Two points present themselves to us here, and demand some earnest consideration. The first is, Why should the Sabbath-day have been especially chosen by our Lord for these acts of healing? The second is, What connexion was there in the Jewish mind, or in our Lord's own words, between the charge of breaking the Sabbath and the charge of calling God His Father?
The belief in angels had a good effect upon the people of the Jews, in so far as it led them to believe that the Most High cared for them individually as well as nationally,—that He Himself, and not some outward thing, was the Author of their blessings, the Restorer of their health. It was perverted to a bad use by the people, in so far as it led them to depend upon accidental interferences, not upon a continual living Helper. How Christ's sign brought out the good, counteracted the evil, of this faith, I have endeavoured to show you. But the belief of angels and spirits, which distinguished the Pharisees from the opposing sect, had most of the mischief, little of the truth, which clung to it among the crowd whom they despised. The tenet, that angels had interfered and might interfere, did not make them think that God was concerned for His creatures,—that He loved them. It only suggested the thought that there were certain persons and certain places that might receive favours which were withheld from others. It did not bring them to believe that any union between God and man existed or was possible. Rather angels were the dispensers of those laws, and the executors of those punishments, which marked the separation between God and His creatures, and the wrath of God against them. God was the Author of statutes which had been written in tables of stone, and could not be changed. God was the Judge and Condemner of those who broke these statutes. God might dispense with the punctual fulfilment of them, or accept sacrifices as a compensation for the breach of them, in the case of His favourites. But one claim to be such favourites would be the rigorous enforcement of them, as His commandments, against the nation generally, and the ignorant, miserable, sinful portion of it particularly.
Was not this zeal for the laws and ordinances of the Most High a good zeal? Did not Christ come to fulfil the law?—did He wish to set it aside? Consider, my brethren, what the law was. I do not speak of any spiritual interpretation of it; I refer merely to the letter of the Ten Commandments. They begin with these words, 'I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the house of bondage.' The zeal of the Pharisees for the law of God forgot this foundation of the law altogether. They did not tell the Israelite that the Lord washisGod; they did not proclaim the Lord as a Deliverer from bondage, but as the Author of bondage. Therefore,everycommandment was denied in its very essence. The first said, 'Thou shalt worship the Lord,'—that is, the Lord the Deliverer, the LordthyGod,—'and Him only shalt thou serve.' But the Pharisee worshipped any god rather than this only God; worshipped a god who was directly the reverse of this only God. Everything in heaven or earth or under the earth—money, the meanest thing of all—was more an object of worship to him than this only God. He could not help taking His name in vain. Every time he pronounced it he took it in vain; he substituted another name for that of the only God; he cherished another name in his heart.
But then came the command to keep the Sabbath-day. Here, at all events, he could be strict to the letter; that he could keep as God had wished it to be kept. What! when that commandment says, 'Man shall rest because God rests; man shall work because God works?' What! when the commandment announced the Sabbath-day as a blessing to the man-servant, and the maid-servant, and the cattle? A Pharisee construe this commandment literally? A Pharisee keep this commandment strictly? Impossible. There was none which he must distort more, in which he must suppress more vital words, which he must more habitually disobey. The denial of the sentence which introduces the commandments—the determination to regard the Lord as a forger of chains, when He declares Himself to be the breaker of them—necessarily led to a greater and grosser violation of this statute and ordinance of the Lord than of all the rest.
And yet there were obvious reasons why the Pharisee should take his stand on the fourth commandment rather than on any other. As our Lord tells him elsewhere, he made it part of his religion to set aside the honour of fathers and mothers. To bear false witness against a neighbour, if he was not a religious man, not one of their sect, was a merit rather than a crime. Covetousness is spoken of in the Gospels as the very principle of their acts towards men and towards God. And—without inquiring how far they were guilty of secret treasons against life, against marriage, against property—since the enforcing of punishments on open crimes, which disturbed the peace of society, was taken out of their hands, there was no way left them of signalizing their care for what they called God's law and God's honour, but by a pitiless rigour in enforcing the customs and traditions which had connected themselves with the Sabbath-day, the reason and the purpose of the day having been forgotten.
Here was the ground which the Jewish teachers had chosen for the exhibition of their morality and religion; it was on this ground that Jesus encountered them. To the first question, then, I answer, that He selected the Sabbath-day above other days for healing the sick, because He came to vindicate the law and make it honourable; because it had been made dishonourable, and the whole sense of it destroyed, by the notion of the Pharisees that it proceeded from an arbitrary Being, who had made it to coerce His creatures, and not from a loving Being who had formed them in His image, and desired that they should be sharers of His blessedness; because, unless the day of the rest could be reclaimed from their perversions, and restored to its right place and dignity in God's gracious economy, the law never could be a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ the Son of Man, but must always be a hard taskmaster to keep them from Him. It was not a single point of truth which was involved in this controversy—least of all the question, whether a commandment might be relaxed in one particular. The whole truth of the old covenant was involved in it; the whole life and work of the Son of Man was involved in it; the purpose for which the Son of God had taken flesh was involved in it.
The other Evangelists make these assertions sufficiently clear. They tell us how Christ claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath, because 'the sabbath was made for man;' and, because He was the 'Son of Man;' how He was more angered at the hardness of heart which displayed itself in the apparent zeal of the Pharisees for the Sabbath, than at all their other exhibitions of the same hardness; how the Jewish rulers met His divine anger with theirs, and decided that the only adequate answer to the demand, 'Is it right to do good on the sabbath-day, or to do evil?' must be a conspiracy to put Him to death. St. John could not say more on these points. But there was a subject which it was his especial office to handle. He shows us how Jesus made the defence of the fourth commandment, in its letter and its spirit, a means of asserting His own relation to God. 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' Man was bidden to work because God worked. HadGodceased to work, then, on the day of rest? Was He not nourishing the earth, and causing it to bring forth and bud on that day? Was He suspending His labours for His creatures on that day? The argument, like those about the ox and the ass falling into the pit, was broad, simple, direct; one of those which men who have lost their life, their humanity, their godliness, in their books, are tormented by hearing; one which opens the deepest abysses of thought and consolation to those who are seeking for a living God, for a Father of their spirits. But such seekers cannot be content with a command to work because God works, to rest because God rests,—they must know how the command can be obeyed. They must know on what foundation the command stands. If there is a Son of Man who can say, 'I work because He works; I do as my Father does;' He may give the sons of men power to work and power to rest. His union to them and to God is the foundation of both.
I have replied, then, to our second question as well as to the first. I have showed you how the act by which Christ, in the judgment of the Jews, broke the Sabbath-day, naturally led to what was in their judgment an act of blasphemy. It was not that He dispensed with a law of God because He was the Son of God. It was not that He put a new sense into the law of God because He was the Son of God. It was that He could interpret the law of God fully. It was that He could accomplish the law fully. It was that He could unfold the Gospel which was hidden in the law. It was that He could show in what God's rest consists, by showing in what His own rest consisted; what God's work was, by the works which He did Himself in the might of God's Spirit. And thus, by one sign, He declared that men are not the servants of angels, and that they are the children of a Father.
