Kitabı oku: «Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems», sayfa 10

XVIII
THE SILENCE OF JESUS

In the history of our Lord's life nothing meets us more frequently than his power of reticence. It has been justly observed that the things that he did not say and do are as just a subject of admiration as the things that he said and did.

There is no more certain indication of inward strength than the power of silence. Hence the proverb that speech is silver and silence is golden. The Church of the middle ages had her treatises on "The Grace of Silence."

In the case of our Lord we have to remember first the thirty years of silence that preluded his ministry; thirty years in which he lived the life of a humble artisan in the obscure town of Nazareth. That he was during those years revolving all that higher wisdom which has since changed the whole current of human society there is little doubt. That his was a spirit from earliest life ardent and eager, possessed with the deepest enthusiasm, we learn from the one revealing flash in the incident recorded of his childhood, when he entered the school of the doctors in the temple and became so absorbed in hearing and asking questions that time, place, and kindred were all forgotten. Yet, eager as he was, he made no petulant objection to his mother's recall, but went down to Nazareth with his parents and was subject to them. This ardent soul retreated within itself, and gathered itself up in silence and obedience.

When, at the age of thirty, he rose in the synagogue of his native place and declared his great and beautiful mission it is quite evident that he took everybody by surprise. No former utterances, nothing in his previous life, had prepared his townsfolk for this. They said, "How knoweth this man letters? Is not this the carpenter?" What habitual silence and reticence is here indicated! For this was the same Jesus whose words, when he did speak, had that profound and penetrating power that stirred the hearts of men, and have gone on since stirring them as no other utterances ever did. But when he did speak his words were more mighty from the accumulated force of repression. They fell concentrated and sparkling like diamonds that had been slowly crystallizing in those years of silence; they were utterances for time and for eternity.

In like manner we see numerous indications that he withdrew from all that was popular and noisy and merely sensational with a deep and real distaste. So far as possible he wrought his miracles privately. He enjoined reticence and silence on his disciples. He said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." He pointed to the grain of mustard seed and the hidden leaven as types of its power.

In the same way we see him sometimes receiving in silence prayers for help which he intended to answer. When the Syro-Phœnician woman cried to him to heal her daughter, it is said "he answered her never a word;" yet healing was in his heart. His silence was the magnet to draw forth her desire, to intensify her faith and reveal to his disciples what there was in her.

So, too, when word was sent from the sisters of Bethany, "Lord, behold he whom thou lovest is sick," he received it in the same silence. It is said, "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus; when he had heard, therefore, that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was." In those two days of apparent silent neglect, how many weary hours to the anxious friends watching for him who could help, and who yet did not come! But the silence and the wailing ended in a deeper joy at the last. The sorrow of one family was made the means of a record of the Saviour's tenderness and sympathy and his triumphant power over death, which is for all time and for every mourner. As he gave Lazarus back whole and uninjured from the grave, so he then and there promised to do for every one who believes in him: "He that believeth on me shall never die."

In the family of the Saviour was a false friend whose falseness was better known to the Master than perhaps to himself. He knew the falsity of Judas to his trust in the management of the family purse, yet he was silent. He sought the sympathy of no friend; he did not expose him to the others. From time to time he threw out general warnings that there was one among them that was untrue – warnings addressed to his conscience alone. But he changed in no degree his manner toward him; he did not withhold the kiss at meeting and parting, nor refuse to wash his feet with the others; and the traitor went out from the last meeting to finish his treachery, leaving his brethren ignorant of his intended crime. This loving, forbearing silence with an enemy – keeping him in his family, treating him with unchanging love yet with warning faithfulness, never uttering a word of complaint and parting at last in sorrow more than anger – was the practical comment left by Jesus on his own words: "Love your enemies, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." This, the last, the highest grade in the science of love, is one that few Christians even come within sight of. To bear an enemy near one's person, perfectly to understand his machinations, and yet feel only unchanging love and pity, carefully to guard his character, never to communicate to another the evil that we perceive, to go on in kindness as the sunshine goes on in nature – this is an attainment so seldom made that when made it is hard to be understood. If the example of Jesus is to be the rule by which our attainments are finally to be measured, who can stand in the judgment?

