CHAPTER XIII. THE LESSONS OF THE RESURRECTION.

When contemplating the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ, we have little attention to spare for the subordinate personages in the scene. The effects of these manifestations, in working changes in the hearts and minds of the witnesses, are put out of sight by the brilliancy and intrinsic grandeur of the manifestations themselves, and by the momentous character of their direct consequences, universally affecting mankind. But the transformation in temper, in views, and in habits of mind which converted the Apostles of the Gospels into the Apostles of the Acts—a transformation to me otherwise inexplicable—was consummated and clenched by the hours of hard trial and bitter anguish of that Sabbath day, when there was nothing to be done but to mourn and to wonder; as well as by the burst of gladness when the Risen Lord appeared to the eleven. Throughout all the Post-Resurrection interval, during which the Apostles felt that He was close by and might at any time appear—indeed that any stranger accosting them might turn out to be He—the changes which had been wrought were taking lasting hold.

The data for the history of that Passover season of A.D. 30 must have been furnished by the Apostles, yet we find in it scarcely any mention of themselves; all personal thought was driven from their minds; the narrators, like ourselves, had eyes for the Saviour alone.

From the hour of cockcrow on the Thursday night to the time when it “began to dawn toward the first day of the week” all that we hear of the Apostles, and that comes out incidentally, is that John stood at the foot of the Cross. There is not a word to explain their flight at Gethsemane, they do not tell us, that they stood in the crowd or followed to Golgotha; neither have we, what for my purpose would be invaluable, any word of how they passed that Sabbath day of enforced inaction, which—in accordance with our Lord’s way of letting intervals of quiet alternate with times of stress and strain—followed on the violent perturbation and intense dismay of the Crucifixion.

The Apostles could not be perfected for the part that awaited them, unless they encountered some great desolation of soul. Acute suffering, which searches the innermost nature, works after the law which has become so trite to my readers, it gives to those who have. There are some who under its pangs learn that they possess a kind of strength of which they did not know, and find that when some, seemingly more robust, break down in trouble, resource and tenacity are still left in them. This kind of strength the Apostles possessed; they stood the test of being apparently forsaken and were the better for it. Each individual after the trial felt surer that he could rely on himself than he had been before, and each then knew for certain that he could rely on the rest.

They might, as soon as the Sabbath was over, have taken their northward journey, going every man to his own; and, as they did not feel safe where they were—for they had to close their doors for fear of the Jews—and must have been grievously bewildered, this is what some out of the eleven at any rate might have been expected to do. It is the steadfastness of _the whole number_ that is so surprising.

The trial to which the Apostles were subjected, during those six and thirty hours, was excessively severe. They were left as sheep without a shepherd, with no rallying point, no organised rule; and not only were they in the deepest anguish, owing to their personal affection for their Master, but the lodestar of their lives, the hope of the Restoration of the Kingdom to Israel, seemed suddenly and totally withdrawn.

The Jewish notion of a Messiah, who would inaugurate a golden age of national glory and material enjoyment, was so engrained in the Israelite nature that only facts could drive it out. Our Lord never argues against it; if He beheld, in the course of coming events, a fact approaching, which would do more to dispel error than all the arguments in the world, this would explain His silence on these points. The awakening would not be without dangers. It is a perilous moment for a man, when the one dream, the one exalted hope, that has lifted him above selfish considerations is rudely dispelled; and God, whom he had thought to serve, seems to disregard him altogether.

Then self and the world say, “We told you so; now give yourself to us? Our votaries will be found to have taken the right road after all.” Of all the temptations that assailed the Apostles this was perhaps the direst; but their loyalty to their Master, born of nearly two years’ daily fellowship, held fast. Even if He _were_ gone they could be true to His memory still, and that was something left.

One lesson, which the Apostles could hardly help learning, would arise, in this way, out of the discomfiture of their hopes. They might ask themselves, on what this confident expectation of theirs, of a Messianic kingdom, rested by way of grounds. They would have to own that Christ had never spoken of it, but, indeed, had often given hints of what had really come to pass—hints which they had always quickly brushed aside. They had believed in this material Kingdom because everybody around them had done so. They had not formed any notion about it of their own selves; no movement of their own minds had gone towards forming the belief. They had imbibed it and that was all. Hence finding themselves deceived by trusting to a popular belief, there may have arisen in them a healthy mistrust of positiveness about the ways of God. Again, their disappointment might put them in a better direction for finding their way. “Some hope,” they might say, “assuredly Christ did hold out to us,” and the search after this hope might lead them to recollect that latterly they had heard little from Him of the Kingdom, and much of the future Life; He had told them that because He lived they should live also; and the conception of a Kingdom, not of this world, might arise in their minds, and take the place of that of the expected Supremacy of Israel, which was dissolving out of sight.

Another effect of their affliction was that it drew them closer together. When a family, is orphaned by a heavy blow, what they first feel may be helplessness, but soon follows the feeling that they must cling together and be true to one another, and each in his degree supply the help that is lost. Soon the elder brothers, if there is good in them, learn what duty is, and this new responsibility draws capacity out. Now the Apostles stood in the position of elder brethren to all the family of Christ’s disciples.

It is a striking feature of the change worked in the Apostles, that, after the Resurrection, all thoughts of self disappeared. The Apostles, as the History shews us, had been originally no less prone to wrangle as to “which should be greatest” than the average of men. We find in the Gospel the self-regard that we might naturally expect: sometimes it is of a healthy sort, as when Peter says, “We have left all and followed thee;” and sometimes it is unhealthy, like that soreness on points of precedence, which we mark even just before the Last Supper; but in the Acts we find among the Apostles no trace of self-regard at all. The history in our hands will account for this change satisfactorily enough; for these men were called to a Work, so transcending all human interests, so absolute, that it would leave no room for any personal thought in their souls. They were to be fellow-workers with the living God. What could be the worth of the difference between this office or dignity in God’s service and that, compared with being counted worthy to take a conscious part in God’s service at all? Some powerful impression must have been employed to bring about such a moral change as this; and what could better account for such an impression, than to have witnessed Christ upon the Cross? How could they, the servants, cavil about social consideration or dignity, when their Master had spurned all dignity and cast away all that common men hold dear, and that too, when by speaking a word, all that earth could bestow might have been His. Lastly, the sense that Christ was present with them and knew their hearts, was made so real and effectual by the Post-Resurrection intercourse, that it afterwards dominated their lives. This feeling would still the disposition to rivalry, if any such lingered in their hearts; for, being convinced that their Master knew what went on in them, they would know that He grieved over anything that was wrong, as He had done when He was by their side; and they would shrink from causing Him pain.

The story of the Apostles is unique in History in another way. No one of them endeavoured to draw a following about himself, or to claim succession to the Master’s place. Little differences of view and little disagreements as to the course to be followed now and then there were; if, indeed, our records did not speak of such we should suspect that something was kept back. We have cases enough of causes passed on to a company of successors from the dying leaders’ hands, but in no instance, that I recollect, have these successors remained united as the Apostles did (p. 414). Monarchs have sometimes left empires in trust to their generals, whose quarrels have finally torn them to bits. Philosophers have left their systems or their discoveries to their favourite pupils, who, taking hold of them by different ends, have set up new philosophies of their own. Kingly dynasties and political parties have bequeathed causes claiming to be sanctioned by Divine right, or to embody immutable principles, and the inheritors have so fallen out over points of policy, that the broad principle, broken up into branching channels, has lost its momentum and disappeared in the sands.