O brethren, may those to whom God has given a better and a nobler Sabbath, which commemorates God's rest in the risen Son of Man and Son of God, never forget the truth which He taught the Jewish people respecting their Sabbath, or repeat the Jewish sin by making it a mere legal day instead of His day!
[Lincoln's Inn, 4th Sunday after Easter, April 20, 1856.]
St. John V. 43.
I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
I spoke to you last week upon these words,—'Therefore the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because He not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.' I tried to ascertain what connexion there was in their minds between these two offences; I tried also to show you how their feelings respecting the Sabbath-day were involved in their general feelings respecting the Law and respecting the dominion of angels. If there was a Son who was higher than angels, who could express the very mind of God—if that Son was actually in the nature of man—all their thoughts of God and of man must be changed; they must regard Him whom they worshipped as something else than a mere lawgiver, removed to an immeasurable distance from His creatures, only holding occasional intercourse with them through beings of a different order from their own. They must look upon human beings,—that is to say, not only upon themselves, but upon publicans and heathens, upon those whom they regarded as utterly cut off from God,—as standing in a very near and close relation with Him. This, therefore, was the most horrible of all conceptions to them, one which struck at the root of their pride, of that which they called their faith. They might suspect Jesus before, they might despise Him; but the moment He called God His Father, suspicion and contempt gave way to hatred. It was clear enough why He was setting institutions at nought; it was clear enough why He claimed to heal sick men, whom the ministrations of angels could not heal. By His words and His acts He was bringing God and man into the most dangerous proximity. He, 'being a man, was making Himself equal with God.'
This last charge I did not dwell upon; I reserved it for our consideration to-day. The discourse of our Lord which follows in this chapter has reference to it. No words throw more light upon it than those which I have taken as my text from one of the latest verses. The answer to the charge begins in the nineteenth verse. 'Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.' You will feel at once that this sentence is the expansion of that plea which Jesus put forth for the cure which He had wrought on the day of rest,—'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' But, I think, you will feel also how wonderfully it meets the other more awful accusation, that He was raising Himself to a level with God. If it had been true, it would not have been a new charge. 'Ye shall be as gods,' was the first temptation presented to human beings,—the temptation to which they yielded. The ambition had never ceased in any age or in any man. Jesus would have been but the Person who exhibited it in its highest power, who expressed it with the greatest boldness. But if the doctrine which St. John asserts at the beginning of his Gospel, which he has been working out in every passage of it since, is a sound one; if there is a Word who was with God and was God; if that Word was made flesh, and the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father shone forth in Him; then Jesus was the one Person in the world to whom this charge did not apply; the one Person in whom there was no ambition of making Himself equal with God. And this is what He declares here: 'You think I am exalting myself; on the contrary, this proclamation which I am making of a Father, this claim which I am putting forth to be His Son, is the abdication of all independent greatness, the denial that I am anything in myself. I can donothing of myself but what I see the Father do.'
Here is the new revelation, the discovery of the real ground upon which all things stand,—the will of a Father commanding, the will of a Son submitting. Here is that idea of Godhead which men had been seeking for,—if haply they might feel after it and find it,—in which they had been living and moving and having their being, yet which they had always been rebelling against and contradicting, and which every thought and act of self-will and pride had been putting at a distance from them. The lowliest of all, He who was called the 'carpenter's son,' was able to speak it out, to translate it into language, as His whole life translated it into act. And this union of wills, this inward substantial Unity, He declares to have its basis in love, the underground of Deity,—'For the FatherLOVETHthe Son, and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth.'
We must not forget that all this bears reference to the primary subject of the discourse. He had been working on the Sabbath-day. That work He justifies as His Father's work, because it was a work of love, done to fulfil that mind of the Father which He knew, with which He was in sympathy. Now He goes on, 'And He will shew Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.' The work of healing was His Father's work. In quickening the sick man beside the Pool of Bethesda, He had manifested a part of His will and power towards His creatures. There would be a more august display of that will and power; 'For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.' Since the whole passage refers to one of the signs which Jesus did, it is surely most natural to take this also as referring to another of those signs. Jesus would not only cure a sick man, He would raise a dead man. As the cure of the sick man was an exhibition in a single instance of all the restoring, health-giving, life-giving influences which were at work through the universe; as its intent was to lead men to trace all these, not to chance, not to a dead law, not to their own merits, but to a Father who directs the operations which look most accidental, from whose mind law has issued, who alone enables men to work in harmony with His law; so, by raising a man from the dead, He would show what was continually going on in the unseen world; what the Father was doing there with those who were lost to the sight of their fellows, and who seemed to perish. 'The Son would quicken whom He would.' He would take an instance here and there to illustrate the general course of His Father's government. He would break the bonds of the grave for the widow's son, or the brother of Martha and Mary, that man might understand how little these chains could bind the whole universe of human beings, if the Father pleased to set them free.
But the thought of resurrection was associated in the Jewish mind, as it was in the heathen mind and as it is in ours, with the thought of Judgment. How could He speak of raising the dead, without speaking of a judgment through which the dead would have to pass? He anticipates the objection, and does much more than answer it. 'For the Father,' He says, 'judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him.' These words have been much used in theological argumentation. I am far from saying that they have not been used fairly. But I have warned you already, that if we wish to understand St. John, we must follow his course of thought, not eagerly snatch at sentences which may serve a temporary purpose. On this ground I refused to take the first words of his Gospel as a dogmatical assertion of the divinity of Jesus. I said we must begin, as he began, at the beginning. We must wait till he spoke to us of Jesus of Nazareth, and declared His nature to us. Then we should learn much more of His divinity than if we were in haste to get proofs of it. For are we not learners, who want to be told what divinity is and what humanity is? Have we not need to sit at the Apostle's feet, that he may instruct us in those things which it is most needful for us to know? Is there not a danger of our fancying that we know all already—of our taking his divine words merely to confirm propositions of ours, into the sense and power of which we have never entered?
