5. HEARING AND SEEING
Luke 1:1-4; Matt. 13:16-17; Luke 10:23,24; Matt. 5-7; 7; Luke 6:17-49; Matt.
13:1-52; Matt. 8:16,17; Mark 4:33,34.
In the training of the twelve for the work of the
apostleship, hearing and seeing the words and works of Christ necessarily
occupied an important place. Eye and ear witnessing of the facts of an
unparalleled life was an indispensable preparation for future witness-bearing.
The apostles could secure credence for their wondrous tale only by being able
to preface it with the protestation: "That which we have seen and heard declare
we unto you." None would believe their report, save those who, at the very
least, were satisfied that it emanated from men who had been with Jesus. Hence
the third evangelist, himself not an apostle, but only a companion of apostles,
presents his Gospel with all confidence to his friend Theophilus as a genuine
history, and no mere collection of fables, because its contents were attested
by men who "from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the
Word."
In the early period of their discipleship hearing
and seeing seem to have been the main occupation of the twelve. They were then
like children born into a new world, whose first and by no means least
important course of lessons consists in the use of their senses in observing
the wonderful objects by which they are surrounded.
The things which the twelve saw and heard were
wonderful enough. The great Actor in the stupendous drama was careful to
impress on His followers the magnitude of their privilege. "Blessed," said He
to them on one occasion, "are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I
tell you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see,
and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not."
Yet certain generations of Israel had seen very remarkable things: one had seen
the wonders of the Exodus, and the sublimities connected with the lawgiving at
Sinai; another, the miracles wrought by Elijah and Elisha; and successive
generations had been privileged to listen to the not less wonderful oracles of
God, spoken by David, Solomon, Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets. But the
things witnessed by the twelve eclipsed the wonders of all bygone ages; for a
greater than Moses, or Elijah, or David, or Solomon, or Isaiah, was here, and
the promise to Nathanael was being fulfilled. Heaven had been opened, and the
angels of God--the spirits of wisdom, and power, and love--were ascending and
descending on the Son of man.
We may here take a rapid survey of the mirabilia
which it was the peculiar privilege of the twelve to see and hear, more or less
during the whole period of their discipleship, and specially just after their
election. These may be comprehended under two heads: the Doctrine of the
Kingdom, and the Philanthropic Work of the Kingdom.
I. Before the ministry of Jesus commenced, His
forerunner had appeared in the wilderness of Judea, preaching, and saying,
"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;" and some time after their
election the twelve disciples were sent forth among the towns and villages of
Galilee to repeat the Baptist's message. But Jesus Himself did something more
than proclaim the advent of the kingdom. He expounded the nature of the divine
kingdom, described the character of its citizens, and discriminated between
genuine and spurious members of the holy commonwealth. This He did partly in
what is familiarly called the Sermon on the Mount, preached shortly after the
election of the apostles; and partly in certain parables uttered about the same
period.[5.2]
In the great discourse delivered on the
mountain-top, the qualifications for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven were
set forth, first positively, and then comparatively. The positive truth was
summed up in seven golden sentences called the Beatitudes, in which the
felicity of the kingdom was represented as altogether independent of the
outward conditions with which worldly happiness is associated. The blessed,
according to the preacher, were the poor, the hungry, the mournful, the meek,
the merciful, the pure in heart, the peaceable, the sufferers for
righteousness' sake. Such were blessed themselves, and a source of blessing to
the human race: the salt of the earth, the light of the world raised above
others in spirit and character, to draw them upwards, and lead them to glorify
God.
Next, with more detail, Jesus exhibited the
righteousness of the kingdom, and of its true citizens, in contrast to that
which prevailed. "Except your righteousness," He went on to say with solemn
emphasis, "shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye
shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven;" and then He illustrated and
enforced the general proposition by a detailed description of the counterfeit
in its moral and religious aspects: in its mode of interpreting the moral law,
and its manner of performing the duties of piety, such as prayer, alms, and
fasting. In the one aspect He characterized pharisaic righteousness as
superficial and technical; in the other as ostentatious, self-complacent, and
censorious. In contrast thereto, He described the ethics of the kingdom as a
pure stream of life, having charity for its fountainhead; a morality of the
heart, not merely of outward conduct; a morality also broad and catholic,
overleaping all arbitrary barriers erected by legal pedantry and natural
selfishness. The religion of the kingdom He set forth as humble, retiring,
devoted in singleness of heart to God and things supernal; having faith in God
as a benignant gracious Father for its root, and contentment, cheerfulness, and
freedom from secular cares for its fruits; and, finally, as reserved in its
bearing towards the profane, yet averse to severity in judging, yea, to judging
at all, leaving men to be judged by God.
