Immanuel

Front matter

A*«V

Mosques of Omar and El Aksa. Hill of Evil Counsel.

iiiiiii^Mi issttttli

Preface

This book, the fruit of many years of patient and faithful study, is intended for the people, but not for the ignorant and thoughtless. It assumes that the majority of readers in this age are neither thoughtless nor ignorant. It is written in the spirit of the lamented Hugh Miller, who declared that it had been his aim to write up to the people, and not down to them.

I have not, therefore, deemed it necessary to ignore those great questions touching the person and work of Christ, which now engage the attention, not only of theologians but of philosophers and scholars. The age-long controversy concerning supernaturalism has, in our time, extended far beyond the closets of solitary thinkers, far beyond the cloisters and lecture-rooms of the universities, and enlists, not only the startled curiosity, but the anxious concern of millions. The day seems close at hand, when the final decision of mankind on the gospel of Christ, will be pronounced. I have not hesitated to grapple with this mighty problem, and to offer what seems to me the only rational solution. I have therefore devoted the first part of the book to the discussion of miracles and other topics connected with the credibility of the gospels. I venture to hope that my readers will find this discussion neither unintelligible nor uninteresting.

The predominant design of the book, however, is not to meet the arguments and cavils of rationalistic assailants of Christianity, but rather to set forth in as clear and graphic a style as possible, the great events of our Lord's earthly history, and the scope and substance of His wondrous sayings and discourses. It is an essential part of my plan to avoid all chronological, topographical,

11 PKEFACE.

and harmonistic discussions. I content myself with following, on all doubtful questions, the most approved authorities, though the reader will find me sometimes forsaking them all, for what appears to me a " more excellent way."

In the preparation of this work, while many books have been diligently consulted I have been largely indebted to a few, the most important of which are, Robinson's " Researches" Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine" Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible" JSTeander's "Life of Jesus Christ" Lange's "Life of the Lord Jesus Christ" Ellicott's "Historical Lectures on the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ" Andrews' "Life of our Lord upon the Earth" and De Ligny's (Roman Catholic) " History of the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ" My obligations to Alford, Stier, Olshausen, Tholuck, Trench, Yan Oosterzee, and other commentators on the gospels, are too numerous to be specified.

I must here record my thanks to my friend, Prof. Frederick S. Jewell, Ph. D., for his invaluable assistance in preparing this book for the press. Burdened as I have been with professional cares, it is possible that, but for his efficient cooperation, the publication would have been delayed for many months — perhaps, even for years. He is entitled to my lasting gratitude, and, in proportion to the enhanced value of the book, to that of my readers.

I am deeply indebted to the Rev. Dr. Storrs, whose genius sheds splendor and beauty on whatever it touches, for the Introduction which is prefixed to this book. Whatever judgment may be pronounced on the main edifice, none who enter will fail to be enchanted with the magnificence and grandeur of the portico.

It remains to offer the fruit of my toil, which has been its own exceeding great reward, to my adorable Lord and Master, who has upheld and strengthened me in this humble attempt to spread abroad among men, the fragrance and glory of His precious name. To Him, Imhanuel, the Word made flesh, be glory in the Church forever. Amen.

Brooklyn, March 12, 1358.

Contents

Preface,

PAGE.

1 I Introduction,

PAGE.

Part I. Introductory

Eationalistic Lives of Christ, . .

Inviolability of the Laws of Nature as related to Miracles, .

The General Probability of Miracles,

The Delay in the Coming of our Lord,

Posture of the Heathen Nations as preparatory to Christ's Coming,

Part II. The Birth And Early Life Of Jesus

The Virgin Mother, 69

2. Birth and Recognition of Jesus, . 74

3. Jesus, the Word Incarnate, . . 82

4. The mission of the " Wise Men

from the East," 85

The Infancy and Early Training

of Jesus, 95

The Youth of Jesus, 101

Lessons from the Youth of Jesus, 106

1. The Eorerunner, . .

2. The Baptism of Jesus,

Part III. Preparation

. 113 I 3. The Temptation : Preliminary, . 127 . 121 I 4. The Temptation, 134

PART IY.

THE EARLY MINISTRY OF JESUS.

