Peculiarities of the League of Pity

If one had been asked to predict beforehand what would be the constitution of the league of pity, I think he would have said three things: ‘It will have a very large membership’; ‘It will select men of tried experience’; ‘It will embrace minds of kindred qualities.’ Every one of these natural anticipations has been falsified by the fact. The league of pity constituted by Jesus is a conspicuous reversal of these three principles; and as in this respect it partakes of the originality of its Founder, it demands a place in a study of the Portrait of Jesus.

And first. There is apparently a startling disproportion between the aim and the efforts of Jesus. The aim is gigantic; it is nothing less than the moral conquest of the world: ‘Ye

are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.’ But where is the 47//? The eye looks around and sees none. There is nothing elevated in the spectacle before us, There is nothing in the city to excite wonder — except the seeming presumption of its pretensions. It has a population of twelve souls capable of action; the rest are as yet impotent. This insignificant company is to Jesus the beginning of the kingdom of God. It is to this insignificant company that He utters His largest and loudest promises. It is on the work of these twelve that He professedly builds His empire. It is these that He sends forth — I do not say merely into the parliament of earth, but into the parliament of heaven — to represent the cause of humanity before the throne of the Father. We start back, appalled at the boldness of the representation. It is a boldness unparalleled in all religion, unexampled even in literary imagination. We have often been startled to hear the Jewish nation claim to represent all the kingdoms of the earth; but to hear twelve men make that claim surpasses the bounds of wonder.

And yet, in the very heart of this paradox the wisdom of Jesus shines, There is a familiar expression, ‘ The world is small.’ We frequently quote it; but have we considered the truth of it? We popularly understand it to mean that people whom we have once known are likely to meet us again in far-off lands and after many years. In truth it means much more than that. The individual meetings are only symptoms; the real proof of the world’s smallness lies below. It lies in the fact that, wherever we go, the types of humanity repeat themselves. Perhaps to a thoroughly travelled man or woman the most abiding experience will be a sense of the essential likeness of human nature everywhere, I believe that the number ‘twelve’ is not too small to represent before any throne, Divine or human, all the phases of humanity. It is a great mistake to imagine that the village life of Galilee differs in essence from the metropolitan life of Jerusalem. Those who have lived in a village after knowing the town will tell you how struck they have been with the parallel between them. We speak of the temptations of city life as if they were something distinctive. They are not. The life of the rustic reveals precisely the same temptations as the life of the man of fashion — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and especially, what we should least expect, the pride of life. I have never seen such exhibitions of caste as I have witnessed in the routine of a country village none of whose inhabitants rose above the level of a working man.

When Jesus lit twelve representative moral torches He contributed all the original lights required for the illumination of the world. I say ‘all the original lights’; other torches had to be kindled from these. But what I mean is that in these twelve He had already provided for all possible phases of humanity. If I want to light a million candles there are two ways in which I may do so, I may strike a million matches and put one to each of them; in this case they are all original lights. Or I may light with one match only twelve candles, bring these into illuminative contact with others,

bring these others into contact with a third class, and so on throughout the series. In this case only the twelve lights are original; the rest are really derived from them. Now, this latter is the method of Jesus. It appears again and again in word and work — in the parable of the mustard seed, in the simile of the leaven, in the distribution of the desert loaves. Nay, is not this multiplying of little things the root idea of that otherwise obscure sentiment, ‘A few are chosen, but the many are called’? The chosen lights are the original lights — those who are kindled by the immediate contact with the match. But the rest have to place themselves in proximity to the original lights. Unlike the chosen, they have a choice. They are not illuminated previous to willing it; they must come into contact with the first light and catch the glow. The kingdom of grace is an economical kingdom; it has provision for all, but provision without waste. There is no expenditure of superfluous radiance; the twelve first candles are the light of the world.

I come now to the second peculiarity of the league of pity. We should have expected that

Jesus would have made choice of the most experienced men. A league of pity seems to demand experience; we go instinctively to the aged for comfort. Yet the first league of pity is a guild of young men. Why is this? Of course we all understand and approve the platitude, ‘Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.” That is an argument for early tuition. But what we want to know is why the stage of early tuition should be deemed a standard for all time. The mystery is not that Jesus haa young men among His disciples; it is that these young men became His primeministers. We want to know why Jesus selected for His league of pity men whose experience was yet to make, men who were standing only on the threshold of existence, and who had still to enter that world of which they were declared to be the light.

