Moses enrolled twelve tribes for conquest, but while they mastered the Canaanites, they did not obliterate evil. Our Lord began His work, not with twelve tribes, but with twelve men, undistinguished by genius, and some of them so unlearned that their very pronunciation was defective. He did not send them to college, or teach them theology, as we read it to-day. He said no word to them about architecture and organs and choirs and painted windows and ritual, but kept them near to Himself, where they could best learn--first, the need of the people; and, secondly, the Redeemer's power to save. The kind of subject that He discussed with them was not the unknown and undiscoverable origin of a manuscript, however interesting might be that matter to the curious, but real questions, affecting our happiness--as, for instance, whether His Gospel is suitable for children or only for grown-up people ; and why miracles depend on prayer, which is an approach to God, and fasting, which is a denial of self; and what the parables meant. Some of these twelve men became famous; others are only names to us. But all alike started with average abilities, as if He would show us by their example how much He can make of anyone who submits to the rules of His companionship. He even declared that these true disciples of His would one day occupy thrones, and judge the twelve tribes of Israel, thus sharing His own glory. To us, a leader of men is he who can obtain the votes of men. He knew that the real leader is he who has a vision of God.
The Commission "Go"
He did not shut up His followers in monasteries, or bid them spend years in a theological seminary, but He stirred them at once to deliberate initiative. Having been disciples who were taught, they became apostles who were sent. "Go" was His first word to them after their call; "Go" was again His last word to them before He ascended. Go, not into the study or pulpit or university as such, but into the world, among the people; enter their homes, tell them the News, heal them, cleanse them. Freely ye have received, freely give. Go first to the nation you know well; go afterwards to all nations. Be ambitious. Let your quest absorb every power--the soul that asks in reverence; the intellect that seeks with patience; the body that knocks with energy. Yet in all your hopes recognize Another beside yourself. Let your happiness be a gift, granted by God's goodness; a treasure, found by His guidance; a home, thrown open to you by His love. But let all your initiative be hallowed by reverence. Asking is not demanding, seeking is not snatching, knocking is not house-breaking. Be not like robbers, who climb up another way into the sheepfold--whose religion is a cloak for self-will--but understand that every quest, duly made with the whole being of man, has an immediate reward. All who ask, receive; all who seek, find; to all who knock, it is opened. Even in the world, if men and women have an aim and resolutely pursue it, they usually get what they want-sometimes good, sometimes bad. But in His kingdom everything worth having is free to everybody. As St. Paul put it, we have all IN CHRIST.
The Kingdom of Heaven was not a half-empty church, very dull and very respectable. It was a territory that suffered violence, and the violent took it by force. It is a place where Salvationism, Socialism, Tolstoyism--any ism that submits to the One Master--may raise its voice. The complaint of our Lord was that the disciples were so slow to ask anything in His Name. Whatsoever ye thus ask, He declared, I will do it. If two or three of you agree on a matter, whatever it be, you will prevail with the Almighty. The letters of these words were as carefully chosen as the phrases of a title-deed. The promise is limitless, but the conditions are exact. If prayer is to be effective, it must be made, not in the name of a patriarch, as was the custom of the Jews, or of a saint, as is sometimes the custom of Catholic Christians, nor must we put our own desires into the form of a prayer, and of necessity expect an answer; we must pray in the Saviour's Name, which means that we must only offer prayer for what He would Himself pray if He were in our position. In drawing our checks on the bank of faith, we must not forget that without His endorsement they are mere scraps of paper. Our profits, our luxuries, our pleasures, our whims, are all excluded by that test, and let us never forget that the test is social. He safeguards prayer against idiosyncrasy, selfishness, and monomania. When we pray, can we find some other of our Lord's friends, as intimate with Him as we are, who will with his whole soul join us in our petition to the Great King? You wish a life to be spared. Are you certain that your doctor, who has so often seen the sufferings of a long illness, is equally eager thus to urge Providence? You want a war-bonus on wages. Have you considered that your prayer may inflict hardship on those who, less well organized than you are in your mine, need their coal this winter? Do you pray to our Father, as of a family, or to my Father, as if you were His only child? To every Act there is the Royal Assent, but no Bill becomes an Act unless it be with the consent of Lords and Commons. The preliminaries must be observed. The two must agree. And with prayer also, the assent of the Almighty is the final act which crowns obedience to His will.
The disciples themselves had to learn this. James and John, relying not on His Name, but on a mother's pride, asked to sit, the one on His right and the other on His left hand, in His Kingdom. They only saw the glory of temporal power, and did not perceive its responsibilities, its perils, its suffering and weariness. After He had risen from the dead, His disciples begged Him to disclose the date on which that Kingdom would be set up. They discovered that in the Court of the King of kings there are no back stairs whereby men may clamber into preferment, and that the majesty of the Almighty reserves to itself the State secrets of Omniscience. Ours it is to return to Galilee--to do our duty and, if need be, to suffer, knowing not the times and seasons, and reckoning not the reward. Believing as I do in prophecy and its fulfillment, I cannot but think that if we had all remembered what He said about not knowing particular dates of His coming, we should have been preserved from speculations which have gravely discredited the authority of Scripture among the careless and often caused trouble among the saints.
