The Pains And Penalties Of Heavenly Rank
THE PAINS AND PENALTIES
OF HEAVENLY RANK
REVELATION
III. 12
THE heavenly state—the state of completed humanity—is always declared to be one of gradations ; it is a condition which is to have its thrones and principalities and powers.
These upper seats receive here their charter.
It is a charter of pains and privileges; and as any man may one day become the subject of it, I quote it in full:
"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God: and I will write upon him My new name."
The first thing which strikes us here is a
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note of autobiography.
We know from St.
Paul's epistles that St. John himself had been regarded as one of the pillars of the Church; probably the name had been directly applied to him.
Very likely it was a pain to him that he was looked upon as enjoying a sense of pre-eminence.
Doubtless he had long wished men to see that his position was not a monopoly—not a thing which others could not win.
The spirit of inspiration expressed itself through the form of his own human consciousness; it always does.
If St. Paul, instead of St. John, had been the man of Patmos, the vision would have been equally grand, the truth would have been exactly the same, but the expression would have been radically different.
You may play the same tune through a lute and a violin; but, even in the act of playing, no one will mistake the lute for the violin ; the music reveals, not only itself, but its environment.
So is it with the music of the Divine Spirit.
It takes the man as it finds him—breathes through him as it finds him.
It clothes itself in the forms
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which he knows the best.
Even if it tells him the secrets of the future, it does so in the language of the past—his past.
It builds his heaven out of his special earth; it speaks through his yesterday, even though that yesterday be humble—through bad grammar, defective knowledge, perhaps imperfect reasoning itself.
The revelation fo the man is also the revelation of the man.
We do not wonder, then, that St. John's vision of heavenly dignity should have clothed itself in that garb wherein men had seen his own dignity—should have called the occupiers of the upper room, "Pillars of the Church."
But having done so, it proceeds to disabuse them of a wrong impression.
Many had coveted, many had envied, the position of the pillar-apostles.
St. John tells them that from 'their point of view they are in a delusion.
He tells them that to be a pillar of the Church is, from the worldly side, not a privilege.
He declares that it is the bearing of a weight so intense and so awful as to demand a special training, He says
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that no one can be qualified to be a pillar of the General Assembly of the firstborn who has not been tested by the weights of the present world: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God."
The idea is clearly that of danger and responsibility.
It is the peril of supporting a building upon beams which themselves need to be supported.
It is not a question of getting to heaven.
St.
John would have admitted thousands into heaven whom he would not have allowed to be pillars.
The pillars are the weight-bearers.
They are those who, because they are the strongest, require to go below and support the building.
It is essential that they should be the strongest ; it is essential that their strength should be tested before they are bidden to bear.
There can be no arbitrary selection, no capricious favouritism.
Those beams alone can support the heavenly building which have served unbroken in the temple of earth.
This principle of selection is a very striking one, and none the less so because we see it
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constantly around us.
What do we mean by the desire, so often expressed in the hour of sorrow, to lean upon some one who has overcome?
We mean that the pillar of our temple must be tested, not by heavenly height, but by earthly weightedness.
Why is it that, in a season of bereavement, we would rather seek comfort from the old than from the young?
The common answer will be, " Because the old are nearer to the other world than the young."
In truth it is exactly the reverse.
It is the young who are nearer the other world—or at least, farther away from this.
We go to the old, not because they know more of heaven, but because they know more of earth.
Youth is always looking toward the stars.
It sees not the common plain, it observes not the garish day ; it is what Matthew Arnold would call
"otherworldly."
But age has learned life's reality.
It has tasted of the earthly springs— their sweetness and their bitterness; it has known the best and the worst of it.
Therefore in the hour of trouble we go to lean there.
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We select, not from the hills, but from the valleys.
We choose the men and women who are farthest advanced on the earthly road— not because they are so near the goal, but because they have seen so. much of the journey.
We pass the youthful by, not because we suppose them to be wedded to the fashions of the earth, but for precisely the opposite reason
—because they have fixed their eyes upon a State too perfect to be realised below.
