'These things,' He continues, 'have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.'
This is the climax of His discourse, one may say of all human discourse; though prayer, as I think we shall find in the next chapter, may take us into a higher region still. He has been speaking to them in symbols, proverbs, parables. He has been showing them how all nature, how human transactions, how their own lives, all implied a kingdom of heaven, were ladders upon which angels were ascending and descending. The ladder would not be thrown down; parables and proverbs would remain everlastingly true. But now His voice could be heard who was at the top of the ladder. The Father, who had been declared through all subordinate relations, would Himself be revealed. And though all prayers are ascending up to Him, yet His love would be discovered as itself the fountain of them all. Even the Son, the great Intercessor, will not say to them that He will pray for them, if they take prayer to mean anything which is to alter the Father's purpose, or augment His love. For of His will His own words are the utterance and expression. He came forth from the Father, and is come into the world. He is going back to the Father to unite the world to Him.
'His disciples said unto Him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.' It seemed to the disciples as if all clouds were now scattered. They thought the Man was already born into the world. Alas! it was in their own faith they were still in part believing, not in Him. The travail-hour must be passed through by them as by us; that which would scatter all trust in themselves, that which would leave them only God to trust in. 'Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, in which ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone.' Their hour of weakness was at hand. It would be also His. They would be deserted, and He would be deserted. And yet He adds, 'I am not alone, because the Father is with me.' 'Your faith will perish. Even I shall cry, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And yet that eternal union which I have been declaring to you, which I have come into the world to manifest, will be unshaken. This desertion will make it manifest. And because that is unshaken, your union with me will be unshaken also. Nothing which I have said to you will prove untrue. "These things haveI spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation,"—that world which surrounds you, and in the evils and faithlessness of which you share. "But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." Its wars and divisions and hatreds have not vanquished me; I have vanquished them. Not the king whom the world has chosen for itself, but the Son whom the Father has set over it, shall reign in it for ever and ever.'
[Lincoln's Inn, 10th Sunday after Trinity (Afternoon), July 27, 1856.]
St. JohnXVII. 1.
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.
The more we enter into our Lord's teaching, the more profound is our apprehension of the dignity, the awfulness, the divinity of words; the more we confess their insufficiency. If He who was in the beginning with God is the Word, if words have been the expression of His mind, they awaken those thoughts in our minds which they are intended to clothe. But if the Word has spoken of Himself as a Son; if He has said that He has come from a Father; if He has promised a Comforter, He has taken us out of the region of words into the heart of the realities which they represent. It is the Son Himself who reveals the Father: what could words effect without His Person? The Father Himself, He has said, draws us to the Son: words would be spoken in vain if there were not that wonderful and loving attraction upon the hearts of the creatures whom He has formed in the image of the Son. The Spirit's work is to produce that inward conviction which words cannot produce, to act upon the man himself, to bind those into fellowship whom the diversities of speech and custom have made unintelligible to each other, to testify to men of the Father and the Son, as the ground of all speech, thought, and being. But here, as throughout this Gospel, the deepest revelation is the commonest and simplest. As we enter into the region of the divine relations, of divine communion, all must tremble; none are forbidden to approach. Intellectual differences disappear; here every spirit may find its home.
We sometimes ask ourselves, as we read the prayer in this chapter—and it is good that we should ask ourselves—'Is this the model of our prayer? Is Christ giving us an example here that we should follow in His steps? Or does it stand awfully alone, separated from every other that ever has been or can be offered; one which we are to wonder at the more, because so vast a chasm separates it from all our acts and efforts of devotion?' I believe that if we havenotunderstood the acts and discourses on the Paschal night, there can be but one answer to this question. 'The Son of God praying to His Father the night before His Passion,—how entirely isolated,' we should say, 'must such intercourse be from all that ever has been, from all that can be conceived of! What blasphemy to connect it, even in thought, with the petitions of those who have little to do but to confess their sins, and supplicate forgiveness!' But if we have studied these chapters; if we have learnt that when the disciples saw Christ they saw the Father; if we have understood that He is the Vine, and they the branches; if we have known what He meant when He told them that they were to ask in His name, that their joy might be full; if we have observed how He distinguishes the disciples from the world, and yet how He teaches them that everything they do is to be done for the world, and as a witness of God's love to the world; then, I think, we shall feel that it is the greatest of all contradictions to suppose that this prayer does not contain in itself the essence and meaning of all prayer, that it is not the one which best expresses the wants and longings of every man, that it is not the prayer of all the children of God, in all places and in all ages, because it is the prayer of the only-begotten Son of God.
'These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come.' He had spoken to His disciples of an hour of travail, which was to terminate in a new birth for them and for the world. The world knew nothing of this hour; no one of its works or pleasures was interrupted; that night was like every other night. The disciples had a dull sense of present oppression, a vague presentiment of approaching calamity. But they, as little as the world, felt what the sorrow was, still less what joy they had to expect when it was over. He knew it all. He knew inwardly that that was the hour to fulfil the purpose for which He was come into the world. The life and death of the world were gathered up into it. The feeling would have been intolerable if it had been a solitary, separate one; but the foresight of it had been given Him by His Father; the sense that the hour was come was imparted by Him; His prayer was the acknowledgment of that which had been revealed to Him, His filial acceptance of that which had been prepared for Him. And surely, brethren, all prayer must be this. It is the acknowledging of that, be it sad or joyful, which has been given to us; it is the casting our experience upon Him who has brought us into it, and who understands it, because without Him we cannot go through it, or in the least understand it ourselves.
And this is the petition which is grounded upon that confession, 'Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.' Every prayer that had been presented since the creation-day had been a prophecy of this. When the Psalmist cried out of the depths, 'Lord, hear my voice;' when he said, 'Let not any be offended or confounded because of me;' when he confessed his sin, that God might be justified, andmight be clear when He was judged, heseemedto say, 'Glorifyme, that I may glorify thee;' heseemedto pray, 'Letme, David, be brought out of my ignorance and darkness and sin, that thy name may be honoured and not blasphemed.' He didreallypray, 'Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee!' He prayed that not he, but that the Son of Man, might be raised and delivered and exalted, in order that God's own image might be exalted, and might shine forth upon men. When the Son of Man actually in His own person prayed this prayer, He was expressing that which was latent and could not be expressed in those earlier petitions; He was bringing them forth into their full clearness and power; He was actually presenting them in His own name to Him who had known and inspired the suppliant.
