baptism. But he spoke of another gift which Jesus, if He was indeed the Son of God, would confer upon those who believed in Him. 'He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son of God shall not see life.' It was a mighty thing for men to be purified, to have corruptions removed from them. But corruption is the consequence of death. Where corruption is, death must have entered. He who is the source and spring of life, He who can restore life, must have in Himself the very principle and power of purification. All instruments of purification must derive their virtue from Him. He must bethePurifier.
Accordingly it is to this quality of the divine Word, or Son, that St. John has from the first directed our thoughts. 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men:' this is the starting-point of his Gospel. The sign in Cana of Galilee was the sign that Jesus was the communicator of life. His discourse with Nicodemus turned altogether upon the life from above which the Spirit of God would confer upon men, and which would enable them to see the kingdom of God. The primary announcement of the forerunner, therefore, respecting the Word made flesh, 'He shall baptize with the Holy Ghost,' whatever more it might mean, could mean nothing less than this: 'He shall not merely cleanse away defilements; He shall impart the life which those defilements obstruct and seek to extinguish.' John did not say for a moment that water should not be the sign of entrance into the kingdom that was at hand—that it should not be Christ's sign, as it had been his sign;—but he said that it should be the sign, not merely of repentance and remission of sins, but of a higher and eternallife.
Was this an unusual and arbitrary application of the symbol? Surely not. Water, when it is applied outwardly, suggests only the thought of purification. Water, when it is taken inwardly, immediately suggests the thought of life. And this, therefore, is the point of connexion between the discourse of John with his disciples, which occupied us last Sunday, and the discourse of Jesus with the woman of Samaria, which is to occupy us to-day. The Evangelist points out the relation between the two subjects in his own mind and in the history, by the first words of the fourth chapter: 'When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (though Jesus Himself baptized not, but His disciples,) He left Judæa, and came again into Galilee.' What the disciples of the Baptist had angrily conjectured, the Pharisees would of course take for granted. They would assume that John and Jesus were rival teachers, and that one was supplanting the other. The thought of this might become the thought of Christ's own disciples: if it did, they would utterly misunderstand the work of their Master, and His relation to the preacher of repentance. Was not this a reason for leaving Judæa, and going into Galilee?
'And He must needs go through Samaria.' That was the most natural road. He might no doubt have avoided it; there was an inward and moral necessity why He should not. If He was setting up a kingdom in the whole land, portions of it which had been most separated from the rest must be claimed as belonging to it.
'Then cometh He to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph.' This country was connected with the oldest traditions relating to the commonwealth of Israel,—to the period before the giving of the Law, when the life of the fathers of the nation was entirely domestic and pastoral. In these traditions was the link between one part of the people and the other. The local associations with the events recorded in the Book of Genesis were witnesses that the rocks had once been united, however rudely they had in later times been rent asunder. There, especially, was the simplest and most faithful token of patriarchal times—awell. It was believed to have been dug by Jacob. It brought the name of the head of all the tribes, and the likeness of his mode of existence to their own, before those who could read no letters, and had little in their own thoughts to tell them that they were members of a chosen race.
'Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For His disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat.)' Such a request from a weary and thirsty traveller would not commonly have been refused by a woman of Palestine; and certainly we have no reason to think, from the Gospels, that a Samaritan was likely to be less friendly or courteous than one of the Southern people. It is not probable that the woman meant to refuse. But she thought she had a right, on behalf of her country, to trifle a little with the pride of a Jew, who, in a difficulty, would ask a favour of those whom he despised, though he would not hold any intercourse with them, or meet them upon fair terms. 'How is it,' said she, 'that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings' (do not traffic) 'with the Samaritans.'
That word, 'have no traffic or dealing,' seems to explain the first part of our Lord's answer. 'If thou knewest theGIFTof God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.' She had come day after day to draw water at that well. Had she never known that that water was agiftof God? Had no thirst on a hot day, or no failure of the spring, taught her that? Was water a thing to traffic in? Did not she recollect that it was a man, and not merely a Jew, who was saying, 'Give me to drink'? Did she never think of the gift of water as something very free and universal? This lesson was contained in the opening of the sentence; and the look and the voice of the Stranger had, perhaps, already carried it home in some degree to the woman's conscience. But the speech suddenly took another turn. There might be an exchange of gifts here also. 'If thou knewest who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.'
The words conveyed no immediate sense to her mind as to the nature of the gift which was spoken of. But her answer shows that the presence of the Stranger had not been without its effect. She speaks with less levity than before, with something of doubt, if not of awe,—'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his children, and his cattle?' I am far from supposing that this question indicates any suspicion in her mind that Hewasgreater than their father, or that He could know the country and where to find its secret springs as Jacob did. But that very reference to Jacob showed that the feelings of the woman were becoming more serious than they had been. The petty disputes of Jews and Samaritans were giving place to those remembrances of the past which make all common spots sacred, and ennoble even the vulgarest minds. Her well, that well at which she had so often filled her pitcher, was the one out of which, eighteen hundred years before, the patriarch had drunk, and his children, and his cattle. It was a step in her education, a preparation for the words which follow.
'Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.' I do not say that our version of this passage is in itself an incorrect one; nothing is harder than to find the most suitable equivalents for the words which are rendered here 'never' and 'everlasting:' but it would, I conceive, have been most desirable, by some means or other, to make the reader feel (which scarcely any reader of our translation does feel) that the two clauses answer to each other,—that εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, follows 'shall not thirst,' and that the adjective, αἰώνιος, is that which qualifies 'life.' I shall make no further use of this observation,—for there is enough in this passage to occupy us without any reference to it; but I could not pass it over because the word 'life,' which is the cardinal one of the passage, and I might say of the dialogue, must be considerably affected by that which accompanies it. I am far more anxious, however, that you should consider how our Lord describes the difference between the water of Jacob's well and that which He would give. 'The water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.' The woman had wondered where He would go to discover a fountain deeper and more abundant than that which Jacob had bequeathed. The answer is, 'He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again.' 'He must come, as you do, to fetch water continually. The supply of to-day will be no supply for to-morrow. But what if each man should have the spring in himself? What if it should be a spring ever renewed, kept alive by Him who first opened it?' 'A strange thought,' you will say, 'to set before an ignorant woman! What could she understand about springs or fountains within?' Very little at first, if we believe the Evangelist. Her reply is just what we might expect it to be. She relapses into the sort of banter with which she had begun the conversation. The gravity which she had exhibited for a moment has disappeared: 'Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.' A sufficient proof, most would say, if they dared, that this kind of mystical discourse was very little adapted to the comprehension of such a person as she was. But, my brethren, if we say this, we must say more. We must say that the whole Gospel of St. John—the simplest, as I have said already, in language and construction, of all the Gospels, that which Luther was wont to designate the child's Gospel—is unsuitable to simple people, and must be reconstructed according to our notions of simplicity. For that Gospel begins from the principle that Christ, the living Word of God, is the life and light of men, the life and light of all men. If that is true, it must have been the work of the Son of Man, of the Word made flesh, to let all manner of people know that He was the source and spring of their life,—that apart from Him they had none. Now, life must be inward; it cannot come to a man from the world which is about him. That may be full of signs and tokens of the life he wants. Each well, each drop of rain, may testify of it. But it must spring up within him. Whatever is enduring, whatever he wants to satisfy the infinite thirst within him, must be there.
You say, an ignorant woman could not enter into such a mystery as this. But there were mysteries that she could enter into. 'Jesus said unto her, Go, call thy husband, andcome hither.' It was a curious and startling break in the conversation. What had it to do with Jacob's well, or with the living water which she could not find there? Very much indeed. 'The woman said, I have no husband. Jesus answered and said, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.' Here were facts concerning her past and her present history; here was a revelation of something that concerned her own very self. Withthisthere was no trifling. It was not of Jacob's well, or of another well, that the Stranger was discoursing now. He was speaking ofher,—He was telling her what she was. 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.' She confessed it in her way,—'Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet.' All was not quite right with her;—He knew it, and He made her know it. She had offended the Power above,—perhaps He could tell her, also, how she might appease Him. Her fathers might have taught her wrongly. She would like to know. She would rather like, moreover, to make the discourse more general, less personal. A wish for truth, and a fear of it, light and darkness, in her, as in all of us, fought for the mastery. She said, 'Our fathers worshipped in this mountain,'—this venerable Gerizim,—'and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.' Whether or not she would have been ready at the bidding of a Jewish prophet to repair her errors, and earn the favour of God by giving up her Samaritan faith, and becoming a proselyte of the Temple, she had not perhaps asked herself; how much she would have gained by the exchange, our Lord's words in another Gospel, about those who became proselytes from heathenism, may partly tell us. But He who had sat by the well did not ask this proof of her desire for reformation. 'Woman,' He said, 'believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.' All she had asked—all that most Samaritans or Jews would have disputed about—waswherethey ought to worship. The thought upon which Jesus fixes her mind, is the Being to be worshipped. That new name, which John said the Son was come to reveal, is now proclaimed in the ears of a separatist and a sinner. He speaks not of the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, but of theFather. Such a name the woman might or might not have heard, as one of the names of Him who dwelt on Gerizim. At all events, it would be but one of them—one that would be lost amidst the various titles by which He was invoked—carrying no special significance to the mind of the worshipper. Still, far down in that mind there was that which responded to the word Father, which would awake up at the sound when it came from lips that felt all the power and reality of it. She who had had five husbands, had had a father. To feel that the God of the distant hill had anything to do with that human relation, was the dawn of a new day to her. The sun was rising in her heart, if there were ever so many clouds concealing it.