St. John transfers this thought to the upper sanctuary.
He says that the principle of selection for the pillars of that house shall be the survival of the previously strong.
There shall be no choice made on the ground of an arbitrary Divine Will.
The idea uppermost is not privilege, but pain.
The election to be a pillar of the house not made with hands is determined by preparation in the lower sphere.
Is there here another note of autobiography?
Is the vision appealing to St. John's memory of a scene on the shores of Galilee—a scene in which he mistook the nature of heavenly rank?
Does he remember the day when he
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AND
PENALTIES
asked to sit at the right hand in God's kingdom—forgetting, what even the psalmist saw, that God's right hand "instructs in terrible things"?
»!Does-; he -remember.
'that' the psalmist's statement was the very answer he received: "You know not what you ask; can you drink of My cup?"
Does he remember, above all, how the idea of arbitrary election is disclaimed:
"To sit at My right hand is not Mine to give, except to those for whom it is prepared of My Father"?
What, then, are these "terrible things" at God's right hand?
Why is it that to be a pillar in His temple involves a pain?
In answer, let us put to ourselves a supposition.
Let us imagine that in the midst of a Sabbath service in one of our large cathedrals a single pillar were suddenly to awake into consciousness: what would its first impressions be?
I think it would have two—a great sense of weight, and a still greater sense of responsibility.
It would feel the actual pressure to be very heavy ; but this, after all, would be the smaller part.
The responsibility would be felt to exceed the
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RANK
actual weight.
The weight is shared by other pillars; strictly speaking, the responsibility is not.
How could this single pillar tell where exactly the effect of its fall would terminate?
Where could it fix the limit of its own catastrophe?
How could it know precisely to what extent its own work was necessary to the work of another?
By what means could it escape the fear that its own individual fall might drag the others down?
Could this imaginary consciousness forget that, in the conception of the great apostle, the complete collapsé of the largest cathedral on record came from the fall of a single pillar: "in Adam all died"?
I have dwelt upon this penalty of rank in the heavenly state because I think it a matter of great importance.
I believe that the destruction of responsibility would be the destruction of morality ; and an immortal life without morality is inferior to annihilation.
By "responsibility" I mean exactly what St.
John means by the pillar, what St.
Paul means by the membership in Christ's body.
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PENALTIES
It is the point which differentiates the heaven of the Bible from all previous heavens—particularly from the Greek.
" Differentiate," indeed, is too weak a word.
It would hardly be too much to say that the Christian heaven would be the Greek hell, and the Greek hell the Christian heaven.
The Olympus of the Greek is free from care: that of St. John is an increase of care.
The Olympus of the Greek is a life of individual licence: that of St. John is an augmentation of the claims of service.
The Olympus of the Greek is a shadowless sky, prepared for the indulgence of all sensuous delights: that of St. John is a full awakening to the perception that no man liveth unto himself alone.
The Greek's idea of heaven is to de happy: that of St. John is to make happy.
Passing now from the penalties involved in the state of heavenly rank, I come to consider its privileges.
St. John says that there are two respects in which the position of a pillar is desirable.
The first is that. the man who gets it is thenceforth attached to
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the building from the inside:
"he shall go no more out."
I understand St.
John to mean, not that he will never lapse—which nobody ever suspected him of—but that he will never again have any temptation to serve for external motives.
What is attachment from the inside?
We express it by one little word—love.
There may, at the beginning, be an attachment from the outside.
Wealth may attract one man into the companionship of another.
But if, as a result of the companionship, there should spring up an inner joy of sympathy, the attraction of wealth will cease to be a motive; the man will no more go out.
The joy of sympathy—the attachment from the inside—will not only surpass the old outward attraction of the money, but will render it non-existent.
It is not simply that, when the inward sympathy appears, there is added a new motive for friendship ; the new motive effectually and for ever destroys the old.
We see this tested frequently in actual life.
A marriage is celebrated on principles of convenience and on _ principles
THE
PAINS AND PENALTIES
of esthetics—worldly position on the one hand, and physical beauty on the other.