Jesus at Bethabara, ..... 147 The Marriage at Cana of Galilee, 158 Eirst Journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and the Temple, .... 166 Jesus purifies the Temple, . . . 172 Jesus and Nicodemus, .... 179

6. John and his Disciples on our

Lord's Baptizing, ....

7. Jesus and the Women of Samaria,

8. Jesus heals the Nobleman's Son,

9. Jesus heals the Impotent Man, .

189 194

208 213

Part V. Introductory Ministry* Of Jesus In Galilee

2. Jesus on the way to Caper-

naum, 237

3. Jesus at Capernaum, .... 243

4. Jesus healing the Leper, . . . 251

5. Jesus heals the Paralytic at Ca-

pernaum, 257

Jesus rebukes the Formalism of

the Pharisees, 265

Jesus chooses Twelve Apostles, The Teachings of Jesus, . .

The Sermon on the Mount, .

Same subject — concluded,

11. The Sermon on the Plain,

304 312

IV

CONTENTS.

PAKT VI.

OUR LORD'S LARGER GALILEAN MINISTRY.

PAGE.

1. Jesus heals the Centurion's Ser-

vant, 319

2. Raising of Widow's Son at Nain, 324

3. Message of John the Baptist to

Jesus, 328

4. Jesus Discourses upon John the

Baptist, 334

5. Jesus forgives the Woman at Si-

mon's Feast, 340

6. Jesus heals a Blind and Dumb

Demoniac, 350

PART

THE LATER GALILEAN

1. Jesus Feeds the Multitude and

Walks upon the Sea, . . .

2. Our Lord's Discourse in Caper

naum,

3. The Syro-Phenician Woman,

4. Journey through Zidon and De

capolis to the Sea of Galilee,

5. The Transfiguration, . . .

6. Jesus heals the Lunatic Child,

421 430

440 449 461

7. Mother and Brethren of Jesus, . 360

9. Jesus stills the Tempest and

heals the Demoniac, .... 374

10. Jesus at Matthew's Feast, . . 382

11. Jesus raises the Daughter of

Jairus, 387

12. The Theory of our Lord's Mi-

raculous Healing, .... 395

13. Another Missionary Circuit in

Galilee, 399

VII.

MINISTRY OF JESUS.

7. The Secret Journey of Christ

through Galilee, 469

8. Jesus at the Feast of Taberna-

cles, 477

9. Same subject — continued, . . 489

10. The Woman accused by the

Pharisees, 497

11. Jesus heals the Blind Man on

the Sabbath, 501

THE PERIOD OF

PART VIII.

CUR LORD'S MINISTRY

1. Final Departure of Jesus from

Galilee, 513

2. Progress of the Perean Ministry, 521

3. Further Progress of the Perean

5. Jesus Dines with the Pharisees, . 543

PART

PASSION

1. Mary Anoints Jesus at the house

of Simon, 601

2. The Triumphal Entry of Christ

into Jerusalem, 608

3. Christ and the Pharisees, . . .617

4. Christ and His Enemies in the

Temple, 625

5. Same subject — continued, . . . 633

548 556

7. The Raising of Lazarus, .

The Last Journey :

8. The Ten Lepers, . . .570

9. Pharisee and Publican, . 574

10. The Ambitious Disciples, 586

11. Conversion of Zaccheus, . 593

IX.

WEEK.

7. The Conspirators and the Traitor, 653

9. Lord's Supper: Valedictory Dis-

course, 670

11. Jesus Betrayed : Peter's Denial, 689

12. The Trial of Jesus, . . .697

14. The Crucifixion and Burial, . . 716

PART X.

OUR RISEN LORD.

1. The Resurrection of Christ, . . 729 I 3. The Ascension,

2. The Risen Saviour in Galilee, . 745 |

Introduction

Amid whatever changes of arts, letters, institutions, empires, one figure continues supreme in history. It is that of the man whom John baptized, whom Pilate crucified ; who built do capital, led no army, wrote no volume ; who seemed to the principal persons of his time to have fitly closed a restless yet an obscure life in an ignoble death ; but who named himself, and who now is named in all the written languages of mankind, the Son of Glod.

