The Mission of Jesus
What is the meaning of this Face in the great gallery? There are some countenances which bear on every feature the stamp of a purpose. This is one. No man can look at it without being impressed with the fact that it is meant to depict a soul with a mission. What is that mission? It is a question on which there is no agreement. Men have come to study the Portrait from all parts; but each has given it a meaning peculiar to his own country. Renan has come all the way from Paris to see it, but he has seen in it only the atmosphere of Paris. He has beheld an zsthetic soul inspired by the enthusiasm of beauty, and inspiring by his own beauty — a fair Galilean drawing all hearts by his Parisian charm. Schenkel has come
from Berlin, and he has brought the azr of a7
Berlin. He looks into the face of Jesus and reads there what he feels in himself. He sees a German heretic struggling with orthodoxy — a mind impressed with new speculative ideas, and obstructed by the narrowness of the priesthood. Seeley has come from London, and he has brought to the Portrait the eye of London. To him it is the countenance of an Englishman. It breathes, above all things, practical common sense. It is not the face of an esthetic; it is not the countenance of a heretic; it is the portrait of a reformer. It is the delineation of a man imbued with the enthusiasm of humanity, indignant at social abuses, and eager to right the wrong.
In these voices from Paris, Berlin, and London, I recognise one common note. They all assume that the Portrait is a revolutionary portrait. They take for granted that it expresses Paris, Berlin, and London, rather than Jerusalem. But I see a critic standing more directly in front of the Portrait than any of these; it is a man called Paul. He has been first in the gallery, and has obtained a very near view. At the outset he shared the national antipathy to the Portrait. He did so because he held the belief of these other critics that the Picture was not Jewish, but revolutionary to the Jew. He has changed his mind; he has come to an opposite conclusion. From the front seat of the gallery he looks back to the critics of Paris, of Berlin, of London. He says: ‘You are all ina mistake. This Picture is not revolutionary. I am not surprised you should think it so; I thought so once myself. But a veil has been lifted from my eyes, and I have reversed my judgment. I tell you that this is the portrait of a Conservative — a man who wants above ll things to keep the traditions of His country. So far from being an innovator, it is the innovation that He objects to. He is opposed to the foreign elements that have corrupted the faith of His land. He wants to go back — back to the primitive times, back to the first sources, back to the beginnings of the stream. He would restore the foundations, He would revive the first spirit of the nation. He would go further back than Moses. He would sweep away the elements of so-called progress. He would restore the earliest times, the primal faith — the faith of that father Abraham whose religion of joyous hope was an anticipation of His own day,’
So says Paul. And as in the great gallery he is nearest to the Portrait, we shall let him interpret for us to-day. What, then, is this golden era which he says Christ wished to restore? What to the eye of Jesus made the age of Abraham so much more inspiring than the age of Moses? It was that in the age of Abraham the object of human interest was not a holy law, but a holy man. The living patriarch took the place of the written book. Instead of bending over an inscribed page, the clan raised its eyes to the form of a mighty chief in whom it beheld God’s representative of all that was good and true. Instead of becoming an audience, men were made spectators. Instead of listening to the reading of abstract rules, they were told to centre their attention on a living man — to study him, to take their time from him, to imitate him. They were to make him their standard of comparison, to measure their actions by his light, to ask if their deed was such as the God of Abraham would approve. It was a life rather of example than of precept; nay, shall we not prefer to say, it was a life in which the influence of an individual spirit was more powerful than the maxims of a copy-book morality.
Such, according to Paul, was the life to which Jesus would fain lead back His people — the life which lay, not in obedience to a law, but in sympathy with a mam, But where was the man to be found? Abraham was dead; and if he were alive, he would be no longer available. He had been the representative of holiness only to a primitive race; he could not pass through the fiery furnace of modern criticism. Who could pass through that furnace? Was not the whole world lying in wickedness, dead in trespasses and in sin? Where from that corrupt mass could there rise a life worthy to draw the eyes of all the tribes of Israel? Could a bitter fountain bring forth sweet waters? could death generate life? Where was the man whom the developed conscience of the nation could pronounce holy? Must not the verdict of the united land be, with ever-accumulating conviction, the verdict given by one of her minstrel bards, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one’?
It was true; therefore the nation’s hope must lie, not in the dead masses, but in the living God. There was no place for her Heroin the ordinary course of the stream; therefore God must somewhere turn the stream. The coming man of holiness must be a man sent, a man anointed; he must be a ‘ Messiah.’ A long heredity of physical strength might produce a great warrior; but a long heredity of sin could only bring a great sinner. God must somewhere intervene in the heredity. He must add to the river of time a breath from the ocean of eternity — a breath which should accelerate the movement of the waters, and send a current of purity through their turbid flow.
What was to be the test of the coming of this man? What was to be the evidence that the Messiah had appeared? There could be no absolute evidence till His life had closed. The Holy One of God could only prove His holiness by living pure from morn to eve. No man could stand upon the hill of youth and say with certainty, ‘I am the Messiah.’ What did the ‘Messiah’ mean? It was one who should serve God from sunrise to sunset. It was one who should give up his will from dawn to twilight, from birth to death. He could not say ‘I am the Messiah,’ till he could say ‘It is finished.’ He might get through the morning; he might conquer the meridian sun; he might even prevail over the afternoon — and yet he might sink beneath the shadows of twilight. The last hour alone could seal his mission, could justify his claim. He must be content to begin with a trial, with a hope, with a prayer. He must be content to feel the aspiration to serve his Father, to atone to his Father for the long dearth of human love. The starting-point of any such life must be the desire to make up, to recompense, to restore, to offer the Father a compensation which all the Jewish sacrifices had failed to give — the surrender of a life of spotless obedience.
