Footprints of the Saviour

Front matter

t J

Shelfig

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Preface

This little volume aims to make real to thought and affection the Divine Humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. It does not attempt a complete narration of the events in our Saviour's life, neither does it seek to enter the forum of critical discussion. Its purpose is, rather, to present the Lord's Humanity in its saving relations to men ; to show how real that Humanity was, and how real it still is to all who are striving to understand their Saviour, and come within the peaceful shadow of His Being. For unless all signs fail, many are longing to understand the unity of God in Christ; and the tempted and the penitent, the weary and the heavy-laden, would fain cast themselves upon His blessed Personality, and find rest unto their souls.

viii PREFACE.

The chapters which follow are written from a religious point of view which, it is believed, makes plain the divinely human nature of the Lord, to the end that faith may look to Him with cleared vision, and that love may cling to Him in humbleness of heart. For to how many a would-be disciple could Christ say, as He once said to Philip : " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me ? "

Boston, October, 1886.

Contents

PAGE

The Footprints 11

I. The Christ-Child 29

I

"And the Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Mm."

TT was a hard, sinful world to which the Christ- Child came. Silently and at night, while the world slept, the Child Jesus was born. And when the dew was lifted, there upon the face of the earth lay the Bread of heaven ! He came as peacefully as did the manna which fell upon the wilderness. " Manliu ?" the children of Israel exclaimed, as they beheld " a small, round thing, as small as the hoar-frost on the ground, — "■ what is it ? " u Manliu ? " the world has continued to ask ever since " the living Bread w came down from heaven. There lies the Bread to be gathered from day to day and be (< our daily bread."

" This is the Bread "which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die."

How simple to human sight, this Bread lying peacefully upon the world's wilderness ! How sweet and strengthening to failing souls, who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and know that Jesus spoke truly when He said, "If any man eat of this Bread, he shall live forever."

But the Jews, we read, "murmured at Him because He said, I am the Bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it, then, that He saith, I came down from heaven ? " What would they have said had they stood by the manger on the day of the nativity? What would they have said at any time during that childhood? Would they not have asked, with added scorn, how one who was born into the world . apparently as other children, who grew in wisdom and stature as other children, could be this heaven-descended Bread?

"WHO HATH BELIEVED OUR REPORT?" 33

Even Joseph and Mary were perplexed. "When the shepherds of Judea came and told of " the flocks of God"" which swept down

" And sang to them of peace,"

as though the heavens were trembling with joy and could not keep back the good tidings, 6 ' Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart." When the devout Simeon took the Child in his arms, as it was brought into the temple, and blessed God, saying that he had at last seen the salvation prepared before the face of all people, "Joseph and Mary marvelled at those things which were spoken of Him." They could not have forgotten what angels had said of Him. They knew the promises of their Scriptures. Yet still they marvelled.

Down into Egypt they fled, to save this young life from the murderous hate of Herod. They take Him to Nazareth; and there in that despised little town, unknown, unnoticed, it may be, " the Child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him."

At length, the time came when, according to Jewish custom, He must go up to the Passover at Jerusalem. Up to the age of twelve, Hebrew parents were regarded as responsible for a boy's conduct, and they had absolute control of his ritual performances. But after twelve, they were required to present him to the Lord. The boy was inducted as member into the community amid solemn and impressive ceremonies. He then became what was known as a " son of the Law." x So we read of our Lord, " And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem, after the custom of the feast."

It is pleasant to think of this first Passover as agreeing quite closely with our first Communion, and of the induction as a son of the Law as similar to our rite of Confirmation. 2 It is pleasant to think that the Lord has gone before us in this way; that there was for Him a first Passover, and an entrance upon the religious responsibilities and duties of youth.

The week of the feast is ended, and the many

1 See Note A. 2 See Note B.

THE FIRST PASSOVER. 35

thousand pilgrims set out for their homes. At the end of a day's journey Mary and Joseph discover that the Christ-Child is not in their company,, as they had supposed. Three days they search for Him, and then they find Him in one of the schools of the rabbis, held in the temple courts, with the doctors and, most likely, their pupils gathered around Him. The Scripture is that day being fulfilled, which says, " I have more understanding than all my teachers ; for Thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients; because I keep Thy precepts.-"

For Mary and Joseph, the mystery of this young life is deepening. A son, yet not a son. Dutiful, it would seem; gentle, submissive; He is with them but not of them. How plainly this is brought out in His answer to Mary. She appeals to Him half reproachfully, " Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing." There is parental authority in the appeal. " Thy father and I/' — Joseph and Mary. And how does He answer? A few words gently reminding the woman of a divine Fatherhood she should not have forgotten — " Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?"