I pass on to the lessons which our History of the Resurrection conveys. The different narratives relate our Lord’s appearances, with differing circumstances of persons and place. Herein I find that loophole for disbelief which may be discovered in every miraculous manifestation of our Lord. If the fact of our Lord’s Resurrection had been so attested that no sane person could doubt of the fact; if He had appeared in public, and appalled Pilate on his judgment seat or Herod on his throne, then—strange as it may appear—by the very fact of the historical certainty being thus established, the moral significance of the Resurrection would be impaired, for the acceptance of it would be independent of that which I have so often said is essential to religious belief, the concurrence of the free human will.

Although, as to the occasions and circumstances of the appearances, we find in the different accounts rather more than their customary diversity; yet in the _nature_ of the appearances the agreement is so singular, and the conception involved is so unexampled, that it is impossible for different writers to have lighted at the same time on the idea, and I can find no explanation for the phenomena, except by supposing that the picture was taken from life. The appearances themselves, as we should expect from their nature, leave on the mental retina an impression indelible and distinct; but the traditions about _when_ and _how_ they occurred, undergo variation as they pass from mouth to mouth.

The character of our Lord’s appearances, in all the Gospels, is alike. Most commonly He is not recognised at first, and does not appear in His own form, when other than disciples are by; only to those, who had already mastered the words of eternal life, was it given to see Him Risen from the dead. He comes men know not how, when they are sitting with fastened doors He appears in the midst; He goes they know not where, and the disciples who beforetime were so full of curiosity, do not venture to ask whither He goes or where He abides. But, what bears most of all on my subject, is the mode in which our Lord assuages that dread of a disembodied spirit, which would have paralysed the Apostles’ minds. This terror, reasonable or not, certainly existed, and Christ always deals with the fact He finds.

There were lessons still to be taught and for the right learning of them it was needful that the old confidence between Master and learners should still subsist. Could the disciples have listened to the Lord, as their old Master, receiving his direction to go back to Jerusalem and tarry there till they were “endued with power;”—could they have rested gladly on the assurance that He would appear and help them in any need that came, if they had regarded Him as a spectre belonging to another world?

In order to calm their instinctive terror of a spirit, and be again in some degree what He had been on the Lake shore of Galilee, it was necessary for our Lord to assure the Apostles that He had a body even as they. The deep doctrinal significance of this lies beyond the limited purpose of my book, but the point which is within my range—the effect on the Apostles themselves of the conviction of our Lord’s existence in the body—is important and full of instruction. It was essential that confidence should be restored, and the course actually adopted did restore it in a wonderful way. Men thought that a spirit might be seen and heard but only a body could be _felt_. Our Lord therefore at once appeals to touch—He eats and drinks before them. He tells them that He has flesh and bones. He suffers them to “handle Him and see.” To this corporal presence as a crowning fact St John recurs, saying “That which we beheld and our hands handled;”(331) and St Peter says

“Him God raised up the third day, and gave him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, _even_ to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.”(332)

Our Lord would not Himself establish a visible Church. I have amply set out, p. 236, the difficulties that would have ensued if He had so done; but it was essential that the Apostles should receive some indication—though only so much as was essential to the lines upon which they were to build; and this being a matter of human cognisance was to be given by Christ in His human guise. A phantom, or a voice from Heaven, would have seemed an agency of a different order from the intervention of the Son of Man.

Here I will stop for a moment, to consider these narratives of the Resurrection under a purely literary point of view. These accounts present us with the same general aspect of the risen Lord, and they remain true to the primary conception in unnoticeable points of detail such as no one would have introduced out of purposed imitation. Inasmuch as we cannot suppose that the same wondrous creation of fancy presented itself to different writers at the same time, we are driven to suppose, either that the accounts relate actual facts, as Christians generally believe; or else that they were imagined by one person who disseminated the story. But who this writer can have been is not only a mystery but a mystery embodying almost a miracle, for here we have a genius compared with whom—in point of dealing naturally with the supernatural—Shakespeare is thrown into the shade; and further this genius, we must suppose, never invented or wrote anything else in that particular line in which he so wondrously surpassed the rest of mankind. The Orientals delighted in tales. Did they suffer the greatest imaginative genius of the world to live and die unknown?

There was nothing in Literature to furnish a hint for the portraiture of the risen Lord; the idea of the Resurrection body must have been due to one man’s imagination and have been presented with extraordinary literary skill at a time when imaginative narration was wholly unknown. The writers of the age in which the Gospels appeared could set down events and record colloquies, and depict living personalities with truth and force; but they were no more capable of conceiving a character, of making him act, and putting into his mouth words which should seem to be his own; or of imagining a new supernatural phenomenon, and keeping their account always true to itself; than they were of conceiving the vibrations of an elastic medium. That this phenomenon also, exactly met the requirements of a most singular condition of things adds greatly to the wonder, but in another way.

If the Christian records had been thrown aside and forgotten, while the world, passing on its way, reached a mental culture such as we now possess; and then, in some exploration, the Gospels had been brought to light: would they not have been regarded by the critics of that day as wholly anomalous, and as refusing to fit in with any theory of the growth and progress of the literary faculty in mankind? The surprise caused by the discovery would have been like that of excavators at Mycenae, if they had found a watch in the treasury of Agamemnon. This aspect of the matter belongs to the realm of critical literature rather than to mine, and I only note it for a hint. The literary aspect of the History of the Resurrection has yet to be written; it would be curious to see it treated from the point of view of one, who, shut out from a knowledge of the religious history of mankind, lighted on it as a mere literary treasure.

There is one point on which I cannot forbear to touch. Our Lord never mentions His persecutors, He never touches on the past. The apparition of a legend usually either reveals a burning secret, or embodies resentment for the past; frequently it personifies hatred or foretells destruction, and its fateful whispers make the blood of enemies run cold. But in all the utterances of the Risen Lord not a word is said of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, not a syllable is breathed of the treason of Judas, or of the persistent malice of the scribes. There is an ineffable grandeur—so unconscious that we may fail to mark it—in the utter oblivion that is passed on the foes who had beset the path of the Son of Man. He no more resents the ills that men had wrought Him on His way through life, than the traveller, who has reached his home, resents the insect plague of the desert or the tempests he has met with at sea. The past is lost to sight, and our Lord displays but one thought and one interest, and that is for the disciples and their work. He has now done with the rest of the world and He belongs wholly to them. He is lifted above all human contention into that serene atmosphere, which we feel ourselves to be breathing, when, reading the story, we seem to find ourselves in the presence of the Risen Lord.

I will now quote St Paul’s account of the chief occasions when our Lord appeared; but I can only discuss one or two points of the History.

“And that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also.”(333)

I take the view, that within a few days of the Resurrection, the Apostles, by our Lord’s command, returned to Galilee. If the Resurrection had been immediately followed by a time of agitation—one of persecution for instance—so that the Apostles could not have let their minds dwell on what had happened, the lessons of that period would have been soon effaced; but our Lord, as we have seen, is ever careful to provide seasonable opportunity for reflection, and it was not likely that He would suffer it to be wanting now.

