The bank clerk who, to the surprise of his friends, wins the Victoria Cross, had that sudden courage latent in him when he sat behind the counter. Nurse Cavell was all that we now know years before she faced the firing party. It is not the limelight that makes the actor, nor the battle the general; and when Jesus, after eighteen years of obscurity at Nazareth, stepped forth upon the stage of history, there to play His unapproachable part, what happened was only that a veil was withdrawn. As His most intimate friend put it, the Christ was manifested, or displayed, or shown to the world. The unsearchable resources of His character shone forth with less and less reserve, until at last He was lifted up, and so drew all men unto Him.
Luke tells us that for fifteen of the eighteen silent years Tiberias Cæsar reigned at Rome. If ever a monarch had the chance of bettering mankind, it was he; but when Jesus came, the sick still lay in the streets, the lepers still rotted in wretched isolation ; and while legions of soldiers garrisoned the Empire, legions of devils tormented the heart, In one of those verses which at first sight seem to be fuller of unfamiliar names than of spiritual consolation, Luke records that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee, Philip was tetrarch of Ituræa and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene. The Promised Land was thus in utter subjection to foreigners. Its unity was shattered. Its provinces had lost their ancient and sacred titles; and where the Prophets spoke of Zebulun and Naphtali, the Evangelists make mention of Galilee and Decapolis. In the golden days of liberation, Moses and Aaron had themselves led the people; but Annas and Caiaphas, their successors in the high-priesthood, had to yield precedence to tetrarchs and proconsuls, and, even in the Gospel, are mentioned last in the long list of dignitaries. Every theory of government had been tried, only to break down. Under the Judges, a republic failed; and under the Kings a monarchy. With Ezra and Nehemiah, what we should call home-rule was established; yet with the fall of the Maccabees the nation again succumbed to despotism.
John the Baptist
But among peasantry and fishermen there still smoldered the embers of liberty. John the Baptist, had he so desired, would have been an ideal leader of revolt, and of the new monarchy the Lord Jesus would have been an ideal King. The times seemed to be ripe. Among our Lord's chosen apostles was Simon, who belonged to the Zealots, or national party. The sons of Zebedee, after years of communion with Jesus, were so little touched by His ideals that they asked to sit, the one to the right and the other to the left of His temporal throne. The people themselves wanted to take Him by force and make Him a King; and when He was awaiting His ascension, the last error to be dispelled from the minds of His followers was that He would then set up the Kingdom of Israel. It was with such a sovereignty that the Devil tempted Him in the wilderness; the soldiers thus mocked Him in Herod's palace, and Pontius Pilate pinned that same superscription to His cross.
It was the supreme service of John that, breathing this dangerous air, he avoided all such sedition against the civil power as Fenianism and Sinn Fein, and announced a kingdom, not of earth, but limitless as the heavens; a revolution, not of states, but of souls; a release, not from despotism, but from sins. Leaving the kings on their thrones, he proclaimed the immediate and eternal responsibility of the sovereign people. What concerned him was not Herod the tetrarch, but Herod the husband. John died, not to liberate his country, but to defend its insulted morality; and Jesus Himself steadily refused to be party to a revolt which, as He foretold with tears, would one day deluge Jerusalem in blood.
From that doomed city where, amid the ritual, hearts remained unsatisfied; from Judea, from the Jordan valley, crowds flocked to hear John's preaching. Jesus quietly joined them, not as a rival teacher, but, with incomparable humility, as a disciple, unmarked amid the multitude, save by John himself, and then only after an interval. With Christ in the pulpit we are familiar; but here we have Christ in the pew, the divine Layman, who does not criticize the sermon or discuss the style of it, but receives it with reverence as "the word of God" to Him, and so ponders over it. There was not a sentence spoken by John that Jesus did not remember and hand on to others. If John said, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," then this was what Jesus also preached when He began His ministry. When the Twelve were sent forth, and after them the Seventy, they were bidden, each in turn, to preach John's Good Tidings of the Kingdom. John so spoke that what he said could be preached over again by the Saviour Himself in person, and could be spread abroad by His missionaries, alike among Jews and Gentiles--everywhere reaching men's hearts. For addresses, sermons, hymns, articles in the newspapers, speeches, one can imagine no severer test.