'As thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him.' I do not think that when we are occupied with the words of our Lord Himself, spoken in prayer the night before His crucifixion, we have a right to alter them in the slightest degree, for the sake of extracting from them what may seem to us a more natural and obvious signification. I am quite aware that our translators would have appeared to themselves and to many of their readers to be using an uncouth and strange form of speech if they had rendered the words literally, 'That all that which thou hast given to Him, He may give to them life eternal.' But I think they were bound to encounter any apparent difficulty of construction, rather than to incur the risk of contracting or perverting this sense. It was not a time to ask themselves whether their understandings could fully measure or take in the words. If they had faith in Him who spoke them, they should have given them exactly, and left Him to interpret them in His own time to those who had need of them. Christ says that His Father has given Him power over all flesh. He speaks, again, of all (everything) which His Father had given to Him. And then, leaving the neuter, πᾶν, He uses the masculine plural,them, αὔτοις, surely that He may denote the universality of the gift, as well as the personality of those on whom it is bestowed. It seems to me that we cannot afford to lose either of the truths which He thus declares, because it requires a violation of the technicalities of grammar, not of its essential laws, to utter them both. I suppose it was only in prayer that even He could have united them; and possibly it is only in prayer that we can apprehend them, so that they should not clash with each other.
'And this is the eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.' If these words came upon us for the first time, without any preparation, we should perhaps think them very wonderful, but should either pass them over, or try to reduce them under some notions or formulas of ours. But in this Gospel we have been most carefully educated into an apprehension of their force; they do not burst upon us suddenly, though they may be both more full and more distinct than any with which we can compare them. In the night dialogue with Nicodemus, by the well with the woman of Samaria, in the synagogue at Capernaum after the feast of the five loaves, in Jerusalem on the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, we have been hearing of a life which the Son of Man gives, a life of the Spirit, a life which is not of yesterday or to-day, a life of communion, a life of God. If what was said there was true, this must be true; or rather, this is the truth which throws back a light upon the words concerning the new life, and the 'water of life,' and the 'bread of life.' This explains the assurance in man that he is born to know that which is above himself, and his equally strong assurance that he must be known before he can know. The only true God knows the creature in all his wanderings and ignorance and falsehood, knows him in that Son in whom He has created him. When he turns to that God of truth, when he confesses Him and the Son, who is His image and the Light of man, then comes the true life, the eternal life, which Christ, who has power over all flesh, alone confers upon it.
'I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the worlds were.' It is impossible to say anything which will not weaken the force of these words. All I desire is to show you how they fulfil the idea, which St. John has been presenting to us from the beginning of his Gospel, of a Word who was with God and was God, of a Son who had come forth from the Father to reveal His grace and truth to men, of a Son who was returning to that Father as to His proper home. All is consistent from first to last; all has been divine, and all human. No clashing of the one with the other; but the human showing forth the divine as the perfect light from which it has been derived; the human leading on to the divine as that in which it is satisfied.
Hitherto this prayer has had no special reference to the disciples. He has spoken of His power over all flesh, of eternal life, of the work which He had accomplished. Now it turns to them: 'I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.' We have traced the use of this language through the later discourses of this Gospel, and have seen how entirely they are in harmony with the commencement of it. The disciples are taken out of the narrow exclusive sect-world by which they are surrounded, to be a family of witnesses for the Father and the Son; witnesses of that love which the world—and no part of it so much as the religious world in Jerusalem—was by its acts, its words, its principles, repudiating. To those Jesus had manifested the name of His Father. He had shown them what He was, and that they belonged to Him. Amidst all their confusions and errors, they had kept firm hold of this word. They had yielded to Christ's guidance; believing, when they understood Him least, that there was none else to whom they could go; that He had the words of eternal life. And they had now learnt a deeper lore. They had referred His calling and guidance to the Father. 'Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me;and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.' This had been the design of all His discipline. It had been working gradually upon them and in them. But there had been still a clinging to Him astheirMaster; the vision of a Father had only just dawned upon them. Now in these last discourses they had learnt the mystery of His relation and their relation to the invisible world. Their belief might not be strong enough to be proof against all storms, but it had taken root. Their position was that of friends, not servants; they were waiting for the Comforter to tell them fully of the Father; already they had the sense of not being born of flesh, or of blood, or of the will of men, but of God.
'I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.' It is not because I wish in the least to evade the force of these words as they stand in our version, that I plead for a more exact rendering: 'I am asking concerning them; not concerning the world do I ask, but concerning those whom thou hast given me.' I believe the impression left on many minds by our use of the prepositionfor, is that Christ is indifferent to the world, and only solicitous on behalf of a certain select circle. I do not say that any one will quite put that thought into words. When he sees it stated, he will shrink from it. Still it lurks in men's minds, and it is very desirable to remove any prop, however feeble and unimportant in itself, which may sustain it there. If any one says, 'But the force of the words lies not in thisfor, but in the expression, "whom thou hast given me,"' I say at once that, so far from wishing to makethatexpression less strong, I would insist upon it vehemently, as marking the distinction between a family which stands in its calling by God, and a world which attempts to associate on another ground than that calling, which chooses for itself. Christ is here praying concerning those who are to be the lights of this dark world, the salt of this corrupting earth; those who are to teach the world, in Whom it is constituted, the earth, by Whom it has been created and is kept alive.
'They are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.' All that has been said in the Paschal discourses, concerning the unity of the disciples with Him and His unity with the Father, concerning the essential and eternal dependence of the human unity upon the divine, is here translated into prayer. And yet,translatedis an unsatisfactory word. It rather finds its only root and ground in prayer. For what is prayer but that intercourse of the Father with the Son, of the family with its Head, which this unity makes possible? And what is the object and result of all prayer but this, that what is true in the mind of God may be true in the actual condition of men; all the hindrances which self-will has opposed to the divine Will being finally and for ever taken away?