The discourse, of which we have given a hasty
outline, made a powerful impression on the audience. "The people," we read,
"were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught them as one having authority
(the authority of wisdom and truth), and not as the scribes," who had merely
the authority of office. It is not probable that either the multitude or the
twelve understood the sermon; for it was both deep and lofty, and their minds
were pre-occupied with very different ideas of the coming kingdom. Yet the
drift of all that had been said was clear and simple. The kingdom whereof Jesus
was both King and Lawgiver was not to be a kingdom of this world: it was not to
be here or there in space, but within the heart of man; it was not be the
monopoly of any class or nation, but open to all possessed of the requisite
spiritual endowments on equal terms. It is nowhere said, indeed, in the sermon,
that ritual qualifications, such as circumcision, were not indispensable for
admission into the kingdom. But circumcision is ignored here, as it was ignored
the teaching of Jesus. It is treated as something simply out of place, which
cannot be dove-tailed into the scheme of doctrine set forth; an incongruity the
very mention of which would create a sense of the grotesque. How truly it was
so any one can satisfy himself by just imagining for a moment that among the
Beatitudes had been found one running thus: Blessed are the circumcised, for no
uncircumcised ones shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. This significant
silence concerning the seal of the national covenant could not fail to have its
effect on the minds of the disciples, as a hint at eventual antiquation.
The weighty truths thus taught first in the
didactic form of an ethical discourse, Jesus sought at other times to
popularize by means of parables. In the course of His ministry He uttered many
parabolic sayings, the parable being with Him a favorite form of instruction.
Of the thirty[5.3] parables preserved in the Gospels, the larger number were of
an occasional character, and are best understood when viewed in connection with
the circumstances which called them forth. But there is a special group of
eight which appear to have been spoken about the same period, and to have been
designed to serve one object, viz. to exhibit in simple pictures the
outstanding features of the kingdom of heaven in its nature and progress, and
in its relations to diverse classes of men. One of these, the parable of the
sower, apparently the first spoken, shows the different reception given to the
word of the kingdom by various classes of hearers, and the varied issues in
their life. Two--the parables of the tares and of the net cast into the
sea--describe the mixture of good and evil that should exist in the kingdom
till the end, when the grand final separation would take place. Another pair of
short parables--those of the treasure hid in a field and of the precious
pearl--set forth the incomparable importance of the kingdom, and of citizenship
therein. Other two--the grain of mustard seed, and the leaven hid in three
measures of meal--explain how the kingdom advances from small beginnings to a
great ending. An eighth parable, found in Mark's Gospel only, teaches that
growth in the divine kingdom proceeds by stages, analogous to the blade, the
ear, and the full corn in the ear, in the growth of grain.[5.4]
These parables, or the greater number of them,
were spoken in the hearing of a miscellaneous audience; and from a reply of
Jesus to a question put by the disciples, it might appear that they were
intended mainly for the ignorant populace. The question was, "Why speakest Thou
unto them in parables?" and the reply, "Because it is given unto you to know
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given;" which
seems to imply, that in the case of the twelve such elementary views of
truth--such children's sermons, so to speak--might be dispensed with. Jesus
meant no more, however, than that for them the parables were not so important
as for common hearers, being only one of several means of grace through which
they were to become eventually scribes instructed in the kingdom, acquainted
with all its mysteries, and able, like a wise householder, to bring out of
their treasures things new and old;[5.5] while for the multitude the parables
were indispensable, as affording their only chance of getting a little glimpse
into the mysteries of the kingdom.
That the twelve were not above parables yet
appears from the fact that they asked and received explanations of them in
private from their Master: of all, probably, though the interpretations of two
only, the parables of the sower and the tares, are preserved in the
Gospels.[5.6] They were still only children; the parables were pretty pictures
to them, but of what they could not tell. Even after they had received private
expositions of their meaning, they were probably not much wiser than before,
though they professed to be satisfied.[5.7] Their profession was doubtless
sincere: they spake as they felt; but they spake as children, they understood
as children, they thought as children, and they had much to learn yet of these
divine mysteries.
