Verses 24-37
Chapter 50
Prayer
Almighty God, thou hast set us here a little while, and thou hast required great things at our hands. Is not thy demand upon us a proof of the divinity that is within us, and of the great capacity with which thou hast endowed and blessed our life? Surely thou wouldst not gather grapes of thorns: thou hast planted us a goodly vine, and thou dost look that we should bring forth good grapes. Teach us to find in ourselves what thou wouldst find in us; thus may we answer the divine demand, and with all diligence and faithfulness of industry do those things to which thou hast called us, and act with a loyal spirit in all the engagements and endurances of time. We bless thee that now and again we obtain some glimpses of our true selves, and we trace our ancestry back to thine own hand, thou Mighty One, for there is in us a stirring of divinity, and there is within us a yearning which all thy heavens fail to satisfy and which thyself alone canst bless with sweet content. Enable us at all times to realise our sonship, to claim our inheritance, to walk worthy of our origin and of our destiny. These things we know through Jesus Christ our Saviour: he only hath brought life and immortality to light in the gospel: he called us with a great calling and clothed us with a great power he is our Priest, and he. will make our prayer prevail; he is our Redeemer, so we will draw our right hand from our own protection; he is our atonement and our sacrifice, so will we hide our sin in his infinite grace.
We bless thee for all the kindness which has made the week rich: thou hast kept our eyes from tears, our feet from falling, and our soul from death. Thou hast watched the return of our hunger, and thou hast anticipated with satisfaction the pain of its demand. Thou hast made our bed in our affliction. Thou hast comforted us with all healing solaces. Thou hast touched our tears, and they have been filled with light, and in all things thou hast been unto us sweeter than honey, yea, sweeter than the honeycomb. So have we come to thine house with a multitude of hymns and many psalms and desires after thee, keen as the passion of love and resolved as the determination of the whole heart. Thou wilt not disappoint us; thou hast no rude answer to those who pray to thee from the shadow of the Cross; thine answers are plentiful in love, and gracious and condescending and all pitiful, and in the look of thine eye is there hope for mankind, as in every tone of thy voice there is a gospel for the trusting and penitent heart. What shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards us? We have nothing of our own to give; the flowers of the field were thine before they were ours; we are not our own, we ourselves are bought with a price, so we have nothing to give thee, on thine altar we can lay no sacrifice that is primarily our own what then shall we render to the Lord for all his benefits towards us? We can only take of the offered cup, and find in it salvation; standing with it in our hand before thee we must call upon the name of the Lord.
We bless thee for the revelation of thyself which we find in Jesus Christ; though we cannot understand one word of it, yet it is music without words, it is tenderness without expression that we can comprehend. Thou dost tell us in thy Book that God is love, but what love is thou dost not tell us. Behold the explanation is a mystery, and the answer a difficulty. God is light, but we know not what light is, so how can we tell what God is? Behold, to these words there is no explanation, they are not equal words, we are lost in them, and yet we feel borne up by them as by subtle and infinite strength.
Enable us to read thy word again and again in the light of every day, that at last we may come to have somewhat of the music breathing in our souls, and giving us the order and command of life. Wondrous word, never to be explained, always to be as a sun that may not be looked at too closely, and yet always as a sun giving the light in which alone we can safely walk.
