The Voice to the Multitude

I have one other glance to cast at the phase of the Portrait we have been considering. In this moment of exuberant joy, and in the midst of His invitation to the labouring and the laden, Jesus utters these remarkable words, ‘I am meek and lowly in heart.’ That they express on the part of Jesus a retrospective consciousness of the secret of His human development I have no doubt. But we are to consider here not the retrospective but the present meaning of the words. Jesus has promised the multitude rest. Although theirs is a physical burden, He has promised them rest through the mind — rest to the soul. As a cure for their outward ailments He has — virtually bidden them accept Azm as their

teacher. What in this light is the meaning of the words, ‘I am meek and lowly in heart’? It is clearly this: ‘Do not fear that in coming to my teaching you will need to rise too high in the scale of intellect. You will not need to rise at all. I will come down to you. I will do with the intellectual bread as I did with the physical bread — break it. I am quite fit to descend to your capacity. I can bring my revelation into the valley; I can, like the Father, make it known to babes. No teacher shall be simpler in his tuition, for simplicity belongs to knowledge and not to ignorance; it is the highest who best serve the lowest.’ The words, then, were prompted by the impulse to reveal. I cannot but direct attention to the fact that this impulse came forth so powerfully at this particular moment. It was a moment of joy, exuberant joy. It is when the spirit is joyful that it is most revealing. I have often been struck with words written by the author of the Acts. He tells that a disciple said of the Master, ‘ Being exalted, He hath shed forth this which you see. ‘Being exalted, He hath shed forth’ — exaltation always helps revelation. I do not think grief does; the hour of depression is not commonly an hour of revealing. But joy opens the gates of the spirit. It unbars the windows of ‘the soul and lets us see through. It gives back the natural tendency to the human heart — the tendency to speak out that which is in it. It is joy and not sorrow that says, ‘Let there be light’ As I believe in the human development of the Son of Man I am not afraid to apply the principle to Jesus, What, then, is this intellectual lowliness of Christ? It is the adoption of that form of teaching which is called speaking in parables — clothing a truth in the dress of a story. I do not mean to say that it owed its adoption to the desert of Bethsaida. I mean that in the desert of Bethsaida Jesus told the multitude He would ever give them this bread. What, then, was this bread? Where lay the educative element of the parable? I think there is a prevalent misconception on this point. The popular answer is, ‘The parables appealed to the homespun experience of the working classes.’ That was their picture; but I doubt very much if it was their lesson. A deeper consideration may tend to modify our view that the lowliness of Christ’s teaching involved also a lowliness of aim.

Let me lead you back to the ground of Christ’s exuberant joy — ‘I thank Thee, O Father, that Thou hast revealed these things unto babes.’ It was a recognition of the fact that the Divine education of man was to begin by an appeal to the child. Now, in the life of the child, what is the first thing we seek to educate? Is it the eye? the ear? the hand? No; in order to train these we must first rouse another faculty. What is that? It is the sense of wonder. We do not need philosophy to tell us that. Ask the nurse, ask the mother, how she tries to stimulate the child’s outer sense. She will tell you it is by wakening an zzner sense — wonder. She points the child to certain objects by notes of exclamation, by cries of admiration, by questions suggesting astonishment — what is that! do you see that! We are told that the children of Israel were fed by manna. The word ‘manna’ means ‘What is it?’ In this sense all children are fed by manna; they enter the world’s palace through the gate of wonder,

Now, in dealing with the multitude, Jesus proposed to follow the method of the mother with the child — to begin by stimulating their wonder. The main object of the parable was to wake this wonder. It was not to teach them prosaic or homespun things; it was to show them that even prosaic things have an element which puzzles the onlooker. If He takes them to their own fireside, it is to show them that the sparks fly upward. If He brings them along a familiar road, it is that He may lead them to a barred gate. If He conducts them through the natural world, it is that in the natural world they may find spiritual law. The essence of the parable in Christ’s view is not what it reveals but what it conceals. Its object is to rouse a feeling of mystery, a sense that there is something hid under the common soil. The discovery that in our most familiar sight there is more than meets the eye, in other words, the discovery that something is concealed, is in the view of Jesus the most valuable of all revelations. The parable causes the multitude to exclaim, ‘Behind the veil! Behind the weill’

Do you doubt this exposition? Listen, then, to what seems to me a direct affirmation of it on the part of Jesus. The disciples ask Him, ‘Why speakest Thou to the multitude in parables?’ If the essence of a parable was its prosaicness, they ought to have thought it very appropriate to the multitude. Clearly they did wot think it appropriate; they thought the lesson to the multitude beyond them. Listen now to Christ’s answer: ‘Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; but unto them which are without, all things are done in parables, that seeing they may see and not perceive, and that hearing they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should be converted and I should heal them.’