The Apostles in Galilee, engaging again in their old callings, would have leisure to review, not only the last few days, but the whole of the two eventful years since they had been called from their work to follow Christ. It was probably here in Galilee that the Apostles received a command to return to Jerusalem; for we cannot account for the presence there of all the eleven, at the time of the Ascension, together with the mother and brethren of our Lord, except by special direction of our Lord. They would not, without some injunction, have remained at Jerusalem after the Resurrection,(334) neither would they have gone up thither for Pentecost, having been so lately at the Passover. Whether the appearance to the “five hundred brethren at once”(335) be, as I think it was, identical with that on the mountain in Galilee recorded in St Matthew’s Gospel, c. xxviii., v. 16, is a matter of discussion.

But where else, except in Galilee could five hundred disciples have been got together? It could not have been at Jerusalem, at the Ascension, because the brethren there only numbered one hundred and twenty souls.(336) St Matthew, it is true, only speaks of the eleven disciples as going “into Galilee unto the mountain,” but others must have been present because we are told that “some doubted,” and the eleven would not have doubted. This admission shews that when the writer drew up his account, he felt no eagerness to strengthen the evidence for the Resurrection; and that He had no fear of its being disbelieved by those for whom he wrote. The eagerness that St Matthew does shew is to find instances of the fulfilment of Scripture, not to support his statements of fact. It seems to me likely, that, in Galilee, among His earliest followers, our Lord should have appeared more publicly than He did elsewhere; here only could He find a _body_ of believers who should serve as witnesses, and, inasmuch as among these five hundred, there must have been men in different states of belief, it falls in with our Lord’s way, so often noted, that He should appear in a form, not indisputably recognisable at once and by all, but with His aspect so changed, by some glorification perhaps, that those who were half-hearted in their belief might remain in doubt or disbelief if they chose; while the faithful and loving would be in no uncertainty about their Master’s lineaments and voice.

The appearance “to James” which is related by St Paul alone, is important, and calls for special notice.

There are three persons called “James” in the sacred books, and there may be a question which of these it is of whom St Paul speaks. I am of opinion that it is James the brother of our Lord. The Corinthians, to whom St Paul is writing, would hardly know of any other; he was the head of the church at Jerusalem and when Paul speaks of “James” simply, as in Galatians ii. 9, 12, he means always the brother of the Lord. “James, the son of Zebedee,” Acts xii. 2, is designated “the brother of John” for distinction’s sake, and of James the son of Alphaeus we never hear. Every disciple however in the Church at Corinth had heard of James, the “pillar” of the Church at Jerusalem.(337)

Nothing is heard of our Lord’s brethren during the week of the Passion; possibly, they were not in Jerusalem, but, from the Acts, as has been just said, we find that they were present there at the time of the Ascension.

“These all with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” Acts i. 14.

This adhesion of the brethren falls in with the supposition that our Lord appeared to His brother James after the Resurrection in Galilee. It was natural that James and the younger brethren should have found difficulty in comprehending that their elder brother, who had played among them as a child was of a nature essentially different from their own; and that this exceptional hindrance to belief should be counterpoised by an exceptional, but not absolutely decisive, revelation is what we might expect. It is not inconsistent with our Lord’s treatment of doubt; for the difficulty arose out of circumstances and not from adverse will. Of James, our Lord may have felt sure; and Joses and Jude and Simon,(338) no one of whom could have been much over thirty years of age, while one or two of them must have been quite young men, may have been brought to full discipleship by what they heard from James.

From what St Paul says, “Am I not an Apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”(339) it seems likely that to have beheld the Risen Lord was held to be a condition of the status of an Apostle. St Paul must have meant “seen the _Risen_ Jesus,” for to have cast eyes on the bodily presence of Jesus, as He journeyed and taught, would have been a distinction shared with thousands.

Without some recognition of James by our Lord, such as is related by St Paul, it is hard to account for his being placed at the head of the Church. We hear of no election or form of appointment, but we find him in this position about ten years after this time. It would have been at variance with our Lord’s repeated injunctions to the Apostles not to seek authority one over the other, if the primacy had been made a matter of contest.(340)

Organisation and graduation of authority grew up in the Church, not after any plan settled and declared, but as the need of it arose. It agreed in this respect with the history of those human institutions that have proved the most enduring. In this, as in all matters, our Lord, wherever it was possible, left His followers free; not but what, when these same followers turned to their Master and prayed for guidance, as in the election of Matthias, they found in their hearts an answer positive and plain.

St Peter, in the earliest days of the Church, stands forth as the foremost personage; but this influence rests on personal qualities and not on any formal appointment. He, as I have said (pp. 248, 344), was the man of action, the person who in every juncture addressed himself at once to the question, “What is to be done?” It was Peter, who took immediate steps to fill up the vacancy which the apostacy of Judas had left. He was the speaker on the day of Pentecost, and he it was who in the case of Ananias sternly repressed falsehood unto God. But the impetuosity of Peter, and his disposition to give himself up completely to the impression of the moment, though it served well to carry forward a great movement at its outset, may have made him ill adapted for the ruler of an infant Church, in which discordant elements had to be welded into one; while the well-poised judgment of James the Just(341) and his practical sense fitted him particularly for this kind of rule. That this admirable selection, this putting of each in his right place, should have come about without dispute; and that those who had “borne the burden and heat of the day” should have admitted to equality—or something more—in outward dignity, one who was “of the eleventh hour,” bears out what I have said of the phenomenal subordination of self displayed by the Apostles. It shews that outward dignity and authority—that which I have taken to be the “false mammon” of the parable—was as nothing in their eyes compared to the true riches, the priceless feeling that their work great or small, as men might count it, was all done for God and all accepted by God.

The Ascension.

What was said of the Resurrection we may say of the Ascension too. The changes it brought about in the position and characters of those few “men of Galilee” who stood “gazing up into heaven,” seem small matters compared with the immensity of its import for the Human Race. But, that our Lord did not leave out of sight the effect on the Apostles of the change in their condition which His departure would cause, is clear from words spoken to the Twelve, which are preserved to us by St John, and on which there is something to say.

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you.”(342)

This saying the Apostles may have found hard to comprehend; for it must have seemed to them impossible that it could ever be for their good for their Master to leave them; and, why the Comforter should not come, while they all continued together, would by no means be clear to their minds. Neither here nor elsewhere does our Lord explain to the Apostles either the reason of His regimen or the way in which it was to work. He tells them simply the fact, without a word as to _how_ or _why_. He never leads them to examine into the _modus operandi_ of His treatment, He would have awakened—what He carefully avoids—self-consciousness, if He had so done. That they could not learn, at the same time, from Him in the body and also from the Comforter in their own souls, arose, not from any “determinate counsel of God,” but because the mind cannot perform two operations at once. It rested on the positive psychological fact that we cannot walk by Sight and by Faith at the same time; that we cannot turn one ear to an earthly monitor, and keep the other open to the whispers of a spiritual guide. The posture of our minds when we are hanging on the lips of a living Master, is different from that in which we set ourselves to listen for the Comforting Voice from within. The Apostles would not have learned to hearken to the promptings of the Spirit so long as they could turn to Christ by their side; and it was therefore “expedient for them” that Christ should go away. They would not otherwise have reached full communion with the Spirit on high.