Give unto us all we need, we humbly pray thee, especially that pureness of heart, that modesty of mind which can see God and follow him in all the darkness of his way. Strip us of everything that intercepts our view of thy providence, blind us to every fascination but the attraction of thine own wisdom, love, purity, and grace; give us full satisfaction of the presence of Christ in the soul without explanation, an eternal mystery, yet an eternal joy. Thou hast set us in a circle of mysteries: we are mysteries to ourselves, the light is a mystery, and every season of the year, and every outgoing of the heart, the throb of every impulse and the passion of every desire to these we have no answers, we are smitten with daily amazement, and our amazement brings us into the spirit and posture of prayer. Gladden us for a little while, for the clouds are often thick; help us up the hill, for it is steep beyond the power of our climbing; give us answers to some of the riddles that vex our daily inquiry, lest we be discouraged and fall a prey to impious dejection. Give us lifting up in the day of trouble; when life is narrowed into a point or becomes but one great cloud, then speak to us as we fear to enter into the darkness, and let a voice from heaven call us to hope and confidence and joy. Bless the stranger within our gates today, and give him to feel that he is in his Father's house and therefore is no stranger here. Speak to the desolate heart and bring back some memory that shall be precious as a light of hope. Take up every little child in thine arms, thou lover of children, bless each with the kiss of thine affection and the seal of thy care, and return each to the father and the mother, anointed with the unction from on high.
Speak to our sick ones and they shall be sick no more: though the body itself have written upon it the condemnation of death, there shall be resurrection in the soul and life immortal in the heart. Speak to the wayward one, the hard-hearted, those who are set against thee in cruel obstinacy, breathe thy gospel upon such. O, thou who hast the all-melting fire, do thou bring to tears and to contrition those who have hardened themselves against thee.
Pity our infirmity, and call it a cloud: pity our sin and call it a thick cloud, and cast our sin behind thee as a cloud and our transgression as a thick cloud, thou God of the Cross, of the atoning blood, of the uplifted Lamb, of the eternal, the infinite Sacrifice. Amen.
Mighty Words and Mighty Judgments
"Then the Pharisees went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him," because he had broken the Sabbath day. The penalty would seem too much, but it is the way with passionate men that they should overleap themselves, and show by the severity of their penalties some sign of the errors of their own supposed piety. You will generally find that a man's condemnation of other people is meant to be a recommendation of himself. Study this law of social penalties, and you will be amazed, I think, to find how constantly it operates in this direction. A man severely condemns this or that offence on the part of his fellow-creatures. Is it a really honest judgment upon the offence or the sin? Is it not oftentimes a backhanded compliment to himself, as who should say, "What a virtuous man I am: how my indignation burns like an oven against such offences. Trust me, I am judge and purist and honourable man?"
The Pharisees sought to destroy Christ because he had broken the Sabbath day. This was the exaggeration of piety a piety that, by its own exaggeration, broke itself, and became impiety, so that extremes met. But what could you expect from men who actually wrote in plain letters this doctrine, that to eat with unwashen hands was more criminal than homicide? That to eat with unwashen hands, let me explain to the children, was worse than to kill a man. It is thus that good doing falls into Pharisaical impiety when it is left without a divine and living centre; this is what we come to in the absence of a legitimate and adequate authority: our morality becomes offensive; we rearrange it: we put it in new lights, and place it at new angles, and we make experiments of it, and we run it through all the gamut of our own imagination, until at last it becomes the wildest farce, the most consummate and intolerable nuisance. We want a standard authority, a court of appeal, a law that says, "Thou shalt and thou shalt not," and a spirit which interprets that law with all the breadth of poetry, and yet with all the clearness and narrowness of the highest rectitude. This law and this spirit we find in him only who is the Son of man.
"But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence." This was the true courage; it was no use opposing physical force to physical force. The man whose life is founded upon a great plan does not live by mere surprises, nor does he trust to what is called the fool's Bible, namely, the chapter of accidents. He removes the occasion; he will not even lead his enemies into temptation; he can always get out of the way. No man could hide himself so impenetrably as Jesus Christ, no man could look so dumb. He looked at Herod until Herod was glad to call in a score of servants to keep him company. No man could be so silent as Christ, could withdraw himself to such infinite distances as Christ, even whilst he stayed and looked at you. He frightened Pilate like a ghost leering out of the darkness.
This was part of the wisdom of Christ, that he should not bring his enemies into temptation to kill him. He kept back force by that subtlest and mightiest of all forces, true prudence. Force, thou fool, is not in thy fist; that is the meanest of weapons; it is in wisdom, compassion, abstention from violence, in the negativeness that simply withdraws and calmly awaits.