The silence of Jesus in his last trial before Herod and Pilate is no less full of sublime suggestion. We see him standing in a crowd of enemies clamorous, excited, eager, with false witnesses distorting his words, disagreeing with each other, agreeing only in one thing: the desire for his destruction. And Pilate says, "Answerest thou nothing? Behold how many things they witness against thee." It was the dead silence that more than anything else troubled and perplexed the Roman governor. After he has given up his victim to the brutalities of the soldiery, to the scourging and the crown of thorns, he sends for him again for a private examination. "Whence art thou? Speakest thou not to me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee and power to release thee?" In all the brief replies of Jesus there is no effort to clear himself, no denial of the many things witnessed against him. In fact, from the few things that he did say on the way to the cross, it would seem that his soul abode calmly in that higher sphere of love in which he looked down with pity on the vulgar brutality that surrounded him. The poor ignorant populace shouting they knew not what, the wretched scribes and chief priests setting the seal of doom on their nation, the stolid Roman soldiers trained in professional hardness and cruelty – he looked down on them all with pity. "Daughters of Jerusalem," he said to the weeping women, "weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." And a few moments later, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

We are told by the Apostles that this Jesus is the image of the invisible God. The silence of God in presence of so much that moves human passions is one of the most awful things for humanity to contemplate. But if Jesus is his image this silence is not wrathful or contemptuous, but full of pity and forgiveness.

The silence and the great darkness around the cross of Calvary were not the silence of gathering wrath and doom. God, the forgiving, was there, and the way was preparing for a new and unequaled era of forgiving mercy. The rejected Jesus was exalted to the right hand of God, not to fulfill a mission of wrath, but to "give repentance and remission of sins."

XIX
THE SECRET OF PEACE

Peace! Is there in fact such a thing as an attainable habit of mind that can remain at peace, no matter what external circumstances may be? No matter what worries; no matter what perplexities, what thwartings, what cares, what dangers; no matter what slanders, what revilings, what persecutions – is it possible to keep an immovable peace? When our dearest friends are taken from us, when those we love are in deadly danger from hour to hour, is it possible still to be in peace? When our plans of life are upset, when fortune fails, when debt and embarrassment come down, is it possible to be at peace? When suddenly called to die, or to face sorrows that are worse than death, is it possible still to be at peace?

Yes, it is. This is the peculiarity of the Christian religion – the special gift of Christ to every soul that will receive it from him. In his hour of deepest anguish, when every earthly resort was failing him, when he was about to be deserted, denied, betrayed, tortured even unto death, he had this great gift of peace, and he left it as a legacy to his followers: —

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth give I unto you."

He says himself that his peace is not what the world giveth. It does not come from anything in this life; it cannot be taken away by anything in this life; it is wholly divine. As a white dove looks brighter and fairer against a black thunder-cloud, so Christ's peace is brightest and sweetest in darkness and adversity.

Is not this rest of the soul, this perfect peace, worth having? Do the majority of Christians have it? Would it not lengthen the days and strengthen the health of many a man and woman if they could attain it? But how shall we get this gift? That is an open secret. St. Paul told it to the Philippians in one simple direction: —

"Be not anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God; and the peace of God that passeth understanding shall keep your heart and mind."

There we have it.

Now if we look back to the history of these Philippians, as told in the Book of Acts, we shall see that when Paul exhorted them never to be anxious about anything, but always with thanksgiving to let their wants be known to God, he preached exactly what they had seen him practice among them. For this Philippian church was at first a little handful of people gathered to Jesus by hearing Paul talk in a prayer-meeting held one Sunday morning by the riverside. There Lydia, the seller of fine linen from Thyatira, first believed with her house, and a little band of Christians was gathered. But lo! in the very commencement of the good work a tumult was raised, and Paul and Silas were swooped down upon by the jealous Roman authorities, ignominiously and cruelly scourged, and then carried to prison and shut up with their feet fast in the stocks. Here was an opportunity to test their serenity. Did their talisman work, or did it fail? What did the Apostles do? We are told: "At midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises to God, and the prisoners heard them." That prayer went up with a shout of victory – it was as Paul directs, prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Then came the opening of prison doors, the loosing of bonds, and the jailer fell trembling at the feet of his captives, saying, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" And that night the jailer and all his house were added to the church at Philippi. So, about eleven years after, when Paul's letter came back from Rome to the Philippian church and was read out in their prayer-meeting, we can believe that the old Roman jailer, now a leading brother in the church, said, "Ay! ay! he teaches just what he practised. I remember how he sung and rejoiced there in that old prison at midnight. Nothing ever disturbs him." And they remember, too, that this cheerful, joyful, courageous letter comes from one who is again a prisoner, chained night and day to a Roman soldier, and it gives all the more force to his inspiring direction: "Be anxious for nothing – in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God."