Let me try to paraphrase this answer of

Jesus: ‘You, my earliest friends, have come to know that there are things, yea, even things of experience, beyond the veil of sense. But the outside multitude have all their lives been feeding on the eye and ear; they have faith in nothing which they cannot see or taste or handle. I should like to teach them the mystery that lies in their own sphere. I should like to show them that the world which they call real is surrounded by depths unfathomable. I should like to wake them to the truth that in the very things which they see there are problems which they cannot understand, that in the very objects they think most familiar there are secrets which no man can penetrate. Therefore it is that I have bid them consider how the lily grows, and ponder how the bird of the air supports its wing; it is that they may learn that in the midst of sight they are in the presence of the unseen. Therefore it is that I give them parables from their own rural life — to make that rural life itself a subject of speculation. I wait for their wonder. The moment when they begin to wonder will be their turning-point — their converting point. I should not like to miss that moment; whenever it comes their chance of being healed has come. There may be seed below, which in the hour of waking wonder may leap into life. Let me labour at the parable lest I lose the golden grain,’

Such is my reading of a passage which expositors have tortured to make it say the opposite of what is its literal meaning. You say, Am I to believe that Jesus spoke in parables to the multitude in order to conceal truth? No, not to comcea/ — it was to reveal that something was already hid. What is wonder but just a waking to the sense that there is something hid? Happy are the multitude that are so awakened! Our first years are not years of much reverence. We look upon religion as having its special sphere of mystery from which common things are excluded. It is a moment of glorious revelation when a man can see mystery in common things, when he can say, ‘I see, and yet I do not understand.’ It is what Wordsworth calls

U a ‘presence that disturbs’; but it is glorious. It is a mist before the eyes; but it means heat, not rain. It is seemingly a barred gate; but it is really the first step of entrance within the holy temple.

I have said that the disciples were impressed with the inappropriateness of the parable to the multitude. And the reason is plain. The disciples underrated the capacity of the multitude. Jesus had a much higher sense of their capacity than His disciples had, because He had a much higher sense of the capacity of childhood. The parable problem was only a part of the childhood problem. When little children were brought to Jesus the disciples forbade them. Why? Because they thought Jesus was abandoning ‘the mysteries of the kingdom.’ In truth it was the reverse. Jesus received the little children with a view to lead them to these mysteries by another way. They could not find them by reflection, but they could reach them by wonder. The disciples were thinking of a child’s simplicity; Jesus was considering its power to scale the heights: ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven,’ The disciples viewed the child as helpless for spiritual flight; the eye of Jesus rested on its hidden wing.

And this explains something which must have struck every student of the mind of Jesus — His love for children. I suppose about the fact there is no doubt. It meets us directly or indirectly on every page of the sacred narrative. It lies at the root of His parabolic teaching; it is the light of His unclouded moment; it is the centre of His message to the apostolic ring. But more than all these do we note His familiar name for His disciples — ‘ These little ones.’ We can understand why it should have been applied, as it was applied, to the pupils in a Jewish school; but that Jesus should have made it a term of endearment for grown men seems strange. He was not anxious to establish an analogy between Himself and the Jewish teachers; why, then, call His followers by a name which suggested the pupils of these teachers? The answer is luminous — it is because it was to

Him a dear name, a precious name, a name of fond associations. It is because nothing suggested to Him so much endearment as that epithet ‘Little one’; He could use no name more tender to His own heart. He gives them other epithets in official moments; He calls them servants; He calls them disciples; He calls them friends. But in the hour of danger, in the hour of need, in the hour of coming trial, the old name re-asserts itself, and the deepest instinct of His heart reveals itself. There is a whole volume of biography in this one voice of Jesus, ‘These little ones.’

And whence Christ’s love for the child-nature? Was it the helplessness of that nature? No, it was its latent energy. It was because He saw more chance of combustion here than anywhere else. There was more possibility of lighting here the fire He came to kindle — that fire whose first spark is wonder, and whose final blaze is revelation. The first spark was lighted by the parable. Jesus said to the child-nature which lay in the heart of the multitude, ‘What you see on earth is like something in heaven; guess what it is.’ He never tells them till they give it up. The guess is to Him a Divine thing even though it be wide of the mark. The seeking for the gate and the knocking at the gate have a value apart from the opening of the gate. It may be a great thing to have a mystery solved; but to manifest that there zs a mystery is, I think, a work greater still.

THOU, who art the door into all truth,

reveal to me that there is a time to knock as well as a time to open. I am often distressed at the barriers to my sight. I say at these times, ‘If I could see clearly, Thou wouldst be pleased with me, Thou wouldst come to me.’ It never strikes me that the obscure moment is z¢seJf Thy coming. Teach me that truth, O Lord. Let me learn that Thy coming is ever with clouds. Reveal to me, as to Saul of Tarsus, that Thy glory begins by blinding the natural eye. When

I wake to a world of wonder, when I ask, like the Israelites, ‘What is it?’ do not let me think this a profane questioning; do not let me imagine that it parts me from Thee. Tell me that the knocking is a portion of the prayer, that the questioning is an act of the service. Tell me that I have learned the silence by hearing Thy step, that I have learned the darkness through the rising of the dawn. So shall my hour of inquiry be an hour of deep solemnity; so, when the clouds have gathered, shall I say, ‘Behind the veil! Behind the weill’