The Second Result of Samaria

I have said in the previous chapter that the end contemplated in the sermon of Nazareth is the survival of the unfittest. As yet, however, it is only the burden of a sermon; it has all to be translated into the life. Here, as elsewhere, the step of the Son of Man into the lower humanity begins not in act but in thought. As the meditation of the wilderness preceded the miracle of Cana and the cleansing of the temple courts, so is the meditation at Nazareth the prelude to a deeper and darker descent into the life of the human soul. For the first time as a missionary enterprise, there has flashed before the eyes of Jesus a vision of the conquest of Galilee. Men had often spoken of its conquest

from the power of Rome. Jesus dreamed of a mightier deliverance — of what one of His followers called a deliverance ‘from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” The voice which He heard in Samaria had summoned Him into Galilee.

But remember, in becoming an idea, Galilee had become a type. It had ceased to be a mere geographical province; you have only to read the conclusion of the sermon of Nazareth to see how completely Jesus had emancipated Himself from the limits of geography. Galilee had become to Him what Bohemia is to us — a name to mark the reckless section of humanity. It had become to Him a synonym for all in the world who needed help, for the whole family of the labouring and the heavy-laden, for those whom despair of recognition had rendered lawless. The higher life of different cities may vary; but the lower life of all is very much alike. My sympathy with the upper ranks in one place does not imply my sympathy with the upper ranks in another; but my pity for the lower ranks in one place does imply my pity for the lower ranks in another. When Jesus took up Galilee into His heart He took up all Galilees. He entered into sympathy with all distress in every locality. He became pledged and bound to regard the soil of all poverty as His own native soil.

And, singularly enough, the first public manifestation of the plan conceived at Nazareth occurred, not in the literal province of Galilee, but in the course of another visit to the capital. The time of the Passover had come, and the tribes of God went up to the sacred city, Jesus joined the multitude. He never dreamed of founding a new religion — neither then nor afterwards. To Him the faith of the Jewish race was the bud which enclosed all possible flowers. Therefore He joined the multitude on the road to the great religious festival of His nation. When next the curtain rises He is beside a second well. At the well of Samaria He was alone; at the well of Bethesda He is surrounded by a crowd of sufferers in search of health from the mineral waters. From out that crowd His eye rests on one. Why does the one engross His interest? All are suffering from the same kind of ailment; why does His attention centre on a unit in the thousand? Surely there must have been some element in the fate of this one man which made him a special object of interest in the eyes of Jesus! Is there anything peculiar in his case, anything in which he differs from the crowd? If we find this peculiarity we shall reach at the same time the secret of Christ’s attraction.

The peculiarity of this one man is not the fact that he is lame; others around him are in the same condition. It is not the fact that he is personally impotent; many at his side are in like case. It is the fact that he is impotent all round — personally and impersonally. He has neither limbs nor friends. Others are equally impotent in body, but they have some one to help them down into the pool, This man is at all points disarmed for the struggle of life. He has not one single weapon with which to defend himself. He has neither self-support nor brotherly support. He is in the arena, not only without weapons, but without hands. Numerous as is the crowd of sufferers, there is one class of the unfortunate which has no other type but him, which without him would be unrepresented — the men who are unfit for the battle.

Now, remember where Jesus has come from. He is fresh from the sermon of Nazareth, Remember what was the burden of that sermon. It was the survival of the unfittest. Put the two facts together and see if they do not harmonise. Is not the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda the very embodiment of that idea which dominated the sermon of Nazareth? It is the first practical effect of that sermon, and therefore the second result of Samaria’s well. It is the inauguration of a principle new in the world’s development. That development had always proceeded on the lines of the survival of the strongest and

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the sending of the weakest to the wall. At the pool of Bethesda the waters of human sympathy were stirred, and the spirit of man became troubled by the claims of the weakest. It was the advent of a new force into humanity — a force which entered into collision with the old, and never paused until it had transformed the world.