From the human point of view, was it open for any one to try? I think it was. ‘What!’ you say, ‘have you forgotten that the choice of the Messiah was limited to the family of David?’ No, I have not forgotten that. But I think if I had been a native of Palestine in its later age, I should have been quite unable to tell whether I had or had not any link with the family of David. That family had become blended with the masses; no man could certainly say that he had no kinship with it. Nay, had not that family, according to Jewish tradition itself, originally sprung from the masses — from the sons of daily toil? Was not David taken from the flock and from the fold? It was not without reason that to the mind of Israel the first appearance of the Son of David was associated with shepherds keeping watch in the nightly fields. The branches of the Davidic tree were of all branches the most wide-spreading and the most hard to trace.* The family had risen from the people, and tu the people it had returned. One might apply to it the words which a poet of Israel spoke of another subject, ‘Who shall declare its generation?’ Who could say, ‘I am precluded from trying the Messianic life by the knowledge that the Messiah must be of the seed of David’? The seed of David was thrown broadcast over every field, and no man could be sure that he had not a share in its possession.
Jesus said, ‘/ will try to be this Holy Child of God.’* I do not think He said, ‘I belong to the family of David; therefore I have a call’ Others around Him might claim, might
really possess, the same distinction. I believe
1 You will observe that in Isaiah xi. 1 and 10, collateral branches seem to be allowed a claim, for the descent was to be reckoned, not from David, but from his father, Jesse. According to this reckoning, all descendants of Jesse might aspire to a Messianic birthright.
2It may seem that the portentous circumstances of Christ’s birth necessitate His definite knowledge of Messiahship from the beginning. But I understand St. Luke ii. 19 to mean that Mary, for the sake of the human development of Jesus, concealed the portentous circumstances of His birth; she ‘kept all these things i# her heart.’
His impulse came purely from within. I think He began by saying to Himself something like this: ‘How little return the Father has got from His creation during all these years! Men have been offering Him the lives of victims that were unconscious of being offered. Surely that can be no atonement for the voluntary separation of the soul! How is it that in all these ages no man has tried to give Him the surrender of his own will? It has been open, at least, to every man to try. Yet I have looked round on every side, and have not found one effort towards voluntary sacrifice. If the Father could get one single soul to serve Him from dawn to dark, I believe that soul would be His Messiah. I believe this one life, offered without spot to the Father, offered from childhood to death in unbroken obedience, would be to Him the justification of all the treasures lavished on humanity. He would feel that it was worth while to have said, “Let us make man”; the whiteness of the one pure soul would atone for the lovelessness of the past, and light the world with prospective glory. J will make this trial — for the sake of the Father, for the love of the Father. I will try by the devotion of one child to make up for the disobedience of all the other children. I will begin to-day — as myself a child in years. I will stand in the temple of His universe, and inquire reverently His will. I will have no plan; I will follow where He leads me. I will go where He points the way — to life or to death; my life shall itself be a dying in Him.’
You will observe that this was a far more aspiring aim on the part of Jesus than if He had founded a claim on His descent from David. Indeed, I think this is a point on which Christians of every age have been apt to err. We divide the life of Jesus into two states — a state of humiliation and a state of exaltation; and we apply the former term to His mission of sacrifice. Now, if I were asked to put my hand on the most aspiring effort of the life of Jesus, I should point to that moment in which He attempted the valley of sacrifice. Christians habitually refer to His mzracles as the sign of His divinity, to His cross as the sign of His humanity. To me, the attempt to bear the cross is quite the most regaé feature, the most ambitious feature, in the Portrait of Jesus. No claim to Davidic descent, no claim to physical power, no claim to wonder-working, no claim even to personal resurrection, can for a moment touch the magnitude of conscious greatness implied in offering Himself as a compensation for the sins of the world. The writer to the Hebrews says He offered Himself as one ‘without spot.’ He could only do soon the ground of that spotlessness, or in the hope that He might attain it. The man who should serve God from dawn to dark would indeed be a spotless soul. To ¢vy such a service was an aim before which the dreams of a Napoleon grow pale. No son of the Roman Empire in its proudest moments had ever attempted anything so high. Amid a nation which, of all others, had the deepest sense of human sin, amid a people which, through its consciousness of guilt, feared to take the Divine name into its lips, a man arose and said, ‘J will try to live the perfect life’ — it is the most dramatic incident on the stage of time!
ON of Man, Thou art never so kingly to me as in Thy priesthood, never so regal asin Thy sacrifice. Thy deepest miracle is Thy mission. Thou hast aspired to be the Lamb of God — the spotless soul. In a world where not one thought is absolutely pure, Thou hast essayed to live, from morn to eve a life without a stain. Thou hast offered to the Father one cloudless day, one sky of unbroken blue. There is no aspiration so bold in all the ages as this effort of Thine. We tremble to see Thee go forth. We hold our breath at the marvel of the spectacle. We watch Thy progress with palpitating hearts. The desire of our souls will go with Thee. Our interest will accompany Thee. Our sympathies will follow Thee. We shall long to meet Thee victorious at the setting of the sun.