I have said that our Lord was drawing the woman's thoughts from theplaceof worship to theobjectof worship. He goes on, in the next verse, to tell her that ignorance of this object was the special ignorance of the Samaritan: 'Ye worship ye know not what.' And then He introduces words that have startled many, especially in this connexion: 'We know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews.' 'Could He,' it has been asked, 'claim this dignity for His own nation, at the very moment when He seemed to be breaking down all distinctions of nations? Anddidthe Jew know what he worshipped? Did not Jesus Himself say, "Ye know neither me nor the Father?"' I apprehend, brethren, that the assertion of this, as the great calamity of the Samaritan—that he knew not what he worshipped—is abundantly borne out by history. It was in all times a country of superstitions, the early home of Baal-worshippers, the later home of enchanters and fanatics, and of sects putting forward pretensions to all kinds of spiritual powers, appealing to great necessities in the human mind, always leading it astray from its centre. The hard, cold Jew was not half so much open totheseimpressions. The sects in his land were dry and formal, bound together by certain notions about the law. Becoming more and more selfish, measuring everything by rules of profit and loss, he grew at last to be a mere worshipper of Mammon. How was it possible, then, for him to know Christ and the Father? But in his debasement, he still preserved the shadow of the blessing which had been conferred upon his race, and which his neighbour, though freer and more open-minded, had lost. He still clung to a distinct object of adoration. He was a protestant against the worship of spiritual phantasies. This poor shadow showed what the substance was which the Jew had inherited, and which was his distinction among all nations. Salvation was to go forth from his land. And salvation, so our Lord teaches us, consists in knowing what we worship; for that knowledge saves men from slavery to the world's idols, and to the idols of their own hearts, which is their great curse and misery.
But if this is salvation, it could not be salvation to worship in the temple of Jerusalem any more than in the temple of Gerizim. If this salvation was to go forthfromthe Jews, it could not be limitedtothem. Therefore He proceeds—'The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.' Here was a proclamation which, in a wonderful manner, combined the truth that had been partially revealed to the Samaritan, and the truth which still subsisted, though commonly hidden, distorted, even inverted, among the Jews. The confused sense of a spiritual worship, of men being spirits, was that which gave the magicians among the Samaritans all their power. They did acknowledge some invisible presence and influence acting upon them, and capable of producing wonderful effects, though they did not know what they worshipped. The Jew bowed down before a Being mightier than himself, who could lay down laws for him, who would execute those laws upon him. But he turned that Being into a selfish tyrant. A double transformation! The tyrant is revealed as a Father. The enchantments are supplanted by a Spirit proceeding from that Father, a Spirit of truth. Men are not to climb up to that Father by their offerings on Mount Moriah or Mount Gerizim, by their sacrifices or by their enchantments. The Father is seekingthem. He gives them His true Spirit to make them true worshippers. They must not wish to draw Him down to them; He would draw them up to Him.
'For God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' In those first words there was, as will be evident from what I have said, much that was in harmony with Samaritan feeling,—even with the feeling of an ordinary Samaritan like this woman. She had heard of spirits; she thought more about spirits than a Jew would have done. She did not speculate about them, but supposed that they might appear to her, or have some influence over her. But then came that other part of the sentence, which went to the very root of the tricks and superstitions with which she and her countrymen were familiar; 'they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' The Spirit of truth—thatmust enter into you,thatmust govern you,thatmust reform your life. A message this meant for the universe,—going to the very root of all religion and all philosophy, and yet bearing straight upon the conscience of that woman of Sychar who had come to draw water at Jacob's well.
Perhaps there is nothing that strikes us more in this conversation, which is so very direct and consistent in its purpose, and yet which follows all the windings of the human heart, beginning from 'Give me to drink,' and ending with a revelation of the nature of God; perhaps, I say, there is nothing more remarkable in it all than the result of it. You expect to see the woman bowing before the mysterious Foreigner, expressing her astonishment at his high doctrine, lamenting that she had spoken to Him so uncourteously. Not at all. She says, 'I know that when Messias cometh, He shall tell us all things.' 'Our people speak of One who is to be sent from God, of a Messias. I suppose, if these things are true about God being a Spirit, and about our having a Spirit of truth, He will tell us. We shall know as much of these things as we can know.' Evidently this part of the conversation has not yet taken hold of her. The part about herself has. 'The Messias will tell us all things; but this Jew has told me of myself; He has seen what I am.' And therefore, when Jesus answers, 'I that speak unto thee am He,'—so making a more direct profession of His name and dignity to this Samaritan than He had made in Jerusalem,—He surely meant to fix this impression on her mind: 'Yes, this is the test of Messiahship. Look for no other. Do not ask for some outward signs to tell you when He is coming, or what He can do. I that speak untothee—I that lay barethyheart—am He. That is the proof of my kingship over human beings; that is the proof of my being sent from God. I know what is in thee—the wrong of thy outward life, the evil of thy inward life. I know thy deepest necessities. I know thy want of a new spring of life within, of water of which thou mayest drink, and not thirst again. Thou needest that. All Samaritans, all Jews, all men and women who shall live, all nations and generations to come, will need it. I can give it them. For I can give them that Spirit of truth which the Father desires them to have, that they may know Him and worship Him.'
Lord, evermore give us this Spirit, that we thirst not, nor seek to draw the water of life, which is only in Thee, from the wells of earth!
[Lincoln's Inn, 2d Sunday after Easter, April 6, 1856.]
St. JohnIV. 48.
Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.
