Part 20 (1/2)

They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a s.h.i.+p immediately; and that night they caught nothing_.' We thought that when Jesus called them from mending their nets, that occupation was for ever abandoned. Who would have dreamed of their resuming it now? They had been admitted behind the veil; One from the grave had come back to them. Were they to become common fishermen again? They evidently go into their boats with no misgiving of conscience. They set about their toil as freshly and earnestly as ever. _As_ freshly and earnestly? Was there nothing in that lake, and in all that had happened to them upon it, which made every labourer more free and joyous? Did not the water speak to them of Him who had walked upon it? Did not the sh.o.r.e beyond tell them of the bread which He had blessed? Was not the still night full of voices that echoed the voice which had said to them, '_Peace be with you; my peace I give to you_'? Had not the curse been taken from the earth and from the labour of man, since He had been called 'the carpenter's son,' since He had been proved to be the Son of G.o.d with power?

There must have been the sense of His presence everywhere; and it was not merely _the sense of a presence_: He was there. '_But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the sh.o.r.e: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered Him, No. And He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the s.h.i.+p, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the mult.i.tude of fishes._'

The old sign is given again. They had been taught that He cared for their craft and blessed it, when they had only a dim notion of Him as a great Prophet and King. They find that He cares for it and blesses it still. The risen Christ is the same as the Christ who told them words, hard to believe, about rejection and crucifixion. Only He does not sit with _them_ in the boat, as if He were caring for one particular band of fishermen. He has chosen them to tell all workers everywhere, that He is watching over them, that their work is not a barrier between them and Him, but a means of grace, a road to intercourse with Him. '_Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little s.h.i.+p; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask Him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise._'

We must not suffer ourselves to be cheated of the blessing which lies in this simple and minute narrative, by vulgar efforts of the fancy to give it what is called a spiritual signification. Our spirits want to know that they have a Lord who has shared earthly food, and does not disdain us for partaking it, but who Himself bestows it and blesses it. Our spirits do not want to know why the number of fishes caught was one hundred and fifty-three; they cannot live upon meagre, childish a.n.a.logies about those who were to be caught in the Gospel net. Our Lord had promised His disciples that they should be fishers of men, and they were speedily to become so. But He was teaching them and us that the higher duty glorifies, instead of degrading, the lower; that every business in which men can be engaged is a calling and a ministry; that the bread which sustains the eternal life in man hallows the bread which sustains the life that is to pa.s.s away.

Our Lord did not allow His disciples to forget that grander office to which He had destined them, while He was putting this honour upon the one to which for a time they had returned. But instead of taking His comparison from the work of the fisherman, He takes another, with which His own lessons and the lessons of the old Scriptures had made them quite as familiar.

'_So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep._'

We are wont to dwell, perhaps, too much upon the thrice-repeated questions to him who had thrice denied. There is a meaning in all such correspondences; every hint to the conscience is worth something. But the meaning is always subordinate to a higher one; the hint brings a train of thought, or it fails of its purpose. Peter had boasted of his love; his sore discipline had been to show him how little it was good for, how utterly it must fail. Now he was asked, '_Lovest thou me more than these_?' He had loved Christ just as he had loved other people; more intensely, it might be, but with a love going out from himself.

Had he learnt yet that he needed One who could bestow love upon him, One in whom he must trust and to whom he must cling, because he was so poor in that wherein he had fancied he was rich? Did he love his Master now with this dependent, trusting love, instead of that self-confident love? with a love that sought to be always replenished from the Fountain whence it proceeded, instead of with a love which he could call _his_, and which therefore must continually run dry? Simon Peter appears to answer boldly; he does answer humbly. He would have said in former days, 'I know that I love thee.' He now says, '_Thou knowest that I love thee_.' It is an appeal from himself to his Master. It is saying, 'My love is but the fruit of that knowledge which thou hast taken of me. I love thee so long as thou knowest me, and no longer.'

And then comes the command which shows that the loving Him more than these implied anything rather than loving these less. He had been told at the former supper, that if he loved Christ, he was to keep His commandments. To obey a loving Being is to love Him. His love works in the man who is content to do His will. That love must go forth to His sheep. Here, then, was the minister's commission and his power. The Chief Shepherd had taken care of the sheep, and had died for them; the under shepherd was to do His work for them. So far as he did it, he would feel how scanty and wretched his own love for them was. He could not feed them at all unless he was possessed by his Master's love.

