You must not ask me to tell you how it was that Jesus came to us as God and Man, for this is a mystery, which means an undisclosed truth that cannot be put into words, and the attempt to do so has often tortured the Church with dissension, and obscured His Presence among those who needed His help. So bitterly have people argued about His Divinity that their schisms and heresies and even their very orthodoxy outclamored the good news of His great love; and where the Arians, and the Nestorians, and the Eutychians, and the Monophysites could not find terms for His majesty, I must be content with the Gospels.
There I find that He does not expect us to understand what theologians call "His substance," but He would have us "RECEIVE HIM," and they who thus take Him have the right to become the sons of God." So He describes Himself, not in hard terms, but simply as the Light by which we see, as the Shepherd who cares for us, as the Master who teaches, as the Friend whose love is even unto death, as the Way by which we walk, the Truth by which we think--nay, as our Life itself, as branches have life in the vine. When He fed the multitudes, He showed His providence for their temporal needs; but when His own, His very own disciples, gathered around Him before He suffered, He remembered that they could not live by bread alone. "Take, eat," said He, as He handed them the loaf." This is My Body, which is broken for you and, as He passed the cup, "This is My Blood, which was shed for you." Every part of Him--all that felt, and saw, and heard, and spoke, and suffered--was given to them--not easily, but with pain--by shedding, by breaking--and their communion was accepting the Gift. With Jesus Himself as Priest, there lay no special virtue in the bread as such, nor in the wine, but only in the remembrance of Him. Peter, who was one of them, denied Him thrice, and on that remembrance went out and wept bitterly. Judas betrayed Him, and, remembering, hanged himself. It was when He blessed and brake the bread that remembrance flashed on His friends at Emmaus.
God and Man
Those who met Him in the flesh never doubted that He was Man. They brought Him food and begged Him to eat, and they put a pillow for Him that He might sleep in the boat. When He entered the city, they set Him on an ass; and, even as transfigured, Peter would have built for Him a shelter on the mountain. No one loved Him more reverently than Mary of Bethany, yet it was over His human feet that she poured her ointment. And after His resurrection Mary Magdalene mistook Him, not for a vision, but for the gardener. The disciples walking to Emmaus assumed that He was a stranger on the road.
When we think about our Lord's Manhood, we do not challenge His Godhead. No one confessed that Godhead more clearly than Peter, who yet feared what .He would suffer in the body at Jerusalem. And it was the print pf the nails in His human hands, the wound of the spear in His human side, that daw from Thomas the words, "My Lord and my God." The soldiers who unclothed and reclothed Him, who scourged Him and smote Him and crowned Him and nailed Him to a cross of wood, little thought that they were proving Him no phantom or wraith of the imagination; as John, who lay on His very bosom, testified, when they pierced His side, and drew from His broken heart both blood and water, they proved that His nature was ours.
But He seemed to be wearing our nature, as it were, on a throne. When He was " a mere boy," the scribes were amazed by His answers; and, a few years later, asked how He knew His letters, having never learned. Andrew, His first disciple, was convinced that here was the Messiah. Philip, though knowing Him only as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, realized that He was the One of whom Moses and the Prophets spoke. Nathanael, with the pure heart, saw Him Divine as Son of God, and human as King of Israel. The woman of Samaria perceived that He was a Prophet; while her neighbors, having heard Him themselves, were assured that He was Christ, the Saviour, not of Israel only, but of the world. Single-handed--for the disciples gave Him no help--He twice drove the money changers from the Temple. Unarmed--for they did not defend Him--He faced the mob at Nazareth, who would have lawlessly hurled Him from a cliff, and that other mob at Jerusalem, who, with memories of Moses, would have stoned Him. Those who were first sent to arrest Him returned, saying that never man spake as He did. In the Garden, the officers with swords and staves fell backward at sight of Him. The multitude, who would have made Him a king, realized His majesty less clearly than His opponents, who were haunted with the idea that He was a King already. It was as a Monarch that the soldiers mocked this Royal Man; and Pilate, nailing it to His cross, refused to unwrite the eternal truth. Even the thief who died with Him was assured that He had done nothing amiss, and that His crucifixion was the accession of a Sovereign to His rightful realm; while the centurion, who contemplated " the felon's death," cried, " Truly, this was the Son of God."
The Miracle at Cana
His greatness was in HIMSELP--not in what He did. Being what He was, His miracles were inevitable. The marriage at Cana came three days after Nathanael's confession, so that people were speaking of Him as Divine before He had shown them one sign of His material power. When He attended that wedding breakfast, He was a Man, still almost unknown; yet His mother--the one most intimate with His Person--who had waited thirty years for the fulfillment of the promises made to her at His birth, yet knew that He was Omnipotent, and that His hour would come. About what happened there was no premeditation. The six waterpots were there--not for wine, but for washing. Having served their purpose, they were empty. The surprise of the governor was genuine. There was no explanation from the bridegroom. Nor did the memory of that miracle fade. Jesus went away quietly to Jerusalem, and, as it were, left the event to stand the test of inquiry--alone and unsupported by other marvels; with the result that when He returned to Cana--not avoiding the place, as an impostor would have done--He was immediately met by a nobleman, who was ready to trust to Him the fate of his dying child.
