Pastor Pastorum Part 12

"And pa.s.sing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew brother of Simon casting a net in the sea: for they were fishers.

And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they left the nets, and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the _son_ of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the boat mending the nets. And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went after him."(141)

This pa.s.sage would offer an opening for criticism, if it were not for the light thrown on it by St John's Gospel, by help of which an apparent difficulty is turned into a coincidence.

If we did not possess the Gospel of St John, the story of the call of the Apostles would stand thus: It would appear that our Lord came down to the Sea of Galilee, and said to two fishermen-whom, for all we should know to the contrary, He had never seen before,-"Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men." These would seem startling words to hear from a stranger, but the brothers, without asking further, and without one consulting the other, at once left their work and followed our Lord.

This would be unlikely, but not pa.s.sing belief; men are mastered in a moment, by personal influence, now and then; but still the preponderance of probabilities is against the truth of the story. The Evangelist however goes on to relate that our Lord pa.s.ses on along the Lake side, and within a few hundred yards comes upon another pair of brothers, also fishermen; he addresses them nearly in the same terms and they also leave their nets and follow Him. Now this repet.i.tion, the critic would say, savours in itself of the Eastern legend. But, what is far more than this, the combination of the two improbabilities produces an improbability of a far higher order.(142)

The information gained from the Gospel of St John clears the difficulty away. We may learn from this, how a word or two of fresh information might, in like manner, clear away other discrepancies which are stumbling-blocks to learners now.

There we find, that these fisher brethren were old disciples of our Lord.

It is consistent with the Gospel to suppose that during the summer they had been at their work, nursing the memory of their Master all the time.

They now hear that He has come preaching the Kingdom of G.o.d in their own land. They are waiting for Him and expecting His call. The two pair of brethren stood in the same relation to Him, consequently they were treated in the same way, and the result was naturally the same. This unhesitating compliance on the part of the brethren, which seems so strange, points to a previous acquaintance with our Lord; of this acquaintance St John's Gospel speaks, and so St Mark strengthens St John just as St John does St Mark.

In the Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark, which we suppose to be both based on a primitive doc.u.ment, the story is told without the slightest idea of obviating objection or mistrust. The writers never appear to contemplate readers to whom the fact that Simon and the rest had, before this, been a.s.sociated with our Lord should be unknown. They took it for granted that this was too notorious to call for mention.

But we have another Evangelist, St Luke, a more practised writer, whose design was to present his account in a coherent form. He did not possess the Gospel of St John and possibly did not know the particulars of the earlier call of Simon and Andrew and John. It may well have been that he was himself somewhat startled at the abruptness of our Lord's call to the Apostles, and at their unhesitating compliance with it, as related in the primitive doc.u.ment, and felt that it required to be accounted for: consequently, having the account of the miraculous draught of fishes among the materials he speaks of-an account not contained in the Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark-he finds in this Sign an explanation of the prompt adherence of the pairs of brethren, and he combines the two events.

We should gather from him that the Apostles were struck by the miraculous draught of fishes, and that the Lord thereupon invited them to follow and become "fishers of men," but I think it most likely that the call took place as St Matthew and St Mark relate. The circ.u.mstantial minuteness of the details in these two Gospels, and the naturalness of the picture-two brothers are engaged in casting, and the other pair in mending their nets-convinces me that this relation comes originally from one who saw for himself. This draught of fishes may have taken place some days after the call of the brethren. For we need not suppose, that, before the Twelve were chosen, those who were called abandoned the craft by which they lived, although they probably resorted to their Master day by day.