Instances in the Acts shew us in what way the Spirit acted in the hearts of believers. Sometimes, when human judgment and inclination seemed to agree, an unaccountable inward reluctance to follow their dictates was nevertheless felt—a repugnance, not resting on a new argument, but simply saying “No.” When men experienced such feelings, some might overbear them by will; but Paul and Silas recognised in them the voice of the Spirit. For we hear that they “went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.”(343)

Again Christ’s Church was to be everlasting and universal, and this it could only become by changing outward and visible for inward spiritual rule. So long as the Lord was in bodily presence among them, the disciples naturally looked only to Him. Where He was, there and there only to their minds was His Kingdom and His Church. For His sway to become universal it was essential that He should go away, for it is only Spiritual influence that can be everywhere at once. The fire had to be set alight at a particular spot and at a particular time, but it was then to be left to spread over the earth and to go on burning, seemingly all of itself.

All through the Gospel we mark how men cling to the Letter, and how Christ, with tender hand extricates the Spirit from it and tells His hearers, that it is this which gives the Letter its worth. A law such as that of Moses has its place in the Schooling of a race at a certain epoch of national life; but a code or a creed that cannot be expanded must at last be outgrown. If however a Divine and living Spirit be enshrined in a Church, it may direct its development, and transform the outward tenement as inward need requires.

Christ came to set men spiritually free; but, strange to say, men are slow to take this freedom up. Among some African races, a man set free from a master at once goes and sells himself to another, he cannot be troubled with managing for himself. This is like the way in which men liberated from one absolute and infallible authority have so often handed themselves over to another. They must have something or somebody to take their beliefs and consciences in charge. Fancying that they are to be saved by holding proper opinions—for by belief they often mean no more than taking up and maintaining opinion—they come, asking, “What are we to believe?” just as the Scribe asked, “What am I to do?” Christ’s answer to him practically was, that he possessed already grounds enough to frame for himself a rule of conduct such as he required. Might He not answer the others nearly in the same strain?

Belief, in Christ’s sense of the word, is not the acceptance of a theory, it is something that will actuate the man’s whole being, and which requires the concurrence of an emancipated will. Now this emancipation brings with it a responsibility—a call to mental effort—which a large proportion of mankind steadfastly abhor.

Thus the Israelitish party in St Paul’s time and after, hugged the chains of the Jewish Law; then, after turbulent ages of fierce doctrinal dissension, when combative spirits found in polemics the strife which their temperaments required, the Churches of Greece and of Rome took charge of the consciences of men. A revolt at length took place against the external authority of the Church, but there was no more religious freedom under the new regimes than under the old. Confessions of Faith came into vogue, and men tried to tie down after ages to the ways in which the controversialists of the sixteenth century had, with much giving and taking, agreed to regard the insoluble problems of existence. The Bible was now often held up, not to reveal God’s will and ways, but to yield texts for weapons in disputes. Christ’s care to guard against a bondage unto written matter is apparent in the whole form of His teaching; and especially in His leaving no writings of His own, and no directly accredited record of His life; but the craving of men after an unerring touchstone of truth has wrapped them again in bonds like those from which Christ would have set them free; and the Canonical books have been invested with a character of literal inspiration, not unlike what would have attached to writings of our Lord Himself.

The verses of John, Chap. xvi. 9, 10 which follow that of which I have been speaking, while leading us to the profoundest Theology, bear on the change from a visible teacher to a spiritual one, and so far they come within my scope. I have only to do with them so far as they illustrate this change. The reason given for the intervention of the Spirit is, that Christ, in the body, will no longer bring home to the world the sense of sin and of righteousness and of judgement.

“And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgement, because the prince of this world has been judged.” John xvi. 8-11.

I should place the emphasis on the pronouns—He and I. The Spirit is to take the place of the departed Lord. So long as Christ was in the world He Himself brought home to the men who believed on Him the sense of sin; He presented the ideal of righteousness, and He enforced the conviction that moral evil brought doom and destruction upon men. Henceforth the witness to all this would no longer be Christ in the body, whose contact with the world was necessarily limited to one point, but the Holy Spirit, which could speak to the hearts of all mankind at once. It would lead me too far from my province if I enlarged on the topic of _Judgment_; and I turn to another matter.

It may be asked, Why did this Post-Resurrection state last as long as it did and not longer? God’s _reasons_ we leave aside, but this we can say, Christ never hurries forward processes in the Apostles’ mind, and these processes, in this case, needed all the time allowed; also, since a state of watchfulness involves a nerve-strain, it agrees with Christ’s carefulness for the body that this condition should not last too long. The _durations_ of the different stages of our Lord’s teaching—that while He was in the flesh, and that while He wore the body of the Resurrection—seem to me just as wisely ordered for the end in view, as are the other circumstances of the case.

Christ’s way of teaching is the very opposite of that which would make the learner a mere reflection of his Master. In the Mission to the cities and in the ministrations of their every-day life, Christ had left the Apostles to act very much for themselves, He had kept their self-helpfulness alive in various ways; we find them bold to question, and not slow to murmur, and both questions and murmurs are readily tolerated by our Lord. But, even with all these precautions, if they had remained too long in attendance on Him, we can imagine that they would have got confirmed in the habit of looking constantly to their Master and of, at once, carrying to Him every difficulty without considering it themselves, and they would thus have lost capacity both to think and to act. They might also have fallen into habits of mind which, serviceable so long as they were subordinates, would stand in their way when they had to take the lead. They might have become faithful to execute, but helpless to plan. When subordinates, or young people, are too long deprived of opportunity for judging and acting for themselves, their minds are apt to become passive and purely receptive; they become slow to start a notion or suggest an expedient; ideas of theirs, they fancy, are not wanted, and so they soon cease to have ideas at all.

Our Lord guarded against this by restricting the period of the Apostles’ pupilage. As soon as the ground plan of their characters was marked out, He left them to rear the superstructure for themselves. He was so tender in preserving every line of individuality that He would not shackle freedom of growth in His disciples, even by prolonging His own companionship and instruction beyond the proper time.

But, if the period of our Lord’s stay on earth in the body, served its educational purpose all the better from being no longer than it was; so did that also of the forty days after the Resurrection (supposing that we accept the traditional chronology) for the opposite reason, from its being extended so long. Four days would have served as well as forty for the manifestation of the Risen Lord, for the conclusive witness to His Divine nature, and for ratifying the hope of immortality in the bosoms of mankind; within this time He could have given His final charge to the infant Church, and have set it on its way. A higher work however remained which could not be perfected all at once. The Apostles were now to receive the crowning lesson of the course. They were about to pass out of the training ground into the real arena of danger and of toil. They were to be gradually fitted to exercise authority, and to feel trust in the presence with them of a Spiritual Guide.

It took time for their faculties to grow into shape and adapt themselves to the change. Christ always brings His scholars on by gradual progress; He moulds them as nature moulds organic forms; there are with Him no sharp or sudden turns, no jerks in the movements, but all proceeds along one even curve. If the forty days of this transitional condition had not intervened, but the Apostles had been suddenly transformed from disciples into the rulers of a community; if, more than this, they had found themselves all at once exalted into the accredited ministers of the Almighty in the most express and patent of His dispensations, what human beings could have stood the strain? Gradually, during those forty days, they got used to possessing authority. It was not formally conferred; but the other disciples took it for granted that they were to look to them for direction or advice. In this season also, the Apostles acquired a habit of watchfulness over themselves, knowing that Christ was looking into their hearts, and might at any moment appear by their side.