It surely is a most expressive figure, this lad from Nazareth, standing there amid the teachers of the Law, breaking away from the past, looking into vistas of truth which were opening upon His clearing vision; and then the woman and the man clinging to Him as their own. "My Father's business." He will go back to Galilee ; He will toil as one of them ; He will be known simply as " the carpenter ; " but whether in Nazareth or in Jerusalem, whether in the house of Joseph and Mary or in the temple, whether in the carpenter's shop or in the school of the rabbis, a divine mission, a divine connection with an indwelling Father is growing and growing, bringing Humanity and Divinity into relations which can best be described as those of Father and Son.

Many keep coming back to this figure with no slight perplexity. Later on when we see Him in the full exercise of His wisdom ; later on when we see Him healing, blessing, forgiving, touching

DIVINITY AND CHILDHOOD. 37

with saving power the sinking spirits of men, we seem to come more fully into the meaning of His life. When the time comes that He can declare Himself the very light and life of the world ; when He can invite the disconsolate to His breast ; yea, when He can spread His arms upon the cross in one last act of self-sacrifice, we can more easily enter into the truth of His declaration, " I am in the Father, and the Father in Me." We can see and feel how perfect the love is ; how transcendent the wisdom is ; how saving the power is ; and seeing and feeling these things, make Him the supreme object of our faith.

But back there is the Child of Nazareth, growing and waxing strong in spirit much like other children. There is the lad come up to His first Passover, drawn, it would seem, both ways, — looking way beyond the things of earth, far above the temple, or the great city, or the rabbis, at the very moment that Joseph and Mary are claiming Him as their own.

Do we express what in some minds is a difficulty ? Can anything be said which will explain how a human nature, conceived and born like the Son of Man, could go through the stages of physical and mental growth as we do, and yet be in personal connection with the Divine ? If this be explained, is not everything of that most wonderful, and at the same time most comforting of all truths, the divinely-human nature of Christ, explained ?

The subject is one which, in a sense, includes our own natures. A child is born. Perhaps all one can say of it is, that it lives. It is without thought. It is without conscious love. And yet it lives. And it lives differently from a plant. It lives differently from an animal. There is the delicate, tender body, — the little dimpled hands beating the air, the heedless, helpless, mysterious thing we call the baby. But within and above this outward, physical nature, there is an internal form, or principle, through which the divine life descends. By virtue of this principle, man is man and not brute, and capable of spiritual development. Being created, it is finite; and

THE MIRACLE OF CHILDHOOD. 39

although it serves to admit the divine life, still it can only do so in a finite degree.

The child, however, is all unconscious of its inner soul-life. That can only come later. And it can only come at all, through the growth and development of the rational faculty, which is the great mediator between the soul and the body. We say " growth," because, as we know, a child is not born rational, but only with the faculty to become so.

And how does it become rational ? Watch the development of a child, and we shall see how simple and beautiful the process is. By means of the senses, especially sight and hearing, the child comes into gradual possession of facts or knowledges. These knowledges keep increasing with every day. They become more various. And the point to be noted is, that they become the recipient vessels for the divine life, and for the introduction of higher forms of knowledge.

Take a simple illustration. We wish to teach a child about God. Suppose we should just say,

"There is a God." What would that convey to him ? Nothing, — absolutely nothing. We are trying to give him a naked spiritual fact, and he cannot understand it. Or suppose we wish to tell him about the higher world, and should simply say, " My child, there is a heaven." What can that word " heaven " mean to him ? Nothing whatever.

But suppose we use simple forms of thought in the child's mind. Suppose we begin with a fact he knows from his child's experience, — his father, — and then tell him of another Father, who loves and takes care of us all ; and suppose from what he knows of this natural world, we tell him about a beautiful, heavenly world, and of the pure and beautiful children, and the angel men and women there, — why, then we have done that wonderful thing which we cannot do to any other object in this universe : we have communicated a spiritual truth.