If Paul had been like us, now, how many excuses he might have had for being in a habitual worry! How was he shut up and hindered in his work of preaching the gospel. A prisoner at Rome while churches that needed him were falling into divers temptations for want of him – how he might have striven with his lot, how he might have wondered why God allowed the enemy so to triumph.

But it appears he was perfectly quiet. "I know how to be abased, and how to abound," he says; "everywhere, and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and suffer need. I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me."

But say some, "Do you suppose if you go to God about everything that troubles you it will do any good? If you do ask him for help, will you get it?"

If this means, Will God always give you the blessing you want, or remove the pain you feel, in answer to your prayer? the answer must be, Certainly not.

Paul prayed often and with intense earnestness for the removal of a trial so sharp and severe that he calls it a thorn in his flesh. It was something that he felt to be unbearable, and he prayed the Lord to take it away, but the Lord did not; he only said to him, "My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness."

The permission in all things to let our requests be made known to God would be a fatal one for us if it meant that God would always give us what we ask. When we come to see the record of our life as it is written in heaven, we shall see some of our best occasions of thankfulness under the head of "prayers denied."

Did you ever see a little child rushing home from school in hot haste, with glowing cheeks and tearful eyes, burning and smarting under some fancied or real injustice or injury in his school life? He runs through the street; he rushes into the house; he puts off every one who tries to comfort him. "No, no! he doesn't want them; he wants mother; he's going to tell mother." And when he finds her he throws himself into her arms and sobs out to her all the tumult of his feelings, right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable. "The school is hateful; the teacher is hard, and the lessons are too long; he can't learn them, and the boys laugh at him, and won't she say he needn't go any more?"

Now, though the mother does not grant his foolish petitions, she soothes him by sympathy; she calms him; she reasons with him; she inspires him with courage to meet the necessary trials of school life – in short, her grace is sufficient for her boy; her strength perfects his weakness. He comes out tranquilized, calm, and happy – not that he is going to get his own foolish wishes, but that his mother has taken the matter in hand and is going to look into it, and the right thing is going to be done.

This is an exact illustration of the kind of help it is for us "in everything by prayer to make known our requests to God." The very act of confidence is in itself tranquilizing, and the divine sympathy meets and sustains it.

A large class of our annoyances and worries are extinguished or lessened by the very act of trying to tell them to such a person as Jesus Christ. They are our burning injuries, our sense of wrong and injustice done us. When we go to tell Jesus how cruelly and wickedly some other Christian has treated us, we immediately begin to feel as a child who is telling his mother about his brother – both equally dear. Our anger gradually changes to a kind of sorrow when we think of Him as grieved by our differences. After all, we are speaking of one whom Christ is caring for and bearing with just as he is caring for us, and the thought takes away the edge of our indignation; a place is found for peace.

Then there is still another class of troubles that would be cut off and smothered altogether by the honest effort to tell them to our Saviour. All the troubles that come from envy, from wanting to be as fine, as distinguished, as successful as our neighbors; all the troubles that come from running races with our neighbors in dress, household show, parties, the strife "who shall be the greatest" transferred to the little petty sphere of fashionable life – ah, if those who are burdened with cares of this kind would just once honestly bring them to Jesus and hear what he would have to say about them! They might leave them at his feet and go away free and happy.

But whatever burden or care we take to Jesus, if we would get the peace promised, we must leave it with Him as entirely as the little child leaves his school troubles with his mother. We must come away and treat it as a finality. We must say, Christ has taken that. Christ will see about it. And then we must stop thinking and worrying about it. We must resolve to be satisfied with whatever may be his disposal of the matter, even if it is not at all what we would have chosen.

Paul would much sooner have chosen to be free and travel through the churches, but Christ decided to allow him to remain a chained prisoner at Rome, and there Paul learned to rest, and he was happy in Christ's will. Christ settled it for him, and he was at peace.

If, then, by following this one rule we can always be at rest, how true are the lines of the hymn now so often sung: —

 
"Oh, what joy we often forfeit!
Oh, what needless pain we bear!
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer."
 

XX
THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER

What is the true idea of a Christian church, and what the temper and spirit in which its affairs should be conducted?