The framing of a society in which Christ’s word should be the outer Law and Christ’s spiritual presence be the sustaining life, was to be the work of men, because it was to be adapted to human needs. It does not derogate from man’s free agency, that he should own and follow the promptings of God, for to do this is part of his proper nature; these promptings are not an alien influence, but belong to his own self as he was intended to be.

With the descent of the Holy Spirit at the end of the forty days, the outward visible training of the Apostles, which it has been my business to trace, was brought to an end; and the guidance of God’s Spirit, working in men to will and to do of His good pleasure, came in its place.(344)

The fire which Christ had come into man’s world to kindle, was now alight, and the special need for Christ’s presence on earth did not longer exist. What was it, we may ask, that He left behind? The chief visible outcome of His work was the little band of Apostles; but the mightiest of His influences were imponderable and unseen. Our Lord’s sojourn on earth had changed the world in which He had dwelt, so that all subsequent History reads differently from that which goes before. By what means was this change wrought? Christ left no new code of regulations for men to live by. He introduced no changes into Human Society or into any of the forms of Government which He found upon earth. If men might not be left to frame such things for themselves, what had freedom and faculties been given to them for? What Christ did leave, was infinitely more than a reorganisation of Society or a scheme for the reformation of men. On that day of Pentecost a new faculty—that of communing with God’s Spirit—came to the birth. And a new force—that of living religion—sprang into existence as a fresh agent in the affairs of the world—a force which Emperors and sacerdotal castes and schools of philosophers had soon to reckon with.

This fire has now and then burned low, but at such times some “circumstance” has often come about, which, answering to some expression of our Lord—perhaps one which seemed till then obscure—has opened out a vista in the minds of men. People say, “Now we see what that hard saying meant,” or “Christ must have had this in view when He spoke.” Or else—what has sometimes happened—an idea has sprung up in men’s hearts, seemingly everywhere at once, and Christ’s words have caught a fuller meaning, read by the light of this.

So far we have traced the steps by which the Apostles were taught Faith in the unseen. First by confidence in a Master at their side, next by the assurance that, though unseen, He was close by, and could, if needed, appear and help as of old; and now, lastly, when seeing Him no more, there comes in their hearts an assurance that He is with them to the end of the world.

When I say that the Apostles were _taught_ Faith, I use the word _taught_ in a different sense from that which it has when applied to the subjects of knowledge. I mean that through wise moral treatment, a quality existing only as a rudiment was so developed as to fit the disciples for communion with God; and not only did they in this sense learn Faith, but—what also need learning, more than we suppose—Love and Hope as well.

I spoke casually just now of the joy which, as appears by the Book of Acts, illumined the Apostles’ lives. This came greatly of Love; not merely from the affection of the brethren for each other, but from a general Lovingness, a capacity for Love, which, on coming into action, made them look differently on all they saw. This, like their Faith, had grown up from their being in their Master’s company. They felt how He loved them; and if ever one among them was disposed to think lightly or unkindly of a brother disciple, he might recollect how dear that brother—faults and all—was to Christ; and then he could hardly help feeling that if his Master bore with him he might do so too. They marked also Christ’s beneficence, His eagerness to render kindness, His readiness to use His wondrous power for the good of those who had no claim upon Him, His gentleness in rebuke, His never recurring to a bygone fault. And this sense of being beloved, this living in an atmosphere of affection, generated in them the capacity for Loving, just as the Home Love that is round a child, not only awakens in it affection to those who shew affection towards it, but teaches it what Love is; and engenders in it a great outcome of Lovingness which it strews broadcast, and bestows, not on persons only, but on animals, and even on inanimate things.

We have had sight of the Apostles at a time when this Love was only half fledged among them, and did not understand itself. It was yet in this state in St Peter when he asked: How often he must forgive the brother who sinned against him.(345) Love with him was then only unfolding in his mind, it was still a thing of bounds and measures; later on he learnt—and his Master’s sacrifice crowned the lesson—that it is in essence infinite. By the time when the Apostles had to stand alone and labour for their charge, they had learnt what Love was. From that came the unity and harmony of which I have spoken above. A common interest or even common devotion to a cause would not have gone deep enough down to have quenched all rivalries. Even if paramount interests had put self out of sight for a while, it would still have been there, ready to reappear when opportunity came. Impatience would have come out now and then. It is Love only which brings others as close to a man as his own self. This lesson of Love was perfected, for the Apostles, by their witnessing Christ’s death upon the cross—a death not for friends, not for those under His protection, but for men “while they were yet sinners.”(346) They saw, too, that when He rose from the dead in absolute might Divine, He breathed not a word shewing that He remembered His wrongs, but quietly put the past away. All this filled the Apostles’ hearts with Lovingness; they could not have gone on with their work, with so little return to shew, unless they had loved the brethren and the converts. The joy which we note in the Apostles, resting like a halo upon them, comes of their feeling sure that God loves them, and of their loving all God’s creatures in return. It was this Love that fascinated their hearers; when the words of Paul, notwithstanding that his speech—so they said—was contemptible, went to the hearts of Greeks and Barbarians, as we know they did, what he touched them by was this magic of Love.

A word about the nature of that Hope which nestled in the Apostles’ hearts must end my book. If their Master doubted, whether, when He should come at the last, “He should find Faith upon the earth;” what, it may be asked, could this Hope of the Apostles have been? Now, that these words of Christ were not spoken in despondency is clear enough for many reasons, but this one reason, that they caused no despondency to the hearers would, to my mind, be sufficient of itself.

What this saying tells us is, that we are not to look for Christ’s Kingdom in the shape of a perfected community existing at the last upon the earth. Science and observation seem to point in the same way. Men are never so selfish and so regardless of others as when they are pushing for place in a crowd. Now this globe can only yield food for a time, it must be exhausted of its stores, and even, it would seem, of its reproductive powers, at last; and a half-regenerated humanity would be apt to degenerate back again when they were struggling for standing room and for bread.

To take another point; though science has not settled the future of this planet of ours, yet opinion leans greatly towards our system’s having an end. But, if we accept Christ’s teaching, Man need not come to an end together with the fabric of the world. The earth is only the spot upon which he is reared and put to proof. Those who come out of the trial we believe to be removed, perhaps after an interval, to another kind of life elsewhere; so that, though this outer fabric of the world may perish, Man, we may believe, will survive, not in a material but in “a spiritual body”(347) whose nature of course we cannot know. Thus the Human episode in the great Epic of Existence, may, as far as life upon this planet goes, come to an end, but the Humanity for which the Christian labours and for which Christ died, will exist for ever; for the Spirits of just men made perfect will have been garnered from age to age into abodes prepared for them from the first. And though Christ, in His wisdom, be sparing of utterances about that which is winnowed away, yet there are not wanting analogies justifying hope.