I would apply this rule in the present case. St. John has told us that in the Word who was with God was life, and that His life was the light of men. We have found him illustrating this language in various ways,—beginning from John the Baptist, as the witness of the light, afterwards telling us how Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of this being the condemnation, 'that light was come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.' In both these passages, in the last especially, and in those which I have not recalled to your memory, the Word or Son of God is described as a Judge; as One who discovers the thoughts and intents of the heart; as One whom the man confesses to be His Lord and King, whether he shrinks back from His clear light, or asks that he may be penetrated by it. In strict consistency with this teaching, our Lord here declares the office of a Judge to be implied in the relation of the divine Son to men. In doing so, He clears away confusions that have darkened the conscience and disturbed the practice of all men. We think of the judgment of God. It is sometimes a terrible thought; it is more commonly a vague, misty thought. It never has been an effectual one in making men inwardly or even outwardly better, till they could connect it with some human judgment,—till they could attribute to some being of their own race, even though he were a frail being liable to error, the function of pronouncing upon their deeds and upon their characters. Why has it been so? Because 'the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.' Because by an eternal, irreversible law, involved in the very nature of God and the nature of man, we cannot bring ourselves face to face with the absolute Being. Our consciences tremble at His name; they do not, they cannot, bring their secrets directly into His light. Until they acknowledge One close to themselves, One who knows what is going on within them; until they acknowledge a Word, a Christ, who is nigh to them and not afar off; there is no distinction in their minds. Good thoughts and evil thoughts lie huddled together. Good deeds and bad deeds are only known, apart from each other, by some results which they may happen to produce. It is when the man has started like a guilty thing surprised, at the presence of One who brings back to him past passages of his existence; who tells him all that ever he did; who shows him that his acts, his petty words, are not lost in the sum of all the acts that have been done and the words that have been spoken since the creation-day, but have all been recorded; it is when the man understands that He who keeps the record is the dearest Friend he has, the One who has been guiding him, watching over him, restraining him from evil, urging him to good from his birth onward; it is when he understands that the Reprover can give him remission of his sins, can endue him with a new life;—it is then that he can believe, and rejoice in the belief, that there is a judgment of God—a judgment for the whole universe. For it is then that he honours the Son even as he honours the Father. It is then that he confesses these testimonies in his own heart to be the echoes of the Voice which gave commandment to the sea, and fixed its bounds that it should not pass, and ordained laws for all the generations of men. It is then that the Will which governs him is felt to be the Will of a Father. He honours it, and bows to it, and delights in it, because he honours and bows to and delights in the will of the Son whom He hath sent.
In the words which follow, our translators have exhibited an instance of the timidity which I have had occasion sometimes to notice before. 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.' There can be no good reason why the word κρίσις should be renderedjudgmentin the 22d verse, andcondemnationin the 24th. But from a fear, I suppose, lest the one should seem to contradict the other,—lest the Son should be thought not to execute the judgment that had been committed to Him,—they were unfaithful to the letter, perhaps even more unfaithful to the spirit, of the passage. To make the language fit their notion of the sense, they were forced to change the tense of 'come,'—to make it 'shall not come,' instead of 'doth not come.' Those who cannot venture these outrages upon the text, must be content to accept the statement of it simply; that there is an eternal life in the Son of God,—that eternal life which was spoken of in the dialogue with the woman of Sychar; that those who hear His voice speaking to them in their hearts, and receive Him as the Witness and Manifestation of the eternal God, enter into that life; that theydonot come into judgment. The light does not scare them, but invites them. They fly to it as a deliverance, not from it lest it should consume them.
Then the next passage becomes far more intelligible. It is not a mere repetition of what has gone before; it enlarges and expands the doctrine we have heard, and applies it to the future as well as to the present. 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: andthey that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.' There can be no doubt that when the Jews spoke either of resurrection or of judgment, they meant merely a resurrection and a judgment after death. Jesus teaches us that we can know nothing of a resurrection or a judgment after death, unless we connect it with the Son of God, in whom men may believe and rise to newness of life here,—with the Son of God who speaks to us and judges us here. When we acknowledge Him as the Word in whom is life,—when we confess that His life is our light,—then we shall go on to acknowledge how both His life-giving power and His judging power extend over the whole universe, over the dead as well as the quick; then we shall understand that those who are in their graves are as little beyond the reach of His voice, as little without the sphere of His light, as those who are walking upon the earth. So much is involved in the very idea of a Son who is one with the Father. If we believe that the Father hath life in Himself, we must believe that there is a life in the Son which corresponds with that. If we believe that all thoughts, and acts, past and present, are open to the Father, we must believe that they are open to the Son. And, as I said before, the scrutiny of our own hearts and spirits must be in the Son of Man. We can know nothing of God's scrutiny, except through Him who is in contact with us, and knows all the throbs and pulses of our spirits. How dark are all our thoughts of the tomb, till we believe this! How horrible its abysses seem, when we think of them as out of the circle of all the laws and relations which exist among us upon earth! What a sunlight there is upon it—what flowers spring from the sods about it—when we believe that the Son of God and the Son of Man rules there as here; that those who have tried to catch the sound of His voice here, recognise it more clearly and fully in the unseen world; that those who have done evil, because they have refused to listen to it, have still Him, and no other than Him, for their Judge!
It is perilling the sense of the whole chapter, to separate this passage concerning life and judgment from that concerning the Father and the Son, which introduced it. Our Lord points out, still more clearly than He has yet done, the relation between the two subjects, in the next verse. 'I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father who hath sent me.' They had said, 'He called God His Father, making Himself equal unto God.' He answers, 'When I speak of a Father, I signify that I can of mine own selfdo nothing. I do not raise myself to the rank of King or Judge over men; I give up all independent power of judgment. I claim to obey a Will, to be governed by it. And because that Will is the righteous and perfect Will, my judgment is right. The moment I boasted that I could judge according to the hearing of my ears, that moment my judgment would be wrong. I should be denying my Sonship; I should become false.' And as He could not judge others except by hearing His Father's judgment, by following His Will, so neither could He judge Himself. 'If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.' The Jews had asked Him already—asked Him more emphatically afterwards—to tell them if He was the Christ. Why could He not give the answer? Because it would not have been an answer. It would not have shown Him to be a Son; it would have led them to think of Him as another person altogether than that which He was. He therefore refers to the words which had been spoken by the preacher in the wilderness. 'There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he beareth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness of the truth.' John had borne witness of a Word who was with God, of a Son of God, of a Lamb of God. John had borne witness of a light shining in the darkness, which the darkness did not comprehend. This was the true witness of Christ; to this He could appeal, because it was a witness not to the ear, but to the heart,—because it was the witness of one who did not claim honour for himself,—and therefore was the fit herald of a Christ who should come in the name of His Father, not in His own name.
John's testimony being of this character was not the testimony of man, though it came through a man. Jesus, therefore, does not contradict his former words when He adds, 'I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining lamp;' (our translators have lost the distinction between the vessel containing the light, and the light itself,—a distinction which St. John has carefully preserved;) 'and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. ButI have a greater witness than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.' John's lamp was one which God had kindled and filled with his light, that they might be saved from their darkness; for a while it had played about them, and they had felt a kind of joy in the thought that God had not forgotten them. But Christ's works,—that latest work, especially, which He had done on the Sabbath-day, to show how and for what end His Father worked on that day,—these contained witnesses of a filial power, a filial obedience, a filial communion,—a witness to the hearts of suffering men,—which the words of the Baptist, quick and penetrating as they were, did not contain.