Distance of time is not always unfavourable to accurate recollection. We often remember a friend's words better, years after they were spoken, than the next day; because we understand them better, because we see how one of them rose out of another. So, I imagine, it must have been with the woman of Sychar. If she had repeated the dialogue with Jesus to her neighbours, as soon as she returned to her city, she would probably have misrepresented it. Short as it was, she would have mistaken words, she would have changed the order of them. A time will have come when she would be sure of what He had said, and of what she had said,—when she could say confidently to those who were collecting His words, 'This is what He told me—this, and nothing else.'
At first she seems to have been too full of one part of the Stranger's speech to care about the rest. She did not say, 'I have received strange lessons from this Jewish prophet about God being a Spirit, and about the water of life;' she expressed far more simply the effect of this speech upon her: 'He told me all that ever I did.' Was this exaggerated language? At first we are inclined to say so; then, perhaps, to justify her by resorting to some awkward hypothesis of our Lord having said many things to her which the Evangelist has omitted. The experience and conscience of human beings justify her far better. One who repeats to us all the passages of our history ever so accurately, does not tell us all that ever we did. A single flash of light may make the whole past visible to us, and show us that it isourpast. Thus was it with her. Her inmost self was revealed to the Stranger. And, what was wonderful, she did not wish to escape from His gaze. Awful as it was, she was attracted, not repelled by it. She had the comfort,—the greatest almost that we can experience,—of feeling that she had no longer anything to hide,—that there was One who knew thoroughly all that was wrong and all that was right in her. For Jesus had given her a sense of there being a right in her which she had never had before. She could not have explained how it came to pass; she was an ignorant peasant;—but it was so. The Stranger's speech had raised her to a new level. She had never seen the evil in herself as she had seen it now; but she had never so much risen out of the evil. When do we rise out of our evil but when the truth is told us, and we like to hear it?
And therefore she said, 'Is not this the Christ?' 'Can it be any one else? And must He not be the Christ for you, my fellow-citizens, as He is for me? Must He not know all that you ever did, as He knows all that I ever did?' It was the right sermon. They acknowledged at once that it was such a Christ they wanted; not one who could tell them about all things in the world, but who could tell them all things that evertheydid. He who had that power might or might not be such a Christ as scribes and doctors talked of; He might or might not have the marks by which they discerned the coming King and Deliverer. But He was the Christ for poor people who hewed wood and drew water, who were human beings, and who had committed sins. These were the proofs of His mission to them. He must give these; they asked no others.
The Apostle could have been no ear-witness of the conversation with the woman. But he describes with such vividness, the impression made upon the disciples who returned when she was departing, that it is difficult to suppose he was not one of them. 'And upon this came His disciples, and marvelled that He talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest Thou? or, Why talkest Thou with her?' The sense of astonishment which they all felt,—the look which showed to each how the other was sharing it with him, and yet the awe which restrained them from questioning Him,—the confidence that He had some great purpose, though they knew not what it was; all this came back to the old man as clearly as if he were then by the well of Sychar, not amidst the merchandise of Ephesus. And so, by a single instance, he makes clearer to us than he could by a multitude of explanations, what must have been continually in the minds of the disciples, when they stood in that presence, and heard words spoken and saw acts done which they could not sound with their plummets, and which called forth faith in Him because they could not.
But though this was so, they had no dread of speaking to Him about common earthly necessities. They knew that He had sat down weary on the well; they knew that He hungered and thirsted. He had sent them to buy food, and they could say, 'Master, eat,' without any doubt that He would partake of it just as any of them did. Probably He took what they offered Him, even while He said, 'I have meat to eat which ye know not of.' They had so little suspicion that He would ever work a miracle for His own support,—they were so inwardly certain that He would not,—that they said at once to each other, 'Hath any man brought Him ought to eat?' No. He had waited for their coming. The ravens had carried no nourishment to Him; He had not commanded the stones to become bread. There must have been a special joy, an unwonted radiance in His face as He answered, 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work.' He had that spring of life within Him, of which He had spoken to the woman, from which life might flow forth to her and to all. And yet He speaks of it as not an original fountain, even in Him. There was One from whom He was sent. The satisfaction of doing His will, of accomplishing his purpose,—this was His food; this was the sustaining principle within Him. St. John has taught us already, and will teach us more completely hereafter, that the relation of the Son to a Father, with all the trust, obedience, communion which it implies, is the subject of the new revelation. To be doing the will of Him that sent Him, to be in perfect sympathy with the will which is at the root of the universe, to be fulfilling the purposes of this will,—this Christ affirms to be meat to Him in a double sense; meat, as that which keeps up the strength of the man—meat, as that which gratifies and satisfies his desires.
One may feel there is great general force in such a sentiment as this; but what is itsspecialapplication to the story we are reading? Had His interview with the woman supplied Him with what could be called meat in either of these senses? What was there to sustain Him, what was there to delight Him, in her way of receiving His words?
The answer is given in the following passage: 'Say ye not, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already unto the harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.'
