Part 14 (1/2)
The sight of these visitors from the outside world made Him feel how grand and how congenial to Himself would have been a worldwide mission to the heathen, such as He might have undertaken had His life been prolonged; but this was impossible, because in the flower of His age He was to die. The other occasion was the Agony of Gethsemane. A careful and reverent study will reveal that this incident was the effort by which the will of Christ rose into unity with the will of His Father.
It belongs to the very essence of human nature that it must grow from stage to stage; and the perfection of our Lord, just because it was human, had to realise itself on every step of a ladder of development.
He was always both perfect on the stage which He had reached, and at the same time rising to a higher stage of perfection. Sometimes the step might be more easy, at other times more difficult; the step which He had to take in Gethsemane was supremely difficult; hence the effort and the pain which it cost. It seemed, however, in Gethsemane as if He had finally conquered, and it might have been expected that the mood of weakness and darkness could not come back. Yet it was to be permitted to return once more; and on the cross the attack was far more violent and prolonged than on either of the preceding occasions. Keeping in mind the light which these two previous accesses of the same mood may cast on this one, let us draw near reverently and see how far we may be able to penetrate into the mystery.
There can be little doubt that there was a physical element in it. He had now been a considerable time on the cross; and every minute the agony was increasing. The wounds in His hands and feet, exposed to the atmosphere and the sun, grew barked and hardened; the blood, impeded in its circulation, swelled in heart and brain, till these organs were like to burst; and the slightest attempt to move the body from the one intolerable posture caused pains to shoot along the quivering nerves.
Bodily suffering clouds the brain and distorts the images formed on the mirror of the mind. Even the face of G.o.d, reflected there, may be turned to a shape of terror by the fumes of physical trouble.
The horror of mortal suffering may have been greater to Jesus than to other men, because of the fineness and sensitiveness of His physical organization. His body had never been coa.r.s.ened with sin, and therefore death was utterly alien to it. The stream of physical life, which is one of the precious gifts of G.o.d, had poured through His frame in abundant and sunny tides. But now it was being withdrawn, and the counterflow had set in. The unity of a perfect nature was being violently torn asunder; and He felt Himself drifting away from the living world, which to Him had been so full of G.o.d's presence and goodness, into the pale, cold regions of inanity.[2] He did not belong to death; yet He was falling into death's grasp. No angel came to rescue Him; G.o.d interposed with no miracle to arrest the issue; He was abandoned to His fate.
There was more, however, it is easy to see, in the agony which prompted this cry than the merely physical. If in Gethsemane we have the effort of the will of Jesus, as it raised itself into unity with the will of the Father, we here see the effort of His mind as, amidst the confusion and contradictions of the cross, it finally rose into unity with the mind of G.o.d. This intellectual character of His pain is indicated by the word ”Why.” It is always painful when the creature has to say Why to the Creator. We believe that He is Sovereign of the world and Guide of our destiny, and that He urges forward the course of things in the reins of infinite wisdom and love. But, while this is the habitual and healthy sense of the human mind, especially when it is truly religious, there are crises, both in the great and in the little world, when faith fails. The world is out of joint; everything appears to have gone wrong; the reins seem to have slipped out of the hands of G.o.d and the chariot to be plunging forward uncontrolled; the course of things seems no more to be presided over by reason, but by a blind, if not a cruel fate. It is then that the poor human mind cries out Why. The entire book of Job is such a cry. Jeremiah cried Why to G.o.d in terms of startling boldness. In mortal pain, in bewildering disappointments, in bereavements which empty the heart and empty the world, millions have thus cried Why in every age. It seems an irreligious word. When Jeremiah says, ”O Lord, Thou hast deceived me and I was deceived,” or when Job demands, ”Why did I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?” it sounds like the voice of a blasphemer. But indeed it is into the most earnest and delicate souls that this despair is likeliest to slip. The ignorant, the frivolous and the time-serving are safe from it; for they are well enough satisfied with things as they are. Callous minds learn to be content without explanations. But the more deeply pious a mind is, the more jealous must it be for justice and the glory of G.o.d; the appearance of unwisdom in the government of the world shocks it; to be able to trace the footsteps of G.o.d's care is a necessity of its existence. Hence its pain when these evidences disappear. Now, all the contradictions and confusions of the world were focussed on Golgotha. Injustice was triumphant; innocence was scorned and crushed; everything was exactly the reverse of what it ought to have been. And all the millions of Whys which have risen from agonized souls, jealous for the honour of G.o.d but perplexed by His providence, were concentrated in the Why of Christ.
