The League of Pity
When Jesus healed the lame man of Bethesda the saddest part of the spectacle remained to Hiim uncleansed. The saddest part of the spectacle was the fact that in a world of human hearts a man of physical impotence should be deemed unfit to survive. The cure was but the lifting of one pebble from a sea of troubles, At all Bethesdas and in all Galilees the same weird story was being repeated. The man who did not happen to move in the direction of the stream was left behind to die. To Jesus this current of the stream was the real calamity. The thing above all others to be deplored was man’s inhumanity to man. The cure of the cripple was a satisfaction; but it did not by one iota remove the fact that he had been left to lie
in the porch for want of a friend’s strong arm.
Accordingly, the eye and mind of Jesus were occupied with a deeper problem than the world’s pain — the world’s sin. The conviction of the world’s sin did not come to Him as an abstraction; it was wakened by concrete experiences. If you believe in His human development — and the evangelical history bids you — you will believe there must have been a time in which the conviction of the world’s sin broke upon Him as a personal experience, a time when it became not merely a lesson learned from the Jewish law, but a fact realised in the individual life. I think one of its deepest revelations must have been the scene at Bethesda. It was not a scene of absolute inhumanity; men were engaged in helpfulness. But each helped only his own. The spectacle was in one sense sadder than one of complete savagery; it was savagery in the sphere of civilisation. It showed how little the development of the world had done to root out that primitive instinct which makes self-preservation predominant. It revealed the limits of human
love even in its own sphere and under the most favourable conditions. Jesus felt that what the world wanted was moral renovation. To clear away calamity would be simply to remove the need of unselfishness. His aim was to preserve that need; what He deplored was that men were not conscious of it. To abolish the cross would be moral suicide; men must be taught to take up the cross, to reproduce His experience, to follow Aim.
Here is something unique in human history. An individual life, burning with the desire to right the wrong, stands in the centre of the world’s market-place and cries, ‘Follow me.’ Observe where the uniqueness lies. It is not in the fact that jesus seeks to attach Himself to the company of others; all youth does that; it is the period when we like least to be alone. But the motto of ordinary youth is, ‘Let me follow you.’ Its leading feature is imitation. It sets before itself the examples of the past and tries to tread in their footsteps. Jesus is an inversion of the order. Standing on the threshold of active life, with all the kingdoms of the world in front of Him and all the examples of the past behind Him, He proposes Himself as the object of imitation. Like all lives on the threshold, He too desires to associate Himself with others; but He claims to be the leader, not the follower. Instead of constructing a guild on the basis of some ideal of admiration, He proposes to construct a guild which shall have for its basis the imitation of Himself. Humanly speaking, and speaking with all reverence, I should say that Jesus presents the aspect of a man without an ideal. His only ideal is His Father. To be perfect as His Father in heaven is perfect and for the sake of His Father in heaven is the sole end and aim of His being; His meat and His drink is to do the will of His Father. This human life without a human ideal is the most extraordinary spectacle in history. But that this human life should offer itself as an ideal to all other lives, that this man who followed none should invite all to follow Him, is an element that adds to the wonder, Such is the manifestation of Jesus which we are
next to see,
Shortly after the scene of Bethesda, and with a view to the moral renovation of the world, He begins to form a league of pity. It is to be the nucleus of a great humanitarian gsuild — a guild which through the years is to grow and ramify — which is to become first the Ecclesia, then the Church, then the Christian State, and eventually the United World. But the point I here wish to emphasise is the condition required for enrolment in this guild. The condition prescribed by Jesus is the consent of the members to take Himself as their model; ‘Follow me.’ This new league, like other leagues, receives a secret watchword; but by the consent, nay, by the command of its Founder, the watchword is neither ‘ fraternity’ nor ‘liberty’ nor ‘equality’; it is ‘the imitation of Jesus.’
And this is not the less but all the more remarkable from the fact that the members of that little band which inaugurated the league of pity were not new to Jesus. I gather from the opening chapter of St. John that they had known Him in the days directly preceding
His public ministry, that they had listened to His private teaching, that they had been so impressed with that teaching as to say among themselves, ‘Is not this the Christ?’ He founded His claim to their confidence upon something earlier than His miracles — upon impressions derived from the domestic life, from the family altar, from the scenes of home. He rested it upon that in Him which was least transcendental, most familiar to the average eye. He neither appealed to Cana nor to Bethesda; He reverted to the memories of a time when as yet the cottage of Nazareth was in the ascendant and the household fires had not been left behind. There is no better proof of the absorbing power of His personality than the fact that the league of pity had its nucleus in men who were drawn to Him ere He had manifested His glory.