You see how remarkably these commands are in accordance with the doctrine which our Lord set forth in the conversation which is recorded in the 10th chapter of this Gospel, and also with that language which He addressed to the disciples generally, to Peter especially, at the Pa.s.sover, because he had in the highest degree that trust in his own love which was infecting them all: '_Ye have not chosen me; but I have chosen you_.' And you will see how the idea which is contained in that sentence, is expressed and expounded in the words that follow the command to feed the lambs and the sheep.

'_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not._'

This doctrine of a divine compulsion acting upon the heart and will of a man, of a wisdom ordaining every step for him, of a love imposing upon him duties which of himself he would be least willing to undertake, bearing him on to sufferings from which he would most shrink, is the one which St. Peter needed to learn, which every minister of Christ and every Christian man must, by one discipline or another, be taught. St. John intimates that his brother-disciple was to be led along in the exact path which his Master had trodden before him.

'_This spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify G.o.d. And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow me._'

But the Evangelist goes on to show, by another example, that Christ prepares the most different lots for different men; that two may be standing close to each other, may be intended during a part of their lives to work together, who may in the close of their earthly pilgrimage be the most remarkable contrasts to each other, though they may be following the same crucified Lord, and one may be bearing as heavy a cross as the other.

'_Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter seeing Him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?_'

St. Peter was not to know what was intended for his brother-Apostle; that Apostle was to know as little himself. Some meaning there was in that intimate communion which he had had with his Lord on earth. So great a gift could not have been bestowed upon him for his own sake; it must have been meant to fit him for a work that he had to do in the world. What it was he may have waited long to know. He was not to stay in Jerusalem with St. James; he was not to travel to the dispersed among the Gentiles with St. Peter; he was not to raise up Churches among the Gentiles, like St. Paul. He was to stay upon the earth till Jerusalem had been trodden down by the Gentiles; till St. James and St. Peter, and all who had been most dear to him, had glorified G.o.d by their deaths; till a Gentile society had seemed about to displace the old Hebrew society; till the new Christian Church had been threatened by the same discords, the same sins, the same unbelief, which were undermining his country and the empire of the world. In some sense he was to tarry till his Lord came. Was he then not to die? That had not been said. Yet the words had been spoken by Him who did not deceive, and they must be fulfilled. _Did_ he not tarry till his Lord came? Was He not revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance of the unrighteous nation, of the evil world? Was He not revealed as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, as the faithful Witness, as the Prince of all the kings of the earth, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, as the Son of Man standing in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, as the Lamb that was slain in the midst of the throne, as the Word of G.o.d? Was it not for this revelation that St. John had tarried on earth? Was it not that he might declare Who is the foundation of the new heaven and the new earth which should arise out of the wreck of the world that was peris.h.i.+ng?

It appears as if the elders of the Church of Ephesus had added their attestation to the Gospel in the words of the 24th verse: '_This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true_.' I do not profess to decide whether to them or to the Apostle we should ascribe the last verse.

'_And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen._' Some have wished that the verse were omitted altogether, because it seems to them a conclusion scarcely worthy of so divine a record. I accept it as a simple and childlike testimony to the truth of which the whole Gospel has been bearing witness, that the acts of the Son of G.o.d do not belong to the few years in which He dwelt visibly upon earth, but to all ages from the beginning, when He was '_with G.o.d, and was G.o.d_,'

even to the end '_when He shall put down all rule and all authority and power, and when the Son also Himself shall be subject to Him, who put all things under Him, that G.o.d may be all in all_.' I accept it as a testimony that all the books in the world cannot contain the things which Jesus has been doing and is doing, in the hearts of human beings, in the world which He made, in the kingdom which He rules. I accept it as a warning to us, that we can know nothing of the Book which explains other books, unless we ask that it may be explained to us by Him who is, and was, and ever shall be, the Word of G.o.d.

NOTES.

DISCOURSE I.

