The reasonable Christ; a series of studies

Front matter

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Shelf ,Mj5

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Contents

PAGE

I. "That Holy Thing" 9

II. The Luminous Boyhood 29

II. The Luminous Boyhood

ONLY a single gleam of light shines from the boyhood of Jesus in the story of the Gospels ; but it is enough to make all those hidden years luminous, and from the few words we see what He was, and how He grew in favor with God and man in the interval between the infancy and the beginning of His public work.

"And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him. Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when He was twelve years old they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem ; and Joseph and His mother knew not of it. But they, supposing Him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought Him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found Him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking Him. And it came to pass that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. And when they saw Him, they were amazed: and His mother said unto him : Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us 1 Behold Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing. And He said unto them : How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business] And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them. And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them : but His mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." 1

This is all. In passing we may note the singular reticence, and its tribute to the simple faith and single purpose of the sacred narrative. Thirty years are written in a few sentences. We have but to turn to the apocryphal gospels of The Infancy to see what the hand of fraud would do in elaborating this period. Even the learned and devout scholars of Christendom write whole chapters concerning the probable training and employments of a Jewish boy in Nazareth, seeking to picture the scenes of these silent and hidden years with all the art that a reverent scholarship may permit. But the Gospels make no such attempt. The silence is in itself an eloquent testimony to the sincerity of the writers, who would not go beyond what was known and essential to their one purpose. Not even under what must have been to them as great stress of temptation as to any modern biographer of Christ, would they suffer their imaginations to play with their sacred theme. They were writing with one definite purpose in view. They were to transmit to others their own knowledge of the nature and work of Jesus. They were not romancers, nor did they care to excite interest beyond what would naturally follow the recital of facts.

i Luke ii. 39-52.

Doubtless the boyhood of Jesus was comparatively uneventful. The incident at Jerusalem stood alone. It showed the waking intelligence, the desire to learn from the doctors of His people, the appreciation that His Father's business was pressing upon Him, and that for this already He must begin to live. It was the great event of His childhood of a public, or half-public character. It excited attention; it awakened among the chief persons of the nation a question as to this boy, so strangely precocious, and so wonderful in His spiritual insight. There is no evidence that the child usurped the office of a teacher at this time. "Both hearing them and asking them questions " are the words that express His attitude with reference to the scribes and priests in whose company He was found. What days or hours of meditation previous to His twelfth year the boy had had, no one can say. Possibly His " questions " showed only some sudden impulse as He listened to the disputings of the scribes, or sought some interpretation from them of the law, which He had been taught at school. But He knew that He was about His Father's business in thus learning in the Temple. The time was coming when He would speak there " with authority, and not as the scribes." But now he " questioned," and they wondered as they heard; they were "astonished at His understanding and answers." He too was questioned, and already the scribes found in Him a deeper knowledge of their law, a truer appreciation of its spiritual import, than they had found in all their subtlety of interpretation. Already "never boy spake like this boy." 1 This single incident is enough to

1 John vii. 46.

show that at the a^e of twelve He was aware of His high mission, though how far His knowledge of it went we cannot soy.

But when at last His parents found Him in the Temple, He submitted at once to their authority. If His Father's business had detained Him three days in the Temple, that same business would now require Him to live as boys should live, and so He went back to Nazareth and the years of quiet. There was no thought of stepping out of the humble life of a boy because He was Lord and Saviour, the Anointed of God to be the world's King. If at this early time He fully knew that such was His nature and destiny, He was in a position in which any common boy would have been likely to assert himself in some obnoxious way, with some attempt to command already, or with at least a restive spirit resentful under rebuke and impatient of authority. But such a spirit was farthest from the boy Jesus. There was no premature exercise of power. He returned with His parents, and " was subject unto them."