Years pass away, and when next the curtain rises there has come a change in the outer environment; the worldly position has vanished, the physical beauty has faded.
Yet, strange to say, the bond is much closer than it was at the first.
The reason is that it is no longer the same bond.
During these years of interval there has sprung up a reciprocity of feeling between the pair.
The moment this reciprocity of feeling came, the man and the woman lived inside the house ; they were independent of the outer motive.
The shock to the external fabric did not really come with the loss of the wealth and the loss of the beauty ; it came long before.
It began with the birth of love.
"When that which is perfect has come, that which is in part is done away."
The old ties were not loosed by the accident which befell them; they were loosed by the forming of a new tie.
The house of the outer tabernacle was dissolved when the building of God appeared.
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Now, I am quite convinced that this is what St. John meant by the phrase "he shall go no more out."
He meant to say, "He will be no more influenced by outward rewards ; he will cease to be guided by utilitarian motives ; he will work no longer for hire."
That this is St. John's meaning is clear to me from a parallel passage of his own Gospel :
"The servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the son abideth ever."
The difference between being inside and outside the house is with St. John the difference, not between a good man and a bad, but between a servant and a son.
The servant does outdoor work.
He has no connection with the innermost shrine where the family gather.
If he enters that shrine, it is not to abide there, but to carry a message, or take an order, or sweep a room; he does not come to stay.
He is paid for his connection with the inner shrine —paid in material coin—and he has more pleasure in going out than in coming in.
But if this servant were adopted into the family, you would see a great change.
You
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would cease to find him loitering about the outer courts, skulking in the pantry, chaffing in the yard.
You would cease to see him taking a material reward for mending a carriage wheel.
If you offered it, he would be insulted.
It would be like suggesting that the carriage was not his own property.
He would desire to feel that the carriage zs his own property, that in mending it he is helping himself.
This will be his reward for the time to come—the actual beautifying of that which belongs to him.
He will not take payment for it; he will pay to have it done.
To him, as to the child in the Sabbath school, the task of yesterday has become the prize of to-day.
This, then, is the first privilege of the man who has become a pillar in the temple of God; his service is remunerated from the inside.
I come now to the second of the great privileges involved in such a rank.
St.
John says that the pillar gets an expanding power of service.
There are written on him three successive inscriptions ; in other words, he passes one by one through the three great
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circles—the temple, the city, humanity:
"I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God; and I will write upon him My new name."
He begins by being a religious man so called—a devotee:
"I will write upon him the name of J/y God.'
By-and-by he makes a discovery.
He finds that there is a larger church than the temple—the city.
He finds that to be a citizen is a more sacred thing than to be a devotee.
But where shall he behold this city?
On the earth?
No; in the air.
What is that New Jerusalem which he sees coming down from heaven?
It is any city you like, pictured, not as it is, but as it ought to be.
Jerusalem in the air is Jerusalem idealised—seen as God meant it to be.
If St. John had been an Englishman, he would have said that his city was London coming down from heaven—London in the air, London as it appeared to the hope of God in the days of the Roman camp when
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its future was all before it, London without its masses of misery and its scenes of corruption.
The pillar of God's Church must come to realise that he is a pillar of God's State too.
Nor must he think that in proceeding from the one to the other he is going out— becoming secular.
If he thinks so, he is losing the lesson of his own development.
The city is not outside the temple; it is a wing of the place of worship.
In our Father's house are many mansions ; the temple is one, the city is another.
In both I have my table of communion; in each I have my altar of sacrifice.
The one, as much as the other, has its ideal in heaven—is seen coming down from God.
I have gone deeper in, instead of farther out, when God writes on me this second name.
Has the pillar now reached the goal?
No; one stage remains; a third inscription has still to be graven on him.
There is a wider church than either the temple or the city; it is the spirit of humanity: "I will write upon him My new name."
What is that?
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St. John himself tells us elsewhere; it is the gift of the Spirit, "another Comforter whom the Father will send in My name."