These facts in a child's growth and rational development being recognized, we have the means of understanding our Lord's divinely-human nature.

INCREASE IN WISD03L 41

The Lord took upon Himself a human nature, with all the faculties for human thought and affection as a man, except in this : being conceived, as the Gospels declare, of the Holy Ghost, the internal of His Humanity was not a created form recipient of life, but was life. It was the Divine itself. And yet, can we not see that the Christ- Child, the nature born into the world, could have no consciousness of its divine soul ? There would be that same hiatus between the inmost and outermost as with other children ; and, as with them, it could only be supplied by the acquisition of knowledges through the senses.

We needlessly confuse ourselves if we think of the Babe in the manger as conscious of its Divinity ; revolving mighty thoughts in its little brain ; feeling the throbbings of infinite love in its childheart. The time came when it had this consciousness in its fulness. But at first, the Child Jesus would be as another child. It would grow as another child, — grow, as the Gospels declare, in stature, in wisdom, and in grace. Only the incoming thoughts would crowd thick and fast ; the flux of love would be sweet and deep. At twelve years He would have passed beyond the wisdom of the doctors of the Law. Gradually His inner nature would be revealed to Him. Each knowledge learned in the great school of experience, every fact acquired by the senses, would become a vessel for the treasures of infinite wisdom. For it is a law of thought, that the spiritual must rest upon the natural, like a temple upon its base. Silently, day by day, week by week, the mind of the Human would, by the successive development of all its degrees, become more and more the temple of Jehovah. There would be an overshadowing presence of the Divine, as of a father. A light from above would fill the Humanity with a certain divine radiance, until, in the days to come, Jesus of Nazareth could calmly say, " I am the Light of the world."

Is it not wonderful to think of the Humanity of Christ accommodating itself to our condition even in this : that it grew in knowledge in the simple ways of a child ; drank in, as it were,

"HE SHALL GROW AS THE LILY." 43

the words of teachers, the scenes of Nature, and the thousand facts of human life, because in this way only could the Spirit of the Lord rest upon Him, — the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, making Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.

Did the lad, looking, it may be, from that very hill whence, a few years later, His enemies would have cast Him headlong, watch "the keepers of vineyards pruning their vines, the shepherds leading their flocks afield, the husbandmen sowing their grain, the plains over which the breezes as they swept made waves in the field of wheat and tare, the reapers at their work over the vast surfaces of Esdraelon and El Battauf, the prognostics of storm coming up from the sea, or of fair weather when the sky at evening reddens over the ridges of Carmel, c the light of the world ' coming out of the east to enlighten every man," 1 — did He look out on all these things ? Full well we

1 Sears's " Heart of Christ."

FOOTPRINTS OF THE SAVIOUR.

know that into all these scenes the divine wisdom flowed, and turned them into types which even now stand before our souls in lines of celestial beauty.

Those were wonderful years in Nazareth !

THE CARPENTER OF NAZARETH.

With musing long my heart doth yearn, The silence of His youth to learn.

The striving that His soul would stir. By faith, by searchings, and by thought, In Eastern sheds with Him 1 3 ve wrought,

Many good days, a carpenter.

Holy Songs, Carols, and Sacred Ballads.

II. €fje Carpenter of |jla$aretf>,

"Is not this the carpenter's son ?" " Is not this the carpenter ? "

^ | ^HE reader, if he has seen Holman Hunt's " Shadow of Death/' will remember that the picture represents the Master in the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. As He rests from His work, His position is such as to cast a shadow of the cross upon the background ; and upon this, the shadow of death, Mary, who kneels near by, Mary, into whose soul the sword must enter, turns her face. The picture is one more attempt to fill up the blank spaces of those thirty years in despised Nazareth ; to find the Messiah where the Gospels seem to lose Him ; to interpret religiously that most obscure passage in the Master's life.

With many there is an evident desire to behold God in Christ, the Divine within the Human. We cling to the sinlessness, perfection, the infinitude of love, wisdom, and saving power, — this on the spiritual, divine side; and on the other, all those humanities and graces, the living and dying, which, at the end of nearly two thousand years, have still the power to smite and to console, to goad and to satisfy. Yet many feel that in speaking of the " Humanity of Jesus," or in showing that that Humanity fulfilled all man's conditions, not only in being born, but in physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth, His divinity is compromised ; while others urge that every attempt to insist upon the supernatural origin and nature of the Redeemer is only to make His image less distinct, and retard His acceptance.