The scheme of Baur, to which allusion is made in this sermon, is set forth in his '_Kritische Untersuchungen uber die Kanonischen Evangelien_.' The part especially relating to St. John is contained between pages 79 and 389. In the First Part he maintains that there is a leading thought, a _Hauptidee_, in the Gospel. He traces this out, beginning from the prologue; notices the testimony of the Baptist, the comparison of Jesus with John, the first coming of Jesus into Jerusalem, the conflict between belief and unbelief in its different forms, the signs and works of Christ, the argumentative conflict with the unbelief of the Jews, the raising of Lazarus, the transition to the history of the pa.s.sion and death, the final crisis of the nation's unbelief, the discourses of Jesus with His disciples and the sacerdotal prayer, the history of the death and resurrection,--as different points and instances in the development of this idea. He then goes on, in the Second Part, to consider the relation of this Gospel to the synoptical Gospels; maintaining the absence of any leading idea in them, and the consequent evidence that, in spite of the historical confusions which he supposes to be in them, there is more mixture in them of simple facts related without a purpose. Next he enters upon the internal probability of the history in St. John.

Then he considers the relation of the Gospel to the consciousness of the time. Finally, he maintains the ident.i.ty of the Apostle with the author of the Apocalypse; dwelling especially upon his sympathies with the feelings of the Christians in Asia Minor respecting the keeping of Easter; and regarding the Apocalypse as the work of a Jew pa.s.sionately attached to the traditions of his fathers, and vehemently opposed to the spiritual doctrines of St. Paul.

Perhaps I may be allowed to explain in what relation the view I have taken of the Gospels in these Sermons stands to that of this learned Tubingen Professor.

1st. I have maintained, as he has done, that there is a leading idea which may be traced through the whole of the Gospel; that what is called the prologue is not an idle introduction to a narrative with which it has no connexion, but is the key to the meaning of every part of it. 'This leading idea' I have further maintained to be the leading idea of the whole Bible, to be unfolding itself through all the Law and the Prophets, to be that which makes the history of the Jews a coherent history, to be that which makes that history the exposition of all histories. Supposing it entirely absent from the mind of any people on the face of the earth, I hold that people not to be a nation, but a mere herd of animals, and its records a mere collection of fragments, with nothing to bind them together. In proportion as any people has been possessed with this idea, in that proportion has it been a nation great in itself, one which could interpret the conditions and destinies of other nations. That the Jewish people were brought to know that they were under the guidance of a Divine Word--their ever-present Teacher, and King, and Judge--is what I mean when I speak of G.o.d calling out that nation, of G.o.d ruling it and educating it, of G.o.d making it a blessing to all the families of the earth.

2d. Next, with reference to the synoptical Gospels. It follows, from what I have said, that if I did not trace any of this 'Hauptidee' in them, I should regard them not as histories, not as Gospels, but as that collection of fragments, partly mythical, partly historical, which Baur and his school suppose them to be. I have contended, in a book on 'The Unity of the New Testament,' that there is a 'Hauptidee'

in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; that they are not biographies of a certain Man called Jesus of Nazareth, whom His disciples supposed to be endued with supernatural powers, or to be actually divine; but that they are the history of the way in which that King, whom the Jewish prophets had been declaring as the invisible Ruler over them, manifested Himself visibly to His subjects, and claimed their obedience. By a careful examination of all the pa.s.sages which these Evangelists have in common, by an equally careful examination of their differences, I have endeavoured to show that they were all setting forth this King of men, that each was setting Him forth under a distinct aspect. There may be very little of what is called the higher criticism in such an examination as this. To that I do not aspire. We English may be content to work on in the stupid old Baconian method, trying to find out the meaning of facts, and not quite indifferent to _this_ fact, that these Gospels have exercised an influence over eighteen centuries of human beings in different lands, which it is not very easy to understand how they could have exercised, if they had contained a few doubtful records of journeys between Nazareth and Capernaum, of miracles imagined by superst.i.tious wonder-hunters, of discourses some tenth part of which may possibly have proceeded from a Nazarene Prophet. If they set forth a Person who has been, and is now, and will be for ever, the King over men, there is at least _an_ explanation of the secret of their power; whether it is the right one may be at least worth some consideration.