It is the Spirit of Pentecost, the Spirit that speaks foreign languages, the Spirit that goes down to those who as yet do not understand.
Let us enter within this third compartment of the great cathedral.
As I have said, it is wider than either of the others.
It is the church of the churchless, the church of the unchurched.
It comprehends those who have been put out and those who have never got in.
It might almost be called the subterranean crypt of the building; to reach it we must go down.
There is a vast mass of human souls beyond the pale of the temple, beyond the walls of the city.
The temple has refused to let them in; the city has numbered them not in the census of its population.
They are the lepers of society, the pariahs of the body-politic.
They are those whom the land of Egypt casts into the Nile River, as things arresting to her development, those whom evolution has sent to the wall as
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things unworthy to survive.
The Roman never included this compartment in his cathedral.
He had no place for those who were incapable of being blended either with the city or with the temple.
He had no place for the inarticulate; that a Divine Spirit should teach them was to him a new thing.
The temple of Janus and the gates of the Seven Hills alike were closed against the broken limbs of the social fabric.
But this ignored department has been made the widest space in the cathedral of God; the stone which the original builders rejected has become the head of the corner.
The final inscription of the pillar is also the finest.
It is something to support the temple; it is more to support the city; but to bear up the highways and the hedges—it is a glorious thing.
No wonder it is called Christ's new name.
It is the latest development of Christian charity.
It is the opposite of what Milton called the light ; it is the "offspring of heaven lastborn."
Only now in these later days is its presence becoming clearly visible.
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saw long through a glass darkly; knowledge, prophecies, tongues, had the empire over love.
But now love begins to sit down at the right hand of the Father, and man goes forth to seek his dead brother.
Nor does it seem to him that, in leaving the temple and the city behind, he is going out from the presence of the sanctuary; for the essence of all religion is the golden wish called prayer, and the fruit of the golden wish is the service of man.
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REVELATION
III. 21
"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne."
These words bear the stamp of their environment.
They were written at a time when the ideal ofall men was the possession of a throne.
Alike to the Roman and to the Jew the dream of life was the dream of dominion.
The son of Israel contemplated his Messiah who should make him ruler over all nations.
The son of Rome was eager to complete his almost finished work of universal empire.
So far the promise was in harmony with the place and with the hour.
But from another point of view it was in striking contrast to both.
Who were the men that claimed to be the
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recipients of this promise?
A band of obscure slaves.
To the proud Roman leading his armies to victory, to the proud Jew counting his ancestors by hundreds, there must have been something almost grotesque in the claim.
Here was a company of men not yet dignified with the name of humanity—the butt of the satirist, the jest of the poet, the neglect of the historian—spending their days in menial toil, passing their nights in outhouses or top-garrets, leaving their bodies to a pauper's grave.
And yet, in the face of the civilised world, these men make the claim to an empire compared to which the dreams of Cesar grow pale.
They aspire to a sceptre higher than the Latin race had ever aimed at—above zdile, praetor, consul, senate, emperor—above every name that is named to constitute authority.
To sit on the judgment-throne of God, the throne before which all hearts are open, to have the last word in the criticism of human actions, to give a verdict on the deeds of man, from which in all the universe there can be no appeal—that is the aspiration
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of these Christian slaves.
Must it not, to the age in which they lived, have appeared the presumption of insanity?
Nor is it only to a Roman age that the claim of this passage seems to suggest the idea of presumption.
Must it not appear so at all times, to every man?
The throne, as I have said, is a throne of judgment.
How can any human soul aspire to such a seat?
Is not the state of the Christian one of humility?
Does not the amount of the humility increase in proportion as the Christianity grows?
Have not the most purely spiritual souls been precisely those most conscious of their sin?
Is it not least of all any of these that we can think of as claiming such a distinction?
It is in the incipient stages of the Christian life that we find ambition.
Peter begins by asking a perpetual seat on the Mount; but he ends with the aspiration to be "clothed with humility."