The education of human souls to fitness for everlasting spiritual life, is of all God’s purposes the one which we can most continuously discern. No reign of peace and bliss upon this earth could be of indefinite continuance; a perfected Humanity could only endure for a time. Consequently, if we limit our Love to a Humanity visibly existing on the earth, we give up our hearts to something which must necessarily come to an end: if we make a Deity of this we shall serve but a temporary God. But—although the earth should be calcined to powder, or fly off into regions of space where the temperature is fatal to life—still that Humanity which has the Son of Man for its central and presiding figure may abide with Him for ever, in some of the many mansions of His Father’s House.

CHRONOLOGICAL APPENDIX.

It will be of service to readers to have a summary of the actions and movements of our Lord, in the order in which they are treated of in the Text. Few of the dates can be fixed with any certitude and it remains a matter of opinion in what order many of the events occurred. The only dates which can be historically determined are those of the death of Herod, and of the beginning (A.D. 25) and end (A.D. 36) of the Governorship of Pilate; with these latter I am not now concerned. When St Luke names the fifteenth year of Tiberius (A.D. 28, A.U.C. 781 beginning on August 19), it is not quite certain whether he means to fix the time when John began to preach, or when Jesus was baptised, or when John was cast into prison. The grounds for fixing the dates of our Lord’s birth, His appearance in public, and the duration of His Ministry are given in Tischendorf’s “Synopsis Evangelica.” I assume, as sufficiently admitted for my working hypothesis, (1) that our Lord was born early in the year B.C. 4, A.U.C. 750, In which, shortly before the passover, as we learn from Josephus, Herod the Great died; and also (2) that the Baptism of our Lord took place in the very beginning of A.D. 28.

I propose to exhibit the order of events, taken month by month, as I suppose them to have occurred. In the greater number of cases I am supported by the authority of Dr Edersheim in his work on the “Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,” and also frequently by Bishop Ellicott, from the Notes to whose Historical Lectures on the Life of our Lord, delivered 1860, I have obtained much help in forming this Appendix.

A.D. 28. _January._ A.U.C. 781.

I place the Baptism of our Lord near the close of the month. This was immediately followed by His withdrawal into the wilderness.

A.D. 28. _February._

The whole of this month I suppose to have been passed by our Lord in the wilderness.

A.D. 28. _March._

About the 10th or 12th of March our Lord appears “in Bethany (or Bethabarah) beyond Jordan where John was baptizing.” John i. 28.

On the next day, John, Simon and Andrew come to our Lord, and on that which follows our Lord “findeth Philip,” and “Philip findeth Nathanael.” John i. 43, 45.

Indications in the Gospels of the season of the year in which the events happened are so rare that we catch even at slight matters—one such occurs here—Nathanael is seen “sitting under the fig tree,” John i. 48; and as he would hardly have done so if the tree had been bare, it is probable that at this time the fig tree was already in leaf. It might have been so by March 10th; for the climate of the Jordan valley, in the deep cleft of the limestone rocks, far beneath the level of the Mediterranean and three thousand feet lower than the hills of Judæa, was almost tropical; and fig trees, which on the high ground about Jerusalem were not in leaf till April, would be at least a month earlier at this “Peræan Bethany,” as the place is called by Bishop Ellicott

I suppose our Lord to have left “the place where John was baptizing” not later than March 10th and to have been present at the marriage at Cana on or near the 14th. The Passover in this year fell on the 30th of March, and, assuming that our Lord reached Jerusalem on the 28th March, a fortnight has to be accounted for. I have explained, p. 165, what I suppose to have happened in the meanwhile, viz. that our Lord returned with His family to Nazareth, which was 4 miles from Cana, and that, owing to the displeasure shewn by the inhabitants, either at His pretensions or at His having performed His first miracle at another place, He and His mother, His brethren and His disciples removed to Capernaum—“there they abode not many days,” John ii. 12. Our Lord then went to Jerusalem, and His family, though not mentioned, may have gone there also. Whether they ever settled again at Nazareth is uncertain. They were at Capernaum in March, A.D. 29, Mark iii. 21, 32. Observe that the sisters of our Lord are not named: they remained at Nazareth, where they were probably married. We read, “Are not His sisters here with us?” (implying that the brothers were not so), Mark vi. 3.

A.D. 28. _April._

Our Lord during this month was with His disciples at Jerusalem; the events are related in St John, Chap. ii. 13 to Chap. iii. 21.

A.D. 28. _May._

Henceforth the Chronology depends greatly on the time at which we suppose our Lord’s journey through Samaria to have taken place. I place it in May A.D. 28, but many authorities put it in the December of that year. We read,

“After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Ænon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.”—John iii. 22, 23.

This choice of Ænon on account of there being “much water there” points to water having already become somewhat scarce elsewhere. There are in the North-eastern part of Judæa only a few springs which never fail. These are much valued, and one such spring at least was found at Ænon; its site is doubtful (see Bishop Westcott, “St John’s Gospel”). If, as some have supposed, it was late in the Autumn when our Lord made this journey, water would be abundant enough in many places, as the streams become full in November. I speak of this because it bears out my view that our Lord’s journey through Samaria took place in the May and not in the December of A.D. 28.

In the latter half of the former month, I suppose that our Lord left Judæa and passed, with only a few disciples, through Samaria into Galilee (see pp. 171, 174, 176, 179).

The verse—

“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest,” John iv. 35,

is important in determining the dates.

Some regard the above saying as having been spoken soon after seed time; and think that the first sentence refers to the state of the corn at that moment, when it would have been just coming up, it being then four months from harvest: this would agree with the view that the journey was taken at the end of December,(348) and that the “whiteness to harvest” referred metaphorically to the harvest of conversions the Apostles were to reap. Others, among whom is Dr Edersheim, regard the country as being _at the time of speaking_ white (that is _bright_) with harvest, and consider the words to have been spoken in May and to bear a literal sense. This latter view seems to me to agree best with the incidents of the journey, many of which—our Lord’s weariness, His resting at the fountain(349) and His asking for drink—wear, to my mind, an aspect of summer; moreover, the words “Say ye not” apply better to a maxim of husbandry lying in the minds of the people, than to such an indisputable fact as the time of year when they were spoken. It would have seemed more natural to say “Are we not four months now from harvest?” It was a fact which was in every husbandman’s mouth, that the interval between seed time (December), and barley harvest (April) was four months, and our Lord’s meaning is, “The husbandman has to wait four months for his harvest, you begin at once to reap; law-givers and prophets and agencies unseen have sown for you.”

A.D. 28. _June._

Our Lord arrives at Cana in Galilee. A “certain nobleman” comes to Him from Capernaum; our Lord heals his son, John iv. 46. The words “whatsoever we have heard done at Capernaum,” Luke iv. 23, refer I think to this, if so, they help to fix the date of the Preaching at Nazareth related in St Luke’s Gospel, chap. iv. 16-30. For additional reasons for placing the Sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth at this time instead of after John’s imprisonment, see above, pp. 164, 165, 179, and also Dr Edersheim, “Life and Times of Jesus,” vol. 1. p. 430.

It should be noted that we hear nothing of our Lord’s mother and brethren. If they had been in Nazareth, they would probably have interposed as they subsequently did at Capernaum where we find them living, Mark iii. 31.

The few disciples who came with our Lord through Samaria probably went to their homes when He reached Galilee, for St John does not speak of them afterwards.