How near to us He is! Never perhaps in His whole life did He so completely identify Himself with His poor brethren of mankind. For here He comes down to stand by our side not only when we have to encounter pain and misfortune, bereavement and death, but when we are enduring that pain which is beyond all pains, that horror in whose presence the brain reels, and faith and love, the eyes of life, are put out--the horror of a universe without G.o.d, a universe which is one hideous, tumbling, cras.h.i.+ng ma.s.s of confusion, with no reason to guide and no love to sustain it.
Can we advance a step farther into the mystery? The deepest question of all is whether the desertion of Jesus was subjective or objective--that is, whether He had only, on account of bodily weakness and a temporary obscuration of the inward vision, a sense of being abandoned, or whether, in any real sense, G.o.d had actually forsaken Him. Of course we are certain that G.o.d was infinitely well pleased with Him--never more so, surely, than when He was sacrificing Himself to the uttermost on behalf of others. But was there, at the same time, any outflas.h.i.+ng against Him of the reverse side of the Divine nature--the lightning of the Divine wrath? Calvary was an awful revelation of the human heart, whose enmity was directed straight against the perfect revelation of the love of G.o.d in Christ. There the sin of man reached its climax and did its worst. What was done there against Christ, and against G.o.d in Him, was a kind of embodiment and quintessence of the sin of the whole world. And undoubtedly it was this which was pressing on Jesus; this was ”the travail of His soul.”
He was looking close at sin's utmost hideousness; He was sickened with its contact; He was crushed with its brutality--crushed to death. Yet this human nature was His own; He was identified with it--bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh; and, as in a reprobate family an exquisitely delicate and refined sister may feel the whole weight of the debt and shame of the household to lie on herself, so He felt the unworthiness and hopelessness of the race as if they were His own; and, like the scapegoat on whose head the sins of the community were laid in the old dispensation, He went out into the land of forsakenness.
Thus far we may proceed, feeling that we have solid ground beneath our feet. But many have ventured farther. Even Luther and Calvin allowed themselves to say that in the hours which preceded this cry our Lord endured the torments of the d.a.m.ned. And Rambach, whose _Meditations on the Sufferings of Christ_ have fed the piety of Germany for a hundred years, says: ”G.o.d was now dealing with Him not as a loving and merciful father with his child, but as an offended and righteous judge with an evildoer. The heavenly Father now regards His Son as the greatest sinner to be found beneath the sun, and discharges on Him the whole weight of His wrath.” But, if we were to make use of such language, we should be venturing beyond our depth. Much to be preferred is the modest comment of the holy and learned Bengel on our text: ”In this fourth word from the cross our Saviour not only says that He has been delivered up into the hands of men, but that He has suffered at the hands of G.o.d something unutterable.” Certainly there is here something unutterable. We have ventured into the mystery as far as we are able; but we know that we are yet only in the shallows near the sh.o.r.e; the unplumbed ocean lies beyond.
III.
It may appear an affectation to speak of this as in any sense a cry of victory. Yet, if what has just been said be true, this, which was the extreme moment of suffering, was also the supreme moment of achievement. As the flower, by being crushed, yields up its fragrant essence, so He, by taking into His heart the sin of the world, brought salvation to the world.
In point of fact, all history since has shown that it was in this very hour that Christ conquered the heart of mankind. Long before He had said, ”I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.”
And the correctness of this antic.i.p.ation is matter of history. Christ on the cross has ever since then been the most fascinating object in the eyes of mankind. The mind and heart of humanity have been irresistibly attracted to Him, never weary of studying Him. And the utterance of this cry is the culminating moment to which the inquiring mind specially turns. Theology has its centre in the cross.
Sometimes, indeed, it has been shy of it, and has divagated from it in wide circles; but, as soon as it becomes profound and humble again, it always returns.
