The Unclouded Moment

In the stage at which we have now arrived we have had a glimpse of the Portrait at a very unwonted angle. We have seen the countenance of Jesus lit up with an expression of cloudless joy. I cannot yet leave this place in the gallery; it is a point of observation which throws a new light upon many things. Let us stand for a few moments longer in this spot so full of fresh tints, so rich in varied aspects.

I have said that Jesus was standing on a wider plane than any He had hitherto occupied. I have always indeed regarded the experience described in the closing verses of Matthew xi. as marking the distinctive dividing line in the life of Jesus. It is the boundary between the old and the new. I should divide the life of

Jesus into two great parts. The one ends with the first, the other culminates with the second, communion. In the one we witness the steps by which Jesus sought to descend into humanity; in the other we behold the process by which Jesus strove to draw humanity up to fim, The symbol of the one was the breaking of bread in the desert; the symbol of the other was that broken body which Jesus said should draw all men unto Himself.

It is at the close of this first period that we have found Jesus bursting forth into an expression of exuberant joy. I regard this as the most unclouded moment He had yet experienced — the most unclouded He ever was to experience previous to the shadows of the cross. No previous moment had revealed such unqualified triumph; no future moment was to reveal such a conquest of care until the utterance of the final charge, ‘Go ye and teach all nations.’ In the second period we stand for the most part beside His cross; here we stand in front of His crown. We have seen the

1 The Transfiguration was zo¢ such a moment, as I may hereafter have occasion to show.

cause of His joy. His mission had been victorious, and that victory had been the Father’s approving smile; more effectually than the voice on the banks of Jordan had it said, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ It was the time when a new force had been gathered into the kingdom. The multitude had ceased to be mere spectators; they had become actors in the scene; they had helped to pass the cup. There was visible the dawn of a wider ministry than men had yet seen; it was meet to make merry and be glad.

But in the passage from Matthew — which gives the fullest account of this matter — the main stress is laid on the effect of this joy of Jesus. After lifting up His eyes to heaven in a flash of rapture He bends them down to earth in a gaze of pity: ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ I have elsewhere pointed out the comprehensive sweep of this sympathy.y It covers every form of possible suffering, for

1 My Aspirations, p. 72.

there are only two classes, after all — those who toil and those who bear. But what I wish to point out now is the seeming paradox in the present origin of this sympathy. Is it not a strange thing that the hour of Christ’s exuberant personal joy should be the hour of His intense sympathetic pazw? We do not wonder that in contemplating the cross He should have drawn all men under the wing of His compassion. But that the most exhaustive expression of sympathy with human toil and human heaviness should have come from the one unique moment of absolute rapture, that the downward glance of pity should have followed immediately upon the upward look of triumphant joy — this is something which makes us wonder.

And yet there is no ground for wonder. It is quite true, as I have said in foregoing chapters, that sympathy with sorrow requires personal experience of sorrow. But it is equally true that personal experience of sorrow demands the knowledge of a previous joy. I cannot feel for the weary and the heavy-laden unless I myself have felt the weariness and the weight; but I never could have known these experiences unless I had first known their opposites. Every complaint on my part supposes the interruption of a previous joy; and it is to the joy and not to the grief that the heart makes its ultimate appeal in relieving human pain.

All our charities must have a background of optimism. Where have our asylums for the blind originated? Not from blindness, but from sight. We are absolutely safe in affirming that a world of born-blind men would never have devised such institutions, any more than a world of the insane would have founded lunatic asylums. The Son of Man had the constitution of human nature. His sympathy with pain came from His experience of pleasure. He must have had a peculiarly vivid sense of His own capacity for joy. ‘/ will give you rest ’ — the pronoun is emphasised in the Greek. When one professes to have a special power of giving rest he must also profess to have specially known the charm of its sensation. The ultimate source of Christ’s charity toward the struggling masses was, like that of all charity, an impression of the delight derivable from the opposite experience; His sympathetic pain had its root in a personal joy.

If so, where could this sympathetic pain find amore appropriate moment for its expression than this moment of unclouded radiance? The desert of Bethsaida seems at first sight the antithesis of those blue heavens to which the eyes of Jesus were lifted up in rapture. But in reality the uplifted gaze of rapture was the fitting preparation for the downward look of pity. It was from the height of His rest that Jesus viewed His own moments of struggle in the past; His ‘rejoicing in spirit’ implies the memory of a weight from which He had been set free. Even so it was from the height of rest that He looked at the struggling multitude. Their struggle, methinks, never seemed so hard to Him as then — never so heavy and arduous as when it stood out against the background of an opposite experience already

realised as a present possession.