The brilliant names of orators, soldiers, skilful inventors, sagacious statesmen, gradually fade in the vividness of their lustre as other generations follow that to which their genius was first exhibited. But the name of Jesus continues to command, and ever more widely, the love, the reverence, the obedience of mankind. Careers so splendid in comparison of his, and so rich in energetic and governing forces, that to rank his beside them would have looked to the cultivated men of his time like a balancing of Nazareth against the Rome of Augustus, have been lost from sight, and even from recollection, as the race has moved from them, across the expanse of peaceful or of stormy years. But his career remains always in sight; like the star which shines in its serene heights when the lighthouse-lamp, which near at hand glittered more brightly, has sunk beneath the lifting horizon. More than sixty generations of men, — vexed with thought, burdened with cares, and each accomplishing, wearily or victoriously, its office in the world, — have lived, and wrought, and passed away, since the young child Jesus lay on his Mother's breast at Bethlehem. Yet they are to-day more numerous in the world, and more influential than ever before, who turn with profoundly attentive minds, because with profoundly adoring hearts, to consider what he was, and to ponder the things which he said and which he did.

VI INTRODUCTION.

The fact is susceptible of no explanation, which does not discredit human nature itself, unless we clearly accept this man, — so humble in his circumstances, but in his influence so peerless and universal — as what this volume assumes him to have been : Immanuel, or God with us. ' The standing miracle,' as Coleridge describes it, ' of a Christendom commensurate, and almost synonymous, with the civilized world,'* not only compensates, as he affirms, for the necessary evanescence of some evidence for the Gospel enjoyed by the primitive Christians. It supplies a demonstration of the Divinity revealed through Humanity in the person of the Lord, than which the wonders of wisdom and power related of him by those who saw them were not more signal or convincing.

If this be admitted, and if what the Church has declared from the beginning concerning its Lord be received as true, — that he was not merely a Jewish mechanic, of a rare and reviving religious genius, but was the onlybegotten Son of God, whom illustrious promises had foretold, and whose coming to the world opened heaven to its hope, and made history sublime, — then the biographies which present him to mankind become, in comparison of all other documents, of a paramount interest, and a value transcendent ; and then the facts related of him in these biographies, however they surpass what men elsewhere have experienced or observed, show a fitness to him, as well as an intimate harmony with each other, which thoughtful readers must confess. In the utmost height of their mystery and sublimity, they are only, after all, on a level with the nature then attributed to him.

His voluntary entrance into the world, from spheres of being outside of and above it ; his self-elected participation in the situation, the experiences, and the nature of man ; his residence on the earth, in its humblest poverty, and amid the collisions of its keen strifes, prolonged through the lifetime of a whole generation ; the instructions, in which celestial thoughts drop in music from tender lips; the miracles, in which omnipotence is declared with as little of effort as when love suffuses the brightened face ; his institution of the Church, as a world-embracing organism, taking into itself those of all races, tongues, and times, and uniting them to each other and to himself by their common experience of his renovating life ; his free submission to a suffering and a death which a motion of his will would have made it as impossible for

Lit. Rem. vol. 5, p. 428, N. Y. Ed.

INTRODUCTION. vii

men to inflict as to push the mountains from their place ; his resurrection from the grave, and his final crowning return to heaven in the splendors of the Ascension : — these all are things the most wonderful, of course, which history records; which may well ' stagger, in some minds,' as Mr. Gladstone has said, 'the whole faculty or belief;' yet they are facts which on the hypothesis of his Divine nature made manifest through the human, are none of them incredible, or even improbable ; which, rather, may be accepted, if they might not have been looked for, as the fit manifestation, and the opulent fruit, of the infinite spirit, wisdom, and will, residing in him.