Many who have gathered crowds about them, who have produced a marked impression upon those crowds, have said, and said truly, that such success was meat and drink to them. If it did not feed their vanity, but sustained them because it showed them they were doing God's will and finishing His work, they may have understood something of Christ's meaning. But the secret food He partook of certainly came from no sudden success that followed His words. First, He met with a woman who had in general answered Him with levity; then a few people of her own rank came at her call. How little would such honours satisfy the ambition of some eloquent disciple of Christ, who has the power of influencing thousands! Could it satisfy Him who came to found a kingdom of which there was to be no end? Yes; for in these first sheaves He could see the certain pledges of a nation's, of a world's, ingathering. The corn-fields which the disciples saw about them would not be reaped for four months; yet the harvest would appear, because the seed had been sown. These men whom He saw coming showed Him that the other harvest was nearer still. The fields were white already for that harvest; the disciples themselves would be reapers in it. He had sent them, and they would receive the wages of reapers. What wages? He had already told them that His own wages were to do the will of God, and to finish His work. Did they want better? They would gather in fruit,—the fruit of all His work and travail, of all God's revelations of Himself from age to age, of all the toil of patriarchs, kings, prophets. These had laboured,—they were entering into their labours. They were come in at the end of a period when all things were hastening to their consummation. They would have the reward which all these men had longed for,—the reward of seeing God's full revelation of Himself, of opening the spring of eternal life of which all might drink together. The divisions of time had nothing to do with an eternal blessing. The sower and the reaper would rejoice together. Why might not Jacob, who had given the well, and the newest Samaritan convert who drank of it, share in those pleasures which are at the right hand of Him, who is, and was, and is to come?
I have only given you a hint or two which may assist you in tracing out the sense of these great words. The Apostles did not enter into them for many years,—not till they had begun to reap the harvest of which He spoke, not till they had learnt that some of the wages of the reapers were persecution and disappointment. So they understood by degrees how unsatisfactory all promises were but those which He had given them; how miserable a thing it was to hope for any reward but that which had been and is His reward. I suppose we must be trained to understand Christ's doctrine in the same school. Till we have been under His discipline we shall have the temper of hirelings, counting His work a hardship, expecting to be paid hereafter for consenting to do it. Or else we shall look for instant harvests,—for mighty effects to follow at once from the things that we speak,—for those fruits which least manifest the calm, patient, loving will of God, and therefore bring no true and inward satisfaction to the spirit of a man. We must learn to see in the seed that same eternal life which is in the perfect flower and fruit—to believe that God will bring the one out of the other; otherwise we shall have much excitement and much weariness, but no food which can support us, no joy which will connect us with the ages that are past and the ages to come. That will not be given to us till we see, in God's revelation of Himself to one sinner, the token of His love to the world.
The whole doctrine concerning the rewards for obedience, which has been the subject of so many wearisome folios by philosophers and divines, is contained, I think, in these eight verses, and may be drawn out of them for daily use by any who think that the Apostle has a higher wisdom than can be found in his commentators, or in their own speculations. The remainder of the chapter contains, in a form as simple and as available, the solution of another problem which has exercised the wits of schoolmen and the hearts of wayfarers. Who has not been tormented with questions and answers about the nature, conditions, kinds, of belief,—about the force of testimony which produces it,—about the organ which exercises it,—about the security or the insecurity of the person who has it or who wants it? On all these points St. John gives us no dissertations. But he tells us a short story about certain Samaritans, and then another rather longer story about a certain Galilæan, which I think may supply the place of many dissertations.
The first is contained in these verses: 'And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on Him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samaritans were come unto Him, they besought Him that He would tarry with them: and He abode there two days. And many more believed because of His own word, and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'
Suppose this was translated into school phraseology about implicit and explicit faith,—suppose each of these terms was laboriously explained,—all the different opinions of Fathers, Mediæval Doctors, Reforming Doctors, Modern Doctors respecting each compared, weighed, adjusted,—how much learning we should possess! how much the Apostle's doctrine would expand in our hands,—how much we should expand in our own estimation! But supposing we had actually to find out what belief is in our own case, to trace the history of its progress, how thankful we should be to any one who would translate back the learned language into the language of the Gospel, who would let us hear what these Samaritans—vulgar people of our own flesh and blood—said about their belief and its growth!
The first stage of it we have considered already. What the woman told them had a great effect upon their minds, because she spake of what she knew, and not of what she did not know. If she had said, 'He explained the prophecies to me,'—who would have cared? What judge was she of the prophecies, and what judges would they be? If she had said, 'He wrought a miracle in my sight,'—there had been enchanters enough among them, who had imposed upon much wiser people than she was. Her fellow-citizens, if they were not very curious, would not have deserted their common business for such an announcement as that. But, 'He told me all that ever I did;' then she spoke from her experience. Whether she were wise or silly, a good woman or a bad, that was worth listening to; there were signs of truth about that.