The early miracles were mostly wrought in the sight of the mult.i.tude; they seem meant to show that the Kingdom of G.o.d was come; but this miracle of the draught of fishes was performed when few but disciples were by. It was a miracle of instruction, it lent great impressiveness to great lessons; it emphasized in a way never to be forgotten the call to become "fishers of men," and it gave good augury of success. The thought of this draught must have come back to Peter at many a juncture in his life, a notable one being the morrow of the Feast of Pentecost, when "there were added unto them in that day about 3000 souls."(143)

The Apostles may have learned another lesson from this miracle. All night they had toiled and taken nothing, yet they had not given up in despair but had worked on hard; the morning brought success beyond all hope. Men, waiting long for the yield of their labour, have found encouragement in calling this to mind. Simon, though thinking there is little hope of taking fish, nevertheless obeys at once. He frankly tells his Master his view of a matter about which he might be supposed to know best, and leaves Him to judge, but he does immediately as his Master bids. Our Lord does not _promise_ him success; He only tells him to try once more; and thereupon without a word, wearied and out of heart as he may be supposed to have been by a night of bootless labour, he does what he is told. It is enough for Simon to know that his Master wishes him to "Put out into the deep and let down his nets for a draught."(144) His cheerful compliance shews a happy disposition and a loyal nature; for if there had been a grain of peevishness or selfishness in him, it would have been likely to be uppermost then.

In the last chapter, we saw our Lord exploring the characters of cla.s.ses of men. His eye is now turned on individuals; He is peering down into His disciples' hearts, taking them unawares, when their every day selves lie uppermost, putting them, by chance as it were, through some little exercise which shall reveal some tendency or some hidden quality; and to our Lord this incident brought the secret heart of Simon into the light of day.

It shewed that he was altogether free from that kind of stubbornness which is born of self-regard, and that he did not attach a sanct.i.ty to an opinion or a resolve, merely because it was his. He learnt from this miracle that it was best to trust to Christ. He might say to himself, "I never felt more convinced that we should take nothing by letting down the nets, than I did on that morning on the lake, but I let them down and found I was wrong." A memorable act is not done with, educationally, when it is over. The recollection of it is an attendant monitor always pointing the same way; and so this miracle may have done much towards accustoming Peter to look to the Lord's prompting, and to be ready at His word to give up that about which he felt most sure. It may well have helped him to that openness of mind, which stood the Church in good stead, years after at Joppa, when the envoys of Cornelius were knocking at Peter's door.

This miracle has been called a miracle of coincidence, meaning that the marvel lay in the pa.s.sing of the shoal at the moment when the net was cast; it might not be a miracle at all, because the chances against its being a natural phenomenon, though enormous, are not absolutely infinite.

It is not one which would appal ordinary beholders: the boatmen, we may suppose, thought chiefly of securing the fish. Our Lord is now testing the capacity of men for discerning G.o.d, and He therefore performs miracles of a less striking order first; these impress those only who have their eyes open for the manifestation of what is spiritual; and those who are found to possess this "vision and faculty Divine" are afterwards shewn "greater things than these."

Simon had no doubt seen our Lord work cures, but this mastery of our Lord over the creation comes more home to him than His power over disease, and his feelings break forth. It is characteristic of him, that what is in him _must come out_ at once; whether it be an objection that occurs to him, or a motion of indignation or of elation, or of the panic to which Orientals are subject-out it must come; this is the point in which the ident.i.ty of his character is most visibly preserved in all our narratives. Here he is mastered by the emotions of the moment and must give them outward show; and along with his gush of feeling comes the sense of his unworthiness, the impression of his being wholly unequal to the duty and position thrust upon him; an impression not uncommon with men in such junctures; though biographies abundantly show that those who feel it most very often acquit themselves admirably when the trial comes. Touched by this, Simon throws himself at his Master's feet and says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."(145)

We go back now to the course of the narrative in St Mark's Gospel, and there we find that the first thing which struck the hearers of our Lord was the _authority_ with which He spoke.

"And they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes."(146)

We saw in the last chapter, that men bowed to the authority in the air of our Lord when He purged the Temple of Jerusalem: this authority now pa.s.sed into His words, and it swayed the hearts of men. It is the special instinct of a crowd that it quickly discerns those whom it must hear, and this mult.i.tude saw that our Lord had something to tell them and that, not of tradition, but out of His own very self. Here was a genuine authority coming of nature or of G.o.d, by the side of which the stated legal authority of the officiating scribes paled away out of sight.