The permanence, the beneficence, the ever wider extension of his moral and spiritual dominion in the earth, reflect thus a freshly interpreting light on the statements of apostles and evangelists about him. With every century it becomes more difficult for the simply philosophical student, — though wholly uninfluenced by that peculiar Christian affection which in the Church is sought to be propagated, — to eliminate from history, and remit to the department of fable or of poetry, the early records of this supreme man : who was born to no rank, and trained in no school, who held himself aloof from none, and did not shrink from the touch of the sinful, who sought no fame, and seemed content to strew his words on the vanishing winds, but who perfectly expressed in his crystalline character whatever all peoples concede most precious, and who to-day governs governments ; whose words are the light, his temper the model, and his life the inspiration, of all that is noblest in the modern as in ancient character and thought ; and from whose unconspicuous advent the new ages of liberty, of discovery, and of progress, date their birth. It is a true saying of F. W. Faber, that " the Incarnation is as much the world in which we live as is the globe on which we tread." *

It is simply inevitable, then, that particular incidents, of whatever kind, reported to us from 'the life of the Lord, by those who knew him, saw him, walked with him, should have for those who accept them as actual, and him as the chiefest Person in history, an undecaying dignity and charm. Whatever he touched is consecrated thereby to their memories and hearts. The places where he dwelt, the cities where he taught, the hills on which he prayed, and the sea on which he sailed, are invested with the sublimest, the most quickening associations, that can be connected with earthly scenes. It

* The Blessed Sacrament, p. 308, Bait. Ed.

Vlll INTBODuCTION.

is not the capricious impulse of fancy, or the frenzy of superstition, — it is an intelligent and a reasonable sense of the unapproached wonderfulness which belonged to his life, and which fell from that life as a baptism of glory on the very localities amid which it was passed, — which to-day leads pilgrims from all Christian lands to the precipitous ledges that rise behind Nazareth, or the terraced and fruitful ridge of Bethlehem. The

holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,

derive an attraction enduring as time from the consecrating footprints of him who had walked the golden streets, but who consented, for our advantage, to tread the common ways of earth, and at last to be nailed on the bitter cross. No sentence from his lips, but the heart watches and longs to hear. No action of his life, of which the believer would not reproduce, if possible, the image ; setting it again in its original circumstances, and catching the very look and gesture with which it was attended. Not only his miracles attract our attention. We think of him in the actions which in others would have been commonplace, — dining, sleeping, sitting by the way-side, greeting the traveler, or standing on the pebbly beach, — and still our souls are conscious of a secret glow almost as ardent as when we watch him descending the stony pitch of Olivet, or reasoning with the rulers on ihe pavement of the temple.

The charm which thus emanates from the supremacy of his person, and irradiates the visible scenes which he has hallowed, would have been indeed too powerful, if not in a measure counteracted, to leave Christianity itself unimpaired, as a spiritual religion, designed for the world. And so it has beep made impossible, in Providence, for the precise spot of his birth or his baptism, of his transfiguration, his death, his burial, or his ascension, to be beyond dispute identified ; and no personal relic whatever remains of him. An idolatrous adoration of things earthly and temporal would have otherwise seemed inevitable in Christendom. If any parchment, like the letter to Agbarus mentioned by Eusebius.* on which his hand had traced some lines in the Syriac language, remained among men, no setting of diamonds would be precious enough wherewith to incase it. If the early legend had been true, and the napkin of Veronica had kept the imprint of his face as he wiped

*Hist Eccl., B. 1, chap. 13.

INTRODUCTION. IX

with it the bloody sweat on his way to the cross, the city which contained it would have been, by means of it, the centre of concourse for mankind. Only in o-eneral, therefore, dp we know where he tarried or wrought. Only the sionificant facts of his life are left on record for our instruction, For these make impression on the soul, not the sense ; and, by reason of their wonderfulness, they are as near and as glorious to those who look up to them from the banks of Indian or American rivers as if these had followed the winding Jordan from its sweet fountains to its salt grave, or had climbed to the crest of Tabor or of Hermon.