For this inquiry certainly we are not to go back to New England or Cotton Mather primarily, nor yet to the earlier Anglican authorities, or the long line of Roman precedent, and the Fathers of the Church, nor even to the Apostolic churches, but to Jesus Christ himself, and to the earliest association that could be called a Christian church.

There is a difference in this discussion between the Church and a church. The Church is the great generic unity or outside organization; a church is a society related to the whole, as a private family to the State.

In the time of our Lord the generic body —the Church of God – was the Jewish church. Jesus was a regularly initiated member of that church, and very careful never to depart from any of its forms or requirements. He announced in the Sermon on the Mount that, in regard to the Jewish law, he was not come to destroy but to fulfill. He said distinctly to his disciples: "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all things therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do ye not after their works, for they say and do not." The Apostles never separated formally from the Jewish church. They were so careful in this regard that they on one occasion induced St. Paul, who was reported to be a schismatic, to go in a very marked and public manner into the Jewish temple and conform to the Jewish ritual; and when he addressed a company of Jews on one occasion he commenced with the words: "Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee." He elsewhere speaks of the perfectness of this initiation into all the customs and privileges of the national church – that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

The Christian Church arose inside the Jewish church, exactly as the Methodists arose inside the Church of England. They were a society professing subjection and obedience to the national church in all respects where the higher law of God did not require them to go against earthly ordinances. Thus, when the Jewish Sanhedrin forbade the Apostles to preach in the name of Jesus, they answered, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." In like spirit did John Wesley and his ministers answer the bishops when they tried to shut their mouths from preaching the gospel to the poor of England.

But in the mean time it is to be remembered that the Lord Jesus gradually formed around himself as a personal centre an organization of disciples, both men and women. This band of disciples may be looked upon as the seed form of the Christian Church, and the order of their union having been administered immediately by the Master must be studied as conveying the best example of the spirit and temper, though not necessarily the exact form, in which all churches should be constituted.

That this company of believers was regularly organized, and perfectly recognized as an organization, appears from a passage in Acts, where it is said that after the ascension of our Lord this little church came together and abode together for several days. The names of many of them are given – the eleven Apostles, the mother of Jesus, his brethren, and several others, called in the enumeration "the women," are mentioned, and it is further stated that "the number of them was about one hundred and twenty."

St. Paul indeed speaks of an occasion on which Christ, after his resurrection, appeared to five hundred disciples at once, of whom he says the greater part were living when he wrote. This hundred and twenty were probably such a portion of the whole company of disciples as had their residence in and about Jerusalem, and could therefore conveniently assemble together. We first see them called together to perform a corporate act in filling a vacancy among their officers. The twelve by the appointment of the Lord had occupied a peculiar position of leadership. The place of one of these being vacated by the death of Judas, the little church is summoned to assist in the election of a successor. The speech of Peter is remarkable as showing that he considered the persons he addressed as a body competent to transact business and fill vacancies. After relating the death and fate of Judas, he ends by saying, "Wherefore, from these men that have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." Here, then, are all the evidences of a regularly trained church already in existence when our Lord left the world.

But if we look at the twentieth chapter of John we shall see that the little company that performed this act had been previously ordained and inspired by Jesus, and wisdom had been promised to guide their proceedings.

It is said that immediately after Christ's resurrection – after he had appeared to Mary Magdalene – he suddenly appeared in an assembly of the disciples, showed them his hands and his side, said to them, "Peace be unto you," breathed on them, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained." The disciples spoken of here were the whole company of believers who yet remained faithful – not merely the eleven, since one of the eleven at least was absent.

The words of the promise are not to be superstitiously interpreted, as they have been, as giving an arbitrary, irresponsible power to an aristocracy in the church, but as expressing this great truth: that whenever a body of Christians are acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit, under a high and heavenly state of Christian feeling, their decisions will be in sympathy with God and be ratified in heaven. It is only to those who receive the Holy Ghost that such power pertains.

Having shown, then, that Christ left a trained, inspired, ordained church of believers to perpetuate his work on earth, it now becomes interesting to go back and watch the process by which he trained them.

The history of the formation and gradual education of this church is interesting, because, although the visible presence of the Master made it differ from any subsequent church, yet the spirit and temper in which he guided it are certainly a model for all. Christ's visible presence relieved them from all responsibility as to discipline. He governed personally, and settled every question as it rose. In this respect no other church can be like it. But the invisible Christ, the Christ in the heart of all believers, ought to be with every church, that it may be carried on in spirit as Christ conducted his.