They came and heard Him themselves. And then He told each of them whathehad done, showed him to himself, made him feel that he was in the presence of a Light. The Light entered into the separate hearts, and showed them their dark passages. And yet it was a common Light; it gave them a sense of fellowship they had never had before; it gave them a sense of being men, which they had never had before. And, moreover, it was a Light which scattered confusions, ignorances, falsehoods, that had been dwelling undisturbed within them, or that had only been disturbed by what they felt must have been a ray of this same Light.Andtherefore, without asking the opinion of any wise man whatsoever, these bold peasants said out frankly and broadly, 'We have heard Him ourselves, andknowthat this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'
I cannot tell whether this faith of the Samaritans is what one class of modern divines would callsavingfaith. I should imagine not. For these poor men said they knew Jesus to be the Saviour of theworld; and it seems to be put forward as the characteristic of saving faith, that men should believe a Saviour for themselves who is not a Saviour for the world. And, certainly, their belief had not that groundwork which another class of divines tells us is the only one upon which the claims of a Christ can rest. He had done no sign or wonder before them; He had only discoursed with them. On this topic, that other story to which I alluded may possibly throw some light.
It is introduced by the words, 'Now after two days He departed thence, and went into Galilee.' He was going into Galilee before. A strange reason is given for His spending so short a time among the people who had met Him so cordially. 'For Jesus Himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country.' He did not count it good to stay where He had honour. The Galilæans were His kinsfolk and neighbours, bound to Him by human, and therefore by divine, ties.Therewas the token that He was to labour among them. More respect He might find elsewhere,—that was not what He came into the world to look for. His followers often judge differently about this matter. It may be that here, as elsewhere, we should act more safely if we thought that He had left us an example that we should walk in His footsteps.
'Then when He was come into Galilee, the Galilæans received Him, having seen all the things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast: for they also went unto the feast.' They had, then, what we are wont to regard as the right foundation of faith; they had the outward evidence, while the Samaritans were only receiving Him on the testimony of their consciences. 'So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where He made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman,'—(a person, probably, belonging to the household of Herod Antipas,)—'whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto Him, and besought Him that He would come down, and heal his son. Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.' Apparently His judgment of these two kinds of belief was different from ours. That which we think weak and groundless, caused Him inward joy. It was meat upon which He could sustain Himself; it showed Him that the Samaritan fields were white already to the harvest. On the contrary, that stable belief, which rested upon signs and wonders, gave Him little pleasure; rather it called forth a rebuke. The nobleman did not answer the rebuke: 'He saith unto Him, Sir, come down ere my child die.' This was not the response of a man's conscience to one who had discovered his evil. It was not the kind of trust of the Samaritan woman or the Samaritan man; but it was good honest trust, nevertheless. If the nobleman had been hitherto a mere observer of signs, he was now something more. He was a parent seeking help for his boy. He was a man who, in the sight and under the pressure of death, turns to One who can give life. Jesus at once confesses the change which His own discipline has wrought in him. 'He saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.'
Two steps we have traced in the history of his mind. A third remains. 'As he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. Then enquired he of them the time when he began to amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the same hour inthe which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his whole house.'
Here we have, no doubt, the account of a sign, and of its effect upon the persons toward whom it was exhibited. St. John himself connects it with the sign in Cana of Galilee. He appears to wish that we should regard both as specimens of Galilæan signs in distinction from Jerusalem signs. We may, therefore, apply here the principles which we discovered with reference to the marriage-feast. There it seemed that the lesson which was taught belonged to all marriage-feasts,—to all the outward signs of life and joy,—to those mysterious powers by which, in any country or in any age, physical transformations are effected. In this one instance Jesus was revealed as giving the blessing which seals the marriage-vow, wherever it is made,—as everywhere the Inspirer of gladness,—as ruling all the energies of nature. The circumstances in the Capernaum story are much changed; it touches more nearly on the funeral than on the bridal. But in one, as much as in the other, Christ is revealed as the Word of Life. In one, as much as in the other, human relationships are beautified and hallowed by Christ; the relation of the husband there, of the father here. One, as much as the other, applies to England as well as to Galilee. And what was said there of the faith that followed the sign, is even more strikingly developed here. 'He manifested forth His glory, and His disciples'—those who had already confessed Him to be the Christ upon another ground—'believed in Him.' It was a discovery to them of His inward power. It deepened a conviction that had been imparted to them already. The Capernaum nobleman had already believed in Christ, with the belief of one who wants help, and thinks he has found the person who is able and willing to bestow it. The sign unfolds that faith, and makes it more profound. The man becomes not more a seeker of marvels, but less. He desires no longer, casual, flitting exercises of power; he bows to power as inward, continual, moral. He is always in the presence of Him who spoke the word at the seventh hour. At every moment, he and his son and all his household are receiving fresh life from Him. To know Him, to be in fellowship with Him, to be doing His will—which is the will of Him who sent Him: this he finds to be eternal life.
[Lincoln's Inn, 3d Sunday after Easter, April 13, 1856.]
St. JohnV. 16-18.
And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, because He had done these things on the sabbath-day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He had not only broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making Himself equal with God.
And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, because He had done these things on the sabbath-day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He had not only broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making Himself equal with God.
The scene changes again at the opening of this chapter. 'After these things there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.' What feast it was, the harmonists may settle; as St. John has not told us, I am content to dwell upon the fact, which he evidently thought of great importance, that Jesus did go up to the feasts, and that His acts had a special reference to the state of mind which He found among the inhabitants of the capital; above all, among its religious teachers.