So reads the Scripture. But the so-called Gospels of the Infancy to which we have referred, have such inanities as these : " And when the Lord Jesus was seven years of age, he was on a certain day with other boys his companions about the same age. Who when they were at play, made clay into several shapes, namely, asses, oxen, birds, and other figures, each boasting of his work, and endeavouring to exceed the rest. Then the Lord Jesus said to the boys, I will command these figures which I have made to walk. And immediately they moved, and when he commanded them to return, they returned. He had also made the figures of birds and sparrows, which, when he commanded to fly, did fly, and when he commanded to stand still, did stand still ; and if he gave them meat and drink, they did eat and drink. When at length the boys went away and related these things to their parents, their fathers said to them, Take heed, children, for the future, of his company, for he is a sorcerer ; shun and avoid him, and from henceforth never play with him." 1 Another prank in a dyer's shop is related in the same chapter, when Jesus took all the cloths that were lying ready to be dyed, and threw them into the furnace. The dyer cried out: "What hast thou done to me, thou Son of Mary ? Thou hast injured both me and my neighbours ; they all desired their cloths a proper colour, but thou hast come and spoiled them all." He replied, " I will change the colour of every cloth to what colour thou desirest;" and then " he presently began to take the cloths out of the furnace, and they were all dyed of those same colours which the dyer desired. And when the Jews saw this surprising miracle, they praised God." In like manner it is related how, if Joseph made a mistake in his carpentry, Jesus always helped him out of the trouble by simply pulling the gates, boxes, thrones, or what not, into the proper size and shape. And not always do these false writings ascribe to him miracles of benevolence ; but in fits of anger he would paralyze the arms of boys who struck him, or strike dead those who opposed him or accidentally ran against him in the street. 2 It needs no word to emphasize the contrast between such fictions, and the

1 Gospels of Infancy, I. xv. 1-7. 2 Ibid., I. xix. 22.

reserve, the repose, the dignity of the narration of the boyhood in the canonical Gospels.

In the simple record that He went hack to Nazareth with His parents and " was subject unto them," 1 we have the reasonable record of all those years of quiet preparation for His great work. It was the same preparation that every man must have, by which to learn self-restraint and gain that experience of life, which at last will result in strength of character to endure and accomplish. From the earliest years to the last He was " to learn obedience by the things He should suffer." 2 Already He had begun to live the life which would be marked everywhere by obedience. Already He began to develop the perfect character, which by and by would be called upon to meet the most awful strains, the severest testing. And that perfection was developed in the only way possible, the only way in which any human character can become strong and fit to lead men in the way of life.

"He was subject unto His parents." Submission to authority the human race had refused. Sin against God, the denial of His Fatherhood, the arrogance of self-will, the usurpation of the throne of morals by the selfconfident human soul, — these were the very sins that had been the undoing of men. " To be meek and lowly of heart ; " 3 " to esteem others better than yourselves ;" 4 " to be poor in spirit ; " 5 to " fulfil law," 6 and " not to destroy it ; " to be trustful and dependent, 7 as the lilies

i Luke ii. 51. 4 Phil. ii. 3. 6 Matt. v. 17.

8 Matt. xi. 29.

of the field or the fowls of the air ; not only " to say, Lord, Lord, but to do the will of the Father in Heaven ; " * to cry under the most dreadful stress, " nevertheless not my will, but Thine be done," 2 — these were things of the new life, that Jesus came to give. He could not give it until He had it. He could not teach obedience until He learned it. He could not prove Himself perfect, until He obeyed to the letter, and until His obedience went even deeper than the letter, in whatever was required of Him. On a later page this subject must be farther developed, but it meets us here in His very earliest life. The key-note, which was to govern all the wondrous harmony of His life, is struck in those few simple words : " He was subject unto them." The one essential thing for the perfection of His work was the perfection of His own character. And it was with Him as it is with every human being ; character is developed only by training, by submission to tests, by constant response to the appeal of duty. He was to grow from babyhood through boyhood to full manhood exactly as others grow, by the same processes maturing His powers and doing His life's work in the time of preparation, as well as in the period of fulfilment. So only could He "grow in favour with God and man " 3 as He grew in physical stature.

But now the question will surely be asked : Why learn obedience ? Was He not divine ? Was not His paternity from God, and therefore was not all virtue innate ? Was He not at all times divinely endowed with all the attributes of God ? At least in His " divine part " was

1 Matt. vii. 21. 2 Mark xiv. 36. 3 Luke ii. 52.

He not thus beyond all need of instruction and possibility of growth ?