In the first place, then, Christ carried on this his first church as a family, of which he was the father, and in which the law was love. He said to his disciples, "All ye are brethren;" he addressed them habitually as "children," sometimes as "little children," and laid on them with emphasis a new commandment, that they should love one another as he had loved them. The old commandment, given by Moses, was, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; the new commandment of Christ was, Love one another as I have loved you – better than self. St. John interprets this thus: Hereby we perceive the love of God, because he laid down his life for us. We ought also to lay down our lives for the brethren.

This church or family of Christ was very wide and free in its invitation to any to join, and many did join themselves, so that at times portions of them traveled with him as a missionary family from place to place.

Thus, in Luke viii., we read that "it came to pass that he went through every city and village preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom; and the twelve were with him, and certain women whom he had healed of evil spirits and infirmities; Mary, called Magdalene, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who also ministered unto him of their substance."

This coöperation of women in the missionary church would in some countries have given an occasion of offense and scandal. But the laws and institutions of Moses had prepared a nation in which the moral and religious mission of woman was fully recognized. Prophetesses and holy women, inspired by God, had always held an important place in its history, and it was in full accord with the national sense of propriety that woman should hold a conspicuous place in the new society of Jesus. It is remarkable, too, that the bitterest and most vituperative attacks on the character of Jesus which appeared in early centuries never found cause of scandal in this direction.

These pious women exercised, for the benefit of our Lord and his disciples, the peculiar gifts of their sex – they ministered to them as women best know how. One of them was the wife of a man of high rank in Herod's court. Several of them appear to have been possessed of property. Some of them, however, were reclaimed women of formerly sinful life, but now redeemed. The wife of Herod's steward, and the spotless matron, the mother of James and John, did not scruple to receive to their fellowship and sisterly love the redeemed Mary Magdalene, "out of whom went seven devils."

The contributions for the support of this mission church became so considerable, and the care of providing for its material wants so onerous, as to require the services of a steward, and one of the twelve, who had a peculiar turn for financial cares, was appointed to this office. Judas made all the purchases for the company, dispensed its charities, and, as financier, felt at liberty to comment severely on the "waste" shown by the grateful Mary.

It seems that Judas was a type of that class of men who seek the church from worldly motives. The treatment of this treacherous friend by Jesus is a model that cannot be too earnestly studied by every Christian. St. John says, "Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him." But he carried himself towards him with the same unvarying and tender sweetness that he showed to all the rest. He was Love itself. He could not possibly associate with another without love, and there was something peculiarly delicate and forbearing in his treatment of Judas (as is more fully considered in our next chapter).

He might easily have exposed him before his brethren, but he would not do it. It seems from the narrative that even when Judas left the little company to complete his crime, the simple-hearted disciples knew not where he was going.

There was no calling him to account, no exposure, no denunciation, no excommunication. Why this care, this peculiar reticence, on the Master's part? It was a part of his system of teaching his family what he meant when he said, Love your enemies. It was a way of teaching that, when they came to understand it fully, they never would forget. Moreover, during his whole life, in all his teachings to this little church, his main object was that they should be rooted and grounded in that kind of love which no injury, or cruelty, or perfidy can change, the kind of love which he showed when he prayed for those who were piercing his hands and feet. But he found them not apt scholars. They were apt and ready in the science of wrath. With them the way of anger and what is called righteous indignation went down hill, but he always held them back. When a village refused to receive the Master, it was James and John who were ready to propose to call down fire from heaven, as Elias did. But he told them they knew not what manner of spirit they were of; the mission of the Son of man was to save – not to kill.

As a delicate musician shudders to strike a discord, so Jesus would not excite among his little children the tumult of wrath and indignation that would be sure to arise did they fully know the treachery of Judas. He so carried himself that the evil element departed from them without a convulsion, by the calm expulsive force of moral influences. He bore with Judas patiently, sweetly, lovingly, to the very last. He kept the knowledge of his treachery in his own bosom till of his own free will the traitor departed.

There is something so above human nature in this – it is such unworldly sweetness, such celestial patience, that it is difficult for us at our usual level of life to understand it. It is difficult to realize that these expressions of love which Jesus continued to Judas were not a policy, but a simple reality, that he loved and pitied the treacherous friend as a mother loves and pities the unworthy son who is whitening her hair and breaking her heart, and that the kiss he gave was always sincere.