In these studies I am only selecting the facts that bear on the human development of Jesus. This is one of these. It is the first healing act He performed on the lines of the sermon of Nazareth. He had found that His special work for man was to promote the survival of the unfittest — to set at liberty them that are bound, Here is a representative of the class — one whose case may stand as a specimen of all. He attracts Jesus mainly by his unfitness for life’s struggle — his unfitness even for the ordinary modes of cure. He presents disqualifications which were as yet unique in the human experience of Jesus. Neither the men of Cana’s feast nor the inmates of the cleansed temple x20 THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA

nor the nobleman’s son whose cure is recorded in Luke iv. revealed this element of unfitness. The man is not only bruised in body but bruised in heart. The impotent limb is almost the least of it. Byron tells us that the prisoner of Chillon had been so long in bondage that when at last deliverance to the captive was proclaimed he left his dungeon with regret. This man’s position would have been similar. I have said that the broken heart is the motionless heart. It is not enough to put the watch to the right hour if the spring has snapped; you must first restore the spring. The spring of the watch is the heart; the broken heart is not necessarily restored by the restoration of an impotent limb.

Accordingly, Jesus employs here the method prescribed at Nazareth. He begins by asking

seemingly useless question, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ What makes it seem useless is the fact that we attribute to this impotent man our own healthy condition. Jesus knows better. He sees him listless, apathetic, taking it as a matter of course that he is unfit to survive. He desires to awaken the dormant wish for something better. Before all things, He would move the feart of the man. Previous to creating for him the heavens and the earth He would have the spirit to move on the face of the waters. Therefore He begins by asking, ‘Would you not like to be as other people — active, unimpeded, able to enjoy the delights of life?’ It is a question which no man would like to put who believed cure to be hopeless, but which every man is entitled to put who aspires to effect a cure.

For this leads me to a principle which is deeply imbedded in the healing acts of Jesus. I allude to the fact that in the cure of human distress He habitually asks the co-operation of the patient. Sometimes He appeals to the faith; here He appeals to the desire: in either case the principle is the same. And what is the reason of the principle? It is because Jesus wants the survival of the unfittest to be the transformation of the unfittest. He does not want unfitness itself to survive; that would be to Him the least desirable of all evolutions. The aim of Christianity is to have the deformed transformed. It is not simply to preserve the weak; it is to annihilate their weakness, to make them dominant forces in the kingdom of God. Accordingly, the first appeal of Jesus is to the secret of all human force — the will. ‘Wilt thou be healed?’ — it is a declaration on the part of Jesus that in /7zs system of salvation man is not to be passive. The salvations of the past had been commonly of another kind. The human soul had been a mere instrument played on by a foreign hand; its will had been absorbed, its affections suppressed. But the kingdom of God was to be opposed to asceticism. It was to seek, not the contraction, but the expansion of the soul. Its keynote was to be reciprocity — man working together with God. It was to desire an increase, not a diminution, of human personality. It was to demand as a preliminary condition the co-operation of the heart of

Man.

One of the finest illustrations of this principle is to be found, I think, in words used by Jesus Himself, ‘If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.’ You will observe the demand for a reciprocal relation; we must abide in Hzm and He must abide in ws. Brahmanism would have been content with the former; it was satisfied that the human should be lost in the Divine. Jesus would have deemed this no victory. To Him the highest power of salvation is what Ezekiel calls the saving of a soul ‘alive.’ A soul might be saved by death — taken away from the evil to come. A soul might be saved by sleep — have its passions deadened by narcotics. These are not a conquest, but an annihilation, of the will. But to be saved a/zve is to preserve my personality in the process, It is to come forth from the baptism not deadened but quickened, not mutilated but enlarged, not circumscribed but glorified. It is to reveal the truth that surrender to God is mot absorption in the Divine, and that the human will is never so strong as when it has yielded to the power of love.

HOU Divine Man, I thank thee that Thou hast desired the response of my heart.

[ thank Thee that there is something in me which is not quite impotent — something which Thou hast deemed worthy to work along with Thee, I have no strength with which to serve Thee; but Thou hast accepted a service less than strength — the w// to be strong. While yet I am impotent of 4b Thou hast asked the movement of my feart, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ Let me yield Thee this one gift in my power — the willingness to be. I cannot yet toil with Thee; let me wish with Thee. Let me figure in fancy what I would do for Thee if I were free. Let me imagine how I would serve Thee if I were lifted from the porch of Bethesda. Let me plan the race I would have run if I had been strong in limb. Let me picture with longing that road of beneficence which weakness has forbidden me to follow. Let me paint in my heart those labours of love which the body could not bear. And Thou shalt accept the heart. Thou shalt receive the desire in place of the deed. Thou shalt pluck the flower in the absence of the fruit. Thou shalt write in the book of Thy remembrance that I wesh to be made whole,