When the children had grown to spiritual manhood,
and fully understood these mysteries, they highly valued the happiness they had
enjoyed in former years, in being privileged to hear the parables of Jesus. We
have an interesting memorial of the deep impression produced on their minds by
these simple pictures of the kingdom, in the reflection with, which the first
evangelist closes his account of Christ's parabolic teaching. "All these
things," he remarks, "spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables, . . . that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my
mouth in parables, I will utter things which have been kept secret from the
foundation of the world."[5.8] The quotation (from the seventy-eighth Psalm)
significantly diverges both from the Hebrew original and from the Septuagint
version.[5.9] Matthew has consciously adapted the words so as to express the
absolute originality of the teaching in which he found their fulfilment. While
the Psalmist uttered dark sayings from the ancient times of Israel's history,
Jesus in the parables had spoken things that had been hidden from the creation.
Nor was this an exaggeration on the part of the evangelist. Even the use of the
parable as a vehicle of instruction was all but new, and the truths expressed
in the parables were altogether new. They were indeed the eternal verities of
the divine kingdom, but till the days of Jesus they had remained unannounced.
Earthly things had always been fit to emblem forth heavenly things; but, till
the great Teacher appeared, no one had ever thought of linking them together,
so that the one should become a mirror of the other, revealing the deep things
of God to the common eye: even as no one before Isaac Newton had thought of
connecting the fall of an apple with the revolution of the heavenly bodies,
though apples had fallen to the ground from the creation of the world.
2. The things which the disciples had the
happiness to see in connection with the philanthropic work of the kingdom were,
if possible, still more marvellous than those which they heard in Christ's
company. They were eye-witnesses of the events which Jesus bade the messengers
of John report to their master in prison as unquestionable evidence that He was
the Christ who should come.[5.10] In their presence, as spectators, blind men
received their sight, lame men walked, lepers were cleansed, the deaf recovered
hearing, dead persons were raised to life again. The performance of such
wonderful works was for a time Christ's daily occupation. He went about in
Galilee and other districts, "doing good, and healing all that were oppressed
of the devil."[5.11] The "miracles" recorded in detail in the Gospels give no
idea whatever of the extent to which these wondrous operations were carried on.
The leper cleansed on the descent from the mountain, when the great sermon was
preached, the palsied servant of the Roman centurion restored to health and
strength, Peter's mother-in-law cured of a fever, the demoniac dispossessed in
the synagogue of Capernaum, the widow's son brought back to life while he was
being carried out to burial,--these, and the like, are but a few samples
selected out of an innumerable multitude of deeds not less remarkable, whether
regarded as mere miracles or as acts of kindness. The truth of this statement
appears from paragraphs of frequent recurrence in the Gospels, which relate not
individual miracles, but an indefinite number of them taken en masse. Of such
paragraphs take as an example the following, cursorily rehearsing the works
done by Jesus at the close of a busy day: "And at even, when the sun did set,
they brought unto Him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with
devils; and all the city was gathered together at the door. And He healed many
that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils."[5.12] This was
what happened on a single Sabbath evening in Capernaum, shortly after the
Sermon on the Mount was preached; and such scenes appear to have been common at
this time: for we read a little farther on in the same Gospel, that "Jesus
spake unto His disciples, that a small ship should wait on Him because of the
multitude, lest they should throng Him; for He had healed many; insomuch that
they pressed upon Him for to touch Him, as many as had plagues."[5.13] And yet
again Mark tells how "they went into an house, and the multitude cometh
together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread."[5.14]
The inference suggested by such passages as to
the vast extent of Christ's labors among the suffering, is borne out by the
impressions these made on the minds both of friends and foes. The ill-affected
were so struck by what they saw, that they found it necessary to get up a
theory to account for the mighty influence exerted by Jesus in curing physical,
and especially psychical maladies. "This fellow," they said, "doth not cast out
devils but by Beelzebub the prince of devils." It was a lame theory, as Jesus
showed; but it was at least conclusive evidence that devils were cast out, and
in great numbers.