He goes on: 'And the Father Himself which hath sent me, He beareth witness of me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape.' 'In these acts of mine—these wonderful acts—as well as in my ordinary discourse, in my daily deeds and works, a Father is speaking to you, a Father is testifying of Himself to you. He is an invisible Being. It is not by visible appearances, by sounds and by shapes, that He communicates with you; it is by His Word.' Could it be necessary to say this to a people who were called out of all nations to know the unseen God, to protest against idols; to a people who had the law and the Prophets; to a people who were proud of their calling, proud of their law; who detested idols; who wrote out the Scriptures continually, reverenced them, declared them to be the very words of God?
Yes, brethren! it was necessary for this people. Jesus declares why it was necessary. 'And ye have not His Word abiding in you: for whom He hath sent, Him yebelieve not. Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life.' I think that the late learned Bishop of Limerick and others, who have maintained that the verb ἐρευνᾶτε, in the 39th verse, would better be translated by the present tense of the indicative than by the imperative, have produced sound arguments for their opinion, and that the context is all in favour of it. But if the previous verse and those which follow be heeded, I am quite willing to adopt our version; the sense will be radically the same; and any who think that they cannot enforce the duty of studying the Bible, if they are deprived of this precept, may retain it as a motto for their sermons. What the Word of God is in St. John's Gospel, we have not now to learn; he has been teaching us from the first verse of it onwards. How that Word must abide in men, if they are to have any light; how the rejection of it is the choice of darkness, he has also been telling us, not once, but continually. Those who will not have the Word of God abiding in them, must shut out the invisible world, must become the slaves of the visible world. They may not have idols of wood and stone; but they must have idols. Besides the grosser idolatry of money,—to which, as a nation, they will be driven by the want of any spiritual object,—their religious men will fall into the worship ofletters. The letters of the book which testify of a living God, will receive the homage which the only God claims in this book for Himself. This was the condition of the Jewish people,—especially of the Jewish teachers,—when our Lord came among them in the flesh. 'They searched the Scriptures; for in them they thought they had life.' And those Scriptures they made the excuses for rejecting Him in whom life dwelt,—the living Word of God. This charge our Lord brings against them here and elsewhere. That he wished them to search the Scriptures which testified of Him, no one, I suppose, doubts. That He commanded them to do so in this place, I am not at all anxious to dispute. And oh! how rejoiced should I be if we English Christians, heirs of Jewish privileges, felt that command as indeed addressed to ourselves! if we were ready to obey it! if, instead of talking about the Bible as the only religion of Protestants, writing its name upon banners, declaring that we are ready to die for it, we would indeed search into its treasures, because it testifies of Him in whom alone we can have life!
I do, indeed, desire that we should take the lesson contained in these awful sentences home to ourselves. For I do feel that the danger of the Jews in this case, as in that of which I spoke to you last Sunday, is precisely our danger; that we are likely not to search the Scriptures, because they bear witness of the Word of God, but to turn them into idols, because we have not the Word of God abiding in us. And I feel as if our Lord had laid bare the inmost root of our disease, as He does of the Jewish disease, in the verses which follow: 'I receive not honour from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?'
He begins with asserting this as His distinction, that He seeks His glory from the only God (παρὰ τοῦ μόνου Θεοῦ), not from man. He concludes with asking how they can believe Him, when they seek honour from each other, not from this only God. And who is this only God of whom He sought glory? He has told us before,—the God who loved the world, and gave His Son, that through Him it might be saved. That love He reflected; of that love, in His words and deeds, He testified. No such love was in them. They did not feel their want of it; they did not seek it where it was to be found. They flattered each other; they lived upon each other's praises. And the consequence was, that they did not believe in One who denied Himself, who abjured all praises, who said that He could do nothing but what He saw His Father do. Such a Being was incomprehensible to them. Theycouldnot believe in Him. They must take Him to be a blasphemer and a devil. Let us remember it and tremble. When religious men open 'a benefit club of mutual flattery,' and live upon the allowances that are doled out from it, they must deny the Father and the Son.
There are still some sentences left in this chapter which must not be passed over. 'Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?' However little of theloveof God there might be in the men to whom Jesus spoke, there was a conscience which responded to what He said. Their conscience said there must be a Father,—weoughtto be His children. If so, and if this man were not a blasphemer, but the Son of God, might He not charge them before His Father for their denial of Him? The thought was a natural one. How eagerly a teacher who came in his own name would have profited by the terror it excited! How continually the ministers of Jesus Christhavesaid to unbelievers, 'What! dare you question His mission? If He should be what we say He is, how certainly He will accuse you to the Father for your rejection of Him.' Jesus Himself declares that this is not His office—that He is not, and never can be, the accuser. The law in which they gloried, in which they trusted, that was accusing them,—that was telling them how they had resisted the God of love,—that was telling them that they needed a Person to unite them to God; an elder Brother, in whom they might meet and behold their Father. Moses the lawgiver was writing of this Advocate and Brother. But if those letters of his were boasted of and worshipped, not believed, how could they believe the quickening, life-giving words, which are written not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart, by the Son of Man?
[Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday after Easter, April 27, 1856.]
St. JohnVI. 35.
And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
In general, the signs or miracles of Christ which St. John records are not the same with those which the other Evangelists have recorded. The exceptions are found in this chapter. Here, as in St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, we have a narrative of the feeding of the five thousand; here, as in St. Matthew and St. Mark, we have the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea. There is no doubt that the events described in all the Gospels are the same. In time, place, numbers, and in most of the circumstances, they exactly correspond. The variations in St. John, however, are very instructive as to his own design. We may learn from them why he repeats his predecessors, as well as why he so commonly introduces topics which they have not touched.
'After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a great multitudefollowed Him, because they saw His miracles which He did on them that were diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.' The addition to the story is in the last verse. It has puzzled the harmonists. It does occasion serious difficulties in the chronology of this Gospel. Yet I hesitate to call it an interpolation. The Jerusalem feasts are continually present to the mind of St. John. Even when he leads us into Samaria and Galilee, we are never allowed to forget them. I own, however, that this notice of the Passover does not prepare us for a visit to the city; and that it is quite unnecessary as an introduction to the following discourse, which, as we all know, was suggested by an event which took place near Capernaum.
'When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, and saw a great crowd come to Him, He saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this He said to prove him: for He Himself knew what He would do. Philip answered Him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto Him, There is a lad here which hath five barley-loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?' The force of the sign is often, as I said before, to be discerned in these incidents, quite as much as in what we call the miraculous part of it. We see how our Lord uses events as an education of His disciples; how part of an event serves to bring out the character of one man, part of another. And what was true then, according to the doctrine that goes through the book, is true always. As the Teacher does not change—as, in essentials, the learner of the West is not different from the learner of the East—the same method of discipline belongs to both. We may understand, from the specimens of it which St. John gives us, how our thoughts are awakened—how we are made conscious of doubts, that they may be satisfied.