And yet, as it is with all other facts which the senses report or which thought apprehends, so, most of all, with these which the gospels narrate of the Lord. They have their value in their significance, and not in their mere sublimity or strangeness. As every crystal, from the snow-flake this instant swinging through the air to the diamond on whose history volumes are written, attracts the philosopher to the study of itself because in its special structure and form it incorporates a law, and so becomes to him a lens, through which he may discern great secrets of nature ; as each heroical action of men, in the crisis of their fortunes, reveals the undetermined capacity, for tranquility amid pains, for victory over force and a joyous self-sacrifice, which forever is lodged in the consecrated soul, and so becomes to the thoughtful observer more rich in suggestion than any dazzling march of armies, or the most successful achievement of skill in the intricate whirls of diplomatic intrigue; — so, and still more, it is not so much by what they are, as by what they evidently contain and declare, that the facts which confront us in the life of the Lord engage and reward the thoughts of disciples. The secret of their preciousness, the hiding of their power, is in this : that — admitting the Lord to have been what faith, from both prophecy and history, affirms him to have been — through these facts are declared to us, in the sharpness and fulness of a personal revelation, the life, the might, and the character of the Most High ; that He whom men had blindly groped after, and whom, as Paul declared of the Athenians, they unknowingly had worshipped, is here set forth in the perfect discovery of His grace and His glory, to draw men in penitent love to Himself.

The most amazing event of time, — the appearing of Him by whom all things consist, in the person of a man, partaking the experience and sharing the nature of those whom His will had first created, and whom it still restored

X INTRODUCTION.

by a word from the grave to life, — this had a purpose as sublime as itself. All preceding procedures of grace and truth were completed in it ; and the waiting yet rebellious world, which had worshipped the winds, had called stars and streams to be its gods, had molten the gold, and had almost chiseled the marble into life, in its search for a divinity, gained in Him the vision of its Maker.*

It is not then a point which needs to be argued that to one who so accepts the Lord the interest which essentially belongs to his life must be supreme, and be as immortal as the soul. The most vital and transcendent truth which the universe holds, which eternity can show, is here presented ; not as shown through words or in vision, but as realized in a life, and revealed through its continuous action. Realms of wisdom the very outskirts of which, except for this, we could have hardly hoped to tread, are opened by it ; and thus it becomes not only the means for illuminating the mind with that ultimate knowledge which interprets all others, but also for enriching the moral nature with a profound and prophetic experience, in comparison of which all else that we gain beneath ' the low-hung sky of time ' is of trifling account. "Whoever feels — what all who reflect on it with any attention it would seem must feel — that to have a sufficient and certain apprehension of Him from whom all being is, and in whose mind are the archetypes of the Universe, is of paramount consequence to those who in spiritual constitution are like Him, and whose real blessedness and perfect exaltation are only to be found in alliance with Him, must find in these records of the life of the Lord attraction to the intentest study, while always conscious that whatever he has learned, the fulness of their treasures remains unexhausted. Such a motive as that which impels him to this study can animate the scholar in no other inquiry. He may well be assured that the spirits of light partake his interest, and aspire to share the rewards of his study.

For it is no mere knowledge which such an one attains, as he dwells upon

* " The God who dwells in a light inaccessible, into which the human spirit can not penetrate, must descend to humanity, bringing himself into the limits of its own finiteness, in order to be truly known by it. Not until the incarnate manifestation of Deity through Christ could the God afar off draw near to mankind. For the first time, through this image of the Divine in human nature, was the idea of God enabled to enter, in a vital and substantial way, into the consciousness and thought of the race."— Neander. Der erste Brief S. Johannis : p. 123.

INTRODUCTION". xi

the gospels, concerning the usages and the spirit of society, in the country of Palestine, in the eighth century of the history of Home. It is no£ simply a new view which he gains of the mystic and solemn order of history, as he places himself at that eminent point toward which preceding centuries had tended, around which the world unconsciously paused in a strange peace, and from which after times have taken their direction ; where thus the real harmonies, in what otherwise were inextricable and bloody tangles of confusion, become apparent. It is not simply a juster impression which such a student may hope to gain, and may in fact gain, of other truths, greater than these, yet all auxiliary to the greatest : — of the guilt of sin, and its tenacious grasp on our nature, as illustrated by the mission of the Saviour; of the nature of Redemption, and the grandeur of the elements that are combined in it to accomplish the atonement and the renewal which we need ; or, even, of the glories still surpassing our thought, but surely, hereafter to appear, as the heavenly fruit of that atonement and that renewal.

All these will indeed be gained by him who studies with attentiveness, and with spiritual insight, the life which began in the mystery of Incarnation, and which closed, as it seemed, in the darker mysteries of Gethsemane and the Cross. But still the essential and the perfect result to be attained from such a study is that which the Lord himself pointed out as constituting the motive which drew him to the world : " that they might have life, and might have it more abundantly;" even that unbounded and absolute life whose element is " that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Because it is true as Paul affirmed, in that majestic and luminous sentence written to the Corinthian converts, that "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," therefore it is true, as he in the preceding paragraph had said, that f we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord."