In what ways was it, we may ask, that this authority of Christ shone out now, and took such hold of men? First of all, I would answer, He brought to the birth, within men, thoughts which were lying in embryo in their own hearts. This, which was also Socrates' way, I have spoken of in the Introductory Chapter and once or twice since. Our Lord wakened within men the perception of truths which they seemed to have once known and forgotten; especially that G.o.d was the Father, not only of Israel as a nation, but of every particular man in it. The common people had been told by the learned that they were not worth G.o.d's notice, and when Christ a.s.serted the dignity of each individual soul they said to themselves "we always thought it must be so; and so it is." The beat.i.tudes in like manner commended themselves to men's hearts; they felt that if there was a G.o.d in the world, it ought to be as our Lord said it was.

Secondly, our Lord not only _told_ men that they were the children of G.o.d, that they should strive after their Father's likeness, and that they might approach nearer and nearer to being perfect as He is perfect: but, what was more than this, in every word He spake,-whether of teaching, or reproof, or expostulation, or in His pa.s.sing words to those who received His mercies-He _treated_ them as G.o.d's children. Man, as man, has in His eyes a right to respect. Anger we find with our Lord often, as also surprise at slowness of heart, indignation at hypocrisy and at the Rabbinical evasions of the Law; but never in our Lord's words or looks do we find personal disdain. Towards no human being does He shew contempt.

The scribe would have trodden the rabble out of existence; but there is no such thing as rabble in our Lord's eyes. The master, in the parable, asks concerning the tree, which is unproductively exhausting the soil, why c.u.mbers it the ground; but it is not to be rooted up, till all has been tried. There it stands, and mere existence gives it claims, for all that exists is the Father's. This notion, that every thing belonged to G.o.d, and was therefore to be reverently regarded, lay very deep in the hearts of the children of Israel, even the poorest in Galilee; and when the Lord brought it to light, men listened to Him with breathless respect.

Thirdly. If a scribe spoke to the people, he bethought himself of topics within their comprehension: he had a double self; one he showed to them and one he kept for his equals: he was afraid of talking over his hearers'

heads, so he took them on the side of what he supposed they might understand, of their interests, for example, and spoke of the advantages of good repute, or, at the highest, of the blessings which G.o.d brought on His servants in this life and hereafter, and of the ill fate which awaited offenders. All this implied, "We who speak to you, of course, have for ourselves higher principles and purer motives than those we have named, but these are quite good enough for you." Now there is nothing that men, young or old, so surely detect, as whether a man serves them with the same thoughts that he gives to himself and his friends.

The people, moreover, are always grateful for being supposed capable of higher sentiments than mere hope of gain and fear of loss, and for the appreciation shewn in taking them on higher ground; they seldom fail the speaker who boldly addresses their consciences; they are eager to justify his trust in them: "He has treated us as men," they say, "and men he shall find we are." Above all they feel the compliment of being not flattered, but supposed reasonable enough to hear the truth about themselves and shewn their failings; and we feel sure that men went away from the Sermon on the Mount confident of Christ's respect and regard for them, without His telling them of it in so many words. He talks to them quite naturally of _their_ Father who is also _His_ Father, just as men speak of any common tie: and this took hold of their hearts.

Fourthly. We find in the earlier portions of the Sermon on the Mount, which best represent this preaching to the mult.i.tude,(147) that our Lord a.s.sumes a certain positive authority, by putting His own commands in contrast with the written Law.

It had probably been given out by our Lord's opponents that He had come to destroy the Law, and our Lord in this Sermon declares that He is not come to destroy but to fulfil.