'While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.' Here, no doubt, is an unfathomable abyss; we cannot see down into it; to attempt it, is to hazard the loss of our footing. One of those whom the Father has given to Christ (so the passage seems to say, and we cannot alter the terms of it to fit our fancies or wishes) perishes in his own selfishness and sin. Jesus says so. He says that that which had been written of old had come to pass; curses had come upon the man who loved cursing; he who had chosen death had been left to die. It is terrible to think of. But how infinitely more terrible would this fact, and all the facts that are daily occurring in the world's history, be, if they were not associated with the gift of eternal life, with the cry of the Son to the Holy Father on behalf of all whom He has given Him! What the heights and depths of that prayer are, none of us can know. It is enough to know who spoke and who heard, what love is above all and beneath all, how that love has been manifested and accomplished on this earth of ours. To dwell in it must be eternal life; to be separated from it must be eternal death.
'And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.' The idea of men living as children of God, members of Christ's body, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, with a world and a flesh and an evil spirit striving against them which they can renounce and can overcome, is not one which is strange to any of us. It is only too familiar. We know the sounds so well, and we have repeated them so often and so idly, that the words have lost their significance; we think they are words of art, or words of course. Here we have the beginning and ground of them. Throughout, St. John has been speaking of a race born, not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of men, but of God. Christ here declares that He has founded such a race upon the earth. He prays His Father to keep it in the world, not to take it out of the world; to keep it by His word, His quickening, uniting word, which a world that is divided and is seeking death must hate; to keep it in the confession of Him who is not of the world, but is the Son of God; to keep it from that evil spirit who would make it selfish, divided, hating, and therefore the worst portion of the world against which it is to bear witness.
'Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.' Surely, brethren, there are no words that we need to meditate on more than these: for it cannot be denied that sanctity and truth have become strangely separated among those who call themselves by Christ's name. Oftentimes it would seem as if holiness were pursued to the utter denial and dereliction of truth; nay, as if it courted an alliance with falsehood. Oftentimes, again, it would seem as if men who desired truth and pursued it, regarded it as a dead and abstract thing, which has no affinity with the life of man, which has no effect in making him purer or better. Nevertheless, the voice has ascended on high, 'Make them holy by truth,' for truth only can make holy. Whatever is contrary to it or mixed with falsehood, must defile and make base. And the prayer has been heard, and will be answered completely at last; for the Son of God, who is the way, and the truth, and the life, took our flesh upon Him, and met falsehood in all the forms in which it presents itself in this world, and sanctified Himself, and kept Himself from all contact with it, only by the might and energy of truth, only by submitting in all things to His Father, who is the God of truth. And these temptations He underwent, and this battle He fought, for the sake of His disciples, that they also might be sanctified by truth and truth only, that it might be an armour to them on the right hand and on the left, that they might live for it, and die for it.
In this second part of the prayer, all has had direct reference to the disciples who surrounded Him, whatever ultimate reference it might have to the remotest corner of the universe. But in the third part of it, He says expressly: 'Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.' Here is a prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here on earth from age to age; a prayer offered by the Head of that Church to His Father, offered on the night before His sacrifice was to be perfected; a prayer grounded not upon some wish or high aspiration hard to be realized, but, as He has just said, upon truth, upon the eternal truth that the Father is in Him and He in the Father, and that He is the Head of all men and that all live by Him. This glory, He says, He has given not to those eleven who were sitting about Him then, but to all everywhere who should believe in Him through their words. He has put this glory upon them; He has given them the name of Himself, and of His Father, and of the Holy Spirit the Comforter, to betheirname, that they might dwell in it and abide in it. And He prays for them, that they may not choose to be divided when He has made them one, that they may not make themselves the curses of the world by sharing in all its envies and hatreds, and by pleading God's name as the excuse for them, when He has sent them into the world to be the witnesses that His own Son has declared His love to it, and has gone forth from Him to bring it into the circle of His love.
He began by saying, that eternal life was to know the only true God and His Son Jesus Christ; He ends with saying, that this is the glory which all are created to seek after, and which He has taken flesh that they may attain and possess with Him. 'Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee' (has not known thy righteousness, but has supposed thee to be altogether unrighteous like itself; has not known thee by that name of Father, but has taken thee to be hard-hearted and grudging like itself): 'but I have known thee,' (known thee as the image of thy righteousness, known thee as thy Son,) 'and these have known that thou hast sent me.' These have seen thy light shining forth through me. These have beheld my glory as the glory of an only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth. 'And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it' (to the end of all things): 'that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.'
[Lincoln's Inn, 11th Sunday after Trinity (Morning), August 3, 1856.]
St. John XIX.37.
And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they have pierced.
In our services for the earlier days of Passion Week we read carefully and at length the narratives of the first three Evangelists. The narrative of St. John is reserved for Good Friday.
There is great wisdom, I think, as well as courage in this course. The diversities in these narratives, instead of being concealed from us, are forced upon our notice; we are taught that we shall gain insight into the whole purpose of the writers of the Gospels, of God Himself, by considering them. We are taught, at the same time, that it is here we are to look for the unity of the Gospels; that all the lines in them have been tending to this point; that we must learn what they signify at the Cross itself. The special honour which is given to St. John may have been suggested by the name of 'beloved disciple.' But it has, I think, a higher justification. St. John's Gospel takes us into the very heart of the Good Friday mystery. The passages in his narrative of the Passion, which do not occur in the other Gospels, throw back a light upon them, while they explain the special end for which he wrote. But they do much more. They show us why the death of Christ has been, and must be, the centre of the Gospel concerning Him; why all His discourses, nay, even that prayer I was trying to speak of last Sunday, would be worthless and unmeaning without it. How we should tremble to overlay the record of it with our words! How careful the Evangelists are that we should not be hindered from seeing the facts, and the Person, even by listening to their words! I shall attempt little more this morning than to seize those points of the narrative contained in the 18th and 19th chapters of St. John, which are different from the narratives in St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. But, that we may feel the force of these differences, it is necessary to say a word respecting their essential agreement.
