Verses 51-58
Chapter 57
Parables Turned to Account
Jesus Christ uttered a gospel which was meant to be understood. Do not create more mysteries than he himself created. Jesus Christ took his disciples, so to say, into co-partnery in divine teaching: this circumstance is never to be forgotten in estimating the value and force of the Christian argument. There is to be no needless mystery. Mystery comes as a necessity, and is not to be introduced by clever persons as a merely intellectual puzzle. This kingdom of heaven was meant to be understood, to be grasped by the human mind, and to be reproduced in human speech and in human life.
Observe, the disciples did not understand the parables until they went to Jesus Christ himself for an explanation. They followed him into the house, and said, "What did that parable mean?" The Parabolist became the Expositor. He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. In reading these parables, turn up the expectant heart after every one of them, and say, "Lord, what is the meaning?" and he will withhold from your understanding nothing that is needful to the thorough illumination of every word he has spoken and that was intended for reduction to practical life.
Keep within the truth you do understand, if you would be mighty as speakers. That is the secret of impression and of consequences of the best and most enduring kind. It is not given to every man to understand equally the whole revealed word: one man hath a gift of tongues and can speak all languages in the sanctuary; another man hath a parable, in the interpretation of which he is almost a genius; a third is a speaker of consolations, his face was meant to represent them, and his voice, itself a mystery, was intended to convey solaces to the heart with all the witchery of celestial music.
This is the rule in all life, pulpit life, market-place life, theological, commercial, literary, artistic, musical keep within the limits of your understanding; do not let the sparrow try to fly as high as the eagle, and do not let the child's little paper-boat go far out upon the sea, if ever it is meant to be brought home again. There are portions of this Bible which none of us understand: there are whole pages and books here that I can make nothing of. To some, perhaps, it may have been given but I have not had time to inquire into their credentials to expound the mysterious prophecies of the word; to others it may have been given to follow its typology with such intelligence as to be able to write under every type exactly what it signifies. I have not been conducted into those remote schools, I cannot tell you anything about prophecies and dates, and the interpretation of beasts and vials and trumpetings and apocalyptic signs but this one thing I know, that Jesus Christ is the Saviour and Teacher and Hope of the world. Within that limit do we range here, and if we have gone in and out and found pasture abundant, the praise be his who made the pasture so luxuriant and bade us to the enjoyment of his hospitality.
Having understood these mysteries so far, what was to be done? No sooner did the disciples answer, "Yea, Lord," than he said unto them, "Therefore------." This man's words come one after the other in most gracious and logical continuity. They no sooner admitted their understanding than out of that admission he struck the spark of a final parable. He was the Life, to touch him anywhere was to extract virtue from his being. The intellect that had conceived these parables, so varied, so resplendent, so exact in all their adaptations to circumstances, was not tired. Omnipotence cannot be tired, omniscience cannot be exhausted. So when the disciples said, "Yea, Lord," their very admission was turned into another parable. "Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder," a parable after the parables, a sermon after the sermons, There was no ending to this man's teaching, the word was not its measure: after every word there followed an infinite ghostliness of possibility and suggestion. Let us look at this final parable.
"Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." A householder who has treasure: Jesus Christ claims for all the scribes of his following substantial truth. They do not utter mere phrases of their own making or utter sentiments which are the measure of their own sighing and desire only. In the Church of God there is a positive quantity, a subjective truth, a content that, so to say, can be seen, handled, felt, known, as a personal possession, an individual inheritance. Look at this circumstance most carefully, those of you who are anxious to know what Christianity really comprehends and purports to be. It is not a sigh, it is not a sentiment, it is not a rhapsody there is nothing of the nature of mere fantasy in it. It has solid doctrines, grand conceptions of the divine being, broad and luminous revelations respecting human nature, great, solid, massive gospels as to the redemption of the race from the presence, power, tyranny, and torment of sin, and infinite hope which it can only indicate by words not earthly, but which fall infinitely short of the reality as God himself understands it. But a word has been given us which overpasses earth, time, death, tomb, shadow, and shines yonder as heaven.
