A TRIPLET OF GOSPEL-PARALLELISMS. 229 CHAP. XIV description of the circumstances, which marks the eyewitness. It is winter, and Christ is walking in the covered Porch,' in front of the 'Beautiful Gate,' which formed the principal entrance into the 'Court of the Women.' As He walks up and down, the people are literally barring His Way-'came round about' Him. From the whole circumstances we cannot doubt, that the question which they put: 'How long holdest Thou us in suspense?' had not an element of truthfulness or genuine inquiry. Their desire, that He should tell them 'plainly' if He were the Christ, had no other motive than that of grounding on it an accusation. The more clearly we perceive this, the more wonderful appears the Christ's forbearance, and the wisdom of His answer. Briefly He put aside their hypocrisy. What need was there of fresh speech? He had told them before, and they 'believe3 not.' From words He appealed to the mute but indisputable witness of deeds: the works which He wrought in His Father's Name. Their non-belief in presence of these facts was due to their not being of His Sheep. As He had said unto them before, it was characteristic of His Sheep (as generally of every flock in regard to its own shepherd) to hear-recognise, listen to-His Voice and follow Him. We mark in the words of Christ, a triplet of double parallelisms concerning the Sheep and the Shepherd, in ascending climax, as St. John follows:-5 4 And I give unto them eternal life; A similar fourfold parallelism with descending and ascending climax, but of an antithetic character, has been noticed in Christ's former Discourse in the Temple (St. John x. 13-15) x. 27, 28 BOOK IV Richer or more comforting assurance than that recorded above could not have been given. But something special has here to be marked. The two first parallelisms always link the promise of Christ to the condition of the sheep; not, perhaps, conditionally, for the relation is such as not to admit conditionalness, either in the form of because therefore,' or even of 'if-then,' but as a matter of fact. But in the third parallelism there is no reference to anything on the part of the sheep; it is all promise, and the second clause only explains and intensifies what is expressed in the first. If it indicates attack of the fiercest kind and by the strongest and most cunning of enemies, be they men or devils, it also marks the watchfulness and absolute superiority of Him Who hath them, as it were, in His Hand-perhaps a Hebraism for 'power'—and hence their absolute safety. And, as if to carry twofold assurance of it, He reminds His hearers that His Work being the Father's Commandment,' it is really the Father's Work, given to Christ to do, and no one could snatch them out of the Father's Hand. It is a poor cavil, to try to limit these assurances by seeking to grasp and compress them in the hollow of our human logic. Do they convey what is commonly called the doctrine of perseverance'? Nay! but they teach us, not about our faith but about His faithfulness, and convey to us assurance concerning Him rather than ourselves; and this is the only aspect in which 'the doctrine of perseverance' is either safe, true, or Scriptural. But one logical sequence is unavoidable. Rightly understood, it is not only the last and highest announcement, but it contains and implies everything else. If the Work of Christ is really that of the Father, and His Working also that of the Father, then it follows that He and the Father are One' ('one' is in the neuter). This identity of work (and purpose) implies the identity of Nature (Essence); that of working, the identity of power. And so, evidently, the Jews understood it, when they again took up stones with the intention of stoning Him—no doubt, because He expressed, in yet more plain terms, what they regarded as His blasphemy. Once more the Lord appealed from His Words, which were doubted, to His Works, which were indubitable. And so He does to all time. His Divine Mission is evidence of His Divinity. And if His Divine Mission be doubted, He appeals to the 'many excellent works' (xaλà 1 St. Augustine marks, that the word 'one' tells against Arianism, and the plural are against Sabellianism. And does it not equally tell against all heresy ? CHRIST'S ANSWER TO JEWISH OBJECTIONS. a a 6 231 CHAP. XIV pya) which He hath showed from the Father,' any one of which might, and, in the case of not a few, had, served as evidence of His Mission. And when the Jews ignored, as so many in our days, this line of evidence, and insisted that He had been guilty of blasphemy, since, being a man, He had made Himself God, the Lord replied in a manner that calls for our special attention. From the peculiarly Hebraistic mode of designating a quotation from the Psalms as Ps. lxxxii. 'written in the Law,' we gather that we have here a literal transcript of the very words of our Lord. But what we specially wish, is, emphatically, to disclaim any interpretation of them, which would seem to imply that Christ had wished to evade their inference: that He claimed to be One with the Father-and to convey to them, that nothing more had been meant than what might lawfully be applied to an ordinary man. Such certainly is not the case. He had claimed to be One with the Father in work and working; from which, of course, the necessary inference was, that He was also One with Him in Nature and Power. Let us see whether the claim was strange. In Ps. lxxxii. 