Chapter 7: TO WHOM, IF NOT TO CHRIST?
Chapter 7: TO WHOM, IF NOT TO CHRIST?
John vi:22-71
"I watch them drift — the youthful aspirations;
Shores, landmarks, beacons drift alike!
Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven S
till fades to night, still blazes into day.
But Christ! my Christ! Thou wilt not drift away!"
— Kingsley (altd.).
WHEN AT LAST the crowds had dispersed, our Lord crossed the greensward to the edge of the mountains, and began the ascent. His pulse quickened its beat, as ours does when we climb.
The wild creatures darted from His path, not knowing Him. The sun descended to the western wave, and all the land was hushed and still, until the gathering storm reverberated through the funnels of the mountains and hurled itself on the lake. Did not that storm portend an even greater one, which, on the following day, was to break on the little band, who even then were fighting their way through the angry water?
A crisis was upon Him. He was becoming surrounded by a mixed crowd, who only desired to live on His bounty, and thought to exploit Him to gratify their wild passions for independence and revenge. He must clearly undeceive them, else they would wreck His great purpose of redemption, and make Him the tool of a political party. Immediate steps must be taken to arrest this movement. Not a day could be lost.
On the morrow He would make such statements of the spiritual nature of His Kingdom as would effectually quench these incendiary sparks. Therefore, in fellowship with His Father, He gathered strength to disabuse His followers of their earth-bound views. His mission was not to give meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. He knew quite well how much it would cost, but there was no alternative.
The following morning, on the farther side, witnessed a renewal of the excitement of the preceding evening, so our Lord withdrew into the comparative seclusion of the synagogue, and delivered that marvellous discourse of John vi., which, were it not for the further disclosures of Calvary, would be the high water-mark of the New Testament. And it changed the whole tenour of his career.
We are conscious of the added interest which characterizes the report of a speech, when successive parentheses record its reception by the audience. So in the Evangelist's narrative we can detect the effect which our Lord's deeply spiritual words had on the crowded audience. In verse 41 they murmured at Him. In verse 52 they strove among themselves. In verse 60 many, even His disciples, confessed aloud that His sayings were hard and difficult to be borne. In verse 66 many of those who had vowed their allegiance renounced Him, and quietly withdrew. "They walked no more with Him." By ones and twos, and then by groups, the crowd thinned away. First in order, the hot-headed politicians; then those who hoped for another meal; then the good-hearted but narrow-minded people who were shocked at His demand that they should eat His flesh and drink His blood, which, even if it were taken spiritually, arrogated for the speaker the claims of Deity. Finally, the synagogue was entirely emptied, except for the little group of aghast Apostles who had been the sorrowful witnesses of the shattering of the Master's popularity and of the fabric of their private ambitions. It was then that He looked round on them and put the pathetic question, "Will ye also go away?" which drew from Peter the unhesitating reply: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of Eternal Life, and we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God."
I. THE URGENCY OF THE QUESTION. — To whom shall we go? The question presses on us, as on Peter.
He knew something of the ritualism of the Pharisee and the dogmatic negations of the Sadducee, of the wild mythologies of the Greeks, and the crass materialism of the Romans. Perhaps some slight knowledge of the mystic speculations of the Orient had floated in on the shores of the lake with the merchandise of India or China. But what comfort and help did any one of these various systems, traditions, or philosophies, yield to a world or a soul weary to the point of exhaustion and sick with sin? Peter knew that the soul of man must go somewhere. It must needs go outside itself for living water and satisfying bread. There had awoke within his soul cravings for the eternal, the infinite, and the divine. He had known nothing of these in earlier days, which seemed so far away, before the voice of the Baptist had rung out its clarion appeal and startled his slumbering soul. But since he had awoke to the realities of the spiritual world, all former sources of inspiration and instruction had failed to satisfy. He was henceforth conscious of an inward cry like that of the Psalmist:" My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." That cry, as Peter knew by profound inner experience, could be answered only by his Lord.
To whom else could he go?
To whom shall we go at this time of world-weariness? Men have tried every system of human government, every phase of human philosophy, every form of religious cult. Like a restless sleeper, they have tossed restlessly on their beds and beneath their coverlets: but the one is shorter than a man can stretch himself on it, and the other narrower than a man can wrap himself in it. "Many there be which say, who will show us any good? " Suicide is said to be on the increase. Immorality and the laxity of the marriage tie suggest the wane of love, and hope, and faith. The clouds of revolution and searching trial are hurrying up the sky.
Ancient landmarks are being swallowed by the advancing tides of change. This is the predicted hour of trial — "the hour which is to come upon the whole inhabited world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." To whom shall we go?
To whom shall we go when our souls have suddenly awoke to the majesty of the Eternal Presences, which are hidden by the glare of pleasure, but emerge in hours of loneliness, change, sorrow, and loss?
To whom shall we go when in the light of the great white throne we suddenly find that snow-water can never cleanse hearts and consciences, on which sin has laid its defiling hand?
To whom shall we go when one by one the lights which we have trusted die out in the sky, and neither sun nor stars shine for many days, and no small tempest lies upon the distraught soul, which hears the breakers dashing on an unknown shore?
