Another Young Man Who Left All, and Followed Jesus

On the western side of the Lake of Galilee there was a cluster of thriving little villages; and although the inhabitants did not depend entirely on the lake for their subsistence, yet most of them were at least occasionally fishermen. Amongst the rest there was a good man who was better off than some of his fellow-townsmen; for he not only had a craft of his own, but could hire servants to man it; and we afterwards find that members of his family were acquainted with the best society in Jerusalem. In his substantial and comfortable abode this worthy citizen had a pious wife called Salome, and two sons whose names were James and John. It is a short sketch of the younger which we here purpose to give.

We know little of his early days, but they would doubtless resemble the early days of neighbourchildren. He would launch his tiny skiff on the waters of the lake, and would deem it grand promotion when allowed to go out with the men in the pinnace. In all the pride of conscious usefulness, he would bail out the water, and bait the hooks, and the first time that his own line quivered with a scaly captive, he would hurry it up hand over hand, and flush with elation as it jumped and floundered in the hold — the fairest and most precious of fishes. And by and by he felt it romantic to spend the whole night on the water, furling the sail on that eerie eastern shore; and as he lay watching the buoys in the moonlight, he would sometimes hear the howl of the wolf, or the laugh of the hyama up among the tombs, or would see capering along the coast the frantic demoniac. But the Sabbath came, and not a sail was stirring on all those peaceful waters. It was the day which God had made, and it was given to devotion. With his father, and mother, and brother, John went to the synagogue, and listened to some rabbi expounding the Law, and was sometimes promoted to read a long passage himself to the village assembly. And when that service was ended, he came home, and either under the fig-tree or in the alcove on the top of the house, gazing away over the green acres on towards the snowy peaks of Hermon, he allowed his imagination to wander at will. And though we do not know what led to it, we know that the youth began to think about his soul. Perhaps it was the conversation of his pious mother, whose spirit was intent on the consolation of Israel; perhaps it was the striking scenes he witnessed in his first journey to Jerusalem — the scape-goat, the paschal lamb, and the daily sacrifice, and all that great dramatic sermon on the subject of sin and atonement which in the Holy City Jehovah preached to his peculiar people. But, at all events, the youth grew thoughtful. He had committed no gross or open crime, and yet he felt, himself none the less a sinner. And hearing that a great preacher had appeared in the south country, John set out to attend his ministry.

When he came to the spot he found a great concourse. Indeed, with its long-robed lawyers and its steel-clad soldiers; with its silken ladies and its swarthy boors; with its tents, and its hucksters, and its sumpter-asses, the place looked like a great civic encampment, or a town turned out on the meadows. As he crossed the ferry, and pushing up through the oleanders and sedges joined the crowd beside the river, the young pilgrim was arrested by a conspicuous figure, — a meagre weather-beaten man, with head uncovered, and with a mantle of coarse camel’s hair. The throng hung enchained on his thrilling tones, and stood revealed to his bright flashing eye. He was proclaiming the near approach of Messiah, and was putting it to his audience if they were really prepared for the arrival of one so holy and so divine — one who would only gather wheat into His garner, and from the flap of whose winnowing-fan hypocrisy would fly away like chaff from the tempest. And as he marshalled up the ten commands, each bodied forth into a stern accuser, and shook its head so ominously that self-complacency sunk back into itself, and the gayest trifler was fain to cry, ‘” O God, be merciful to me a sinner!” Prodigious is the force of earnest words. Hardly yet had the Holy Ghost been given; but such was the mastery over men imparted to the Baptist by loyalty to God and outspoken fearlessness, that frivolity grew serious and pride crestfallen. And, as a confession of the polluted past and a promise of a holier future, there was hardly one who did not pass through the cleansing ordeal, and entering by the door of water-baptism, assume an expectant attitude towards the approaching kingdom.

To understand the sequel, we may assume that John even now possessed those attributes of character which he afterwards abundantly exhibited — a contemplative turn, candour, and acquaintance with Scripture. There is a certain delicacy of scriptural allusion, a certain dexterity in quoting it, which, just like the choice idioms and elegant felicities of a man speaking his native tongue rather than one acquired late in life, betoken a deep and early acquaintance with the books of the Bible; and in such profound quotations and recondite allusions John’s writings abound, giving us reason to believe that in his Galilean home he had studied betimes Moses and the prophets.* And what he perused he pondered. He was a man of meditation — a man to whom thought was an enjoyment — reflection and reasoning the repose of his spirit. But though a thinker, he was not constitutionally a sceptic. Without prejudice, and without precipitation, he had a mind prepared to yield to evidence — that frank and limpid nature, through which, as through the clear fountain or the crystal window, the rays of truth find ready transit.