And the answer is, because the measure of a man is not his experience but his hope. Experience is memory. Earthly memory presents, as a whole, a record of failures. No man guided by that alone will preach the gospel of moral renovation. The work of moral renovation is proportionate to the amount of hope, and in some measure to the discounting of memory. Hope is apt to predominate in youth; memory, in age. Let us imagine a case in which youth was all hope, and age all memory. A young man, let us say, goes to an old man, and paints the ideal he has conceived of a good time coming. The old man asks, ‘What ground have you for this roseate vision?’ ‘Nothing but hope,’ answers the youth. The grave senior shakes his head. ‘My lad,’ he says, ‘when you are as old as I am you will know how all such ideals override experience.’ Which is right? The young man — and he is so for the very reason stated by the old. Is not the very overriding of experience a proof that experience is not the measure of us? Is not the fact that man’s ideal transcends his reality a suggestion that there awaits him a larger reality? That is what Jesus felt. That is why in forming a league for the moral renovation of humanity He drew its first disciples from the young, Nay, that is why in the centre of these disciples themselves He placed a little child. It was a symbol of the truth that what He wanted first and foremost was hope — the power that could precede experience, the power that could survive experience, the power that could predict the advent of a new experienoe. To receive the kingdom of God was to revive the hopefulness of youth.

There is one other peculiarity in this league of pity. The men who compose it do not seem at first sight to have a common basis, As the little company. files out before us there appears to be no bond between them. We are disposed to ask on what principle Jesus can have made the selection. First there steps forth Peter Bar-Jona — a man of quick fire and flashing impulse; we say, ‘I see the kind of man Jesus wants.’ Suddenly there comes up another in every sense his contrast — a man characteristically meditative and slow, proverbially spoken of as tarrying till the Lord comes; it is John son of Zebedee: we feel that we have /zmzted the desire of Jesus. By and by there emerges a second pair. There

K stands forth a man from rural life, bearing the simplicity of rural life, wondering if good can come out of a gay town; it is Nathanael — certainly, I think, one of the twelve. But he is followed presently by a man of the city — a man with all the shrewdness of the exchange and all the keenness of the counting-house; it is Matthew, the publican. A third pair comes into the arena. We see a red-hot believer eager for martyrdom; it is James the brother of John. And by his side there stands one who through his love is equally ready for martyrdom, but who intellectually believes little; it is Thomas — the man who, when he despaired of the cause of Jesus, was still able to say, ‘ Let us go that we may die with Him.’

Whence the admission of such diversities? It is to show how varied are the possible forms of love — how many different songs love may sing and still be true. We can verify this for ourselves. There is a love like Peter’s whose essence is impulse; there is a love like John’s whose power is waiting. There is a love like Nathanael’s which lives in sentiment, which speaks the language of flowers; there is a love like Matthew’s which deals in practical service. There is a love like that of James which must have an object to lean on — it is more reverential than protective; and there is a love like ‘ that of Thomas which has protectiveness for its brightest glory, which can support its object in the dark hour. All these and a hundred phases more can exist in the kingdom of love. ‘The wedding is furnished with guests, and yet there is room.’

THANK Thee, O Lord, that Thou hast

placed so many lights in the upper chamber — so many and so varied. I thank Thee that I do not need to take my rule from one, that each can see his own star in Thy sky. And yet, I thank Thee still more that I do not need to vest in my own star. Thou hast ordained many lights, not only to prepare a place for me, but to prepare for me many places, Thou wouldst have me, not merely to keep my own glow, but to get from others the colour which in me is dim. Thou hast put Peter beside John that the impulsiveness of Peter may be moderated; Thou hast put John beside Peter that the slowness of John may be quickened, Illuminate me by my brother’s light. Give to my love the quality in which it is not strong. Let me catch the impress of the opposite star. Let me press toward the gate by which J have sot found Thee, by which my brother “as found Thee. Help me to sympathise with those who have entered by another door of Thy temple. Reveal to me that my song of praise is not complete till it blends with a counterpart in the great symphony. I shall know the meaning of the many voices when I learn the need of Thy manifold grace,