It is a vicious method of regarding Jesus by which we assign one attribute, or act, to one part of His nature, and another to another part of His nature. He is to be regarded only as One Being, not a man of double consciousness ; not of human soul and divine soul ; not of twin natures refusing to mingle in one being, as oil and water in a clear glass may always be discerned in their own places. We intend no dissertation upon the mystery of Christ's person. "We may leave entirely the disputes of schoolmen and theologians, however interesting they may be, for our one effort is to study the Christ of the Gospels and see how reasonable He is. And just upon this point the Gospels are explicit. They never speak of the human nature and the divine nature of Jesus as separate and distinct entities. " That Holy Thing " is always presented simply as Jesus the Christ. From the cradle to the ascension it is Jesus, Jesus only, who is the theme of discourse. If He is wearied and sits "thus" 1 on the well-curb, or if He is worn out with teaching and falls into deep sleep on the cushion of the fisherman's boat, it is nowhere said that the human part of Jesus was thus exhausted. If He speaks one word and stills a storm, or puts forth His hand and lifts the dead to life, the Gospels never say that He did it by His divine power. Sometimes we stupidly seek to make this dissection of His nature, but the Scriptures always say, " He spake ; He did the deed." It was Jesus, the Mediator, the One Being, in whom the divine and human dwelt in insep- 1 John iv. 6.

arable union, who was wearied, who suffered, who grew, who learned ; and it was Jesus whose human power is never to be distinguished from the divine power, who stilled the storm, healed diseased folk, forgave sins, and arose from the dead. The narrative is thus consistent from its first word to its last. And this fact is to be borne in mind throughout our whole discussion.

Accordingly, there was much that Jesus must learn. He was to grow in favor with God and man, as any being must grow who is not independent of earthly surroundings and temporal conditions. We make no denial of true deity in Him, and there is nothing inconsistent with His divine origin from the Heavenly Father, when we see in Him one who divested Himself by the very fact of Incarnation of the " glory that He had with the Father before the world was," a and " made Himself of no reputation." 2 He "took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." 3 Otherwise He would have been too far removed from the " likeness " of those whom He came to save, to be in any essential brotherhood with them, or to know anything of the painful processes by which the regeneration and rebuilding of lost character must be accomplished. He was limited, as all other men are limited, by His environment. Experience of life on earth could come to Him only by living life through, day by day, to its end. His knowledge was at any given moment not that of God alone, for though "God was in Christ," 4 God was not Christ, and Christ was not the eternal and omniscient Father.

1 John xvii. 5. 3 Ibid.

Jesus declared that there were things that He did not know. 1 He distinctly said that there were things He could not do, 2 owing to conditions existing outside of Himself. He had laid aside " glory," 3 and would receive that glory again 4 after His life and mission on earth were accomplished. Meanwhile He was subjected to that share of the lot of men, which was necessary to make Him our brother, an example to all, one "who was tried in all points like as we are, that He might be touched with the feeling of our infirmities," 5 and be made a perfected High Priest. 6

When Jesus, therefore, returned to Nazareth and " was subject " unto His parents, He entered upon that course of life which was to be expected until the mission of His maturity should be possible. He learned obedience here in boyhood that He might obey even in manhood and even unto death 7 the will of His Father who was in heaven. He knew the life of a child in a Nazarene home. He studied in school as the Nazarene boys studied ; and if school-hours ever seem long and tedious to any Christian boy, it may help him to think that Jesus sat cross-legged on the floor of some house in Nazareth, while He repeated aloud the passages of the Old Testament until body and mind were alike weary in the prolonged effort to memorize the Scriptures, to which all Hebrew boys were subjected in His time. And yet that one scene in the Temple at Jerusalem, when He was twelve years of age, helps us. Not exactly as all other Hebrew boys could He have studied, who had

i Mark xiii. 32. 3 Phil. ii. 7. 5 Heb. iv. 15. ' Phil. ii. 8.

2 Matt. xiii. 58. * John xvii. 5. 6 Heb. ii. 16-18.

reasoned with the doctors, and even then had been eager to be about His Father's business. There must have been in Him, as He learned the Scriptures at His mother's knee, or at the school of the village-rabbi, a strange insight into the ancient word that would often puzzle His teachers, and an enthusiasm for His studies that even the most studious would rarely if ever feel. He was " learning obedience," and with what delight must He have read the word of Samuel : " Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord ? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." The loyalty of Psalmist and Prophet would find response in His deepest heart. The Messianic hope, wherever uttered, would thrill His soul with forecasts of fulfilment as He should "finish the work which had been given Him to do." Delight in the Word of God would kindle enthusiasm in Him like a clear flame of heavenly fire.