With this Bible knowledge, this thoughtfulness, this candour, it was hardly possible for John to hearken to the Baptist without being deeply convinced of his lost estate, and without listening eagerly to what the speaker added about that Greater than himself, who was coming to take away the sin of the world. On a Gentile, or an ignorant Jew, the words might have fallen pointless; but in the alert spirit of John they touched a hundred chords, and awakened countless echoes; and his whole nature was in that Btir of expectation which precedes a moral revolution, when one day, wistfully gazing at a stranger who ied to be passing by, the Baptist exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takctli away the sin of the world!” and, impelled by some Divine attraction, the young Galilean and his companion

8©# the “Four Witnesses” of Da Costa, (a most profound and io analysis of the characteristics of the four evangelists), pp. 265-7- followed, and joyfully embracing the invitation which Jesus gave them, tarried all night beneath the roof where He at that time sojourned.

We love to recall our first interview with a great benefactor, or with the friend who has formed a chief ingredient in our earthly happiness: but no such date can be so memorable as a man’s first acquaintance with his Saviour. And yet it is characteristic of this apostle’s retiring disposition and sensitive nature, that of all which transpired on that memorable evening, he has not recorded one syllable. A little later, he tells us what passed in a similar interview with Nicodemus; and as far as relates to God’s love to the world, and the lifting up of the Son of Man, it is likely that what was said to John and his companion was substantially the same. And though we confess to disappointed curiosity, though it would have been not a little instructive to know what were the words which first satisfied an intellect so superior, and which first arrested a heart so loving, we must be satisfied with the result which was next morning announced to their friends in words so few but emphatic, u We have found the Messias.”

And here we cannot forbear a parenthetic observation. Some natures are effusive and outspoken. When they find the lost sheep, or the lost shekel, they call on their friends and neighbours to share the joy, and they cannot rest till they have relieved their grateful emotion by crying, “All ye that love the Lord, come and I will declare what He hath done for my soul.” Like John Newton, they cannot forbear, but they must tell to every hearer what miracles of mercy they are, and they write a book to record how they were snatched from the fearful pit and the miry clay: whilst others, no less affected by God’s goodness, feel with Cowper —

“Nor were it wise, nor should I choose
Such secrets to declare;
Like precious wines, their taste they lose
Exposed to open air.”

Like John, they shrink from publicity; and it is not by telling to the Church, or even to their friends, the story of their conversion, but it is by the way they speak and act for Christ, that the world is apprised of their great discovery, and the consequent revolution in their characters.

And this, we believe, is all which even the Church is entitled to demand. For whilst, on the one hand, there may be an explicitness which is aught but egotism — whilst to a frank and exuberant spirit it may feel like coldness or cowardice to conceal the doing of the Lord, another may revolt from any recital of his own experience as verging on vain-glory, or as a self-exhibition at once unseemly and distasteful. And if we are thankful to Paul, who repeats again and again the incidents of his conversion, the example of John may teach us that we are not entitled to constitute ourselves fathers-confessors, and force into a full and particular statement of their experience those who would rather “keep the matter in their heart,”

John went back to Bethsaida. He went back to Zebedee and the fishing boat — to his old friends and his former avocation; and had Christ not summoned him to a higher calling, he would have done well to abide as he was to the end of his days. And, with the consciousness which he now possessed, John might have led on that lake of Galilee an existence happier and more sublime than Seneca was then spending in his cedar library, or Tiberius in his glittering palace. “The mind is its own place;” and just as shabby notions and mean projects may nestle beneath a coronet, so heaven’s heir-apparent is sometimes attired in coarsest raiment, and is holding fellowship with God even when it is a sorry employment in which his fingers are engaged. And should the reader be one whose outward lot is little in unison With his intellectual or moral aspirations — like John after that night with Jesus at Bethabara, should you be obliged to return to a companionship as contracted and to a calling as irksome as awaited the young disciple on Genesareth: — remember that John and a few friends like-minded have thrown around the once obscure lake of Galilee and the humble craft of the fisherman associations almost amounting to sacredness: and if your vocation is too lowly to elevate you, be you yourself so conscientious, so pure and noble-hearted, so full of Christ, as to leave that calling the more dignified because it is the one which you once occupied.