"Except ye see signs and wonders," said He, "ye will not believe." In form, it was a complaint; within the words lay the meaning of His Kingliness. A sovereign's authority is limited by his prerogative; his laws are known by the laws that he can suspend. Jesus seldom asserted His prerogative. He forbade the devils to acknowledge it openly--desiring no homage from hatred and rebellion; and where men denied it, He did no mighty work within their border. What happened was that people themselves assigned to Him His sovereign rights. The servants who drew the water, having seen Jesus and obeyed Him, expressed no surprise at the result. To the nobleman, it seemed impossible--that his child could die in the presence of the Saviour. To Peter, it was obvious that the net, empty all night, should be lowered at the word of Jesus. When the tempest raged, it did not occur to them that Jesus was in danger; their suggestion was that He did not care; and this was what Martha and Mary said to one another when in His absence Lazarus died. Jairus was certain that one touch of the Master's hand would bring life to his daughter; and the afflicted woman had equal faith in the hem of His garment. Blind men were sure that He could open their eyes, and lepers that He could cleanse them; while the centurion whose servant was sick considered that His authority was as absolute as that of an officer over his soldiers. When He fed the multitudes, the disciples at once submitted to His orders. When He walked on the waters, Peter doubted not His power, but only His identity; and when He said "Weep not" to the widow at Nain, the bearers of her son stood still, expecting something more.
Finally, take blind Bartimæus at Jericho--a mere beggar, of no account with the crowd, who yet cried, and again cried, with ever-increasing persistence, demanding mercy. See how that poor man's cry arrested the Son of God in His progress through the city; how, with irresistible authority, He commanded the man to be brought; how the multitude, which tried to silence him, changed round, told him to be of good comfort--to rise--"He calleth thee"; how the blind man sprang up, throwing away his garment, and received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way of happiness and enlightenment.
What Faith really is
These people were not rich or learned or powerful ; but what they had was faith, and it is from them in their need that we learn what FAITH really means. It was a seeing of the invisible that "made Bartimæus whole." When blind men came to Him, Jesus would use the very moisture of His mouth to show them, by their remaining sense of touch, that their sight would come from Him. When the deaf and dumb man wanted liberation, He looked up to heaven and sighed, drawing a deep breath, that the man could see, though not hear, and so teaching him where lay His help in time of trouble. Where Moses used a rod, and Elijah a mantle, and Elisha a cruse of salt--some symbol other than themselves--our Lord had no need to go beyond a touch of love and a word of power when He said to the leper, "I will; be thou clean." It was from His lips that His scepter proceeded. These people recognized Him as King, and so derived their privileges as His subjects.
What aroused His wonder was not the miracles that He performed, but this faith or absence of faith among the people. The healing of the Syro-Phoenician woman was part of the day's allotted duty--but her persistence revealed the greatness of her faith. What astonished Him in the centurion's faith was the fact that the man knew how distance mattered nothing to the Lord of Eternity--a truth hardly realized even by Martha and Mary. Their faith, not His work, was to Him the miracle. He sternly rebuked the devils who acclaimed Him, for their knowledge was their condemnation; but Peter He blessed, for what he saw in the Redeemer was no rebel tribute, but a vision granted by God Himself. Others received Him as a prophet, and had the prophet's reward; or as a righteous man, and had the righteous man's reward. o He did not denounce these Unitarians--He only made it clear that according to their faith would it be unto them. The limit of blessing was with them, not with Him. They take part, where He offers all.
But Simon, though the most erratic of the Apostles--who besought Jesus to depart from him because he was so sinful a man, and was, as Satan, tempting Jesus to avoid Jerusalem, and knew not what he said on the Mountain of Transfiguration, and would not have the Master wash his feet, and boasted at the supper, and slept in the Garden, and struck off the ear which Jesus restored, and denied his Master thrice, and was withstood by Paul, because he was to be blamed--this Simon, so wayward, so impetuous, becomes Peter the " rock," built, with other living stones, into the very foundation of His Church--immovable, and why? Because, in Christ, he saw God, and so led the other Apostles. Against that faith the gates of hell cannot prevail--no miseries can quench that vision--and they who hold it bind on men their duties, and loose men from their infirmities, by a standard that includes both earth and heaven, the here and the hereafter, since their will is the will of the Everlasting.