St. John follows strictly the former Evangelists till the 14th verse. There the effect of the sign upon the multitude is given in words which we have not elsewhere. 'Then those men, when they had seen the miracle which Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet which should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force to make him a king, He departed again into a mountain Himself alone.' Two names are brought together which are quite distinct, but which have mingled with each other in all the world's history. 'He is aProphet; God has sent Him.' That is the natural feeling of a crowd which has been conscious of a wonderful power exerted on its own behalf. Then comes another:—'How shallweexalt this Prophet? How shall we show our sense of His might, and our gratitude for His benefits? Let us make Him ourKing. None is so worthy to reign over us. He may not be willing to put Himself at our head; why should not we take the matter into our own hands?' It was no new thing. Many a champion had arisen before in Galilee to rid the people of their oppressors. Each had come in the name of God. The desert was the ordinary scene of their exploits. Was it not the very place for an insurrection in favour of this Galilæan Prophet to begin? If some compulsion were used, the mysterious power which had fed them would, of course, be ready to support His own claims.
Unless we remember this wild excitement among men who had been hungry and who had eaten, and the voice of command with which He sent them away to their houses—the kingly might coming forth in His resolution thattheyshould not make Him a king—we can scarcely enter into the stillness and awfulness of that night-scene which is brought before us in the following verses:—'And when even was now come, the disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. But He saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. Then they willingly received Him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.'
I believe the conscience of men has received the right impression from this story. It has come to them in dark oppressive hours as the witness of a Presence that had been with them, though they knew it not,—of a calm power in which they might trust. This might not be their notion of a miracle. If they had been asked to define its nature and its purpose, they would carefully limit it to the time in which Jesus dwelt on earth; they would say it was a departure from the laws of nature to attest His divine mission. They would explain away the faith they had expressed unawares; they would say they had only been making a moral or personal improvement of the incident. No, brethren, it is not so. They discovered the true meaning of the sign at first. The other is the cold intellectualmisinterpretation of it. They feel in their hearts that it isnota violation of the laws of nature, for the Son of Man to prove that the elements are not man's masters. They feel that when He raised up His disciples' hearts to trust in Him, He was teaching poor, weak, ignorant men the true law oftheirbeing, and thereby teaching them to reverence and not to despise the laws which He had imposed on the winds and on the waves. They feel that the whole beautiful narrative is not an argumentative assertion of a divine mission which can confute disputants, but the practical manifestation of a divine kinghood to meet the cravings and necessities of human beings. What does a debater care for 'It is I; be not afraid?' What else does a man tossed about in a tempest care for? The words were not spoken to Scribes and Pharisees, and were not heard by them. They were spoken to fishermen out in a boat at night; and by such they have been heard ever since.
St. John tells us this in the next paragraph. If we attach the modern notion to miracles, we shall, of course, conclude that so singular a witness of the Messiahship of Jesus must at once have been declared to those who were hesitating about it, and half ready to believe it. The occasion for announcing it was given. 'The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto His disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone; (howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks): when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither His disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said unto Him,Rabbi, when camest Thou hither?' Here were the excitement and astonishment all ready. These people had said the day before,—'This is of a truth that prophet which should come into the world.' What strength would that conviction gain, if they heard that He did not cross the lake as other men crossed it! He says nothing of this. 'Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me not because ye saw signs, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.' They did seek Him because they had seenmiraclesorwonders; for it was a wonder that they had eaten and been filled; it was one which might be repeated. But they did not seek Him because they sawsigns. The signs had not told them who He was; they had not come because they wanted Him, but because they wanted something which He could give them. He did not then announce any other sign of His power; it could have done them no good. But He proceeded to draw out the signification of the first sign; to show them what there was in it beyond the satisfaction of their immediate hunger.
Here, even more than in the case of the woman at the well, we may wonder at the deep mysteries which He revealed to what we should call ignorant sensual people. That they were a crowd of such people, St. John tells us plainly. And yet to what Jerusalem doctors had He spoken of a Bread of Life—of a bread of which a man might eat and not die? But let us begin where He begins. Each sentence, each clause, even each word, that He addressed to this rabble at Capernaum, is meant for the ears and hearts of the wisest among us. 'Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you: for Him hath God the Father sealed.'
To the woman of Sychar He spoke of water, for she had come to draw water. To these Galilæans He spoke of bread, for they had been eating of the loaves. Neither to one nor the other would He speak of the spiritual gift without speaking of the sensible gift,—without making them feel that that also was from God. He addresses the people of Capernaum as men working for their food ordinarily, though for once they had received it without working for it: and He bids them believe that there is another nobler work which is appointed for them,—a work, however, which does not prevent the fruit of it from being a gift. They were earning, by the sweat of their brow, a food which sustained their lives from day to day,—God endowing them with both the power to toil and the reward of toil. They might toil for a bread that would sustain another different kind of life in them,—a life not of hours and instants, but eternal. This bread, He says, the Son of Man will give. After what I said last Sunday of His use of this title,—of His assertion that the Son of Man must be the judge of men, must be the life-giver to men,—I have no need to dwell upon it here. I would only lead you to notice how exactly this application of it accords with that in the dialogue at Jerusalem, and yet how suitable it is to the Galilæans whom He is teaching. In both cases we find men brought directly into contact with One who knows them, who reads their hearts, who is the source and the standard of all that is human in them. In both, this Son of Man leads them to a Father from whom He has proceeded, from whose life His is derived, who has given Him His authority, whose will He has come to do. The words, we saw, were most provoking to the Pharisees of the holy city. Their inhumanity made it impossible for them to enter into the revelation of a Son of Man; their sense of distance from God, and their conception of Him as a mere Lawgiver, made the name of Father monstrous and incredible. With these ignorant labourers it was otherwise. A Son of Man,—a King who was yet a Brother,—they secretly longed for; half their wild acts were done in the struggle to find such a one. The thought of God was more terrible;—oftentimes they would have wished to hide themselves from Him under any hills and mountains; oftentimes they might have been glad to be told that there was no such Being. But there was that in them which owned Him as the Giver of all that they had; as worthy of the trust which their fathers put in Him; as associated with the graves of their parents and the faces of their children. To hear Him called a Father,—however little they might understand in what sense He could be a Father,—to hear that there was One whom He had sealed as a giver of Life to men,—this answered to some of the dreams which they had dreamed in their happiest hours: to some of the necessities which had been awakened within them in their saddest hours.
But these were vague, half-realized thoughts. The word 'labour,' or 'work,' was familiar to them. Jesus meant, they thought, that God would not give them anything which they did not earn. 'What shall we do,' said one, who was the spokesman of the rest, 'that we may work the works of God?' As often happens, the language was accurate beyond the conscious intention of the person who used it. He desired to know what work they should workforGod, whereas it was really a workofGod that was demanded. 'Jesus answered, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.' God was working upon them; He was calling them to trust their King and their Friend; to give up their hearts to the Lord of their hearts—to Him who could alone quicken them to any good and fruitful work.