This agreement is negative as well as positive. In contemplating the passion of our Lord, one class of devout persons have encouraged a sentimental habit of mind. They have dwelt upon the seven wounds, upon the crown of thorns, upon the circumstances either of mental or bodily anguish which seem to separate this Divine death from every other. A second class has meditated less upon the suffering and upon the Person of the Sufferer; much more upon the effects which the suffering would produce either upon men or upon God I do not condemn these courses; none can tell what good for life or for death may have been extracted from either. I only say, that the method in the four Gospels is equally different from both; and seeing that those who have chosen the one or the other acknowledge the authority of Scripture as paramount and divine, I cannot offend them if I add that the Gospel method is simpler, deeper, and more reverent than theirs, and that probably any blessing which they have divided between them will be ultimately possessed in fulness by those who follow it.
In trying to discover what this method is, the reader is likely to be struck with the importance which all the Evangelists attach to the arraignment of Christ before Caiaphas and before Pontius Pilate. Perhaps, if they were honest with themselves, they would confess that they have been surprised at finding so much said upon this part of the subject, so little comparatively of the crucifixion itself. But the more we reflect, the more clearly we shall perceive that in this, which seems to them the legal portion of the history, the ground is laid for that part of it which is most transcendent and divine, and also which is nearest to the sympathies of all human beings. The charge before the Sanhedrim was, that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God; the charge before the Roman governor was, that Jesus claimed to be a king. To set Him forth in that double character, as the Witness of the Father whom Jewish rulers were denying, as the true human King whose power the absolute emperor was counterfeiting and usurping,—this was the business of the Evangelists in their records of all Christ's discourses and acts. And it was this which gave the significance to His death. It wasthedivine death andthehuman death, the death which manifested the mind and will of the Father; it was the death in which all men were to see their own. In this respect St. John does not in the least differ from his predecessors. It was certainly notlesshis purpose than theirs to exhibit the Son of God and the Son of Man. What was spoken against Jesus, and what He spoke before Caiaphas and before Pilate, could not therefore be passed over or dwelt upon with less emphasis in the fourth Gospel than in the other three. It must be dwelt on with more emphasis. He can tell us nothing of Calvary till he has made us understand Who was brought there, and why He was brought.
And as in this main characteristic of the other Evangelists St. John resembles them, so also he follows them in all the chief incidents which they record. The night scene when He is apprehended by Judas and the band of officers from the chief priests; St. Peter's attempt to defend Him by cutting off the ear of Malchus; St. Peter's denial; the cry of the multitude for Barabbas; the purple robe and the crown of thorns; Pilate's efforts to release Him; the inscription on the cross; and the burial in the tomb of Joseph; are told as carefully in St. John as if no previous narratives of them had been known in the Church.
Yet under each of these heads points are brought out by St. John to which there is nothing corresponding in the earlier Evangelists, and which one feels instinctively would have been out of place in them. The first is this in the story of the apprehension: 'Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon Him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, which betrayed Him, stood with them. As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground. Then asked He them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way: that the saying might be fulfilled, which He spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.'
The last quotation is taken from the prayer which St. John alone has given us. But I think the words, 'I am' which made the officers stagger as they drew near with their torches in the dark night to the Nazarene prophet, have also their interpretation in previous words which belong exclusively to this Gospel. We are told in the 8th chapter that the Jews in the Temple took up stones to cast at Jesus, because He appeared to them to be claiming the words spoken in the bush as if they were spoken of Him. Was there not a recollection of those words as He stood before them now? Did not the clear light of righteousness and truth in His face carry them home to the conscience of the officers, and make them feel for a moment that One was using them who had a right to use them, One to whom they owed homage?
The struggle was soon over; they had been sent to do a work, and they went through it. Then came that other sentence, 'Let these go their way,' which fulfilled, St. John says, the words, 'Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.' What! we say to ourselves, Were not those words spoken for all time? Did not they refer to a deliverance from ultimate perdition? Could they be accomplished in the deliverance of the eleven Apostles from the immediate peril of being apprehended with their Lord? I answer, the more we become acquainted with the letter and with the spirit of St. John's narrative, the more we understand that he regards every act done by our Lord, to effect ever so temporary a redemption, for ever so small a body, or so insignificant an individual, as a sign of what He is, of the work in which He is always engaged, of the blessing which He has wrought out and designs for the universe. If we do not like to take this as a sign that the words of that prayer were uttered on earth and accomplished in heaven, we may form what sublime notions we will about Christ's redemption, but they will be notions only; they will not belong to reality; at best they will point to some good which we expect for ourselves; they will not glorify Him from whom all good comes.
The incident of Peter smiting the high-priest's servant follows immediately upon this sentence. The sequence is, I think, significant. The Apostle begins to defend his Master; he does not know that his Master is defending him. Of His disciples He loses none; but 'the cup which His Father has given Him, He must drink.' Then the vigorous champion is chilled. He must warm himself at the fire, for it is cold, while his Master is in the hall before the high-priest; the faces of maid-servants terrify him; he forgets that he was in the garden with Christ; he forgets his own violence; and the cock crows. The story is told with peculiar vividness by St. John, but it is the same in substance with that which the Hebrew Matthew told of the Apostle of the Hebrews; which Mark told of his own kinsman and master, writing perhaps from his dictation.
But the answer of Jesus to the high-priest is found only in St. John. 'I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort, and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? Ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.' I do not quote these words only or chiefly because they show that He who when He was reviled reviled not again, could answer in a way which the bystanders thought offensive to the dignity of the high-priest; so justifying words that have been pronounced unseemly in many of his followers, when they have been brought before priests and rulers; nor because they show how easily affected reverence for an administrator of the law may be joined with an outrage upon the law itself. I quote them much more because they occur in that Evangelist, who has been suspected of revealing a secret lore which Christ had kept back from those who heard Him in the synagogue and in the Temple. That inference has been grounded upon those Paschal discourses which I have been considering lately; discourses especially designed to prepare the disciples for delivering a message to the world; discourses of which the main characteristic is, that they contain the promise of a Comforter who should deliver them from their narrowness, and who should convince the world. But here is a testimony, coming after those discourses, from the lips of Christ himself, that He had no esoteric lore, that His doctrine may be learnt from that which He spoke openly, and that His disciples are teaching another doctrine than His, if theirs is not one which can be proclaimed as good news to the universe.