We shall see the point most clearly, if we understand the word "fulfil,"

to mean, "carry out into its full completeness." For our Lord does not _destroy_ the Law but he _supersedes_ it by bringing G.o.d's ways to light, and merging in this light the previous partial revelations, of which the Mosaic Law was one. A mathematician supersedes the practical rules which the pupil at first employs for solving particular cases of a problem, by giving a complete and general solution of the whole subject. This may ill.u.s.trate the way in which our Lord merges the particular case of human conduct in a wider rule embracing human dispositions, and which regards, not only what men _do_, but also what they _are_, and what they will _become_.

To take another point. Slavery to the letter of a written Law hampered moral and spiritual growth; it led men to regard authority as the sole test of truth; it tended to prevent their thinking for themselves as our Lord desired them to do. No word of our Lord countenances the idea of verbal inspiration. He treats the provisions of the Levitical Law as subject to criticism, He never attributes them to G.o.d, but either to Moses or those of old time, and after quoting them in His sermon and elsewhere He commonly adds, "But _I_ say unto you" and then delivers His own precept-embracing that of Moses no doubt-but so widely overstepping it, that it would seem to the people to amount to a repeal. A teaching which claimed authority coordinate with that of Moses might well startle the mult.i.tude by its contrast with that of the scribes.

It may be asked-"Why, if our Lord desired to free men's minds, did He not declare how far and in what sense their sacred books contained the word of G.o.d." We answer, "He would have caused utter bewilderment if He had entered on such a matter at all." The truth may be gathered by observing His practice. He never states abstract principles, but He acts as He deems fit and leaves us to infer His views by marking what He does. He never contests the rules about the Sabbath, but He observes them only in His own way. He does not tell the Jews that their Law is not traced by the finger of G.o.d, but He amends and criticizes its provisions as though they were of man.

Let us suppose, for a moment-not of course that He had cried down the Law like one who exulted in finding a flaw-but that He had attempted to put into men's heads views about it which their minds had not yet shaped themselves to receive; that He had told them, for instance, that laws must be fitted to human needs, and that as these needs vary, laws must vary too, and cannot be the subject of an ordinance unchanging and Divine.

Could He, by such explanations, have given His auditors any true view of Divine rule? Would not the Galileans have cried out, "That if the tables of the Law were not graven by G.o.d's finger they were nothing at all?"

Nothing, in our Lord's wisdom, strikes me more than His moderation with regard to error. What seems false to one man's mind may be true to that of another. When men, as soon as they spy out an error, cry, "Root it up,"

our Lord seems to answer, "Along with the tares some wheat needs must go."

Men are complex beings; and much that is best in them is so intertwined with habits and a.s.sociation that we cannot sweep away long-standing notions and outward symbols and ceremonies without destroying also what is of the essence. Take away from an Italian woman her belief in the Virgin, or from a Scotch peasant that in the sacred obligation of the Sabbath, and a great deal of what is best in them will go too.

Our Lord's way of proceeding is always positive, never merely negative. He leaves the Law, but He sows seed which will grow up and displace the spirit of blind subservience to it: just as some particular species in the herbage of a land is often ousted when a more robust one is brought in.

The Apostles had, up to the end, many wrong notions, and we may wonder why our Lord did not set them right; but it would have shaken the whole fabric of their belief if He had so done; and the sure teaching of circ.u.mstances would, as He knew, dissipate the errors in time.

So far we have dealt chiefly with the _matter_ of our Lord's teaching of the mult.i.tudes, but something must be said about its _form_. One striking point in our Lord's practice in contrast with that of the scribes, is this. He cites no authorities, all comes from Himself; there is hardly a text of Scripture in the fifth chapter of St Matthew, except those which are quoted in order to be extended or gainsaid. The scribes depended on their learning, they overwhelmed men with quotations, they laid text by text, and built up their conclusions upon an array of authorities. Now a preacher, or a teacher of any kind, is sure to lose hold of his audience when he goes away from himself and gives other people's opinions instead of his own. They look to him for guidance; and when he says, "This is one man's view and that is another's," and not, "This is _mine_," then they turn from the trumpet of uncertain sound. The mult.i.tude suppose that in all questions there is a right and a wrong-just as there is a right and a wrong answer to a sum-and they do not want to know what one authority says or the other, but what they are to accept.