6 the titles 'God' (Elohim) and Sons of the Highest’ (Beney Elyon) had been given to Judges as the Representatives and Vicegerents of God, wielding His delegated authority, since to them had come His Word of authorisation. But here was authority not transmitted by 'the word,' but personal and direct consecration, and personal and direct Mission on the part of God. The comparison is not with Prophets, because they only told the word and message from God, but with Judges, who, as such, did the very act of God. If those who, in so acting, received an indirect commission, were 'gods,' the very representatives of God,3 could it be blasphemy when He claimed to be the Son of God, Who had received, not authority through a word transmitted through long centuries, but direct personal command to do the Father's Work; had been directly and personally consecrated to it by the Father, and directly and personally sent by Him, not to say, but to do, the work of the Father? Was it not rather the true and necessary inference from these premisses? 1 In Rabbinic writings the word for Law (Thorah, or Oreya, or Oreyan) is very frequently used to denote not only the Law, but the the whole Bible. Let one example suffice: 'Blessed be the Merciful Who has given the threefold Law (N, Pentateuch, Prophets, and Hagiographa)to a threefold people(priests, Levites, laity) by the hands of a third (Moses, being the third born of his parents) on the third day (after the preparation) 3 We would call attention to the words BOOK IV • St. John I. 37 All would, of course, depend on this, whether Christ really did the works of the Father. That was the test; and, as we instinctively perceive, both rationally and truly. And if He did the works of His Father, then let them believe, if not the words yet the works, and thus would they arrive at the knowledge, ‘and understand '-distinguishing here the act from the state 2—that in Me is the Father, and I in the Father.' In other words, recognising the Work as that of the Father, they would come to understand that the Father worked in Him, and that the root of His Work was in the Father. The stones were not thrown, for the words of Christ rendered impossible the charge of explicit blasphemy which alone would, according to Rabbinic law, have warranted such summary vengeance. But they sought again to seize Him,' so as to drag Him before their tribunal. His time, however, had not yet come, and He went forth out of their hand-how, we know not. Once more the Jordan rolled between Him and His bitter persecutors. Far north, over against Galilee, in the place of John's early labours, probably close to where Jesus Himself had been baptized, was the scene of His last labours. And those, who so well remembered both the Baptist and the testimony which he had there borne to the Christ, recalled it all as they listened to His Words and saw His Works. As they crowded around Him, both the difference and the accord between John and Jesus carried conviction to their minds. The Baptist had done no sign,'3 such as those which Jesus wrought; but all things which John had spoken of Him, they felt it, were true. And, undisturbed by the cavils of Pharisees and Scribes, many of these simple-minded, true-hearted men, far away from Jerusalem, believed on Him. To adapt a saying of Bengel: they were the posthumous children of the Baptist. Thus did he, being dead, yet speak. And so will all that is sown for Christ, though it lie buried and forgotten of men, spring up and ripen, as in one day, to the deep, grateful, and eternal joy of them who had laboured in faith and gone to rest in hope. Thus, according to the better reading. 2 So Meyer. The circumstance, that, according to the Gospels, no miracle was wrought by John, is not only evidential of the trustworthiness of their report of our Lord's miracles, but otherwise also deeply significant. It shows that there is no craving for the miraculous, as in the Apocryphal and legendary narratives, and it proves that the Gospel-narratives were not cast in the mould of Jewish contemporary expectancy, which would certainly have assigned another rôle to Elijah as the Forerunner of the Messiah than that of solitary testimony, then of forsakenness, and, lastly, of cruel and unavenged murder at the hands of a Herodian. Truly, the history of Jesus is not that of the Messiah of Judaic conception ! THE SECOND SERIES OF PARABLES. 233 CHAPTER XV. THE SECOND SERIES OF PARABLES-THE TWO PARABLES OF HIM WHO IS ELICITED BY OUR ASKING IN OUR NEED. (St. Luke x. 25–37; xi. 5–13.) THE period between Christ's return from the Feast of the Dedication' and His last entry into Jerusalem, may be arranged into two parts, divided by the brief visit to Bethany for the purpose of raising Lazarus from the dead. Even if it were possible, with any certainty, chronologically to arrange the events of each of these periods, the variety and briefness of what is recorded would prevent our closely following them in this narrative. Accordingly, we prefer grouping them together as the Parables of that period, its Discourses, and its Events. And the record of the raising of Lazarus may serve as a landmark between our summary of the Parables and that of the Discourses and Events which preceded the Lord's final appearance in Jerusalem. CHAP. XV These last words help us to understand the necessary difference between the Parables of this and of the preceding and the following periods. The Parables of this period look back upon the past, and forward into the future. Those spoken by the Lake of Galilee were purely symbolical. They presented unseen heavenly realities under emblems which required to be translated into earthly language. It was quite easy to do so, if you possessed the key to the heavenly mysteries; otherwise, they were dark and mysterious. So to speak, they were easily read from above downwards. Viewed from below upwards, only most dim and strangely intertwining outlines could be perceived. It is quite otherwise with the second series of Parables. They could, as they were intended, be understood by all. They required no translation. They were not symbolical but typical, using the word 'type,' not in the sense of involving a predictive element, As in but as indicating an example, or, perhaps, more correctly, an exem a a Rom. v. 14 |