It is St. John who tells us that the Jews did not 'go into the judgment-hall lest they should be defiled, that they might eat the passover.' This most characteristic trait of a religious and godless nation ever put upon record, should be thought of by each of us in silence and awe, since every age has brought some terrible repetitions of it. What cautions have not inquisitors taken lest they should be defiled! what care have they not used to prepare themselves for feasts, at which their hands were to be dipped deep in blood for the honour of their god! They never fancied that they were copying the Pharisees of Jerusalem. We wrap ourselves in our Protestantism, and think we are quite secure that we shall not follow them. Alas! there is our peril! to dream that there is one evil tendency in Jews or in Romanists which is not in us, that there is one crime of theirs which we may not commit!
It is from St. John that we learn that Pilate would have wished the people to take Jesus, and judge Him according to their own law; and that they, acting in the spirit of the advice of Caiaphas, waived the privilege which perhaps they might have asserted, that He might die the Roman death of the cross, and perish as a traitor against the Cæsar. And it is St. John who gives us that dialogue in Pilate's hall, of which we are only beginning, after eighteen hundred years, to spell out the sense, though during all those eighteen hundred years the sense has been declaring itself in wonderful ways. 'Then Pilate entered into the judgment-hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art thou the King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.'
The other Evangelists have spoken to us of a kingdom of heaven, a kingdom the nature of which might be explained by parables of nature, the powers of which were manifested in acts of healing and blessing to men. It was a kingdom in the strictest sense, a kingdom set up on earth to rule over the earth. But it was not of this world. Its capacity of blessing men arose from its not being created by them, or dependent upon them. It was God's kingdom, therefore it was as unlike as possible to the tyrannies by which the world had tormented itself. St. John had gone in his Gospel to the root of this doctrine. He had spoken of a Word by whom the world is created, who is the Source of its life, though it knows Him not. He had spoken of this Word as the Light of men. He had shown how the Word, being made flesh, proved Himself by all His acts and discourses to be the same who had taught the hearts and consciences of men in all ages. He had spoken of this Word as setting forth the Father from whom He came. He had said that in manifesting Him, he manifested the truth which would make men free.
In this dialogue all these lessons are gathered up. Jesus will not tell Pilate that He isnota king, for that would be to contradict all His preaching and all His acts; He will not tell him that Heisa king, for how could a poor official and slave of Roman absolutism understand Him? But He says: 'For this cause was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness(to Jews, to Romans, to thee) of the truth. And I know that those who seek truth and love truth will hear my voice.' This was that 'good confession' which he witnessed before Pontius Pilate, the ground and pattern of all confessions that were to be borne afterwards in the world; all these deriving their virtue from this, all being witnesses of a kingdom which is not of the world, but overcomes the world; all being true because He is the truth.
I have said already that Jesus is represented in all the Gospels as wearing the purple robe and the crown of thorns. But the words of Pilate, when he brought Him forth with these signs of royalty, 'Behold the Man!' occur only in St. John. The answer of the chief priests and of the officers was, 'Crucify Him, crucify Him.' Pilate said, 'Take ye Him, and crucify Him: for I find no fault in Him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.' These words, like so many of which he speaks in his Gospel, may have fallen lightly upon St. John's ears at first; but after that 'Jesus was risen from the dead, then would he have remembered what things were spoken of Him, and what things were done unto Him.' Then will the sentence, 'Behold the Man,' have seemed to him the most wonderful inspiration which an evil ruler, who spoke not of himself, was ever visited with. Then the cry, 'Crucify Him,' will indeed have meant, 'CrucifytheMan, the Son of Man, the Representative of Humanity.' Then the attempt of the chief priests to sustain their charge of treason against Rome when that was failing, with the charge which Pilate could not understand, and which therefore made him the more afraid, of treason against God, will have appeared to him a startling testimony that they could not crucify the Son of Man without crucifying the Son of God.
What follows belongs only to St. John. 'Pilate went again into the judgment-hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.' Pilate may have had a misgiving that he and the prisoner were not in their right relations to each other. There was something in the criminal which judged Him. He shook off the feeling, as most would have done, by boasting of his superiority. 'Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?' No doubt he watched the countenance of Jesus, to see if such words did not make Him quail. The calm answer came: 'Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.' He did not dispute the authority of the governor or of the empire. It was God-given authority. They believed it was their own. He told them whence it was derived. The heavier sin lay with those who boasted that they were chosen by the righteous God, and who sought the aid of the rulers of the world to put down Right. Pilate was convinced that Jesus was not a rebel, whatever his words about a kingdom might mean. 'From thenceforth he sought to release Him: but the Jews cried out, If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend. He that maketh himself a king, speaketh against Cæsar.' The governor had too much Roman sense not to see through this petty sacerdotal artifice, this affected reverence for a ruler whom, as Jews, they hated. 'When he heard that saying,' probably to indulge his scorn of men who were driving him into an act that he disliked; perhaps—though I think there is over-refinement in attributing that motive to him—because he fancied he should have the people on his side against the priests—'He brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment-seat, in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the Passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out. Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him! Pilatesaith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Cæsar.'
If Pilate had had a deliberate scheme of policy to extract from a turbulent province a solemn recantation of the faith which had kept alive its national existence from age to age, he could not have effected his purpose more perfectly than he did by this proceeding. For an unusual crowd must have been assembled; it was the feast which celebrated the deliverance of the land from a foreign tyrant, and its allegiance to an invisible king. There and then the rulers of the land severed all ties except those which bound them as servants to the emperors. If Pilate had been (as indeed he was) a prophet of God, he could not have proclaimed more solemnly and awfully that the Jewish people were thenceforth ineffectual for any moral purpose, as witnesses against human tyranny or human idolatry, and that there is no real alternative for any people between the acknowledgment oftheMan as King and the worship of a military tyrant or Man-God. This, therefore, is the crisis in the history of that day and of the world. 'Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led Him away.'