But all this delight would not save Him from the common weariness of the student. Perhaps the very burning of His soul would consume His energy the faster. He would allow no phase of truth to escape unnoticed. The three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, were familiar to Him, though the Hebrew had long been a dead language. But His quotations from the Old Testament indicate a familiarity with the Hebrew text as well as with the Greek of the Septuagint, which was the translation then in common use. Plainly nothing but the most intimate and painstaking knowledge of the sacred literature of His people would satisfy Him. His student-life was one of conscience, and here duty was dear to Him.

So in all this period of silence in the Nazarene home, the later years of which we shall regard again when we come to see Him as a man in the home, He was subjected to the customary processes by which human life is shaped. His work doubtless did not preclude the sports of boyhood, which must have brought the glow of health to His browned cheek, and the rest of health to His little cot in the wall at night. But we need not picture with the realism which modern research into the manners and customs of the Jews would justify, the ordinary life of the Jewish boy at this time. It is enough to say, that through it all Jesus was receiving the ordinary discipline of life, learning its one great lesson, through all trial and every temptation proving that the will of His Father in heaven was better than any opposing will, and so subjecting Himself to the voice of authority, that even His boyhood was perfect.

And what a wonderful and joyous thing it is to be a boy ! To have exuberant life ! To feel yourself growing ! To be so full of good spirits that you cannot walk except by special restraint, but must leap and run ! To know that life is before you ! To see manhood in the distance ! To think what you will be and do, when you are a man ! To be so rich in opportunity ! And yet never to be so taken up with the long look forward that you forget the present, — a present so full of content, so joyous, so free ! It is a great thing to be a boy. But to be a boy learning no evil ; indignant at wrong ; repudiating shame ; loving truth and honor ; shunning all pollution ; daring to look every one in the eye because there is nothing to conceal ; with a heart pure as the leaping brook ; with a bravery that trembles only before a possibility of sin ; with lips unstained by any foulness, and a mind that is a fountain of good thoughts ; to be a boy chivalrous, right's best champion, pouring out happiness upon the world, anticipating manhood by a true man's work already, and showing the life of a gentle and gentlemanly soul, because it is the life of God in a boy, — this is a wonderful and beautiful thing indeed ! This is the kind of a boy Jesus must have been, according to the very few words we have about His boyhood. Thus He grew in favor with God and man, as He grew in stature ; and at last His true and strong manhood was but the development of His boyhood, as the flower bursts to its full and glorious bloom from the perfect bud.

III. The Baptism Of Kighteousness

TT 7"HEN boyhood and youth were over, is it a sur- * » prise to see Jesus coming to John the Baptist to be baptized of him in the Jordan ? The surprise vanishes, when we hear His words, that answered the objection raised by John : " Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." x Jesus was but continuing the work that had engaged all His boyhood and youth. His baptism was no isolated act. It was only one step in that path of righteousness, which was necessary if " all righteousness," the whole pathway, were to be fulfilled.

But why ? Was it not a mere form ? Could this plunge in the Jordan have any intrinsic force to add to His native fitness to be the Saviour of men ? If, as so many millions have believed, there is in baptism some magic or some supernatural power to cleanse the soul from sin ; if it was truly a regenerating bath, certainly He did not need it, who from the first had been without sin. It could not have been for cleansing that Jesus came to John.

If we look at the rite itself, as it was administered by John the Baptist, and see its place in the economy of

l Matt. iii. 15.

THE BAPTISM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 43

preparation for the Gospel, we shall understand better why Jesus should submit to it, and so "fulfil all righteousness."

In four hundred years no prophet had spoken in Israel. The period had been one of degradation for the nation, with occasional gleams of hopefulness and heroism, and sometimes of prosperity. Wave after wave of foreign invasion had swept over the land. The toil and bloodshed of the devoted patriots, who had risen against the alien oppressors, seemed in vain. Hopelessness and fear settled down upon the people. With foreign mercenaries and heathen courts had come decadence in faith and morals. It must have seemed to devout Israelites that the darkest prophecies of their ancient books had never found such fulfilment as had now come, or must soon come, if indeed any worse fate could yet be in store. Even religion had degenerated into a heartless ritual, or a trivial subservience to the letter, which had proved fatal alike to Pharisee and Sadducee, driving the one to fanatical and bigoted zeal and the other to a materialistic rationalism. Eighteousness, spirituality, the love of good and of God that flows from a true fellowship with heaven, was like a hidden refugee in the secret hearts of a few choice men and women, who could not believe that Israel would be forsaken of God.