But John was not destined to tarry many months amongst his old neighbours and their work. Although it is well for us that there is One who foresees all our future and who knows the way which we take, it is well for us that we do not know it ourselves: and so, by short and gentle stages, with seldom more than one trial in any single vista, and usually with many sweet beguilements by the way, we are lured along till our generation is served and the work which God has given us is done. At the moment when Jesus called himself and his brother, could it have been revealed to John, * He is calling you to sixty years of wandering and exile. Bethsaida will never more be your home. He is calling you to poverty and reproach. You will never be able to add another mite to your patrimony, and you will often be treated as an impostor or a fool. If you quit this boat and follow that man, you will land in a prison and on a rock of lonely Uinishment: I will not say but you find yourself at last in the tyrant’s gripe, Bung into the seething caldron or shut up in the lions’ den:’ — we dare I thai lie would have been sc daunted as to refuse to go, but he would have gone with a very different feeling from that which now bore him over the vessel’s side, and placed him a recruit instant and joyful in Messiah’s little retinue. No — those days beside the Jordan and that night in Christ’s own dwelling, were still vivid to his memory, and the hope of others like them was a spell before which home-ties dissolved and danger disappeared: and, in the kind wisdom of the Master, fresh excitements and new requitals so succeeded one another; and in the disclosures of a more intimate communion, the great original motive — love to Christ — so deepened, that John was never tempted for a moment to regret that day’s decision. He heard the sermon on the Mount. He saw Jairus’ daughter raised to life, and the widow’s son at Nain. He helped to feed with the miraculous loaves the famished multitude. He shared, in some degree, the love and gratitude which gathered round his Master as the Healer of diseases, and the Forgiver of sins. He was with Jesus on the Holy Mount. He was with Him in the guest-chamber. He was with Him in Gethsemane. He was with Him in the hall of the palace of his friend the high-priest. He was with Him upon Calvary: in the upper room: on Olivet, And after the Saviour had gone hence, the mother of Jesus was still with John. And then, though persecution came, Pentecost was also come; and though

Jesus was gone, the Holy Ghost was given. And though sorrow came after sorrow — though James was slain with the sword, and though Jerusalem, with all its endearments, had to be left behind, yet success followed success, and Ephesus, and Smyrna, and Thyatira, Gaius, mine host,” and Demetrius, were antidotes to overmuch sorrow, and incentives to renewed exertion; — even as it will be with ourselves, when God calls us to any great or good undertaking. Could we realise beforehand the opposition, the obloquy, the fatigue, the misconstruction, the wakeful nights, the weary, jaded days — were the real difficulties present to our mind in all their force, we should be very apt to linger in the boat and continue mending our nets, even after Jesus had said, Arise, follow me.” But these trials are, in great mercy, hidden at the moment when the one mighty motive is working; and when they do arise, they so alternate with gracious encouragements — when one friend gives way, another is so opportunely raised up; when the home-scene is dark, such good news comes from elsewhere; when some effort proves abortive on which prodigious pains were expended, such unaccountable success crowns another, that, like the soldier who in the morning’s victory forgets the rainy bivouac of last night, and all his projects of returning, the cliivaln -n- betiftfttr resumes the fight, and, like John in his long campaign of seventy years, is always committing himself to new labours of love, “faint, yet pursuing;” and when he drops at last, his attitude is onward, and his position where he falls is in advance of the ground where he rested yesterday.

When Noah lifted the hatch, and looked out at the window of his ark, he saw quite another world from that which he had looked upon when God shut the door and closed him in. It was a world where he would meet none of his old neighbours — where the old subjects of engrossing speculation would have ceased to interest — where the old scenes would wear a new aspect — where old things were passed away, and all things were become new. Noah had seen an old world die, and a new world born.