All the Evangelists speak of the title on the cross. St. John dwells upon it with great emphasis: 'And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that He said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.'
If we have understood the meaning of this Gospel, we shall feel the emphasis of the words, 'What I have written, I have written.' The Jews had declared, 'We have no king but Cæsar.' But they cannot prevent the servant of Cæsar from declaring, in bitter mockery, to all men who could read Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, 'This Man, whom they have forced me to put to death as an evil-doer, is their King. Look up, and see what kind of a king they have.' The insult was felt by them; they must bear it. And that Hebrew nation has said by the prophets and apostles whom it has sent forth, has said by all who have believed through their word, has said in their own tongue, has said in Greek and in Latin to the nations which Alexander vanquished and civilized, to the new world of the West which Julius Cæsar reclaimed from chaos, 'Our King is your King; to this malefactor you must bow down; by this sign you must conquer, or be conquered.'
'Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.' Do you ask how St. John could speak of that act of the soldiers whilst Jesus was hanging there? Do you ask how he could dwell upon fulfilments of the Scripture at such a time? Think a moment! Would anything give you the same impression of horror, if you were standing by an ordinary deathbed, as the sight of men contending for the raiment and goods of him who was leaving them? Is there anything so horrible as the thought how much death is regarded as only an event which gives the survivors a right to appropriate the things which the man has no more use for? If we had not been told that it was so when the Prince of the whole earth was dying, how much less we should know of the indifference which it is possible for human beings to feel! How much less we shall know of what He had to bear! 'These things therefore the soldiers did,' in the sight of the Cross, under the eye of the Son of God. We might in their place have done the same; there was nothing in the mere sight of the suffering to prevent it. 'They parted my raiment among them; for my vesture did they cast lots.' Thus a man of the old world, dying in desertion and darkness, expressed a part of his suffering, not a less intense part of it than the dryness of the 'throat with thirst, than the melting of the heart like wax.' And that suffering was allfulfilled, all raised to its most intense point in Him who gave Himself for all, that all might be brought within the power of a love which they seemed utterly incapable of perceiving. I am sure there is immeasurably more in these words than I can enter into or dream of; but I dare not leave realities for metaphors at such a time. It may be lawful to speak of the divisions in Christ's Church as the rending of His seamless robe; they are that, and much more than that; they are the rending of His body and of His heart. But they are too awful, and the Cross is too awful, to permit plays of the fancy. Let us ask God to keep us from them, that we may have some faint perception of the truth of His grief, as He entered into the inmost experience of ours.
'Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and MaryMagdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.'
This is all which St. John tells us of the Cross, and of the words that were spoken upon it. We may think it little; but it has been found enough for tens of thousands of men and women dying on their beds, by the sword, at the stake. When they have doubted, and have even been led by religious teachers to doubt, whether human affections did not belong to frail and sinful mortality, the words, 'Woman, behold thy son: son, behold thy mother,' coming from the Divine lips, have testified to them that selfishness only is accursed, that all which belongs to love is imperishable. When they have felt the intensity of bodily pain, and have felt how little they could obey the dreary command to think of their souls; the cry, 'I thirst,' has bound them to Him who knew the fulness of their sorrow, who entered into the wants, not of souls, but of men. And when all sight of the future has been shut out, and there has been in their minds only the sense of evil triumphant and exulting, a voice which no clamour could drown has said to them, 'It is finished.' 'The battle is fought; the victory is won. A little while, and the hosts which look so mighty now, shall be seen no more for ever.'
'The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath-day, (for that Sabbath-day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs: but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and He knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.'
That some in St. John's day had begun to deny that Jesus Christ was come in the flesh, nay, that he regarded this denial astheanti-Christian doctrine, we know from his Epistle. His Gospel is the answer to this denial, because it begins from the divine ground, and shows how impossible it is to maintain that ground, unless we believe in the Word made flesh. He that saw the water and the blood then bare record of the fact, the import of which concerned the life of the Church and of every man. If we look at the subject from this point of view, we are not obliged to decide whether St. John spoke of the water and the blood in a common sense, as a point of evidence, or in a sacramental sense, as involving a high mystery. The common senseisthe sacramental sense; the evidence of Christ's actual relation to our nature is the assurance that He cleanses it of its defilement, that He endues it with a new and higher life. What more is conveyed by this sign, or, rather, what a force it gives to the whole history of the crucifixion, St. John himself must tell us.
'For these things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of Him shall not be broken. And again another Scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they pierced.'
To understand the fulfilments of Scripture of which the Apostle speaks, by merely fitting the words which he quotes to some fact, I believe to be impossible. There is a fact always answering to the words; but its import, its connexion with the life of our Lord and the life of man, must be ascertained by meditating on the context: that context being found, not always in the letters of a book, but quite as often in a portion of history, or in an institution and the purposes for which it existed. Here is a type instance. The words, 'A bone shall not be broken,' are brought to the Apostle's mind by seeing that the usual custom of breaking the legs of crucified malefactors was not followed in the case of our Lord. But those words recalled to him and to his countrymen the feast of the Passover, and all that is declared respecting it in the 12th chapter of Exodus. The fulfilment, then, of these words was the fulfilment of the whole Passover service; the translation of the national deliverance which it spoke of into a complete and universal deliverance; the substitution of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, for the lamb whose blood was sprinkled upon the door-posts of the houses that the angel of death might not touch them.
The other quotation is even more remarkable; it is taken from the 12th chapter of Zechariah. 'And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and theyshall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.'
One fulfilment of Scripture at the Cross was in the rending of the vesture by the soldiers, and in the mockery of the priests. The last, representing the inward hatred of the Jewish nation, is more fearful than the mere recklessness of the heathen officials. How utterly overwhelming it would have been to the Apostle, if he could have supposed that either the recklessness or the hatred was mightier than the divine love which was manifested there! But the pierced side recalled the words of the old prophet. There was a witness in them that even hatred would prove weak at last; that even upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the house of David a power would come from that Cross that nothing should resist. It said, 'The will of eternal Love may be contended with long. It must prevail at last and for ever.'