Malachi, the last prophet of the old time, had not ceased to speak without foretelling the advent of One who would bring judgment to the earth. A day would dawn when there would be a discrimination, a separating between the good and the bad, a day of burning, when the good would be purified aud the bad would shrivel aud vanish like the stubble under flame. The Sun of Righteousness would arise with healing in His wings. 1

But this advent of a righteous Saviour and Lord must have a preparation. The world must be roused to repentance. The Messiah must be preceded by Elijah. Once more the spirit of that old prophet would blaze forth like a fire, and a great spiritual awakening, a moral revolution, would occur, so that the heart of the fathers would be turned to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, 2 — words that the angel repeated to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, when the birth and mission of John were foretold. "In the spirit and power of Elijah" John was to come. "The spirit and power," not the person of Elijah, would fulfil the prophecy. But the lack of spirituality of the Jews of the time of Malachi and the succeeding centuries may be well typified by this one fact, — that they took the prophecy in a material sense ; they believed that Elijah would return in person to set the order of the world right. They kept a place and set a chair for him at the circumcision of children. If articles of value were found and no owner claimed them, or when difficulties could not be solved, it was said, " Let it wait till Elijah comes." Even to our own times at every Passover the door of the room is set open, in the belief that at that hour Elijah may appear. But it was only "the spirit and the power of Elijah" that was promised, and these came in John the Baptist. He turned the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers. The degenerate descend-

1 Mai. iv. 2 Mai. iv. 6, and Luke i. 17.

THE BAPTISM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 45

ants of Abraham, the unworthy children of the former and greater age, were turned again to repentance. The old righteousness was rekindled in the new time. Elijah had been the prophet of fire, destroying, not constructing. John the Baptist was the prophet of fire, kindling a fire of repentance, " lest God should smite the earth with a curse." 1 Eepentance, or wrath, was the cry of Elijah. Eepent, and flee from the wrath to come, 2 was the message of John.

But John was not only a prophet to Israel, as Elijah had been; he was the forerunner of Him, who, as we have seen, was to be a Saviour to all men. If, then, John's mission was to prepare for the world's Saviour, the sign, if he used any, by which the purpose of his mission should be shown must be no mere Jewish rite, though it must be one which the Jew could receive and understand. In the Jewish code there was but one rite that had a meaning so general, that in that code itself it was of constant and universal occurrence, and had never been incapacitated for the great purpose for which it was now to be adopted by any specific and restricted use. Burnt-offering, sin-offering, trespass and peaceoffering, had their narrow limits of application. All such rites, too, had suffered alike from the degeneracy of the people, and had come to have little force as expressing a real renewal of life within the soul. But the rite that was used by the Jews to purify every other rite, the rite which must precede every formal offering and service, was really more than Levitical, of greater antiquity and wider acceptance, and of such clear significance that in i Mai. iv. 6. 2 Luke iii. 7-9.

any land or age it would not fail to be symbolical of regeneration and purity. This rite was baptism.

Ablution, or bathing, was common in almost all ancient nations as a preparation for any sacred duty. The Greeks and Eomans bathed before sacrifice. At the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, the m.ystce went in solemn procession to the sea-shore and bathed in the sea for ceremonial cleansing. In Egypt the priests bathed twice in the day and twice in the night as a preparation for their sacred offices. In Israel it was necessary to wash before every ceremonial, and at any time to bathe carefully the person, if there had been any contact with unclean things. 1 Even the sacrifices themselves must be washed before they could be offered; and in Solomon's Temple there were ten great lavers, or tanks, for purifying the burntofferings. 2 The priests of the Temple bathed in the "molten sea" before sacrificing; and when the highpriest 3 was consecrated, baptism was the first of the three ordinances of which anointing and sacrifice were the last. And in this rite, it must be borne in mind, the spiritual cleansing, the significance of the outward act in the real inward condition of the mind, was never lost from view. It was as when Pilate washed his hands before the mob that clamored for the death of Jesus. The people cared nothing that Pilate's hands were clean ; they and he only cared to know that he freed himself from participation in the murder of that just man, and from responsibility for it. Christ's blood must be on them, not on Pilate.