Yet Jesus Christ could not withdraw alone under such circumstances. "Great multitudes followed him." The multitudinous heart knew Christ, the sectarian heart hated him. Which is yours which is mine the heart that would slay him because of his violation of a rule, or the heart that would trust him because of the pain of a great necessity?
"But Jesus Christ was so distressed with his official reception, or reception by the official mind, that he paid no heed to the multitudes, fell into a great gloom his lips were shut up in stubborn silence, and his hand, that had never been put out but to bless, fell in paralysis at his side." The story might well have read so, but it reads wholly different. "He healed them all." But there was a council whispering away yonder in the city, and the meaning of the whisper was the death of this healing Man. He nevertheless kept on with his healing. Let that be your policy and mine; if men hate us, let us heal all who come lovingly within our influence. Beware of the evil influences of mere disgust. Never be disgusted. Look at the work, and not at the difficulties of the way; look at the Master, and not at the provocations given you by many of his servants have the end in view. Jesus Christ endured the cross, despising the shame, looking onward to the glory that was to come. This is the secret of steady, continuous, and divine work. Little natures fly off on little excuses. Little natures gather up all the provocations that have been launched against them until they become one great agony which the mind can no longer bear. Jesus Christ kept on healing the multitudes, though councils gathered against him, and officers of the Church made it their one business to shed his blood. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be the fellow of God, but emptied himself and became a servant and obedient obedient unto the death of the cross.
"And charged them that they should not make him known," that a great prophecy might be fulfilled. Jesus Christ did not want to be made known through his miracles only; it was a poor thing to be known as the chief of magicians, which he might have been mistaken for by those who had not the true reading of the signs and wonders which he came to perform. He knew that they would take the narrow view, they would read the lines upon the surface, they would not hear the inner music nor see the inner light, nor feel the inner pathos; they would talk about miracles and wonders and startling signs, and thus would feed their curiosity, and pay no attention to the deeper hunger of the heart.
Jesus Christ never made much of his miracles, except in an introductory and illuminative sense. He never wished to be known through his miracles. You cannot point to an instance in which he said, "This miracle is enough to astound the world and bring it to a spiritual conviction regarding my Messiahship." If ever he referred to them it was to satisfy vulgar curiosity, and not to satisfy a deep spiritual instinct. Now and again he had to point to his miracles, but it cost him something to stoop to such condescension as to indicate the mere issues of his power. His friends were always tempting him in this direction. They took the low, vulgar, and narrow view, which we are all inclined to take of great souls. We wonder how they do not do more; we could show them how to come more boldly out, and to take the age so as to incite in it a profounder amazement and a keener surprise. We know what to do, though these great souls know it not themselves. So Jesus Christ's friends came round about him once and said, "If thou do these things show thyself to the world." That is the vulgar Christianity of this day, not seeing its spiritual aspect, not feeling its tender unction, not knowing the meaning of the compulsion of pure love. Tell me if the world or the Church has got one inch beyond this programme of the friends and relatives of Jesus Christ, namely, "If thou do these things, show thyself to the world. Make a show of the miracles, publish a list of them, take the greatest place that is at liberty, and repeat these miracles night by night to thronging multitudes. Take thy position at the front." That is the programme which makes a splutter at the first, but that dies like a spark in the river. There is no solidity in it, nothing lasting. The true programme is Be true, love the truth, move in God, be silent because of the very majesty of thy faith. Less faith would mean noise and crying and great demonstration; completeness means quietness.