With the assurance that Scripture shall yet receive this grand and complete fulfilment the history of the crucifixion closes. St. John, like the other Evangelists, records the burial in Joseph's tomb. He introduces one particular into their narratives which, for the students of his Gospel, is full of interest. 'And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night; and brought a mixture of myrrh, and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.'
On the night of which St. John speaks, Nicodemus had heard the words, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world, that He sent Hisonly-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' As the eyes of the ruler turned to the Cross, may there not have come to him a sense of divine, unutterable love, stronger than death, which will have made these dark words intelligible? May there not have come to himself, in that hour, the pangs of the second birth of which all his Jewish lore had taught him nothing? May he not have hoped that for the body he was anointing, there would also be a second birth, a resurrection morn?
[Lincoln's Inn, 11th Sunday after Trinity (Afternoon), August 3, 1856.]
St. JohnXX. 30, 31.
And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
This morning I went through the narrative of our Lord's Passion, which is contained in the 18th and 19th chapters of this Gospel. I propose to examine, this afternoon, the narrative of the resurrection, and of the events that followed it, which is contained in the 20th and 21st chapters.
Those who have formed a vague notion of the fourth Gospel, as the Gospelaccording to the Spirit, the other three being represented as Gospelsaccording to the flesh, will expect that St. John should attach far less importance than his predecessors did to the resurrection of our Lord's body out of the grave. They will suppose that he must have sympathised much more in those passages of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, in which he speaks of our being risen with Christ, than with the 15th chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he makes that resurrection, which many among them denied, the very centre of his message to mankind.
I hope we have not gone thus far in the study of St. John without discovering that this conception of his character and purpose is an entirely false one. In whatever sense St. John's Gospel is a spiritual one, he has spoken of Christ's presence at feasts, family and national, of His hunger and fatigue, of His friendship for special persons, of actual bodily suffering in the hour of death, at least as much as any of the four. He takes more, not less, pains than the others, in recording incidents. No plain person ever felt that his story, if it is ever so divine, is not human. I may have made this observation very often, but I will repeat it even to weariness, rather than that it should be forgotten, since upon the recollection of it depends all hope of our understanding the beloved disciple, or of our gaining anything from him. It is true that he has carried us back to the beginning of all things, instead of introducing us to the manger in Bethlehem, or telling us first of the preaching of John in the wilderness. It is true that he has told us of the Word who was with God, before he has used the name of Jesus Christ. It is true that throughout his Gospel he has been presenting to us Jesus Christ as the Word of God, the Giver of light and life to men. It is true that this has been his explanation of the signs which Jesus did when He fed the multitude, or healed the sick, or raised the dead. It is true that this has been his explanation of those parables in the natural world, by which the Creator of that world revealed to men the mysteries of the kingdom of God. It is true that, by following this method, St. John interprets to us those names, Son of God and Son of Man, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, which occur so continually in the previous Gospels. It is true that he brings out in its fulness their declaration, that the office of the Christ was to baptize with the Holy Spirit, and to deliver men from the spirit of evil. It is true that the Name in which St. Matthew declares that the disciples were to baptize all nations, is unfolded to us by St. John with a distinctness and fulness with which it had never been unfolded before.
AndthereforeI think St. John must be even more careful than the other Evangelists to speak of the resurrection as a distinct, definite event: to set it before us in language which shall give us no excuse for supposing that he is merely talking of our spiritual nature, or of Christ's spiritual nature; in language which shall fix it upon our minds as a fact that was accomplished upon this earth. Of evidence, as I have remarked to you before, the other Evangelists give us very little. They assume that it was not possible that the Son of God should be holden by death, that the marvel which angels desired to look into was that He should have submitted to death. Only so far as that conviction took hold of men's minds could they believe in a resurrection, though a body of the most incredulous and learned witnesses should conspire to affirm it. St. John cannot have attached more weight to this kind of evidence than they did. His whole Gospel has been showing that it is an evidence which the living Word presents to the hearts and consciences of men, that alone produces any practical conviction. He must have felt, even more than his brother-disciples did, that the Word of life could not be overcome by death; that the great contradiction of all, which could only be explained by the truth that the highest life is the life of love, was in His undergoing death. He, therefore, more than any one else, must have felt the resurrection to be necessary, to be implied in the relation of Christ to his Father. He has again and again told us that the return of Christ to the Father was that to which He looked forward as the return to His natural state and proper home; at the same time as the consummation of the work He had done upon earth. He is so impressed with this conviction, it was so much his work to impress us with this conviction, that he will not relate, as St. Luke does, the fact of the ascension in the sight of the disciples.Thatis taken for granted. All that he has written would be unmeaning, if his Master were not gone to the Father to prepare mansions for His disciples. But the victory of the Spirit over the flesh, the proof that He who was united to the Father and united to a mortal body, overcame, in virtue of His divine fellowship, his fellowship with dust, and made that body free from its bondage—this must be spoken of as the proper termination of His earthly conflict. For by this He justified fully the feeling of mankind, which all the teaching of Scripture had confirmed, but which no prophet or saint had been able to justify to himself, that death is an intruder into this world of ours; that it is not less an intruder because all have yielded to it, and must yield to it; that there is a law of life which is higher than the law of death; that we cannot be satisfied till that law is promulgated and vindicated, not for one here and there, but for the whole race in the person of its Head.
With these thoughts in our minds, let us consider the following verses: 'The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him. Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.'
The points wherein this narrative differs from those in the earlier Gospels, are those which refer to the Apostle himself and to St. Peter. There is more, you will perceive, not less, of detail than elsewhere. The Apostles look into the sepulchre; they see the linen clothes and the napkin. We are told where the napkin is lying. These are not points of evidence, in the sense in which we commonly use that word. If we repeated them ever so often, or multiplied them ever so much, they would not establish the fact. They have served a much higher and more practical purpose. They have brought the fact home to the minds of multitudes as a fact. They have taken it out of the region of mist and shadow. They have connected it with a Person. Their very minuteness leads us to think of Him, not of them. They say to us, as they said to the Apostles, not 'There is a resurrection,' but 'Heis risen.'