'Now there is at Jerusalem, by the sheep-market, a pool which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.' Jerusalem might or might not have been compassed with Roman armies when St. John wrote. I do not know that its independence or its capture would affect the position of the pool or the sheep-market; they might be still just what they had been when the Apostle knew them. Perhaps the pool was no longer visited as in former days; perhaps the tradition of its virtues still drew to it people from the country round. At all events, the sight which had been before his eyes thirty or forty years before, was not one which he would forget. It is not one which we need much effort of imagination to bring before ourselves.
'In these' porches 'lay a multitude of sick folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the waters.' If we look at the separate figures in the picture, they belong as much to the West as to the East—to the nineteenth century as to the first. Nor can any frequenters of an English or German spa consider the motive which brought together so many of different ages and with different ailments, a strange or an obsolete one. Even the notion that at certain times the water would possess a virtue which at other times it would want, may be justified by modern experience, perhaps may be explained by modern science.
But experience and science, it will be said, are both set at nought by the announcement in the next verse: 'For an angel went down at a certain season, and troubled the water: whosoever, therefore, first after the troubling of the water stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.' Here a reason is given for the virtues of the pool;—not, it will be said, a medical reason; not one which can connect the waters of this pool with those which intelligent people frequent for qualities which are, on fair evidence, known or believed to be in them;—but rather one which connects them with the holy wells which in the villages of England, Wales, and Ireland, are supposed to have received a blessing from some local saint. To find St. John adopting or endorsing such legends, causes no pain to those who assume him and his brother Apostles to be the propagators of superstition; ignorant Jews, who were steeped in all the prejudices of their countrymen, and who added to them some of their own invention. There are some who, with a general respect for him and them, can yet give him credit for following the traditions of his country when they were ever so vulgar and false; excusing him on the plea that he knew nothing of physics, and that his business was not with them. There are men of a better and nobler stamp, who, though they do not claim for him any acquaintance with natural science, yet are sure that he lived to scatter delusions, not to foster them; and that he would not have been permitted by the Spirit of truth to claim for lies the name of Him who came to bear witness of the truth. I do not wonder that some of these honest and earnest men should have been able to persuade themselves that the verse I have just quoted has nothing to do with the general narrative of the cure at Bethesda; but has crept into the text from the gloss of some writer who understood Jewish opinions, not the mind of St. John.
I respect the motives of these interpreters, but I think their conclusion is a rash and a wrong one. I am convinced that the words which they would omit are a vital part of the narrative, and that our Lord's act loses very much of its meaning if we overlook them. I am equally convinced that these words contradict no truth of science; that, if taken by themselves, they do not meddle with it, and are only supposed to meddle with it through a logical confusion, from which, for the sake of science and of our own intellectual clearness, it is well that we should be delivered; that, if taken in conjunction with the whole story, they help to scatter a superstition which was very injurious to the Jewish people, and is equally injurious to people in this day.
What St. John affirms is, that a certain invisible angel or minister—an intelligence, as we are wont to speak—was the instrument of making the water of the Pool of Bethesda beneficial to the persons who went down into it. He accounts, in this way, for its operation being more useful at one time than another. That assertion, you say, interferes with the doctrine that there were certain properties in the water itself which affected the condition of human beings. How does it interfere? You hold that the vaccine matter has in itself the property of counteracting the virus of the small-pox. But you hold also that the intelligence of Jenner had something to do with making this vaccine matter available for the actual cure of patients afflicted by the small-pox; you hold that the intelligence of different medical men has something to do with bringing the preventive power to bear on particular cases. You know this for a fact; but physical science tells you nothing of the way in which the intelligence cooperates with the natural agent. The notion that it does is an excusable fallacy; yet it is a fallacy.In no instance whatever can the mere study of physics help you to determine anything respecting moral or intellectual forces; though at every turn the study of physics compels you to the acknowledgment of such forces.It will save us from innumerable confusions, if we take this proposition in the length and breadth of it. Through neglect of it, the physician and the metaphysician are perpetually stumbling against each other, when they might be the greatest helpers to each other.