This account of the Preaching at Nazareth is peculiar to St Luke, I conceive it to have come into his hands as an isolated piece of information, which he fits into the history to the best of his judgment. The events at Capernaum, which in the Gospel of St Luke (iv. 31-44) are related immediately after this sermon, took place after our Lord had come preaching the Kingdom (see Mark i. 21-39). In the Sermon at Nazareth there is no mention of the “Kingdom of God,” nor do the disciples seem to have been in attendance. This favours the view that the public Ministry in Galilee had not yet begun.

A.D. 28. _July, August._

I believe our Lord to have spent this summer preaching in the synagogues, not only of Galilee but also of Judæa. With regard to the verse (Luke iv. 44), “and he was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee,” we have in the margin of the Revised Version “very many ancient authorities read _Judæa_.” We can understand Judæa being altered into Galilee, to suit the mention of Capernaum, but it is not easy to comprehend a change from Galilee into Judæa (see also Acts x. 37). It agrees with my view of our Lord’s course that He should at this time have been exploring the tempers of the people both in Judæa and in Galilee; and I believe the summer of A.D. 28 to have been passed in this work. The Lord may have gone about unattended or nearly so, He had as yet bidden no one to follow except Philip (John i. 43). The 15th year of Tiberius began in this August, but possibly St Luke might speak of the whole year, from Jan. 1st, by this name.

A.D. 28. _September._

The feast of John v. which, both by Bishop Westcott and Dr Edersheim, is spoken of as “the unknown feast,” I believe to have taken place in this month. I am inclined to identify it with the feast of Tabernacles, see p. 181. It was, as I think, in this month that John was imprisoned by Herod Antipas, who may have feared that the great influence of the prophet would be especially dangerous when the country would be thronged with visitors to the great feast. The Feast of Tabernacles in A.U.C. 781 began on Sept. 18, and lasted till Sept. 29. Josephus, “Antiquities of the Jews,” Bk. xviii. Chap. v, Whiston’s translation, gives the following account: “Now, when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise rebellion (for they seemed to do any thing he should advise), thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death.” The Gospel account is not at variance with this, for if John denounced Herod’s intentions with regard to Herodias as a violation of Law, this would be likely to increase the disaffection of the people. When the news reaches our Lord (probably in Judæa) He goes at once into Galilee (Matth. iv. 12, 13; Mark i. 14; Acts x. 37) and His public preaching of the Kingdom of God begins.

A.D. 28. _October_, _November_, _December_.

Early in October our Lord comes to the sea of Galilee and calls Simon and Andrew and James and John. Matth. iv. 18; Mark i. 16-19; Luke v. 4.

Following this, comes His residence at Capernaum, and the events of Mark i. 14-45, and Mark ii.

A.D. 29. _January_, _February_. A.U.C. 782.

The events of Mark iii. may be placed here.

The call of the Twelve (Mark iii. 13, 14; Luke vi. 13) probably took place early in February. Neither St Matthew nor St John gives an express account of the calling, but both refer to it, “And he called unto him his twelve disciples,” Matt. x. 1; and, “Jesus said therefore unto the Twelve,” John vi. 67. I suppose it to have been near the end of the month when the two disciples sent by John the Baptist came to Christ. Matth. xi. 2; Luke vii. 18.

A.D. 29. _March._

In this month I should place the following events in the order given below:

(1) The teaching by parables. Matth. xiii. 3; Mark iv. 1; Luke viii. 4.

(2) The visit to the country of the Gerasenes (or Gadarenes). Matth. viii. 28; Mark v. 1; Luke viii. 26.

(3) The raising of Jairus’ daughter. Matth. ix. 18; Mark v. 21-41; Luke viii. 41.

(4) The second visit to Nazareth. “And he went out from thence; and he cometh into his own country; and his disciples follow him;” Mark vi. 1, also Matth. xiii. 54. This mention of “disciples” is one of many circumstances which distinguish this visit to Nazareth from that of Luke iv. 15.

(5) The sending out of the twelve two by two. Matth. x. 1; Mark vi. 7; Luke ix. 1.

(6) Execution of John the Baptist. Tischendorf is inclined to think that Herod was celebrating not his birthday but his accession, which took place on the death of Herod the Great about ten days before the Passover, which in A.U.C. 750 fell on April 2. This conjecture is doubtful. Matth. xiv. 2; Mark vi. 21; Luke iii. 19.

A.D. 29. _April._

The order of events in this month I take to have been, approximately, as follows:

(1) Herod’s misgiving that John had risen from the dead. Matth. xiv. 2; Mark vi. 16.

(2) Our Lord, on the return of the twelve, crosses the lake. Matth. xiv. 13; Mark vi. 32; Luke ix. 10.

(3) The Passover was now at hand, John vi. 4. Feeding of the five thousand, Matth. xiv. 15; Mark vi. 35; Luke ix. 12; John vi. 5. The walking on the sea, Matth. xiv. 25; Mark vi. 48; John vi. 19.

The day of the passover A.D. 29 was the 18th of April. What is mentioned by St Mark, viz. that the multitude sat down on “the green grass,” agrees with this indication of the season. It was only during a short time in spring, and then only in a few places, that green grass was found in Palestine. This impressed itself on the narrator, and is an indication of eye-witness work; it is what critics call “autoptic.” There is no mention of green grass in the feeding of the 4000 which was in the late summer. This miracle was followed by the return to Capernaum (Discourse on the bread of life, John, chap, vi.) and the controversy with the Pharisees on traditions, Matth. xv. 1, 20; Mark vii. 1-23.

A.D. 29. _May_, _June_, _July_, _August_.

(1) Journey to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, Matth. xv. 21; Mark vii. 24.

(2) Return from thence.

“And again he went out from the borders of Tyre, and came through Sidon unto the sea of Galilee and through the midst of the borders of Decapolis” (on the east of the sea of Galilee), Matth. xv. 29; Mark vii. 31.

(3) There the feeding of the four thousand takes place (see under April). Matth. xv. 32; Mark viii. 1.

(4) Our Lord crosses the lake “into the borders of Magadan,” Matth. xv. 39; or “into the parts of Dalmanutha,” Mark viii. 10, this was on the western coast. He then proceeds to the north of the lake; there He heals the blind man at Bethsaida Julias.

(5) “And Jesus went forth, and his disciples into the villages of Cæsarea Philippi,” Mark xiii. 33. Confession of Peter, Matth. xvi. 13; Mark viii. 29; Luke ix. 20.

(6) The Transfiguration; Matth. xvii. 1; Mark ix. 2; Luke ix. 28.

(7) Return of our Lord with Peter, James and John from the Mount, to the place where He had left the disciples. Mark ix. 9.

A.D. 29. _September._

“They went forth from thence and passed through Galilee; and he would not that any man should know it,” Mark ix. 30, “and they came to Capernaum,” Mark ix. 33.

The miracle of the stater in the fish’s mouth (Matth. xvii. 24) is usually placed at this point of the narrative. We have no other account than that given in St Matthew’s Gospel, where it seems to be related as happening at this time. But the evidence as to chronology is not conclusive. This stater or half-shekel was the payment for the Temple service, and we know that this was levied in March. That the demand should be made in September is explained by saying that our Lord’s absence since April might have prevented the collection of the tax. It is however possible that this event may have taken place in March, A.D. 30, see below.