By speaking of himself, St. John is able to make us acquainted with the process of conviction in one mind. He does not indeed, dwell upon any mental struggles. He just hints at the dull unbelief with which he began; at the eagerness, more of curiosity than of hope, with which he ran to the sepulchre; at the timidity or awe which hindered him from going in; at the dawn of faith when he saw the clothes. It is all very simple and childlike. What surprises some of us most is, that he should blame himself for not having known the Scriptures, 'that He must rise again from the dead.' What Scriptures could have told him this so clearly? Are there any which positively and formally announce it to us who read them in this day,—any, at all events, which we could blame a plain wayfarer for not connecting with it? Have not learned men of our own, able and vehement opposers of infidelity, affirmed that there are no traces of a belief in a future state among the writers of the Old Testament, nay, urged the absence of such traces as a proof of their divine legation? And has not St. John himself produced evidence enough that those who pored over the Scriptures most could not identify Jesus as the Person in whom their prophecies were to meet? We must go back, I believe, to the language of which I have spoken so often, if we would see our way through this difficulty. If the old Scriptures said nothing of a Word of God, of a divine Lord of men's spirits and bodies, it was impossible to conclude from them that He, or any one, would rise again from the dead. As long as St. John was blind to the fact that theydidspeak of such a One, that they were speaking of Him from beginning to end, that He only gave any unity to their histories or their prophecies; so long the most incessant diligence could not enable him to discover in these Scriptures more than dark hints of a triumph over death,—hints which never could support a practical belief, could never overcome the objections of sense and experience. The moment they foundthisWord speaking in all the words of the Bible, the moment they believed that Jesus was the Word made flesh, the Scriptures became full even to overflowing with these tidings. Not to see them there was to see there only dead letters.
'But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, saith unto Him, Sir, if thou have borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things unto her.'
There had been differences in the reports of the Evangelists respecting the appearance of the angels to the women. St. Matthew had said:—'And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and hisraiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead; and, behold, He goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see Him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring His disciples word.' St. Mark had said:—'And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen; He is not here: behold the place where they laid Him. But go your way, tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.' St. Luke had said:—'And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: and as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?He is not here, but is risen: remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered His words, and returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.'
I thank God that we belong to a Church which is not afraid to bring these diversities before us, as it does those in the reports of the Passion; a Church which believes so strongly in God, that it can leave Him to interpret these differences to us without making any awkward attempts at reconciliation. Our faith in the Resurrection is not affected by them so long as we live upon God's word, and not upon the letters of a book. When we change the one for the other, it must perish; no arguments or explanations will keep it alive. St. John, in some respects, differs from them all. I think many would have been glad if he had differed more widely. There is a dislike in our day, in Protestant countries, to any notice of angelical visitations. Romanists, and some who are not Romanists, would denounce the feeling as a sign that we are losing all faith in the spiritual world. I am not willing to interpret it so harshly. I think there is a feeling amongst us that we ought to be connected with the spiritual world now as much as in the days of old, and that these reports seem to keep us at a distance from it by drawing a line between us and former ages, by affirming communications to have been made to them which are not made to us. I partly considered this subject when I was speaking of the angel who is said to have troubled the Pool of Bethesda; but I must refer to it again, because we all feel, I think, that the angels who sang to the shepherds of the Child who was born in Bethlehem, and the angels who spake to the women at the tomb of Joseph, must have had a different message to deliver from all others. What was the difference? Surely this, that they came to tell of a union of earth and heaven, of the spiritual and the visible world in the person of a Man. If there were no such news to bring, we should indeed be left under the dominion of angels; for we should not be able to get rid of the thought—no nation ever has been able—that we are surrounded by invisible creatures, and that they do in some way communicate with us. But if there was such a truth to be told, should we not be rather startled to find that there was none to tell it? Would not the absence of these stories leave a blank, not in our imaginations, but in our hearts and in our reason? Was not the appearance of these angels a witness to men that we do not need, as former ages may have done, special messengers to come from behind a veil which the Son of God has rent asunder, but that hosts of such creatures may be working with us, and ministering to us, and joining with us, the sinful spirits, who present the sacrifice that was made once for all before the Father of spirits?
St. John tells us, at once, of another apparition to Mary, which was immeasurably more to her than the apparition of any angels. An actual human form stood before her, the one which she had known best and loved best in the world, and yet she took it to be the gardener's. It was not, therefore, that it was too radiant for her to look upon, that it had lost the signs and marks that belong to her race. But it was not the figure or the countenance which revealed Him to her. It was the voice calling her by her name, it was the voice which had bidden the seven devils depart out of her, that brought her to own Him as her Lord.
Then came those wonderful words which contain the deepest and most blessed of all truths in the form of the most startling contradiction. She was not to touch Him,forHe was not ascended. That which appeared to invite intercourse was the bar to it; that which would appear to put them at a hopeless distance would be the beginning of a fellowship that could not be interrupted. The weak, penitent woman was to learn the lesson which the Apostles had been taught at the Paschal supper. He must go to His Father that they might know Him. The private and exclusive communion into which they had entered so imperfectly, must be merged in one in which all should share who would take up their lot as brethren of each other and of Him; for He was to dwell with His Father and their Father, with His God and their God. This was a risen life indeed; and we see at each turn how a risen life implies an ascension.
'Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when He had so said, He shewed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.' You think of these as sudden apparitions, glimpses granted and withdrawn, of the Teacher who had once walked with them by day and sat with them by night; and you think rightly. St. John's words give us that impression of them. But do they give us no other at the same time? Is it not the apparition of an actual Person, of an actual human body? He may be seen, and may disappear; but Heis. We are not among shadows more than we were before. The air is freer, the light is clearer. He only does not tarry in that room where the disciples are assembled for fear of the Jews, because they are to learn that wherever two or three are assembled in His name, there is He in the midst of them.