The Kingdom of Heaven
Not that Jesus repeated John's words by rote, or heedlessly. On the contrary, He enriched the original theme, until it was merged in His own grander music, as a symphony gathers around some simple motive. In Matthew, we read of the Kingdom of Heaven, or of happiness--meaning that happiness, like a kingdom, has its frontiers, its laws, its defenses, its discipline. But Luke uses a different term--the Kingdom of God--showing that, apart from God's rule, there is no rule of happiness. Jesus, observing as He did that the people constantly misunderstand the meaning of happiness, teaches us that the Kingdom has its "mysteries" or State secrets, which can only be indicated by parables. It is like unresisting leaven, which a woman can handle at will, but which spreads its influence slowly but surely, and in utter silence, until all is leavened, and the meal which would have choked us is transformed into the bread that sustains us. Small in origin as is a mustard-seed, it is of an intense life, and so grows into the greatest of all trees, in the branches of which--Anglican, it may be, or Congregational, or Salvationist--many anomalies and even abuses may shelter, injuring the fruit, but no more able than the birds of the air to destroy the rising sap--the inward vitality of the divinely-planted Church. The Kingdom of Heaven is a treasure hidden in the field of a man's daily duty, to obtain which treasure he will sell all that he hath--ambition, luxuries, indulgences--because that special field, so unattractive to others, has become for him the one place of happiness. Amid all pearls--art, literature, beauty, social success--it is so much the greatest of pearls, that men and women--the goodly merchants of their time and opportunities--sacrifice all the rest to obtain that one final reward of wise spiritual leading. Being within us, the Kingdom is safe against those who would destroy the body but cannot hurt the soul; yet we cannot win it by our own unaided efforts. John preached repentance, a change of mind, as passport to the Kingdom; but Jesus, with His profounder insight, realized that evil must be expelled, as well as forsworn. "If," said He, "I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is come unto you." Thus, in half a dozen tremendous words, John's simple idea of God's monarchy is elaborated into a vision of God the Father, as Sovereign; God the Son, as Conqueror; and God the Spirit, as Living Force--a Trinity, not academic, nor theological, but present, practical, omnipotent--a challenge, here and now, to the league of actual devils, which have usurped the soul of man.
With Jesus thus listening, John fearlessly told the Jews that "patriotism is not enough." Summing up the prophetic warnings, he said that nations, like certain trees, must be known by their fruits, and that already the inevitable ax of retribution was laid--not at the branches or outlying synagogues or colonies of Judaism, but at its root and center. That terrible simile is based on the shrewdly observed botanical fact that, as a rule, the wood of fruit-trees is useless save as fuel, so that in planting our gardens we must choose between the trees that refresh our life and the trees that add to our furniture. To the memory of our Lord the ominous parable constantly recurred. Do men gather grapes of thorns--He would ask--or figs of thistles? His one miracle of destruction was the withering of a barren yet leafy fig-tree, growing there under the walls of Jerusalem; a perpetual sign against that city's abundance of empty professions.
Known by Fruit
John spoke of nations simply as trees of the forest, planted each by itself, and afterwards decaying. Jesus enriched the parable by suggesting that His followers would be branches growing from one stem or trunk--what Isaiah called the stem of Jesse--which would be His own self, sharing life with all who desire it. He compared Himself, not with the oak, or elm, or cedar, the heroes of the forest; but with the vine, which cannot rear itself one yard from the earth without support, and every tendril of which is guided constantly hither and thither. Jesus, who commanded the winds and waves, was of all men most dependent upon prayer and fasting, and perfectly responsive to God's care.
John thought of God as the Forester, whose keen eye judges the trees, so that one is spared and another hewn down. To Jesus, the Father is a Husbandman, who uses, not an ax to destroy, but a knife to prune, so that what is fruitful may increase in fruit-bearing, and only the dead be removed. John discerned national decay as a fact. Jesus probed the causes of it. In the vine, mere wood becomes mere rubbish. The branch is only healthy as a vehicle for the life-sap to reach the ripening grapes. Riches--religion--power--these are all to be tested by the love, the joy, the peace which they produce; and love, joy, peace are the fruits, not of the branch by itself, but of the True Vine, of which the branch is a part.