The thoughts of the well-affected concerning the
works of Jesus were various, but all which have been recorded involve a
testimony to His vast activity and extraordinary zeal. Some, apparently
relatives, deemed him mad, fancying that enthusiasm had disturbed His mind, and
compassionately sought to save Him from doing Himself harm through excessive
solicitude to do good to others.[5.15] The sentiments of the people who
received benefit were more devout. "They marvelled, and glorified God, which
had given such power unto men;"[5.16] and they were naturally not inclined to
criticise an "enthusiasm of humanity" whereof they were themselves the
objects.
The contemporaneous impressions of the twelve
concerning their Master's deeds are not recorded; but of their subsequent
reflections as apostles we have an interesting sample in the observations
appended by the first evangelist to his account of the transactions of that
Sabbath evening in Capernaum already alluded to. The devout Matthew, according
to his custom, saw in these wondrous works Old Testament Scripture fulfilled;
and the passage whose fulfilment he found therein was that touching oracle of
Isaiah, "Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;" which,
departing from the Septuagint, he made apt to his purpose by rendering,
"Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses."[5.17] The Greek
translators interpreted the text as referring to men's spiritual
maladies--their sins;[5.18] but Matthew deemed it neither a misapplication nor
a degradation of the words to find in them a prophecy of Messiah's deep
sympathy with such as suffered from any disease, whether spiritual or mental,
or merely physical. He knew not how better to express the intense compassion of
his Lord towards all sufferers, than by representing Him in prophetic language
as taking their sicknesses on Himself. Nor did he wrong the prophet's thought
by this application of it. He but laid the foundation of an
[hungarumlaut]fortiori inference to a still more intense sympathy on the
Saviour's part with the spiritually diseased. For surely He who so cared for
men's bodies would care yet more for their souls. Surely it might safely be
anticipated, that He who was so conspicuous as a healer of bodily disease would
become yet more famous as a Saviour from sin.
The works which the twelve were privileged to see
were verily worth seeing, and altogether worthy of the Messianic King. They
served to demonstrate that the King and the kingdom were not only coming, but
come; for what could more certainly betoken their presence, than mercy dropping
like the "gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath"? John, indeed, seems
to have thought otherwise, when he sent to inquire of Jesus if He were the
Christ who was to come. He desiderated, we imagine, a work of judgment on the
impenitent as a more reliable proof of Messiah's advent than these miracles of
mercy. The prophetic infirmity of querulousness and the prison air had got the
better of his judgment and his heart, and he was in the truculent humor of
Jonah, who was displeased with God, not because He was too stern, but rather
because He was too gracious, too ready to forgive.
The least in the kingdom of heaven is incapable
now of being offended with these works of our Lord on account of their
mercifulness. The offence in our day lies in a different direction. Men stumble
at the miraculousness of the things seen by the disciples and recorded by the
evangelists. Mercy, say they, is God-like, but miracles are impossible; and
they think they do well to be sceptical. An exception is made, indeed, in favor
of some of the healing miracles, because it is not deemed impossible that they
might fall within the course of nature, and so cease to belong to the category
of the miraculous. "Moral therapeutics" might account for them--a department of
medical science which Mr. Matthew Arnold thinks has not been at all
sufficiently studied yet.[5.19] All other miracles besides those wrought by
moral therapeutics are pronounced fabulous. But why not extend the dominion of
the moral over the physical, and say without qualification: Mercy is God-like,
therefore such works as those wrought by Jesus were matters of course? So they
appeared to the writers of the Gospels. What they wondered at was not the
supernaturalness of Christ's healing operations, but the unfathomable depth of
divine compassion which they revealed. There is no trace of the love of the
marvellous either in the Gospels or in the Epistles. The disciples may have
experienced such a feeling when the era of wonders first burst on their
astonished view, but they had lost it entirely by the time the New Testament
books began to be written.[5.20] Throughout the New Testament miracles are
spoken of in a sober, almost matter-of-fact, tone. How is this to be explained?
The explanation is that the apostles had seen too many miracles while with
Jesus to be excited about them. Their sense of wonder had been deadened by
being sated. But though they ceased to marvel at the power of their Lord, they
never ceased to wonder at His grace. The love of Christ remained for them
throughout life a thing passing knowledge; and the longer they lived, the more
cordially did they acknowledge the truth of their Master's words: "Blessed are
the eyes which see the things that ye see"