Again, rightly to apprehend the form of this discourse, we must bear in mind that it is not a written collection of precepts,-though St Matthew may have appended some delivered at a later time-and that still less is it a Code of Laws. It is an oral address to a crowd of villagers gathered on the top of the fell. We mark in it the natural rhetoric of earnest speech: the first necessity is always to win men to listen, and thus the speaker at the opening strikes His most impressive chords.

Words of blessing fell on the ears of those who were used only to hear of their shortcomings and to be treated as outcasts; and when their attention was caught by the unusual sound and they listened to hear who it was who were blessed, they found it was not the strong and the wealthy and the high spirited-those whom they regarded as having the good things of existence while they themselves had the bad-but the blessed are the poor in spirit, and this Kingdom of Heaven, newly proclaimed, belonged to them.

The attention caught by the opening is kept alive by the unexpected nature of the matter.

Again, our Lord is at pains so to put what He says that it may not be taken for a fresh body of injunctions added to the Law; for the people were already, as He said, overburdened with such injunctions. He puts therefore what He has to say into such strong forms, and, by way of example, takes such extreme cases, that it is plain that He is ill.u.s.trating a principle and not laying down a literal rule.

We have

"Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain."(148)

He Himself, before the High Priest, does not submit to wrong, without asking in remonstrance "Why smitest thou me?" and the most literal minded of our Lord's hearers would not have felt bound to offer his cloke to one who had stolen his coat. The language shews by its very strength that it is figurative.

Indeed, a code of Law can hardly be delivered in an address to a mult.i.tude. If it is to meet all cases it must be complex, and to the hearer wearisome. If our Lord had delivered a treatise telling men what they were to do in the ordinary occasions of life, the precepts must have been so enc.u.mbered by qualifications that all impressiveness would have been lost. If to the saying "Give to him that asketh of thee" our Lord had appended all the obvious exceptions-such as the cases in which what is asked for would be hurtful-the whole force of the pa.s.sage would have been frittered away. As long as a preacher delivers broad truths, put forcibly, his audience are ready to hear; but as soon as he begins to qualify his statements and to make exceptions, his hold over his hearers is gone, and they think he is unsaying what he said.

Our Lord wished to leave _seed thoughts_ lying in men's minds. He knew that His words would have to be carried in men's memories for a long while before being written down. They must therefore be clad in the form in which they would last longest and be easiest to carry. He therefore embodied what He wished to have remembered in terse sayings, ill.u.s.trated by cases which are familiar but extreme. The hearer could carry these sentences away, and would ponder on them all the more, because in their literal sense they are startling and impracticable as rules of conduct. I can conceive no style better fitted for the purpose which I believe to have been dominant with our Lord, than that employed in the Sermon on the Mount.

It seems to me to be part of the strange adaptation of circ.u.mstances to the needs of the Faith, that what was most vital and most universal was uttered in the Hebrew tongue. This was the language of the comparative infancy of the world; and there is in the genius of it much-especially its ready lending itself to the form of balanced sentences-which takes hold of the hearts of untutored men. Such men store their wisdom in saws and proverbs; and in like manner the wisdom of the Hebrew is dropped in separate pearls, which can easily be treasured up. When the time came for touching cultured minds, and connected argument was required, Greek forms of thought and speech were needed. Saul was then converted; and Greek became the language of the Word.

Nothing in our Lord's ministry impresses me more than the extraordinary sobriety of the whole movement. We hear nothing of religious transport or ecstatic devotion. People listen in awe to our Lord's preaching as to a communication made from above. They never dare to applaud. He is too much above them for that. Many have since come crying "Lord, Lord," in different accents, at different times; we have heard of "revivals" among great mult.i.tudes, carried headlong by wild excitement, and of religious delirium reaching to the borders of mania. All this is in the strongest contrast with the ways of teaching of our Lord.