Herein are so many mistakes that are made about men and things. I have observed as men grow in education and in wisdom, and in all moral and spiritual refinement, they grow in composure. The last result of education is peace, quietness, rest. The vulgar man looks at the man of deep thought and great learning, and says, "Not very happy looking, is he? His eyes were nearly shut, his mouth was firmly set, and he seemed to be looking at nothing." The man was beyond the appearance of looking, he was absorbing everything all the while, and, as he added feeling to feeling and line to line in the upper progress of his soul, he lost the fuss, the noise, the love of demonstration which belonged to the earlier period of progress than the one which he had attained. Jesus would influence the world on permanent lines and from permanent centres; he was not an acrobat that would fling himself into fantastic attitudes in the air to cause a moment's laugh or shout, and then die away he takes the ages to grow in, he takes all time for his summer and his harvest, and he reveals himself not to our surprise or curiosity or haste, but to the ages, in all the vastness of their compass and all the profoundness of their solemnity.
By a very beautiful figure is the peacefulness of his disposition indicated. "A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory." What is this bruised reed? Is it as a bulrush, crushed by some great beast as he moves towards the river! Jesus Christ takes it up and rejoints it, or spares it, or makes nature pitiful to it with extra nursing and love for nature is a great mother, healing every scar and hiding every wound and working a great wizardry of concealment around all the great gashes and bruises of the world. Or is the reed the musical instrument of the primitive kind, on which the shepherd played upon the hills and in the valleys, and had it got out of order so that the tune would no longer come out of it? Jesus Christ says, "Give it to me, and I will repair it, and that bruised reed shall be as musical as ever." He did not come to destroy but to save, and the exquisiteness and the perfectness of his saving purpose are indicated in this analogy, that even the bruised reed, not worthy the saving, is one of the fragments that he will gather up that nothing be lost.
"The smoking flax he will not quench." Is it some poor man's one candle just going out, an inch of wick and no more, and will he take it and shield it, or wave it gently in the air so as to renew its life? Is it the one mean spark on which everything depends, and will he put his arms all round about it like a great defence, or will he breathe upon it so as to save its flickering flame till it burst out and seize the entire substance and consummate the purpose for which it was lighted? Take it in any way, it means this that the Son of man is not come to destroy but to save. He is mighty to save: he came into the world to save sinners. Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save. This being the purpose of his life, the whole meaning of his incarnation, you will find that everything falls into its proper place in relation to the sovereignty of this aim. Do not read the life of Jesus Christ as if it were a series of unrelated anecdotes; find the central purpose of it, and see how everything sets itself in happy crystallisation around that purpose, and helps to explain and commend it.
Having been engaged with great multitudes and healing them all, the Saviour is next engaged with an individual instance. "Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb." Sometimes the one case is the multitudinous instance, sometimes you find in one case the adding up of a host of cases. Devil, blind, dumb, pronounced incurable, written down amongst the hopeless it seemed to be a single instance. In reality it was a multitude of cases all in one. Every one of us is a multitude in this sense. Life is not all in little drops of ink or blood, which can be indicated by brief names and summed up in an etcetera. In my heart, in your heart is there a legion of devils, and yet the plural and the singular come together in most suggestive conjunction in the delivery of that fact. "What is thy name?" said Christ. The answer was, "My name is legion." Not our name is legion my. "I am many in one, I am one in many. I am not broken up into a multitude of incoherences, but I am one." Study human history and get from it what hints you can of the diabolic administration, and they will all help you to understand that the crowning characteristic of the diabolic monarchy is persistent and indestructible unity. You never find Satan divided against himself.
Now the Pharisees come again upon him. They heard of this instance, and they said, "This fellow doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils." They have been unable to kill him, but it is still within the compass of their malignity to traduce him. Once your Saviour was called "This fellow," once a reed was taken and with it he was smitten on the head, once that face was spat upon, once that unwrinkled cheek was smitten, and the work was never given up for a moment. He endured the cross, despising the shame, because of the glory that was set before him. Poor hasteful man, thou dost want to be a king all at once, not knowing that any kingdom that is worth having is entered by a strait gate and approached by a narrow path. Enter ye in at the strait gate, for strait is the gate and narrow is the road that leadeth unto life.