John begins with the desire for a position on the right hand of power; but he ends with the humble hope, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful
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gl and just to forgive us our sins."
These are the normal utterances of the Christian heart, the very utterance of the heart of that man who wrote the passage before us.
Does it not seem as if he had here been untrue to himself, and had reverted to that old presumptuous standpoint from which in youth he had been dislodged by the influence of the Master's love?
But let us look deeper.
I think we shall find that we have altogether mistaken the meaning of the passage, and that the John of the Apocalypse is nowhere more like the John of the Gospel than in his present claim to Christian empire.
So far from being influenced by the old feeling of presumption, he is actuated by the direct desire to avoid that feeling.
His position is that, instead of being presumption to claim a seat on God's judgment throne, it is presumption that prevents the Church of Laodicea from having a right to claim it.
I1f that Church would adopt more humility, it would be more entitled to a place on the throne.
That this is the idea of the
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Addressing the Laodicean Church in verse 17, the seer of Patmos says, "Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked."
What is the state of mind here indicated?
It is poverty unconscious of itself.
It is the description of a Church which has no elements of strength within it, but which believes itself to be strong just because it has never been tried.
Accordingly in verse 18 he says, "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich."
The Church had an enemy to overcome within her own bosom.
That enemy was presumption— the ignorance of her own weakness.
How was the enemy to be overcome?
By that which revealed the weakness.
Nothing could reveal the weakness but exposure to the fire.
The glitter of the alloy would melt before the scorching flame of adversity, and then the Church, emerging out of the flame, would be
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fitted to be what it had now no right to be— the judge of human actions.
Let us try to make this last point clear.
And first, let us consider that, as a matter of fact, every man has seated himself on a throne of judgment.
The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not the occupation of a throne It is that the occupation of the one is legal, and the occupation of the other usurped.
Every man by nature has constituted himself the judge of other men.
He has seated himself on a tribunal before which he calls his brethren to appear.
As the stream of his contemporaries passes by, the books of the judgment are opened and the sentence of each is written.
Some are dismissed with contempt, some with indignation, some with anger, some with indifference, some with repulsion, and some with that patronising commendation which is equivalent to censure.
Before the natural man are gathered the representatives of all nations ; he has proclaimed himself the judge of quick and dead.
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PROMISE But to all such the seer of Patmos exclaims, "Come down from that throne; you have no right to be there; you have not overcome."
He tells them that until they have felt the temptations of their own nature they are in no 'condition to judge others.
Not only have they no right to sentence their equals; they are not qualified even to judge those whom they call the lapsed masses.
" What," says one, "do I ever steal?
Do I ever, like these violent people, put out my hand to take that which is not mine?"
John answers that there are forms of stealing which take nothing, which can rob a man of his reputation by simply keeping silent when a word would save.
" But,' says another, "have I ever done such an uncultured thing as raise the hand to strike?"
John answers, "Did you never strike wth culture, dy reason of your culture, through the very refinement which marks you out from the lapsed masses ?
Are there not wounds which are inseparable from the gloved hand?"
All this seems to be implied in the exhortation, " Anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see"—
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cure the soreness of your own eyes before you criticise the soreness of others.
And when he says, "I would thou wert cold or hot," he seems to take ground more general still.
He implies that there is an absence of temptation which comes from sheer lukewarmness.
There are those who are never led up into the wilderness, for the simple reason that they are never led up into the Mount.
They have a native sluggishness of heart which makes enthusiasm in any cause impossible.
They make no allowance for errors arising out of worldly allurement.
They themselves are incapable of being allured, either by the day or by the night.
They have all the negative qualities ascribed to the Church of Laodicea—qualities which free from great deeds of wrong as much as great deeds of right.
The throne of judgment on which they sit is therefore a usurped throne.
They have no claim to it.
They do not possess the two sides of the question.
They have set themselves to legislate in a cause in which they have only heard the pleadings of one advocate.
They are
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They have not yet "overcome."
Now, the next question is, What would be the effect of what is here called overcoming
—of vanquishing the temptation?