Our Lord, leaving Capernaum, made the journey through Samaria to Jerusalem, John vii. 3, Luke ix. 51, 56, arriving there about the 18th of September, which in this year was the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles. The sending out of the Seventy took place soon afterwards, Luke x. 1.

A.D. 29. _October._

Our Lord takes up His residence in Judæa, possibly at Bethany, see p. 370. Incident of woman taken in adultery, John viii. 1. Our Lord in the house of Martha, Luke x. 38-40.

_November._

Our Lord probably passed this month in Judæa. Many of the events of Luke, chapters xi., xii., xiii. may have occurred at this time, but we must not conclude for certain from St Luke’s account that the events of these chapters all fell together in one short period. Some of them are related by St Matthew in a different connexion; it seems impossible to place them in order.

A.D. 29. _December._

The Feast of dedication (encaenia), John x. 22, fell in this year on the 20th of December, and lasted eight days. At the end of our Lord’s discourse at this feast, St John says “They sought again to take him: and he went forth out of their hand. And he went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John was at first baptizing, and there he abode.” John x. 39, 40.

A.D. 30. _January._ A.U.C. 783.

Our Lord may have remained at the place just mentioned, “the Peræan Bethany” (see A.D. 28, March), during this month, having probably only a few followers with Him.

“And many came unto him; and they said, John indeed did no sign: but all things whatsoever John spake of this man were true.” John x. 41.

The people contrast Him with John. This agrees with what is said of the place, viz. that John had baptized there; the people recollected him. The teaching of our Lord in Peræa, of which we have an account only in Luke, chaps, xv., xvi., was probably given about this time.

A.D. 30. _February._

Early in this month our Lord leaves Peræa, where He had been travelling about, being warned by the Pharisees—

“And he went on his way through cities and villages, teaching, and journeying on unto Jerusalem.” Luke xiii. 22.

“In that very hour there came certain Pharisees, saying to him, Get thee out, and go hence: for Herod would fain kill thee.” St Luke xiii. 31.

A.D. 30. _March._

While on this progress the news of the sickness of Lazarus reaches our Lord. He seems then to have been little more than a day’s journey from Jerusalem, but outside the limits of Judæa:

“The sisters therefore sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. But when Jesus heard it, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.”(350) John xi. 3, 4.

“When therefore he heard that he was sick, he abode at that time two days in the place where he was. Then after this he saith to the disciples, Let us go into Judæa again.” John xi. 6, 7.

After the raising of Lazarus, the chief priests and Pharisees “from that day forth took counsel that they might put him (Jesus) to death: Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews, but departed thence into the country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim; and there he tarried with the disciples.” John xi. 53, 54.

From Ephraim, the position of which is uncertain, (Dr Edersheim, as I understand him, thinks it may have been near the north end of the sea of Galilee, in Decapolis,) our Lord passes through “the midst of Samaria and Galilee”—St Luke xvii. 11.

This would seem, from the order in which the places are named, to refer to the journey on the way north to Ephraim, but no certain conclusion can be drawn. Towards the end of the month, our Lord joins the company of people on their way from Galilee to Jerusalem, passing by Jericho. The incidents of the journey and the important discourses on the way are related in Mark, chap, x., and in the parallel passages of Matthew and Luke.

The question arises, Where did our Lord join this company? I incline to think that after a short stay at Capernaum, He went with the Galilean company up to the Passover. During the stay at Ephraim, the disciples would have had leisure to turn over in their minds what they had seen and heard; especially the raising of Lazarus, and the words to Martha on eternal life, the plainest our Lord ever spoke; John xi. 25. It is our Lord’s way, as I have often pointed out, to leave intervals for reflection. On the way south (supposing that Ephraim was to the north), with His small company of disciples, He may have made a short stop at Capernaum, where, according to my view (see p. 372), St Peter may have partly resided since the feast of Tabernacles, joining from time to time the disciples in attendance on our Lord. Jesus would, on this supposition, be in St Peter’s house in the month of March when the officers, in due course, called for the Temple contribution, and in this way we avoid the hypothesis of a payment overdue (see under Sept A.D. 29). It may be noted that the officers make no question about _Peter’s_ paying the half-shekel; he was a regular resident and their claim was undoubted, but our Lord had been long absent and was only passing through the place, so that in His case the payment was less obligatory. This is one view of the matter, but I am inclined to think from the form of the collector’s question, “Your Master, does not He pay?” (Matth. xvii. 24) that they half expected an objection on higher grounds. The internal evidence, that is to say the tone of doctrine, which appears in the words, “Then are the children free,” favours the adopting the later period, inasmuch as it reminds us of the later discourses in chaps, xv., xvi., xvii. of John.

A.D. 30. _April._

Our Lord may have made His entry into Jerusalem on Sunday, April 2. He returned that night to Bethany after looking “round about upon all things.” Mark xi. 11.

Monday, April 3. Cursing of fig tree on the way to Jerusalem (see March, A.D. 28), Matth. xxi. 19; Mark xi. 13. Cleansing of Temple, Matth. xxi. 12; Mark xi. 15; Luke xix. 45. Return to Bethany, Mark xi. 19. Either on this day or the next, the Greeks seek Jesus, John xii. 20.

Tuesday, April 4. Tree is found withered. Parables delivered in Temple. Controversies with Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducees. Our Lord takes leave of the Temple; Mark xi. 20 and chaps, xii., xiii. and parallel passages in Matthew and Luke.

Wednesday, April 5. Treason of Judas.

Thursday, April 6. Last Supper. Our Lord’s apprehension.

Friday, April 7. The Crucifixion.

Sunday, April 9. The Resurrection.

I should place the journey of the Apostles to Galilee in the subsequent week. This change would do the Apostles good in many ways. It would relieve the strain on their minds, and was medicine for the shock they had received. For our Lord’s care for the physical and mental health of His followers, see text, p. 302, on the words, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while.”

During this stay in Galilee, there took place the appearance of our Lord on the mountain, which I take to be that named, 1 Cor. xv. 6 (see text, last chapter), and at this time I also place the important interview of our Lord with James, our Lord’s brother, 1 Cor. xv. 17, and probably with the rest of His brethren, see below.

A.D. 30. _May._

The appearance at the sea of Tiberias (but see Mr Sanday on the “Authorship of the Fourth Gospel,” chap. xvii.) may have taken place in this month, as also the return of the Apostles from Galilee to Jerusalem with the women and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and the brethren of our Lord. The latter, possibly, had not been in Jerusalem at the Crucifixion, but had at last learned, perhaps through James, the fulness of their brother’s greatness. The Apostles as well as the relations of our Lord must have been enjoined to return to Jerusalem, or they would not without exception have gone thither. The Feast of Pentecost was not a sufficiently imperative call to account for their presence. This injunction must have been given in Galilee. If we had only St Luke’s account, we should suppose that the Apostles never left Jerusalem; but this would in itself be unlikely and is contradicted by the other Evangelists. The day given for the Ascension by Wieseler, “Chronologie des Apostolischen Zeitalters,” 1848, is May 18.

The Ascension was followed by the choice of Matthias.

The day of Pentecost, as fixed by Wieseler, was May 27, A.D. 30.

INDEX OF TEXTS.

GENESIS.