To whom shall we go in the loneliness of age, in the pains of mortal sickness, in the hour of death, in the day of account, amid the splendour of a holiness which angels cannot face, and a purity before which the heavens are not clean?
Peter had every warrant for his inquiry. It expresses the agonized cry of the human, when the divine and eternal have broken in upon its insensate stupor.
II. THE ALTERNATIVES TO CHRIST. — Let us understand clearly what we want. We want Life, Eternal Life, the pulse and throb within our systems of something beyond emotion, affection, intellect, or reason, and which shall be to our spirit what physical life is in our daily experience. "'Tis life, of which our souls are scant."
Jesus awakens mysterious longings in our souls.
We cry and fret, as a child that awakes suddenly in an empty room and weeps. Plato said that these were reminiscences of a former life, when the soul was perfect in a perfect heaven. Wordsworth would say that they are glimpses of that immortal sea which brought us hither. We are indifferent to their origin; we only know that we turn from the vanities of the world's satisfaction, as beasts from tainted wells.
Shall we go to the sceptic? He will deride our demands, as the phantasies of disordered minds. It is as though one were to assure a hungry man that the sense of hunger was an absurd mistake.
Shall we go to the ritualist? He will offer us rites, which, though fragrant with all that satisfies our sense of beauty or gratifies our reverence for the past, are inadequate to quench the soul's passion for the living God and allay the fever of remorse.
Shall we go to the great religions of the East? Has Confucius, or Buddha, or Mohammed, or the ancient Vedas, a medicine for the soul, that has seen in Christ the Holy One of God, and in whom the Spirit of Christ has started infinite desires for assured forgiveness, for acceptance with God, for the white robes of purity, and the talisman of victory over inbred corruption?
Try every door! Each opens on despair; on the sea moaning at the foot of the cliffs. You hear its ceaseless chafing, you can just descry the foam of the remorseless breakers. But it is night.
There is no satisfaction but in Christ. "The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It is hid from the eyes of all living and kept close from the fowls of the air." But Jesus said: "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them into babes. Yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight."
III. THE IMPERISHABLE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. — His teaching — or "words," as Peter put it — are diametrically opposed to the bent of human nature.
They were opposed to the Jewish exclusiveness on the one hand, and the Gentile culture on the other. But He never sought to gain adherents by lowering His claims. He made no concessions to the passions or prejudices of His hearers. Though His human nature craved for sympathy and faith. He stood as a rock in unwavering steadfastness to His great ideals. What has been the result? This, as Napoleon precisely stated it: "Whilst great empires created by human genius have sunk in ruins, millions have died for Christ, and millions would gladly die again." And what are the grounds of His imperishable supremacy?
Though All-Holy, He satisfactorily deals with the grave question of sin. Sin is a terrible reality to the awakened soul. It drives the fakir to horrible self-torture. It has covered the earth in every age with altars and priests. It has extorted from the saintliest books of bitter confession. It has been the energizing cause of religious movements that have moved the world. Men have ridiculed its introspections and expressions as "the mumps and measles of the soul." They have sought to ignore and stifle it. They have suggested palliatives. Jesus alone has put sin away, has satisfied the sense of justice and the plea for mercy, and has supplied from His Blood and Righteousness the one all-satisfying answer to the enquiry, "Can God forgive me righteously."
Though Man in His Incarnation, He communicates and is the Bread of God. Bread furnishes to our digestions the influences which the corn-plant has absorbed from sun and earth, from the kisses of the summer and the dews of the dawn, from the mysterious actinic rays of light and the silent brooding of the night. Similarly, our Lord brings to us the wealth of the Eternal and Infinite God in such a manner that His words of life, and the living presence of the Spirit in our hearts, convey to our receptive natures that Eternal Life which was with the Father before all worlds, and was manifested to Peter and the rest, and through them to the world. We know that bread nourishes us.
It is a daily experience. No amount of argument or chemical demonstration could make us more sure than we are by habitual practice. So with our Lord. We know and are sure, because we have handled, tasted, and felt.
Though there is mystery in His words which repels the superficial, that very mystery is an additional reason for our faith. They go away because they do not understand. But we are attracted because, though we do not understand, we find that there is a fitness in the mystery of our own profound experience being met by an equal mystery in Him. A Christ whom we could absolutely fathom, measure, diagnose, weigh, and analyze, would be no Christ for us. We are sensible of desires for joy unspeakable, peace that passeth understanding, and love that passeth knowledge; and we find Him always before us. Deep calls unto deep.
The deep of our nature finds a response in the deep of His. He satisfies. He does better for us than we can ask or think. For brass He brings gold, and for iron silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron. He is always leading to fresh fountains of water of life.
Eye hath not seen nor heart conceived what He has in store for those that love. Oh, my heart, with thy heights and depths, and insatiable longings, thou hast found more than thy match in Jesus! To whom else canst thou go?
For private prayer, it is an admirable custom to pass in thought through the spiritual counterpart of the Tabernacle or Temple of old. To renew our consecration at the Altar, to wash in the Laver, to light again our love at the burning Lamps, to offer our intercessions at the golden altar of incense — all is good; but we must see to it that we eat of " the bread of God" on the Table of Incarnation before we enter with boldness into the Holiest of All through the Blood of Jesus.