How like the story of old ! Men and women offended, not because of the Redeemer's power and influence in the world; not because of the inspirations and consolations His name still brings; but offended because of this claim to divinity !

THE FIRST SERMON IN NAZARETH. 49

The people of Nazareth, crowding into their little synagogue to hear this new Teacher, did not for a moment think of denying either His power or His wisdom. The hardest and narrowest of them could but acknowledge that His doctrines were new and searching; nor could they deny what their own eyes saw. Up to a certain point they approved of Him. Up to a certain point they may have been proud of Him. As He finishes His discourse, a low exclamation of surprise escapes from the congregation. " Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works ? " No one was there to say : This is not worth hearing ; these miracles are the merest trickery. Something in the bearing, the voice, but more than all, the truth uttered, must have impressed them too deeply for that. So all they could do was to question each other : " Whence hath this man these things ; and what wdsdom is this which is given unto Him, that even such mighty works are wrought by His hands ? " Apparently they are on the point of going over to Him. A moment more, the cry of " Messiah " will 4 be on their lips. What hinders them ? Why, this question : " Is not this the carpenter ? " The tide has crept up to its highest mark. In a moment more it might have risen above that hard wall. Now it begins to recede. " Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses, and of Juda and Simon ? And are not His sisters here with us ? " The enthusiasm is dying out fast. No matter now what He might say or do, they think they know Him too well. " And they were offended at Him."" Telling words those ! They were offended at Him because for thirty years they had known Him as a carpenter in Nazareth.

Look at the religious world to-day. Only the most shallow or the most conceited will deny beauty, wisdom, power, to this figure of the Lord Jesus. And after all has been said that can be said, after the critics have pruned the histories, and the cynics have sneered at our churches, and the unbeliever has gone over all his arguments by which he steels himself against spiritual faith, still the secret verdict of every thoughtful man

A HYPERCRITICAL WORLD. 51

who ever pondered the story of the Saviour would at least be that of Pontius Pilate, who found his first contempt changed into concern, - — « I find in Him no fault at all." No fault at all ! The teachings are lofty ; the Teacher is sublime.

"Why, then, do not all men accept Him ? Because He presents Himself as something more than a Teacher. Because He says, "I came down from heaven." "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself; but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works." The world delights in heroes. And if Jesus of Nazareth were only a hero, a man with human antecedents, who felt the world's woes and vices so deeply that His soul became possessed with the one desire to ease it of its pains ; to interpose His own pure nature between man and hell ; not only to devote Himself, but to sacrifice Himself to the world's good ; cure its sicknesses, solve its problems, guide its morals, — if no higher claim were put forth for Jesus of Nazareth than this, then, doubtless, the world would warmly receive Him. But this, we maintain, is the imaginary

Christ. This is the unhistorical Christ. This is the Christ of modern days. Where do we find this Saviour ? Not in the Gospels ; not in the Epistles ; not in the writings of the Church Fathers. Place this Man-hero before the world, and we leave Him without a history.

Where was He born? In Bethlehem, do we say ? Ah ! but the very same record declares the divine origin of His birth, — the Yirgin brooding over her motherhood; Joseph, troubled and conscientious ; the shepherd folk ; the Wise Men from the East. If one part is history, why not all? If the greater part is legendary, why not all? Yet there stands Bethlehem to this day; and here are our Christian Churches. What did this Man-hero do ? Select some disciples ? Truly ; yet they called him Lord, and He said, " Ye say well, for so I am." What did He do ? Preach the Gospel ? Ay, and this was its great burden : " I am the Light of the world ;" "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life;" " Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." What did He do ? Minister to the sick ? Nay, we cannot

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY CHRIST. 53

break off here. He cared the sick with a touch, with a word; He raised the dead. What did He say? Bead over His utterances and see how many of them we would put into the mouth of any man living or dead. Whom would we have say, " I am the Eesurrection and the Life ;" "I am the Bread of Life ; " " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; " " all power is given unto Me, in heaven and in earth " ? Strike out these and all similar declarations, and what have we left? Scarcely anything. The plan disappears. The unity and coherence are all gone. Nothing remains but a few isolated sayings. A Teacher robbed of His teachings ! A Messiah with no solid plan of restoration !