Yes, when it becomes humble! Penitent souls are drawn to the cross, and the deeper their penitence the more are they at home. They stand beside the dying Saviour and say, This is what we ought to have suffered; our life was forfeited by our guilt; thus our blood deserved to flow; we might justly have been banished forever into the desert of forsakenness. But, as they thus make confession, their forfeited life is given back to them for Christ's sake, the peace of G.o.d is shed abroad in their hearts, and the new life of love and service begins.
The supreme Christian rite brings us to this very spot and to this very moment: ”This is My blood of the New Testament, shed for many for the remission of sins.”
It was not, however, merely in this profound sense that this fourth word of the dying Saviour was a cry of victory. It was so, also, because it liberated Him from His depression. It has been said that when, at His encounter with the Greeks, He groaned, ”Father, save Me from this hour,” He immediately checked Himself with ”Father, glorify Thy name”; likewise that in Gethsemane, when He prayed, ”If it be possible, let this cup pa.s.s from Me,” He hastened to add, ”Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done”; but that on this occasion the cry of despair was followed by no word of resignation.
This, however, is a mistake. The cry itself, though an utterance of despair, yet involved the strongest faith. See how He lays hold of the Eternal with both hands: ”My G.o.d, My G.o.d!” It is a prayer: a thousand times He had turned to this resource In days of trial; and He does so in this supreme trouble. To do so cures despair. No one is forsaken who can pray, ”My G.o.d.” As one in deep water, feeling no bottom, makes a despairing plunge forward and lands on solid ground, so Jesus, in the very act of uttering His despair, overcame it. Feeling forsaken of G.o.d, He rushed into the arms of G.o.d; and these arms closed round Him in loving protection. Accordingly, as the darkness, which had brooded over all the land, disappeared at the ninth hour, so His mind emerged from eclipse; and, as we shall see, His last words were uttered in His usual mood of serenity.
[1] ”My G.o.d, My G.o.d, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
[2] Some of the Fathers thought of the separation of the divine from the human nature as taking place now.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FIFTH WORD FROM THE CROSS[1]
The fourth word from the cross we looked upon both as the climax of the struggle which had gone on in the mind of the divine Sufferer during the three hours of silence and darkness which preceded its utterance and as the liberation of His mind from that struggle. This view seems to be confirmed by the terms in which St. John introduces the Fifth Word--”After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished,[2] that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.”
The phrase, ”that the Scripture might be fulfilled,” is usually connected with the words, ”I thirst,” as if the meaning were that He had said this fifth word in fulfilment of some prediction that He would do so; and the Old Testament is ransacked, without much result, for the prophetic words which may be supposed to be alluded to. It is better, however, to connect the phrase with what goes before--”Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished.” It was only when His work, appointed by G.o.d and prescribed in Scripture, was completed, that He became sufficiently conscious of His bodily condition to say, ”I thirst.” Intense mental preoccupation has a tendency to cause the oblivion of bodily wants. Even the excitement of reading a fascinating book may keep at a distance for hours the sense of requiring sleep or food; and it is only when the reader comes out of the trance of absorption that he realises how spent he is. During the temptation in the wilderness Jesus was too absorbed to be aware of His bodily necessities; but, when the spiritual strain was removed, He ”was afterward an hungered.”
In the present instance, when He came out of His spiritual trance, it was thirst He became conscious of. I remember once talking with a German student who had served in the Franco-Prussian War. He was wounded in an engagement near Paris, and lay on the field unable to stir. He did not know exactly what was the nature of his wound, and he thought that he might be dying. The pain was intense; the wounded and dying were groaning round about him; the battle was still raging; and shots were falling and tearing up the ground in all directions. But after a time one agony, he told me, began to swallow up all the rest, and soon made him forget his wound, his danger and his neighbours. It was the agony of thirst. He would have given the world for a draught of water. This was the supreme distress of crucifixion. The agonies of the horrible punishment were of the most excruciating and complicated order; but, after a time, they all gathered into one central current, in which they were lost and swallowed up--that of devouring thirst; and it was this that drew from our Lord the fifth word.[3]