So there is range enough in this divine revelation. If viewed poetically only, it is a grand and complete conception. It is not a broken arc, it is not a segment that mourns a loss which it can neither define nor fill up it is a great complete circle, equally strong, and equally luminous at every point of its infinite circumference. So the Word of God is called bread: it is known amongst men as the water of life, of which, if a man drink, he shall thirst no more. The result of the appropriation of Christian truth and blessing is rest rest in the soul, peace in the mind, calm in the heart, and no man within my knowledge has ever tasted the value of this treasure, and entered with conscious joy into its proprietorship, that has owned to one pang of disappointment. Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and as for your hunger, let your soul delight itself in fatness.
Not only is the scribe like unto a man that is a householder, with treasure in his possession, but he is a householder who dispenses his treasure. He brings forth out of his treasure things new and old. The wise man holds nothing for himself alone: we are trustees, we are stewards, who act on behalf and in the interest of others. Every idea which I may have is yours, every idea which you may have is mine. We help one another by the friction of mind, the communion of heart, the mutual reciprocation of life, idea, thought, and purpose. The Church is a commonwealth no one man is lord or king in it, except by natural rights and proofs which no other would for a moment dispute; but the humblest has a right to the ideas of the wisest.
This is the difficulty of the Christian Church throughout the world today. The door of the church is open, the front door and the back door and the side door, and above every open door is written "Welcome" to the humblest, poorest, meanest of the population. If any Church is acting upon other lines than these, that Church seems to me to fall below its high vocation in Christ Jesus. I know nothing of your narrow exclusiveness, I know nothing of what is known as your close communion; I would not be a party to any communion that is close, I believe in the infinite breadth, height, depth of these divine gospels and all their practical meaning. This is my Father's house, and no man has a right to label it, or number it, so that it shall exclude the very poorest human creature that crawls upon the earth this day.
Understand that you cannot grasp the whole measure. It is not within your power to consume the whole banquet, that is no reason why you should not satisfy your hunger at this table. To one man is given five talents, to another two, and to another one to every man according to his several ability, and every man has it in his power to lay hold of Christ somewhere. Know where your fingers were meant to lay their loving grip, and hold fast according to the divine purpose.
As for those of you who have the divine treasure, do not keep it to yourselves. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. In proportion as power is given unto you go ye and teach all nations. That is the only true and most beneficent use of power. How is this to be done? Why, this householder showed genius in the distribution of his treasure he brought forth out of his treasure things new and old. Surely this was a proof of his instruction. I would not listen to one sermon that was all new; in every discourse concerning the gospel which I hear there must be the boom, the infinite sounding of eternity; then may come the new parable, the bright suggestion, the flash of immediate wit, the kindling of sudden lights and the inbreaking of subtle and surprising music. But underneath every flower of human genius I must find the rocks of divine wisdom.
This is the true method, as it is also the true purpose of all teaching. In the school, in the nursery, at the fireside, in the church to give everybody to feel the venerableness, the indestructibleness of truth, and to lure them to its study and love and appropriation, by new hints, by novel adaptations, it may be sometimes even by eccentric uses of facts and thoughts things new and old old time new summers old light new mornings; old eternities new-born time; everlasting duration transient days. So must things be intermingled and allied in any utterance that is philosophical, profound, sympathetic, and immediately useful in this kingdom of heaven.
Now Jesus seems to come down from the mountain once more, as he did after his great sermon. In its own way this sermon is as great as the first: the sermon so strong in doctrine was followed by the sermon so brilliant in imagination. Over the wheat-field is spread the glory of a gleaming and many-coloured sky: out of that sky indeed the wheat-field came, and without it the wheat-field could neither be sown nor reaped. We must not exclude Imagination from the treasure of the Church: it is the highest faculty which can be used, it is the inner eye, it is that divine vision which sees more than is penetrable by scholarship. This is the difference between one man and another. One man knows the letter, is absolutely faultless in all the uses of grammar, yet there may never come one syllable of fire or one drop of dew from his philological lips. People listen, but are never thrilled with glad responses. Another man holds the divine secret and breathes it over our life at his will, and makes the heart leap with sudden joy and cry out because of glad surprise.