Is not this a real dilemma? Christ the Saviour, honored, obeyed, not as He presented Himself, but as the critics have reconstructed Him; not as the early Christians declare He was, — and they sealed their testimony with their blood, — but as the people of the nineteenth century think He might have been ! And what some think He might have been is simply this : The

Christ of the Gospels with the divine and the miraculous left out. And this, we hold, is nothing.

Why do any insist upon this ? There are two reasons. First, because of a dislike to connect divine causes with outward effects. A universe creating and sustaining itself; man dependent upon his own human prudence and not upon Providence, — these are marked tendencies of our age. The other reason is a more worthy one ; a real difficulty in understanding the union of the Divine with the Human. We say the Lord was divine; and yet we read of His being born; of His being subject to Joseph and Mary ; of His dwelling thirty years in Nazareth, where He followed the trade of a carpenter. The religious mind instinctively asks : " Are such things compatible with the idea of God? Could God be born as a man? Could God become a child? Would God be a carpenter?"

Now, the Gospels reveal the Lord under what may appear to be two quite different, if not opposite conditions. There is Christ the child, the

MAJESTY AND LOWLINESS. 55

boy of twelve years, the carpenter; Christ who prays, toils, suffers ; Christ who grows weary and is tempted ; Christ who touches the depth of human misery, and is crucified. And then there is the Christ triumphant, — a Being speaking with divine authority; looking far beyond the limits of time; looking into men's souls; casting out devils; forgiving sins; Christ the Saviour, high above the littlenesses of men, unhurt by their cruelties; "the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty God, the Father of eternity, the Prince of Peace." Are these two conditions really opposed to each other?

Remembering our dual nature, the natural and the spiritual, the one weak, halting, circumscribed, the other capable of the holiest thoughts and impulses, — remembering this duality in ourselves, do we find it so inexplicable that the Saviour should reveal two natures, one quite like a man's, the other infinitely above him ?

Suppose for a moment it were possible that a human nature could be born in all respects a man except in this, — that its paternity should be divine. This, it is objected, would be a miracle. Certainly; but a miracle only in the sense that it was unexpected and wonderful; a miracle perfectly possible, and in harmony with all the laws of life, if God is the real though hidden source of being.

Suppose, then, that in the Divine Providence this creative life should of itself cause the birth of a human nature. Born of a woman, it would inherit the tendencies and characteristics proper to man. It would be a nature requiring physical, intellectual, and moral growth. It would be open to influences from without, that is, from the natural world ; and from within, that is, from the spiritual world.

This human nature, then, in birth, in growth, in all the daily experiences for good or evil, in death even, would pass over the same road that we are passing. The difference would consist in this : that the soul animating that Humanity, being uncreated, would be divine, — the Father within the Son. And this would give the Humanity infinite possibilities for development. It

THE POSSIBILITY OF A DIVINE HUMANITY, 57

could grow infinitely in wisdom and grace. If it remained faithful, it could meet and overcome not only a few evils, as we may, but all evils. It could bear the assaults of the whole demoniac world, be tempted at every point, yet remain sinless.

Outwardly He would live the life of others. To human eyes, the carpenter of Nazareth would be as others ; only more deeply thoughtful, and all unspotted. Inwardly, what thoughts, what perceptions \ The salvation of the world opening up to Him ! Deeper and deeper longings to live, suffer, and die for men's sakes !

At first, indeed, the Father within would seem high above the Humanity. But as that nature opened itself, the Divine would sweep down in glorifying measures. The consciousness of union would grow with each new experience. As with a man, the thoughts and feelings of heaven may work their way down to the very ultimates of his nature the more he resists evils as sins, until the very look on his face changes, so the thoughts, the love, the very heart of God would gradually come into the Son of Man. The Divinity would become merged in the Humanity. All that had been inherited from the mother would day by day be put away. Then, toward the last, the Son would become one with the Father; and if any of His disciples should ever say, " Show us the Father/' He could reply, " He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father."

Enemies might seize this all but divine body and put it to death, but without avail. The work would have been done. The Lord of heaven would have made His way to men, would have lived with them, thought with them, felt with them. In a word, through the glorification of an earth-born nature, He would have made His Divinity human, and His Humanity divine.