But, it will be said, that notion of an angel which connects it with the intelligence in a man, is a modern one, not the one which we should naturally derive from the Old Testament. I think, if we study those passages in the Old Testament which refer to angels, we shall find that it is exactlythisnotion which is the result of them, and that any other is a modern one, either derived directly from heathen sources, or from a mixture of heathen feelings with the lore of the New Testament. In the patriarchal times, we hear of angels appearing to Abraham to tell him of blessings which were coming upon his descendants; of angels seen by Jacob in a vision, of one who wrestled with him till the break of day. The stories leave upon us the impression that there are beings who minister to the unseen Lord of the whole earth; who are interested in the well-doing of men; who are different from men, but not so different as to be incapable of converse with them—not so different that they may not present themselves even to the human senses. The effect of those visions and revelations was to take away from the old shepherds the feeling that they were merely surrounded by natural forms or by animal existences which were beneath them; that there was a world near them, though not visible to them, which might have fellowship with them, and which elevated them above their flocks and herds. In the next age,—the age of legal and national life,—there are intimations of an angel going with the people through the wilderness; angels admonish warriors that they should be courageous in fighting the battles of the Lord; angels remind the people of their departures from the law of God; angels arouse humble men to deliver their people from idolatry and from slavery. Here the lessons respecting the nature and work of angels are not changed, but expanded. These messengers communicate more with the spirit of men, present themselves more rarely to the eye. They are witnesses of a permanent divine order, belonging not to the individuals to whom they come, but to their race; of an order from which they have departed, and into which it is the Divine will that they should be brought back. In the regal period, the war or the pestilence,—the direction of natural agencies to the punishment of human crime,—is referred to angels. The effect ofthisteaching upon the thoughtful Jew was, that he could never suppose himself the mere sport of outward influences of earth, or of air, or of fire. All these had a purpose; all were directed by the wisdom of Him who had entered into covenant with the nation. In the Book of Psalms, which illustrates this period, He is said to 'make His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire.' All natural powers are felt to be angels of God, because they are under the direction of an intelligent and righteous Ruler. In the Books of the Prophets, before the captivity, the angel is not lost sight of; but the Word of God who comes to the Prophet, more and more gathers up all powers and ministries into Himself, while the human teacher to whom he speaks is himself treated as a messenger of the Most High,—as no less His angel than any creature who has not the weeds of mortality. In the Prophets, after the captivity, new functions are assigned to angels. They watch over different lands; provinces of the earth are committed to them by the Lord of all;—it is hinted that some of them may have failed in their trust, as human sovereigns fail in theirs. These lessons seem especially appropriate to the time when the Jew was to feel his connexion with other nations, and to find that each of them supposed itself to be governed by some divine king or demigod.
Is not the doctrine of this chapter entirely consistent with the lessons which St. John had learnt from his fathers? Those lessons, I have urged, can neither be confuted nor confirmed by physical science. But the analogy which we derive from our ordinary experience is all in favour of them. It is a shock to the conscience and reason of man to feel that he is indebted to moral agents,—to spiritual agents,—in a very great degree, for the health and comfort which he enjoys here; but that the whole world which lies beyond his ken is only peopled with physical forces which act upon him blindly and care nothing for him. Men never have been able to persuade themselves of this. Thepeoplehave always held the opposite faith. Surely it is time to ask ourselves whether that faith must be merely set at nought,—whether its manifest falsehoods and mistakes do not conceal precious truths,—whether those truths can be at variance with any others,—whether we are not bound to bring them into light, as the only means of dislodging the errors to which they have given countenance, and also of overthrowing some of those idols of the cave which the student worships no less ignominiously than the multitude worships the idols of the market-place? I believe St. John tells us how his Master did this work at the Pool of Bethesda: 'A certain man was there which had had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, He saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered Him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith to him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed and walked.'
This was a sign indeed,—a sign addressed to a man who had been waiting day after day, perhaps year after year, for some outward accident to make him well,—that health and disease are dependent upon no accidents; that the power of life is an inward power; that there is One in whom it dwells; that He in whom it dwells is near to the weakest, the most helpless, even the most sinful. It would seem, from the words which our Lord spoke to this man afterwards, 'Go, and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee,' as if He had selected a man in whom all these conditions met, who was the oldest and most powerless of all the sufferers there, and had brought the sufferings upon himself by his misdoings. The demonstration, therefore, was complete. Men—the very lowest men—are not the dependants upon outward things, no, nor upon the visitations of angels. Such visitations may be appointed; but there is One who has a right to call Himself a Son—One in whom the mind and purpose of the Lord of angels is expressed—One who fulfils, not occasionally but continually, His purposes of health and restoration to men—One who is the Son of Man—who has sympathy with men, and can take away their infirmities, because He knows them, enters into them, suffers them.
Thus this cure is bringing us to the point to which St. John has been bringing us in all the previous passages of his Gospel. This sign at the Pool of Bethesda, like all the other signs we have been considering, reveals to us the Word who is the Source of life and health to all creatures. We are led from the messenger, visible or invisible, to Him who was with God and was God. We are led from the mere friends or helpers of man to that Word made flesh, the Son of Man. We are led finally to a Son who has come to reveal a Father.
I have chosen my text from the latter part of the chapter, because it bringsthissubject so directly before us, and because I believe that in doing so it gives us the real moral and explanation of the narrative of which I have just been speaking. Two cures are recorded by St. John as done by our Lord in the city of Jerusalem: one is that at the Pool of Bethesda; the other, that of the blind man at the Pool of Siloam. They are very different in their incidents and their object: the latter we shall have to consider attentively hereafter. But they have this in common,—both were wrought on the Sabbath-day. In both cases, St. John fixes our thoughts upon this point; in both, this circumstance is the cause of the bitterest indignation against Jesus; here it is said to be the motive of a conspiracy against him. 'Immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath-day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk? And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed Himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay Him, because He had done these things on the sabbath-day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him because He not only had broken the sabbath, butsaid also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.'