The Snare of Personal Success
On these terms, the only results of His mission were apparent failure and a cruel death. Yet His disciples constantly discussed and even quarreled over the question who among them should be the greatest. Even in His presence there arose those ambitions in pursuit of which monarchs have desolated continents, men science have sacrificed ease and comfort, athletes and explorers have hardened every fiber of their being, captains of commerce have tightened their purse-strings, and politicians, not less arduously, have courted the multitude. There, as they walked with Him, those men--imagining that they had left all to follow Him--displayed that passion for personal success which to-day too often animates the Pulpit, the Press, the Legislature, Society, and War itself. We advertise one another, covet titles and decorations, and are puffed up and flattered by the camera. It is this rivalry between man and man, as transferred to nation and nation, that deluges civilization in blood. Our Lord foresaw it. He knew that peoples would rise against peoples. He noticed how the princes of the Gentiles exercise authority. What we call Prussianism was no surprise to Him. And He condemned it. "It shall not be so," said He, "among you."
Political and ecclesiastical preferment, on which we count so much, lies wholly outside His scheme of service. Twice at least did He tell His disciples that the first would be last and the last first; nor was it an empty paradox. Slowly but surely the often tragic history of mankind has driven home His lesson, that the satrap, if he is to be tolerated, must become a civil servant, and that a priest is one who renders help. The most powerful statesman in the greatest of Empires is to-day no Cæsar, or Imperator, or Sultan, or Maharajah, displaying the ensigns of force and the regalia of plunder. He is the Prime Minister--the one whose duty and office it is not to be ministered unto but to minister. The men who to-day govern the most dazzling of all Asiatic empires affect no trappings of Oriental magnificence, but are clothed simply as civilians. The wisdom of Christ thus works as an inevitable law among men who may seldom mention His Name. He controls the great, so that the heir to the most stable throne in the world acts by the motto, Ich Dien--"I serve"; while the rest of us, in our narrower lives, are healed of our pompousness, our silly pretensions, our toadying, as it is called, and become in Him of a right royal dignity. In science, in art, in business, in every walk of life, the greatest is he who submits himself--not indeed to his fellow-men, for it was no system of master-ship and slavery that our Lord set up--but to truth, to patient study, to duty, to the will of God, however made known. It is serving without servility; and if we are teachable people, we cannot expect honors greater than our teachers. Whatever was refused to Him should not be sought by us.
For nineteen hundred years we have seen how seldom the great ones accept Him. In one of His parables--of the marriage-feast--our Saviour, knowing all things, pictured what still happens. The man who belongs to a county family thinks first of his land; a second, who is in trade, is absorbed by his farm or merchandise; and a third lives for domestic ease-for his wife, whom he might have taken to the feast, but instead reserves for his own sole enjoyment. Ill indeed has been society's treatment of God's messengers. His Bible and those who preach it--how seldom are they honored; how often are they sneered at with contempt! If the ambassadors of the Almighty are warned against anger, it is only because a greater wrath at these things than theirs fills the loving heart of their Father. He sends forth armies, He destroys those murderers, He burns their cities. Not one of them comes to the feast, for not one of them was worthy. He judged them, not by what they possessed, but by what they appreciated. They kept their lands, their trade, their homes; they lost, because they despised the joy of life.
"Nothing that is not His best"
Although His guests came from the highways and the hedges, being vagrants who have no rest save at His table, and were halt and maimed and blind--that is, people whom life has injured--He offers them the fare made ready for the noblest. Like a great doctor, He gives to the poorest of us nothing that is not His best. He provides us with a wedding garment--His own righteousness, or habit of mind--and only asks that we put it on ; for there is no place at His banqueting house for the man who comes there self-satisfied, as if conferring a favor on the Redeemer. It is an occasion of exquisite courtesy and thoughtfulness towards Him and towards others--the whole Law (or duty), the whole Prophecy (or outlook) being summed up in love for God and love for one's neighbor as oneself. Nor is the wedding garment--the right habit of life--enough. The lamp, or symbol of religion, which we carry in our hands for all the world to see, must be, not empty, but full of oil--the oil of a grateful gladness; so that the lamp is visible by night as well as by day, not only beautiful in design, but shining. The oil is ever available; there is no license needed for its purchase. Indeed, we have but to take it, and if we fail to do this, no after-attempt to buy it, by sacrifice and effort, will avail us. The oil is a gift, or we have it not. And that lamp should be full which is to burn through the long night.
Thus sensitive and thus solemn is the Romance of our Salvation; thus delicately responsive to right and wrong impulse is our happiness in Christ. If you begin, says He, be ready to finish. Count the cost. It is a tower of strength and refuge that, with My help, you are building. It is a country that, by My grace, you are conquering. It is a field that, for My sake, you are plowing. It is a marriage that you are celebrating--and marriage is indissoluble.