Of course, they understood by the expression, 'Him whom He hath sent,' that Jesus was claiming to be Messiah,—the sent from Heaven. 'They said therefore unto Him, What sign shewest Thou then, that we may see, and believe Thee? What dost Thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'
Jesus had fed them in the desert when they were fainting. That was a strange and great act, no doubt, worthy of a Prophet, perhaps of a King. But the manna had actually dropped from heaven out of the clouds. If He came from Heaven, would He have merely taken the bread in His hands and blessed it? Would there not have been a sign like that which showed Moses to be indeed the messenger of God? Would there be no appearance in the sky? It was the question of people whose minds were perplexed about Heaven, and who, happily, had not found out seemly phrases in which to veil their perplexity. A material heaven—a heaven of sky and clouds—was what they saw and confessed. They had a dim vision of something beyond this. Their hearts yearned for a Heaven as calm as that upon which their eyes gazed; as full of light, as productive of life, but yet altogether different from that. What it was, where it was, they could not tell. Do you think we should have helped them if we had talked to them about an intellectual Heaven or a subjective Heaven? Do you think such nonsense can be of much help to ourselves?
'Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.' They had a feeling that, in some way, the manna was a gift from above. They had an equally strong feeling that, in some way or other, it came to them from Moses. The impressions were confused; yet each was right in itself. The records in the Book of Exodus encouraged each. Those records taught them to regard the water which started from the rock, when it was struck by the rod, as bestowed by an unseen Giver. If the manna was found upon the trees, that book would teach them that it was just as much a gift as if it fell from the clouds. Our Lord brings this sense out of the old story. 'Moses,' He said, 'gave you not that bread from heaven.' And then He pronounces the higher Name—the new Name, the Name which He had come to reveal—'My Father.' It was He who gavethatbread in the wilderness, and it was He who was giving them, then and there, 'the true bread from heaven.' What that Bread is, He goes on to explain. It is aPersonwhom they want to connect Heaven with earth,—themselves with God. The glory they gave to Moses showed they needed a Man to bring God nearer to them. Their eagerness to assert that the manna came from Heaven, showed that this was not enough for them—there must be a direct connexion between them and the higher world into which Moses ascended; their food must denote it. The name of Father told them that it was even so. That Name turned the material heaven into a spiritual Heaven, more real than the material heaven—a Heaven from which the best good could come, not to lawgivers or prophets, but to hungry Galilæans; for they could not really enter into that name of Father without acknowledging a Son who came to them as their Brother. They could not receive Him in these characters without believing that He had come to bring life—common life and the highest life—not to a few select men, but to the world.
'Then said they unto Him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.' The parallel words to this, in the dialogue with the woman of Samaria, were spoken, I thought, with the levity which characterised her till she discovered that Jesus knew all things that ever she did. I do not perceive a similar levity in these words. The people may have taken in very little of His meaning; but I think they were serious and awed. And surely the words in which our Lord answers them are very different indeed from those which He spoke to the woman; very different, also, from those in which He spoke afterwards to people who had none of her frankness, and who had a crust of intellectual and spiritual pride to break through. Before I quote His words, I will explain why I think that they wind up one division of this chapter, and that the remainder of it, though a continuation of the subject, introduces us to new topics and new persons.
It is evident that the conversation commences on the border of the Lake of Tiberias, with the people who had just crossed and found Jesus there. But it is said in the 59th verse—'These things said Jesus in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum.' There must be a break, therefore, somewhere. I can have no doubt that it occurs at the 41st verse. In it we are told that the Jews murmured at Him. The wordJewswe have not met with before; the moment it occurs, the character of the narrative changes. Instead of the simple, confused observations of a crowd, 'which did eat of the loaves and were filled,' we have murmurs and reasonings of such men as were sure to be found in the synagogues—men who represented the sentiments of the Scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem. They are evidently, I conceive, discussing a strange phrase which had been reported to them as having proceeded from the lips of the Nazarene teacher. All the controversies which have been raised about this chapter, arise directly out of the latter part of it. I shall not enter upon any of them to-day. We shall be far better qualified to consider them, if we dwell for a few moments upon that wonderful Gospel to the poor which is contained in the reply to their half-unconscious prayer—'Lord, evermore give us this bread.'
'You ask me to give it to you: it is given already. The Father has givenMeto His creatures. I spoke of a Son of Man whom the Father had sealed.I, that Son of Man,am that bread of life. But how can such bread be eaten?He that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and He that believeth on Me shall never thirst.' If coming to Him was going to Him on their feet, they had done that already; if believing on Him was acknowledging Him as the Prophet that should come into the world, they had already fed on Him in the sense that He intended. Yet it was clear that their hunger was not satisfied—that it was only beginning to be excited. He goes on—'But I have said unto you, That ye also have seen Me, and believe not.' If Jesus was merely a Prophet of Nazareth, who could be shown by visible miracles to be sent from God, the distinction of seeing and believing is incomprehensible. Let a sufficient amount of probative evidence be addressed to the eye, the act of believing must follow. But if He was the Word who had in all times been the Light of men; if those who judged by the sight of their eyes had resisted this Light, and become idolaters; if those who received it, received it into their hearts, and so rose to the stature of Sons of God;—then it was certain that He would speak to another organ than the eye, or than any of the senses; as much when He stood before them in an actual body, and spoke with fleshly lips, as when He was only their invisible Teacher and Reprover. It must be their faith, not their sight, which must now, as ever, see Him and answer to Him. They might touch Him, and yet not come to Him.
But He proceeds:—'All that the Father giveth to Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.' The apparent advantage of being on earth at the time of His appearing—of being in the streets in which He walked, of sitting with Him, of conversing with Him—would be nothing. All these privileges might belong to those who would reject Him, hate Him, betray Him. But all that the Father of spirits gives to Him—all that yields to the Father's will—shall confess Him as its true Lord; and him that so cometh, in one place or another, in one age or another, He will not thrust away. 'For I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.' 'I have not come forth to save some choice favourites of Mine, but to fulfil the will of Him who created the universe—of that Father to whom I said your spirits are yielding when they turn to Me.'
'And this is the Father's will which hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing out of it(ἵνα πᾶν ὃ δέδωκέν μοι, μὴ ἁπολέσω εξ αὐτοῦ),but should raise it up at the last day.' I dare not paraphrase these words. They are too large and too deep for any conception I can form of them. The adjective and the pronoun, you will perceive, are in the neuter, as if the promise was to include not only humanity, but all that is related to humanity—the body through which the spirit speaks and acts—the whole frame of nature, which has shared man's decay and death. The final day cannot come till all that the Father has redeemed is raised to its proper life. But yet the neuter could not satisfy the intention of Jesus. He was speaking to distinct persons; He must add—'And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.'
