Important as are the perplexities of scholars, what concerns us most is the indifference, the discouragement of common folk, who once heard the Saviour so gladly. His teaching sometimes seems so impracticable, and we ask why His miracles have ceased. And so, to our great loss, we leave Him alone, and do not come to Him that we might have life; while we are too hurried, too careless, to remember that what happens to us is only what happened to people like ourselves, in Judea and Galilee. The "modern" problem, as it is called, is really as ancient--as eternal--as the Gospel itself. Sometimes our Lord asked whether His very Apostles would not leave Him. "Will ye also go away?" was His testing inquiry of the Twelve; and Peter's answer rings out as pertinent as if it were printed in yesterday's newspaper. "To whom shall we go?" Suppose that we assume our Lord's message to be a failure. Who else is there whose words mean life? There is no other.
He did not say that His teaching would be easy. He knew that the best of us would not grasp His meaning all at once, still less obey it. For this reason He wants us to listen, even when we do not understand. And He spoke in parables, because these stories cling to the mind, and so renew their offer of an inner truth not at first appreciated. In the whole range of literature there are no passages so familiar as these parables. Yet we are still discovering the fullness of their meaning. And, after all, what are our commentaries and text-books compared with these original treasures? The parables are creative, the criticism is parasitic.
Teacher and Pupils
We think that we can master the wisdom of Christ in an hour or two. He found that after training His disciples daily for years there were many things still to be said which they could not bear to hear. Philip was one of His closest friends, but even Philip did not understand in what sense Jesus reveals to us our Father in heaven. John the Baptist himself had his misgivings, while the scribes and Pharisees constantly stumbled at His doctrine. We see the men who were to organize the Christian Church quarreling among themselves who should be the greatest; ready to call down fire on some incredulous Samaritan village; forbidding the good work of others who cast out devils in Christ's name without following the apostolical succession; demanding high office in the new kingdom; driving away the children from His very knees.
We see these men in terror at a storm, helpless before a demoniac boy, asleep during His agony, in hiding during His crucifixion. He had to teach these men to be as humble as a child; to share His spirit, which seeks only to save; to recognize His power where good is done; to measure honor by sacrifice, to respect the sacredness of the young; to be brave in danger, strong in the fight against evil; watchful of temptation; to be witnesses, not fugitives, when He was attacked. And if as a Teacher He was thus patient, is it much to ask of us that we be equally patient as His pupils?
In ignoring or criticizing or resisting Christ's in"ruction, we assume that we are judicial persons, sitting as jurors, who are detached from the issues involved, whereas in reality we are the parties to the case. In every inquiry that we make, in every manuscript that we dissect, in every doubt that we raise, we are litigants, claiming exemption for our money and our lives. The only real question is whether we will or will not have this Man to rule over us. He is not satisfied with the righteousness--let alone the scholarship--of the library and the university; far from it. For His claims could not well be more exacting. The eager man, who is ready to follow wherever he is led, must understand clearly that the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests--there is comfort and there is safety for the worldly wise--but the Son of Man, a Captain who ever bivouacs with His soldiers, hath not where to lay His head.
Keeping Pace with the Redeemer
The stickler for etiquette, who wishes first to bury his father, must recognize, on his side, that funerals are not to impede the great advance: "Let the dead bury their dead." His duty is to follow the Master. The courteous man, who spends all his time answering letters and fulfilling the amenities of polite society--who is well known at the Club and fond of complimentary banquets--must cease from his salutations by the way. The family man, with wife and children to support, must be ready to sacrifice for the Cross all that brave men sacrifice for their country. Having once enlisted, he must not look back. His hand is on the plow. And, finally, the man of property, who from his youth upwards has kept the Commandments, must sell all he has and give it to the poor, if he is to keep pace with the Redeemer. Simple for such a man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven! Indeed, no. A camel, unloaded of its burdens, might as easily pass through the eye of a needle.
Even His most loyal friends were staggered by this demand on their very beings. "Who," they asked," can be saved? " And, in replying, He did not compromise. He agreed that, with men, such consecration of "all we have and are" is impossible. But He added that with God nothing is impossible. Many men and women have, in fact, given up what He asked, and have thus discovered what He meant when He promised happiness to those who, instead of finding offense in His words, obeyed them.
On the application of these "hard sayings," I may write something a little later. For the moment I confine myself strictly to the one point, that their difficulty, as it confronts us, is nothing new or unforeseen. And despite their difficulty, the sayings still challenge us, and cannot be disposed of. With heaven and earth still here, not one syllable of His has, in fact, passed away. Before we decide that His teaching is untrue, we would do well to make sure that we hear Him correctly. He Himself was profoundly distrustful of our oral faculty. Some of us, like stony ground, seemed to Him hard and shallow, ready enough to say "Yes" to the Gospel when our surroundings are favorable to it; but withering away when the same surroundings, like the sun, exhaust us with the heat which was once our stimulus. Others are like a field of thorns, choked by the world that is too much with us, and only a few offer good ground for the eternal seed. Even on that good ground there is the Devil, who removes the seed, or sows tares, not in broad daylight--you do not read of it in theological treatises, or find mention of him in discussions about empty churches--but at night; so that what our Lord once said has to compete with the weeds of civilization, an often frivolous Press, an often regrettable drama, the race course, the deluge of fiction, the plague of portraiture. People have tried in vain to uproot the tares. Roman Catholics and Protestants have, each in turn, applied their expurgatorial censorship. But our Lord has advised us to allow the good and the bad to grow up together--you cannot destroy the one without imperiling the other--and each must fight the other. Not until the end of our age shall error be sifted completely from truth, and truth be so purified.
Although nothing of His is lost, He does not hold us responsible for understanding everything that He said. For instance, there is in the East a pathetic class of men, almost unknown among us, not one of whom, so far as we are told, ever came to Him, but who, none the less, received a special message. A saviour less courageous than our Lord would have left these men to take their chance with the rest, and perhaps be driven from salvation; but He made it clear, with unflinching candor, that He understood their case in all its bearings, and did not blame them or despise them for their misfortune. As in His teaching on marriage, so here, He said, let those receive it who can receive it. It may be that we do not need that particular word. But the word meant life or death to the first convert from Ethiopia.
Finally, we should remember that He did not leave behind Him a book of proverbs, over which we are to wrangle as best we may, but the Spirit of Truth--not of Conjecture, or Criticism, or Hypothesis--who is our Comforter. The Spirit understands us, our circumstances, and these words of our Lord, which were spoken in that Spirit, and so can reconcile all three. What we call our private judgment should be the acceptance of that inward illumination. It is personal to each of us, yet not discordant, for we regard the same objects with the same vision, only from diverse standpoints. The Spirit's guidance is not the infallibility of the Pope, who does not really know about us, yet legislates as if he were omniscient. But it is certain as the stars, since His Word is His Bond, His Covenant. That illumination accompanies men and women who desire it wherever they go, resolving their doubts, guiding their opinions, dispelling their errors. No inquiry is resisted, for the aim is " all truth." But the greater the truth, the larger must be the obedience, for it is they who do the works who shall know of the doctrine. It is not Truth as a mere satisfaction to curiosity that He gives us, but truth as the basis of conduct, the food of the soul, the sustenance of love and faith and joy, the life breath of our happiness and peace. And His Truth embraces, not only the material and temporal things that we see with our eyes, wonderful though they be, but the spiritual and eternal, from which there is no escape.