The most remarkable feature of this league of pity is the meagre terms required for its first subscription. These fishermen of Galilee were originally united not by a creed but by an ideal — a standard of imitation. What they subscribed to was not an assent to certain doctrines; it was a promise of certain actions. They began, as they ended, with faith; but the beginning of their faith was not the signing of a confession; it was the expression of a desire to follow Jesus. There is no preliminary command even for the confession of sin. They are not told to begin by interrogating their past — by asking whether they are worthy to follow; they are to come without introspection — as St. Mark puts it, ‘straightway.’ In nothing is the human wisdom of Jesus more transparent than in this postponing of repentance. Self-introspection requires a light; and the light must come before the searching. How shall a man judge of his want of charity except by first jozmzng the league of pity! It is by pity and by pity alone that I learn the want of it. Before all things the “ght must come. It is this light which must kindle the fire of my remorse. It is by the burning bush in my desert that I find it to have deen a desert; previous to that tllumination it was my city, my native air.. It was only by the entrance into a ministrant life that such men as Peter and Andrew and James and John could learn their past inadequacy for the kingdom of God.
There is one question which may suggest itself here: Why did Jesus form a human league of pity at all? Why not appeal to that heavenly host which was so prominent a feature of the old dispensation? Was not such a union a league sufficient? With the confidence in His mind that such an alliance existed, why seek so frail a support as the co-operation of a human guild? Now, in all questions of this sort I try, wherever I can, to get the answer from Jesus Himself. I regard all the sayings of Jesus as autobiographical. Every utterance must have been a voice of personal experience, and there must have been a period in His life when that experience began. There is one of these future utterances which seems to me to have originated at this period in the heart of Jesus. It is the remarkable saying, ‘The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into Hzs hand.’ What is the idea of these words? It is the conception of a transference of the reins of Divine government. I conceive that at this time Jesus said to Himself: ‘Hitherto, in the faith of Israel, the Father has given the charge of man to the angels. The time has come for a change of thought in this matter. Henceforth, san shall have the charge of man. The government of my Father has always been a vicarious government; but hitherto it has devolved upon the angelic throng. Let it now devolve on the human. Why should an angel be the best help for an earth-born soul! Has 4e taken the seed of Abraham? Does fe know the frailty of man’s frame? Has his training in the school of sorrow been such as to make him a fitting guardian of the weak? Is not man the fitting guardian of man? My Father desires to transfer the government. He calls upon the sons of men to lift those burdens of humanity which to the eyes of the past generation were laid upon the arms of the cherubim,’
Such I understand to be the real bearing of the apostolic call. It is the formation of a human brotherhood to take, in relation to man, the place of the angels. Up to this time the beings outszde humanity had been looked upon as the sole ministers to man. To be fed by mysterious agencies was to be fed providentially. It seemed more reverent to believe that Elijah was ministered to by the ravens than that he was ministered to by the Arabians — either translation being admissible. It was really less reverent. Jnze/ligent ministration is the most providential ministration, The ravens and the angels are both removed from man, They are so from opposite reasons; the ravens are too far below, the angels too far above. Perfect ministration is ministration founded upon a kindred experience. Such can only be found within the circle of the human. Jesus woke the world into that consciousness. He proclaimed that if ministration was to be complete, man must be the angel to man. That is the thought at the root of what is called the Christian ministry. It is the idea that sympathy with human weakness demands participation in that weakness. In the strength of that conviction Jesus formed the league of pity — a human league, a brotherhood of man with man for the support of man. He initiated a movement in the heart of humanity which, though in its origin no bigger than the eddies of the pool of Bethesda, was destined in the fulness of time to become a very ocean of love,
ON of Man, let me join Thy league of pity. Let me take the place of the angels in the ministry to human souls, Angels cannot meet the wants of my brother. They could minister to Thee, for Thou hadst their nature as well as mine. But my brother has not their nature. He needs some one who knows him; he needs me. Send me,O Lord. Let me be the apostle to the weak and weary. Send not the cherubim and the seraphim; send not the angel and the archangel, These have no drooping of the wing; they are never tired with their flight; they cannot sympathise with faintness. But J have borne the burden of the day, I have been tried in the furnace of pain. I have trod the dusty plain, I have descended the deep valley, I have climbed the arduous steep. I know the path of the weary, I can guide where the celestials never go; make me a helper in Thy ministrant band