Thus we are brought back to the original proposition; only it has gained immeasurably in strength and fulness. To each man in that crowd who had eaten of the loaves and been filled, and had followed Christ for no better reason than that,—to each man upon whom His light shined in the days before His incarnation,—to each man who has been born into the world since,—to each ignorant peasant of this land,—to every miserable dweller in the streets and alleys of this city,—to each one of us who may have been tempted by wealth, luxury, false philosophy, false religion, to seek some food that cannot nourish us, does He say: 'It is the will of My Father that this man should triumph over all the enemies that are drawing him down into death, and that he should be raised up at the last day by the might of Him who died and rose again; that he should enter into that eternal life of righteousness and truth, which was with the Father, and which has been manifested to us in His only-begotten Son.'
[Lincoln's Inn, Sunday after Ascension (Thanksgiving-day), May 4, 1856.]
St. John VI. 62.
What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?
On this day the order of our Services would lead me to speak of our Lord's Ascension. On this day the Queen commands us to give thanks for the restoration of Peace. My text will tell you that I need not break the order of my discourses on St. John, if I desire to speak on the Church Festival. I believe there are lessons in the passage which would naturally come under our notice this afternoon, that belong equally to the National Festival. As long as we think of the Peace without any reference to God,—we mean by Peace, the Treaty of Peace; we question whether such and such articles in it are commensurate with the cost and success of the war,—whether boundary lines are fairly and wisely drawn,—whether new concessions might not have been obtained by a longer struggle? Or perhaps we mean by Peace merely the cessation of those hostilities by which all the nations that have taken part in them are more or less exhausted. Or perhaps we identify it with the material prosperity of the classes which have money,—a prosperity that seems to some closely connected with social and intellectual progress, if not the source of it. All these subjects deserve our most serious consideration. I believe that a Thanksgiving-day is to increase the earnestness with which we reflect on them, to take away the looseness and levity of our thoughts respecting them. But it must do this by opening to us another view of Peace,—not as based upon treaties and conventions,—not as being sustained by these; but as deriving its ultimate strength from the mind and will of Him who rules the universe, its subordinate security from our conformity to His mind and will. Such a day teaches us to look upon Peace not merely as the end of a war, but as the normal state of a Christian and human society; a state which is interrupted by the lusts that war in our members,—the interruption being most terrible when it exhibits itself in internal strifes and hatreds. Such a day calls upon us to reflect that what, in the dialect of the money-market, is called prosperity, is not one of those symptoms of Peace which we are to rest in with confidence,—not one which we are ever to contemplate without trembling. For it does not mean the growth and vital energy of the whole body, but an unnatural swelling and bloating of certain portions of the body. It often leads to ignoble aims, frantic speculations, systematic fraud,—to everything that destroys the force of a people, and makes it a silly, gambling, slavish people. It compels wise men frequently to regard war, with all its horrors, as an inevitable punishment; nay, even as a positive blessing. Therefore such a day as this obliges us to seek diligently for the springs of the moral life of societies,—for the secret of their inward peace and coherency.
The Lawgiver of the Jewish people had told them that all the discipline they passed through in the wilderness had been to teach them that 'man does not live by bread alone, but that by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God, doth man live.' He was speaking to them as the members of anation. He was telling them that the endurance of their national polity from age to age would depend not upon material bread, but upon another kind of nourishment and strength which it would derive from an unseen Presence. The lesson was repeated by every prophet, ratified by the darkest and the brightest passages of Jewish history. They were a wise and understanding people, strong and united,—however poor in numbers and physical appliances,—just so far as they believed in a One God, who watched over them, in whom they might confide. They were a contemptible people, essentially weak, full of elements of strife and dissolution,—however numerous they were, however rich,—when numbers and riches became the objects of their worship, when the righteous and living King was forgotten. Do you think that this, which isthemaxim of the Old Testament, is forgotten in the New? Do you think that Jesus introduced a new law which set this law aside,—a law that had reference to individuals merely, and not to societies? I believe that the great misery and sin of the Jews, in the time when our Lord appeared among them in the flesh, was that they had lost the feeling of national unity,—that they had become mere covetous individuals, herding together in sects, knit to each other by opinions and antipathies, not by the sense of a common origin, a common country, a common Lord. Jesus came to gather together the lost sheep of the house of Israel under their true Shepherd. Jesus claimed publicans and sinners as part of the same nation, as heirs of the same covenant with the most devout. Jesus was in continual conflict with the sects, because they were substituting a self-seeking religion for the faith of Israelites. It is true that He was unfolding the faith of Israelites into a human and universal faith; but in doing so, He was establishing, not undermining, that which sustained the nation, and must sustain every nation.
When, therefore, He answered those who spoke to Him of the manna which their fathers ate in the wilderness, by telling them of the true Bread which came down from Heaven, He was, I conceive, expounding the words of Moses,—those which He had used in His own temptation. He was showing that neither the life of Israel nor the life of humanity can be sustained by earthly bread; that both demand another food; that He could tell them what that food was, whence it came, how it might be received. By keeping this thought in our minds through the latter part of this wonderful discourse, I believe we shall do something to rescue it from the fangs of systematisers and controversialists, as well as to deduce needful instruction from it for England on this day.
The 40th verse of this chapter appears, as I observed last Sunday, to close our Lord's dialogue with the people who had crossed the lake to see Him, because they had eaten of the loaves on the previous day. An interval has passed before the 41st verse. Then we hear of certain Jews who weremurmuringat the words, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' These Jews, I conjectured, were Scribes belonging to the synagogue of Capernaum,—men who had caught the notions and habits of the Scribes in the capital, and yet could avail themselves of the local prejudices of Galilæans. Their temper is clearly indicated in the 42d verse:—'And they said, Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that He saith, I came down from heaven?' The difficulty about Heaven, of which I spoke last week, was really not less for the Scribe than for the peasant,—only the one could talk learnedly about a second, or third, or seventh heaven, while the other, more honestly and more wisely, did not pretend to know about anything but the actual firmament which was over his head. Yet the consciousness which man has of some better heaven than this, was indicated by the confused experiments of the former to conceive one, and dwelt in the heart of the latter, awaiting some divine touch to call it forth. The spring was touched when our Lord spoke of a Father; the new heaven which the spirit of man in each man craves for, is contained in that name; where the Father is, it is. If we demand a more accurate definition, we may try our skill in framing it,—God's revelation will not help us. For that revelation does not cheat us with formulas when we are in want of realities; does not give us stones when we ask for bread.
Jesus, therefore, told the cavillers just what He had told the crowd. 'Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.' All their reasonings and debatings would not bring them nearer to Heaven or to Him, than the feet and the eyes of the people who had eaten of the loaves had brought them. The Father of spirits must draw their spirits to Him who was the source of their life and light, whom He had sent to raise their spirits out of their darkness and death; when they were drawn, when they did embrace Him as their deliverer and friend, no death of the body, no darkness of the grave, should have power over them; He will raise them up to the fulness of life in the last day.