Some do not know what imagination is: they think if they are good at description they are strong in imagination: this is the absurdity, this the mischievous sophism when you have mentioned all the seven colours you have painted nothing: if you were to paint a tree exactly as it is, you would not have painted it at all. That is a mystery and a fact; the trunk is the same height, the branches are the same in number, and all the dimensions are exact, all the leaves have been counted, and you tell me that the tree upon the canvas is not the same as the tree in the wood? Certainly, they have no connection with one another; you had not the eye that saw the inner tree that is not the tree standing in the wood, that is the body; the spiritual tree is inside that, and you must get it out and translate it, idealize it. So the man standing there is not the man: that is his house of clay, his tabernacle of dust the man is inside; you must see that inner light and describe that mysterious man. So the letter of the gospel is before me, and it may be a letter only unless I have that vision and faculty divine which can penetrate the inner sanctuary of the thought and bring forth things new and old with the honesty of a steward and the energy of a genius.
Have ye understood these things? Not have ye heard the letter? Not can you recite the parables one by one? Not have they fallen upon your outer ear and made a noise there? Have ye understood these things, have they entered into the very tissue and substance of your brain, do they fall into musical accord with all the springs and issues of your purest and noblest thinking? When you relate them, will you recite them as lessons which you have learned, or will you breathe them as part of the very life that is in you? When we can answer "Yes" to Jesus Christ's questions, he will follow our admission with a pungent and practical exhortation.
Now comes the inevitable criticism, the mean and low-minded attack which even the Son of God could not escape. "Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's Son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James and Joses and Simon and Judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?" The inevitable criticism, the inevitable sneer, the inevitable profanation of every sanctuary God has built upon the earth! How is this? how can it be that men can say these things, acknowledging their reality, power, and splendour, and can in the same breath say "This man," with a covert sneer? This impossibility we are performing ourselves every day! Instead of fixing our attention upon these mighty works and all this wisdom, and availing ourselves of the substantial revelation, we fall foul upon the poor instrument through whom the revelation was granted, we hurl at him every reminiscence we can gather up, and we disparage his personality that we may blunt the force of his appeal. Do not mourn such ingratitude and baseness, as if it were the Jewish property only: Jesus Christ was not hated and crucified by the Jews, he was despised and rejected of men.
I was recently rebuked upon this point with a rare piquancy and most pathetic simplicity. A learned man followed me after the discourse, and, speaking with a strong German accent, he assured himself and me in the same breath that what he was about to say was well intended. Then said he, "I was with you on the occasion of your five hundredth noonday service. I am the preacher in such and such London synagogue, and," said he, "if you will excuse me, there was one line in the carol which gave me pain." Bringing the carol under my eyes, he said, "See 'the wicked Jews' why did you sing that in your church about the wicked Jews?" Within the lines of a narrow history the carol was right, but within the true boundary the carol was wrong. They were not the Jews that killed him, mocked him, spurned him, threw his earthly ancestry in his face; it was man, every man. We crucified the Son of God, we Gentiles had our share in that foul tragedy. Do not teach your children in the school and at the fireside that some wicked people called Jews did this to Jesus Christ, and express yourselves in horror about the Jews as if you had nothing to do with it. The truth is this we were all there, we all cut the accursed tree out of the forest and planted it and nailed to it the Son of God, and as he hangs there tell all the world that this was not a geographical incident or a mere point in passing history that this crucifixion was the work of the whole race, and that every eye must look upon it and every heart mourn it as its own cruel deed.
This is the worst they can say about the Son of God. Let us read it again. "Whence hath this man" covert sneer "this wisdom and these mighty works? We cannot deny either the one or the other, but is not this the carpenter's son?" What an awful accusation. "Is not his mother called Mary?" What a distressing indictment against any man! "And his brethren, James and Joses and Simon and Judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us?" Well, suppose we say, "Yes, they are"; now what then? I am glad they say this; there was nothing more to be said, they would have said it if they could, yea, they would have dreamed a lie and imagined it true if they could.
Christian man, Christian inquirer, hear me. This is the indictment brought against him in whose name you were baptized does it alarm, does it frighten you, does it bring with it any sense of oppressive humiliation? He was the carpenter's son, he was the carpenter, his mother's name was Mary, such and such were his social surroundings now, when the little tale has been told, what remains? Hear the great thunder-burst of music and eloquence rolling down the mountain, and then listen to this little piping scorn, and tell me on which side do you stand? I would stand with Christ, the carpenter's Son, the Son of Mary.
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