What, now, was the nature of this rest which Jesus promised? That question is best answered by asking another — what was the nature of that rest which Jesus felt? He Himself points us to this mode of inquiry: “Take my yoke upon you’; ‘Learn of me’; ‘ My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ What, then, are we to learn of Him? Listen again: ‘Ye shall find rest unto your souls, When He says ‘rest unto your souls, He tells us in effect that the secret of His own rest came from within. If you take my chronology, if you regard the exaltation of Jesus as an accompaniment of the first communion, you will see that it actually was so. There had come no change to the outward life of Jesus, except in the zucrease of His labours and the augmentation of His burdens. There was no diminution of arduous work, no relaxation of the yoke of humanity. The multitude were still there with their pains and their penalties; the wilderness had zo¢ broken into singing, the desert had not begun to blossom as the rose. But through that multitude there had passed a change of thought. They had come to ¢hink differently — that was all. But that was a transformation of the whole environment. Without lifting a grain of sand it redeemed the waste places of the desert. Without lessening one hour of toil it made the yoke of Jesus easy and His burden light. A man may do the same amount of work for another man’s child as he does for his own; but he is not bearing in each case the same amount of yoke. The multitude had at first been mere spectators of Jesus. His work for them had been simply a work of pity, and therefore it had involved weariness. But when they entered into the relation of Jove to Jesus, when they accepted from Him the hand of fellowship, the token of communion, they changed His pity into sympathy. Jesus conceived for them the interest of a bloodrelationship; He had the same work for His hands, but He had found ‘rest unto His soul,’ Such I understand to be the biographical foundation of these remarkable words. And now, having acquired the experience for Himself, Jesus proclaimed it to the multitude. ‘Ye shall find rest unto your souls.’ It is a strange message to proclaim to the multitude, a strange ground of hope to set before the toiling masses! One would imagine that what ¢hey wanted was to find rest for their dodies. One would think the deepest need of earthly comfort on the part of the working classes of that day was just the relaxation of labour, just the lifting of life’s burdens. It sounds at first almost like a mockery to hear one address these struggling classes as if they were intellectual sceptics or anxious inquirers. Is it not an ignoring of their actual environment to treat them simply as the pupils in a school, and to prescribe for them a purely mental food — ‘ Ye shall find rest unto your souls’?

I answer, No, I say that this promise of mental rest is of all others the promise most appropriate to the toiling masses of that day. For, I want to direct attention to the fact that what made that day to the labouring classes harder than our day was not the comparative amount of servile labour; it was the degradation involved in servile labour. To the eye of that Roman world the labour of this multitude was ignoble, for, whether hired or unhired, it was servile labour. Startling as it may sound, it is profoundly true that the main weight which pressed upon the workmen of that day was the weight of an idea, of a thought. Probably they did not do more work than is now done in the household by every good mother in England. But the difference lay here — to the mother it is a glory; to them it was a shame. Even from a physical point of view the source of their weariness was an idea, and the rest they needed was rest from an idea. They were in a state of unrest, not because they moved the hands and the feet, but because their mzxd was carrying a burden, Their toil was a badge of inferiority. They bore the name of servant, and the name of servant was the mark of low caste. What they did was done without enthusiasm, because it was done without the impulse of self-will; they felt that they were not their own. Therefore it was that Jesus proposed to impart rest, not from without, but from within,

Any other proposal would have been beside the mark. If their outward burdens had been diminished by one-half they would have remained equally heavy-laden, for the thought that depressed them would have still been there. Jesus proposed to remove the thought, to get rid of the idea. Nay, He proposed to impart a new idea. He proposed to ennoble the act of service, to make the name of servant a synonym not for the lowest but for the highest. He offered to place it where the name of emperor was then placed — on a throne. It was a mental rest He promised, a change of mind; He came to alter not the thing but the thought. Yet the change in the thought has altered the ¢kzmg. This mental rest has become a mechanical power, the strongest of all mechanical powers. The transformation in idea has produced a transformation in fact; the rest which began in the soul has penetrated to the body.

Let us take one instance. Jesus claims for His gospel the power to emancipate from slavery: ‘The truth shall make you free.’ It has made men free; it has been the main factor in breaking the shackles of the bondsman. But how has it broken these shackles? Not by the command, ‘Loose him and let him go.’ Christianity for centuries brake no outward bond; it laid no external hand on the fetters of the slave. What, then, has been loosing these fetters? The infusion of a new idea into the souls of all men — master and servant alike. Every man of every rank has his hours of burden-bearing. Jesus proclaimed the dignity of these hours. He told both master and servant that each had his time for service, and that to each that time ought to be a glory — a source not of shame but of pride. The bearing of burdens was in the new regime to be the badge not of degradation but of nobleness; the Son of Man Himself had come to minister. What has been the effect of this message on the life of man? It has been twofold — inward and outward. On the one hand, in his hours of burden he has said, ‘This is a phase of human dignity. On the other hand, he has said, ‘Being a phase of human dignity, it should not be forced on any man; man’s service te his brother should be a voluntary thing.’ It is this latter thought which, more than any other, has melted the chains of slavery. I say ‘melted, not ‘snapped.’ A thought like this has required time to grow, to develop, to ramify. It has had to root out from every department of life associations of exactly the opposite kind. But if slow, the end has been sure. Man’s humanity to his brother has come from the sense of his brother’s dignity; and the charity which is kind has proceeded from the faith which is aspiring.

THOU, who hast set before me a door of

rest, show me the secret of that door.

I often refuse to enter in by it. It seems to lead the wrong way. I want to reach outward fields, and it ushers me zxdoors; it is a rest ‘unto the soul. Teach me my error in refusing to enter in. Teach me that to reach the outward fields I must pass through the house of the soul. I have tried to get into rest by another way. I have strayed through the paths of pleasure; I have lain down in green pastures; I have walked beside the quiet waters; but I have forgotten the ‘restoring of my soul. Restore my soul, O Lord; before all things, give me zzdoor rest. In vain shall I lie in the green pastures if there is no summer in my feart, In vain shall I walk by the quiet waters if there is no stillness in my mind. Put summer in my heart; put stillness in my mind; and then the pastures will all be green and the waters will all be quiet. Let me come into the outward fields through the postern gate of my own dwelling. All things will smile if my heart smiles; all things will speak peace if my spirit is calm. I shall fear no valley of humiliation, I shall dread no shadow of care, when Thou shalt give rest unto my soul,