When John took his last look from the craggy heights of Patmos, he was a patriarch gazing from the summit of a moral Ararat. It was not that outward nature had made a change; for the evening sun wheeled gloriously down on the far western waves, and the mighty Mediterranean still swept his azure billows along the bleak ribs of Patmos, or went to sleep on the snowy sands of its sheltered bay. With it3 garland of glossy green, the Christmas rose still crowned the rocks where the sea-gull nestled, as it had crowned them centuries ago; and the ships of Tarshish were seen glancing and tacking in the far offing, as they had done when Jonah was the passenger, and Hiram was the sailor king. All these things continued as they were when the fathers fell asleep; but other things were changed. Had the apostle’s eye been keen enough to penetrate so far, from the top of the rock he might have seen Jerusalem a desolate heap — those streets which, when first he trod them, stirred and buzzed with countless myriads, abandoned to the vulture, and the beautiful temple a pile of smashed pillars and scorched timbers, rendering the old ritual of Solomon and Moses a desperate impossibility. Northward he might have looked, and his own seven churches would have risen to his view; and westward Corinth with its Christian congregations, and Rome with its saints in Caesar’s household. With scarce a land that did not contain its Christain worshippers, with scarce a tongue in which the name of Jesus had not been proclaimed, with that old dispensation departed, and with the idols of heathendom trembling in every shrine — in that destruction of guilty and doomed Jerusalem, in that infeoffment already taken in His purchased heritage, the heathen — John felt that, if this were not all the coming of his Master which he had reason to expect, it was all for which the disciple could patiently wait; and, with old associations revived by these apocalyptic visions, and old affections burning afresh, he wished that his dear Lord would come and take him to Himself. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus; come quickly.” ^-*^

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We do not know the particulars of John’s dying hours. Early church history tells us that it was a peaceful death. He did not die a martyr, as his own brother did. No Herod spilled his blood. We do not know the place. Like Moses’ grave, no man knows for certain where he is buried to this day. Nor are we told who surrounded his dying bed. There is only one Friend who we know for certain was there. And, reader, if you be a disciple, Jesus will be at your bedside when you come to die. It may be in a Patmos — a land of distance or exile; or an Ephesus — a place where Christian friends will come to see you, and where the congregation in which you were wont to worship will remember you when it meets to pray. It may be in a quiet chamber, where loving relatives stand by; or in a lonely unplenished room, where a kind neighbour looks in now and then to see if you are wanting anything. Salome and James may have gone before; your mother and your brethren may no longer be with you: but, whoever dies, the Lord Jesus lives; and if you be His disciple, you will not depart in solitude. Jesus will be with you. And once you have fallen asleep, your very dust will not be neglected nor forgotten. The Saviour will watch over it till that bright morrow when He shall draw the blue curtain of these skies, and, revealing a sun which never sets, shall arouse you all recruited for the sleepless services of eternity.

There were many fishermen on the Lake of Galilee, and many young men in the village of Bethsaida, who never became Christ’s disciples. And there was once a time when nothing was further from the thoughts of John. When Salome dandled him on her knee; when, with his older brother and the neighbour children, he played up and down the steep 3treet of Bethsaida; when, in the winter months, he left the village to look at the swellings of Jordan, as, in volumes of foaming ochre, it rolled and tumbled into the flooded lake; and when, a limber lad, he shoved afloat the boat of Zebedee, grating along the gravel, and then leaped in and dealt out the net, and laid him down to be rocked asleep on the swinging waves; — amongst all his dreams he never dreamed of a day which would see him a fisher of men, and one of the dearest friends of Messiah. But that same Saviour who said to John, “Arise, follow me,” invites you, dear young reader, to become His disciple. Be you as ingenuous, as obedient, as prompt, and as loving, and you too will become as lovely, as beloved. It is a wonderful invitation, but it is real. It comes from that Saviour who is “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;” and it is an invitation which is echoed in the last words of this happy evangelist, who closes the canon of Scripture en treating all to come and share the blessedness which he had never wholly lacked since the day that he first beheld “the Lamb of God.” The Saviour Invites you to arise and follow Him; and, amidst all the possibilites opened to you in that high calling, do you pray and aspire to become u a beloved disciple.” Like John, who, amidst the confidential communings of the guest-chamber, the affectionate homage of the seven churches, the transporting revelations of Patmos, could remember the day when the scaly planks of a fishing-boat were his bed, and a coil of dripping ropes was his pillow, and when he had few hopes or aspirations beyond his native village, — you know not what great things you are yet to see. But of all spectacles the greatest is Jesus himself. That sight, dwelt upon by John’s adoring and absorbing eyes, filled his mind for the rest of life with a beatific vision of u God manifest,” and it came out again in a character so elevated and beautiful, that the whole Church is now of the same mind with the Master: it loves the disciple whom Jesus loved, and recognises as the most Christlike of all Christ’s friends, John the Divine.