It would clearly be to transforra a throne of judgment into a throne of grace.
For, be it observed, the value of overcoming is not the victory, but the struggle.
There are two ways in which a man may reach freedom from temptation— by innocence, or by virtue; by never having known, or by having known and. vanquished,
If mere freedom from temptation were the goal, we ought to be content with the first.
What makes the overcoming better than the innocence is the fact that in struggle we learn our weakness, and that in learning our weakness the throne of judgment becomes a throne of mercy.
The prophet of Israel is not afraid to apply the principle even to the sinless "servant of God."
"He shall see of the travail of his soul; by the knowledge of it
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shall My righteous servant justify many."
The idea is that the knowledge of his own travail shall make him tender to others.
In what sense such words can be understood of Him I shall presently consider.
Meantime I note the fact that Paul has not scrupled, in Galatians vi. 6, to name this principle distinctively "the law of Christ."
He calls on the spiritual to restore the fallen—not on the ground of their spirituality, but by that memory of human weakness which their own struggle has left behind.
He tells them to bear one anothers burdens, on the ground that each has had a burden of his own to bear—a burden which either still exists or has left in remembrance the traces of its power.
He promises the throne to the spirit of meekness—to those who have washed their robes in blood, and by the sight of their remaining scars are able to pity the wounds of the actual battlefield.
And now the passage takes a remarkable turn.
To the inspired ear of the seer of Patmos, the Christ who offers the conditions v4
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There is something starthng here.
There seems at first sight to be no analogy between the case of Christ and the case of ordinary men.
Ordinary men are sinners; Christ claims to be without sin.
How can it be said that the Son of Man has been taught to be tender by realising through struggle the difficulty of being pure?
Is there not to the Christian consciousness something revolting in the very statement, and something impossible in the conception?
Undoubtedly there is; but it is neither the statement nor the conception of the passage.
For let us consider the principle which John means to unfold.
It is that no man is entitled to judge another until he has himself been tried in the fire.
But what is the fire?
There lies all the question.
"It is temptation," you say.
Of course it is; but temptation to what?
To sin?
Not necessarily.
There are as many
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forms of temptation as there are circumstances of life.
Sin is only one form of temptation.
I may be tempted without sin.
If I come to two cross roads and have a struggle as to which I shall take, that is temptation.
Whatever exposes human nature to a crisis of perplexity, whatever presents a conflict of motives to the soul of any man, that is his hour of trial.
It may be a solicitation to sin, it may be a solicitation to love, it may be a solicitation to venture; so far as the revelation of human frailty is concerned, the cause is immaterial.
Now, Jesus was tempted; that is one of the cardinal features of the Gospel.
He was tempted in such a way as to make Him feel the inherent weakness of humanity; that is one of the cardinal features of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
But He was tempted also "without sin."
What is the meaning of these words?
They are popularly thought to mean that He did not succumb to the temptation.
I do not think this is their significance.
I take them to express the writer's conviction
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that the temptation of Jesus had in it no solicitation to sin, that it came in the form of a tendency to choose a short road to the path of goodness—the establishment of His kingdom.
It was a wish to realise without death the Messianic expectation of His people.
None the less, it was a temptation which involved for Him the most severe struggle.
Why should death have seemed to Him the longest road?
Clearly because it was something from which He shrank.
On the one hand, He seemed to be impelled towards it by the stream of events, which for Him was the will of the Father; on the other, He was repelled from it by an instinct of His own nature.
If the purpose of death had been quite clear to Him, there would have been no room for temptation ; He could not have hesitated for a moment where he saw without dubiety the Father's will.
But, in the absence of perfect certainty, the repulsive aspect of death was allowed to have its sway, and the spirit of the Son of Man was in a strait betwixt two.
But, it may be asked, why was death so
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Iol repulsive to Jesus?
In this respect He differs from most teachers of the old world.
The philosophies of the past had been distinguished by the little hold which death had over them.