This instance, however, gives us a new view of the ministry of Jesus. He seldom condescended merely to argue with his opponents, he simply pursued his work and allowed his work to be his witness. In this case, however, he turns round upon those who traduce him and answers them argumentatively. Let us be present when he answers his enemies there is always a treat in store then. There was no such replicant as Christ: his answers admitted of no retort; no man, according to this history, ever ventured to reply to his answers. Collect the answers of Christ to his enemies, and tell me if anything can exceed the polish of their wit or the pathos of their feeling. Here is a case in point. Having read the thoughts of the Pharisees and understood the case, he answered them logically. "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. But if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself how then shall his kingdom stand?" As if he had said, "See the absurdity of your position from a merely logical point of view. If Satan were to cast out Satan, his kingdom would be overthrown by his own hand, and if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children, or your countrymen, cast them out? You are making a fool of the very devil you seek to credit with this mystery of wonder."
Thus he reduces to absurdity the thought or suggestion of the Pharisees. The devil is one, and he works with all the strength of unity. Do you know what the supreme prayer of the Turk is? You may be surprised to hear it, but it is a wise prayer from the Turk's altar. He prays to his God that the discords of the Christians may never be settled. Wise Turk, cunning Turk, he prays that we as Christians may never settle our controversies, for whilst we are fighting he is safe. It is the devil's prayer, if ever he turn his eyes of smoke and flame to the blue heavens, that the Churches may never settle their grievances, and never bring to a happy harmonious reconciliation the differences which trouble and vex them. He lives upon our discordances; there is joy in the presence of the angels of hell over every fight that divides and enfeebles the Church, Having answered his assailants logically, he proceeds to answer them judicially. Standing and looking at them as a scourging fire, he says, "Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men." So then Christianity is more than an argument; an argument it certainly is, having command of all the forces of logic and wit, swift repartee and complete reply; but Christianity is not a battle of words, it is a judgment upon the spirit, it is an anathema or it is a benediction, it is the savour of life unto life or the savour of death unto death. When you touch this Christianity, you touch something more than a mere competitor for your intellectual appreciation and your intellectual confidence: it is as a stone which, if a man fall upon, he shall be broken to pieces happy breaking or if it fall upon the man it will grind him to powder, and there are no hands with skill and strength enough to re-constitute that powder into the solid stone.
Beware of this unpardonable sin: not one of us has yet committed it: it lies within the power of the meanest of us now to do it. Take care how you lie unto the Holy Ghost or deny his ministry or insult his beneficent majesty; take care how you cut yourself off from the currents of life. If a tree could seize itself and drag every fibre of its root out of the earth, what would become of the tree? All nature would fight against it and kill it, its juices would be sucked out, its veins would be dried up with an everlasting desiccation, and never more would the birds of the air tenant themselves in its leafy boughs; it has cut itself out of the grooves along which nature sends her life-currents.
Take care how you uproot yourself and seek isolation; take care how you say you will not have the light, and you will not have the dew, and you will not be dependent upon the earth. If a man could so cut himself out of the ministry of nature, what would become of him? Rottenness and putridity would be his lot, and because of his very noisomeness men would hide them away. It is even so spiritually. A man can put the knife through every filament that binds him to the universe, he can cut down his veneration, his imagination, his impulses towards the morning, and all its blue and tender light, he can snatch himself away from the altar and never pray another prayer, he can thrust his face into his chest and look downward to the dust to find what he can in the mean stones beneath his feet, he can separate himself from all social charities and all happy fellowships, he can rebuke the child that would kiss him and run away from all the influences that would redeem him, and having done so, what has become of him? He is twice dead, plucked up by the roots, he is a cloud without water, he has offended the spirit of the universe, he has sought to live alone, and that is the impossibility of human life.
Hear the gospel then this day, men of business, men of toil, women, children, whole families, masters, servants here is a man who heals on the Sabbath day, and today is the Sabbath: here are those who object to him and still he proceeds with his gracious work: here are those who carry their objection to black blasphemy, and they are told that one step further and they go into a new gravitation and never can arise again.
Be the first to react on this!