Was this new doctrine? 'Was it not written in their Prophets, Ye shall be all taught of God?' Was it not the very promise,—the highest promise,—to the people of God's covenant, to those who were circumcised and withdrawn from fleshly idols, that they should hear His voice speaking to them? What did that promise imply but that God was a Father who was educating the creatures who are formed in His image to know that image? 'Every man therefore that hath heard and learnt of the Father, cometh unto Me.' 'He comes to Me as that Word who was in the beginning with the Father,—as that Word who has been, and is, and will be always, the light of men.'
'Not—He goes on—that any man hath seen the Father, save He which is of God, He hath seen the Father.' It is not that any man has had a vision of Him who, by a thousand mysterious influences, is every hour acting upon him, and whom he has either obeyed or resisted; only He who is of God—only the Son, who has come forth from the Father—has had this vision; only He has entered into that Love which has been guiding the universe, and penetrating into the hearts of human beings.
This doctrine respecting the Father and the Son, which we have been tracing through every passage of this Gospel—which we have found to lie beneath all its other announcements—is the necessary preparation for the answer which He makes to the murmurers:—'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in thewilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. And the bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.'
This contrast between these two kinds of life has gone with us through this discourse, as well as through all our Lord's previous discourses: we ought by this time to be sufficiently familiar with it. The eternal life we have found is the life of the spirit; the life which is supported by material bread is the life of the flesh. Faith or belief is here, as elsewhere, described to be the proper act and exercise of the spirit, as feeding upon bread is the natural act or exercise of the flesh. That which is presented to the spirit must be as real as that which is presented to the flesh. The spirit cannot provide its own nourishment; faith cannot create its own object. Jesus says, 'He that believeth hath eternal life.' He adds, 'I am that bread of life.' 'I am the Word of Life to man at all times, whether he knows it or not—whether he desires a heavenly life, or is content with an earthly life. And as your fathers received manna from God to sustain the life of that body which was to die at its appointed season, I, the Word of Life, have come from God to sustain the life of the spirit—to keep that from perishing, to give it the immortality which He intended for it. I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven; I am that Word, in whom is life, made flesh. If any man acknowledge Me as that Word of Life—if his spirit participates of that life which is in Me—he shall live for ever; and this flesh which I have taken, which I have united to My living and eternal substance, I will give for the life of the world.'
I keep closely to the letter of the Evangelist. I dare not depart from it; and I dare not seek the interpretation of it anywhere but in himself. There are a hundred scholastical interpretations of the reason why the Son of God was made Man—why His death was necessary for the deliverance of men. Those who think these explanations better than St. John's may make what use they can of them. I find in St. John all that I want—infinitely more than I can embrace. I will try, with God's help, to learn what the Spirit is saying to us by him before I look elsewhere.
When He says, 'The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world,' does He speak of His death on the cross? Does He speak of some mysterious life which He will communicate to those who truly believe in Him? Does He speak of that Sacrament which we believe that He has commanded us to receive? You know how these questions have been debated in all times—how they are debated now. Perhaps we are on the point of a tremendous conflict on this very subject—a conflict which, however slight in its beginnings, may in its issues be more serious and practical than the one from which we have just escaped. Do not, therefore, let us evade the question, or any of the great moral difficulties which are involved in it. Do not let us strive to discover a poor unsatisfactory compromise upon it. Do not let us treat with contempt or indifference any of the earnest feelings which are enlisted on one side or another of it. One man or another may be condemned; there may be shouts of party triumph, or groans of defeat. What are all these when the question is about the life of the world, the life of eternity—about that which is to be when we are all standing together before an all-righteous Judge, to answer for the idle words we have spoken against each other, and for our mockeries of His Name? If we are giving thanks to God for peace, in the Name of God let us be labouring for peace—such peace as He only can give us!
Let us be sure, then, that when Christ speaks of giving His flesh, He does mean, as all have supposed Him to mean, that He would give up His body to die upon the cross. Let us be sure that, when He speaks of giving His flesh for the life of any, He must speak of a real, hidden, divine life, such as he has been speaking of throughout. Let us be sure, lastly, that when He speaks of giving up His flesh for the life of the world, He must mean that the blessing which He would confer by giving up His flesh would be one for mankind—for the whole earth—not for a little portion of mankind,—not for a few inhabitants of the earth. Whether I can grasp these truths or not, I must acknowledge them all to be true, if I acknowledge the Gospel to be true; I must believe that God understands them, if I do not. And this is what I mean when I come to the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. I do come to give thanks there that in Him is the life of the world, and that He gave His flesh for the life of the world. I do not want a separate life either here or hereafter. I come to renounce that separate life, to disclaim it, to say what a wretch I have been for pretending to have it, for trying to create it. I come to say that I find a separate life to be a detestable and damnable life—another name for death. I come to say, that if God leaves me to that separate life, I know that I am doomed to the second death,—the eternal death; but that I understand that the Son of God, by sacrificing Himself, has given me a share and a property in another life—the common life, the universal life which is in Him; and that, understanding this, I have come to give God thanks for it—thanks for myself, thanks for my brethren, thanks for the universe; and I have come to pray that, through His Son, He will deliver me, and my brethren, and the universe from that separate and selfish life which is the cause of all our woes and miseries, spiritual and fleshly, inward and outward.
In this way, brethren, I reconcile the faith in that sacrifice which was made once for all—the full sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world—with that faith in each man to which Christ promises eternal life. In this way, I believe that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper explains and justifies both truths, not because there is some strange mingling in the elements of a body which must be received,—whether there is a spiritual organ to receive it or not,—but because it testifies to man of the eternal Lord of his spirit—of the Word who is his life, of the Word who was made flesh for the life of the world. I regard that Sacrament as looking backward to the beginning, onward to the end of all things—as speaking of Him from whom all things have proceeded, and in whom all shall be gathered up, whether things in heaven or things in earth. I do not think St. John had anything new to tell us respecting the Lord's Supper: it was already adopted in all the churches. Though he dwells so much on the last passover, he does not record again the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the wine. He had a different task. He had to show why that act was not a formal religious ceremony, the badge of a profession; he had to show the eternal law upon which it rested—the ground there is for it in the relations of God and man. If you ask me, then, whether he is speaking of the Eucharist here,—I should say, 'No.' If you ask me where I can learn the meaning of the Eucharist,—I should say, 'Nowhere so well as here; for here I find the very signification of the sign. Here I may discover what the Eucharist has been to Christendom—what it has been to each man who has desired to be one of the great Christendom family—what it may be as a means of binding that family together—how it may become a bond to nations which are as yet lying beyond the circle of that family.'