The Brahman longed for it; the Platonist scorned it; the Stoic despised it. Why should the purest of all the religions have been the most fearful?
Why should the faith most full of God have been that which most palpably and most unblushingly shrank from the idea of death?
The answer is plain: just because it was the faith most full of God.
To the Brahman, to the Platonist, in some sense even to the Stoic, the life of physical nature was a barrier to the life of the soul.
To the first it was a delusion ; to the second it was an imprisonment; to the third it was an incentive to feelings which ought to be overcome.
But to the human soul of the Son of Man the life of physical nature was communion with the Divine Life.
What others had called natural was to Him supermatural.
The lily of the field, the bird of the air, the sower going
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forth to sow, the wind blowing where it listed, the mustard-seed expanding into ample branches, the fig-tree putting forth its leaves to tell that summer is nigh, were to Him, each and all, gleamings of the Life Divine— windows that opened in heaven to give a glimpse of God.
Death was a shutting of these windows.
To the mind of Jesus the physical world was a stream of the life of God.
The sting of death lay, not in itself, but in its idea.
Death was to all men a loosing of the thread of nature; to the Son of Man the thread of nature was one of those golden cords which bound the human spirit into communion with the Father.
This was His temptation—not a temptation to sin, but a temptation to live.
He had a love of life which grew, not out of His earthliness, but out of His very spirituality ; had He been less full of God, He would have been less averse to die.
I am speaking, of course, of what is called the human soul of Jesus—of that in Him which, the Evangelist says, "grew in wisdom
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and knowledge."
It is only in this sphere that temptation is ever possible.
Temptation always demands limitation, though it need not be a moral limit.
We have the testimony of Jesus Himself for the statement that there was a sphere in His earthly nature and a time in His human life from which the knowledge of the future was veiled.
Such veiling was essential to His sacrifice—is essential to any sacrifice.
The clear foresight of a successful result would in all cases mar the sacrificial element.
The sacrifice of Christ is mainly based on His death.
It can only be so on the ground that death was to His human nature environed with similar clouds and encompassed with similar difficulties to those which burden the race of man.
I say "similar."
There are clouds over death which are inseparable from sin.
There are those who shrink from death because they think it will bring God nearer.
Such a cloud Jesus could never have known.
But to shrink from death because it seemed to separate from God, to shrink from death because it appeared to
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break the thread of communion—this was a temptation which the purest might know; this was the temptation of the Son of Man.
And it is this temptation which, according to the writer to the Hebrews, gave Jesus the moral claim to the judgment of humanity.
John himself, in his Gospel, does not hesitate to declare that Christ's judicial authority rests, not on that in Him which is Divine, but on that which is human: "He hath given Him authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man."
The idea clearly is that His right to judge others rests morally on the fact of His own struggle—the struggle with the thought of death.
It is a singular circumstance that His invitation to the labouring and heavy-laden is based by Himself upon His consciousness of human weakness :
"T am meek and lowly in heart."
He means that on the human side of His nature He has learned by the things He has suffered-— learned the frailty of the frame of man.
And it is to my mind a circumstance no less remarkable that His assertion of human
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power-is in exact proportion to His contact with human weakness: "All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth; go ye therefore and teach all nations."
When did Christ utter these words?
It was after He had faced the great temptation and vanquished it. Why should all human power be given Him only after the conflict with death?
Because "all power" means "all sympathy."
In His dealings with man He acknowledges no power but the sympathetic.
And what is the root of universal sympathy?
Is it not universal experience?
If I would have sympathy with all nations, I must know experimentally the weakness with which all nations contend.
Jesus emerges from the conflict with death wider in His human capabalities, stronger in His hold on man.
He comes forth enriched by His poverty, enlarged by the struggle of His human nature, Judge of quick and dead, because He has come into contact with the spirits in prison.
He is able to promise rest to the labouring and the heavy-laden because He has known a kindred labour and felt an
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analogous ladenness.
He has made the law of the Christian life the law of His own spirit:
"T also have overcome, and am set down with My Father on His Throne."