All other attainments are insignificant beside this. When it is accomplished in any soul, that has within it a light and life, a plenary peace, a mystery of power, an ecstatic enjoyment, which surpass the results that secular studies can produce as the vital force surpasses food, as thought surpasses the reach of the hand. The solid visible frame of things might go

Xll INTRODUCTION.

to pieces, in flame and thunder, without troubling the spirit at rest in this experience. It has nothing to wish for, except an existence continued through immortal years.

Not only is the life of the Lord, in its entireness, the inestimable means for bringing us to such a knowledge of God, and to such an experience conditioned upon it ; but it is wonderful to see how each separate part, the most unobtrusive and familiar particular, in that brief but ample and crowded career, bears on the result; how each fraction of it is freighted with Divinest meaning when we have found the secret of its glory, in the manifestation it makes of God. Not only do the miracles attest His power, and unveil the energy to which the act of creation was but a choice. Not only do the signal utterances of truth show forth His wisdom, and tell us, as sunbeams tell of the sun, of that effulgent and unsearchable mind before which angels bow in awe. The silent years, so many in comparison with the three of the ministry, yet of which our records are so brief, reflect the patience of the Eternal, and His recognition of the fitness of times in His most gracious operations. The tears of Jesus become to us drops from the Infinite sympathy, beneath which our inmost hearts are melted. His interest in the humblest things reproduces before us the mind Supreme, to which nothing is small, and which equally rounds the drop of dew and the photo-sphere of suns. His benediction of the children whom he took in his arms makes us say "Our Father" with warmer heart. His very delay in answering some requests interprets the pauses in God's ways, and gives us new motives to continuance in prayer. His smile lights up the very heavens, as it reveals the Omnipresent compassion, and pours a sunshine on our souls which brightest mornings could not image. While still from his sad rebuking glance flashes a light that illumines all warnings of the word, and is itself yet more admonitory ; that makes what is meant by the ' outer darkness ' almost palpable to our thoughts, and lifts the Judgment before our minds as real and near.

As the Lydian river was fabled to change the very sands its current touched to grains of gold, so the Divinity of the Lord, in fact, not in fable, makes precious beyond computation or compare the minutest incidents in his career. Whatever he did, any words that he said, while he tarried on earth, become vivid in significance, and rich in the most illustrious suggestions, when studied in the light that falls upon them from his supreme nature ; as

LNTKODUCTION. Xlll

the poor frayed threads of his common raiment grew lustrous with celestial splendor when he was manifest in his glory. Not without reason did the woman believe a virtue to reside in the hem of his garment. And no text droops like a frail fringe from the narratives which are the woven robes in which he still appears to men, that has not in it a secret virtue for one who lovingly takes it in hand.

What kind of study is appropriate, then, to this life of the Lord, — is necessary, if we would gain from it its proper and sufficient fruits, — is easily evident from what has been said. A kind of half-poetic pleasure may be derived from a cursory survey of it. Yague aspirations, pointing feebly toward heroism in purpose, and the beauty of goodness, may be sluggishly stirred by a consideration of detached portions of it. But if we would have the very soul ennobled and dilated, in all its intellectual powers, as that immensest thought of the world is intelligently received, that God for us has been revealed in the person of His Son, — most of all, if we would have the heart pervaded and purified by the spiritual life which this portraiture of the Lord is meant to inspire, — then we must study it carefully, largely, with intent contemplation, with all the helps which we can summon ; and then, above all, we must study it with affectionate and eager desire to know the secret meanings of it, and to have the total impression which it leaves adequate to its incomparable glory. For it is not a system of doctrines which we examine, when we seek to know this life of the Lord. It is not a series of moral precepts, the most instructive and salutary of time. We look upon a Person, in his action and discourse ; and a Person is revealed only through the sympathetic vibration which he stirs in our souls. Neither action nor discourse will open to us their inmost import till we are responsively related to him who is manifest in both.