The Imitation of Christ
Matt. iv. 19.
v. 13-16, 43-48-
viii. 22.
ix. 9.
x. 38.
xi. 29.
xvi. 24.
xix. 21, 28.
Mark i. 17, 20.
ii. 14.
viii. 34.
xiv. 28.
xv. 41.
Luke v. 27.
vi. 40.
viii. 1-3.
ix- 23, 57-62
xiv. 25-35.
V. 3-12.
Mark iii. 12.
Luke v. 14.
vi. 1-18.
v. 43-
ix. 21, 48.
ix. 30.
vii. 36.
x. 13, 21.
x. 16.
viii. 26, 30.
xiv. 7-1 1.
xi. 25, 29.
ix- 30>33-37y50-
xvii. 7- 11.
xviii. 4, 22.
x. 13-16, 42-45.
xviii. 14, 16,
xix. 14.
xiv. 61.
xxii. 25-27.
xx. 25-28.
xxiii. 8-12
xv. 3-5-
ft
IN the vocabulary of Jesus, the most significant expression for faith is the invitation, “Come unto Me.” To this, in its turn, succeeds the equally characteristic invitation, “Follow Me,” which recurs with great frequency in the records. And this is the third stage of Christian progress.
When, in the days of His flesh, our Lord said to anyone, “Follow Me,” the first and most obvious meaning of the invitation was a very concrete one indeed. He was an itinerant preacher, moving from town to town and from province to province; and it was a call to accompany Him on His journeys. Thus, St. Matthew quitted the receipt of custom, and of St. John and St. James it is related that they “left the ship and their father and followed Him.” St. Peter, a married man, had to leave his family; and how much this meant to him may be inferred from his own blunt words afterwards, “Master, we have left all and followed Thee; what shall we have therefore?”
In reading the Gospels, everyone must have been
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perplexed as to the actual extent of such a call on the part of Jesus. To the prosaic mind difficulties suggest themselves as to how those were to find support who literally obeyed the call, and as to what was to become of their families and dependents in their absence. Was the abandon¬ ment of home and occupation intended to be permanent or only temporary? In certain cases the decision must surely be given for the latter alternative. The women, for example, who “followed” Him from Galilee cannot have been intended to abandon their homes forever. We
hear of at least one candidate for a place among
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His followers to whom He gave orders to return at once to his friends; yet such a dismissal must have been compatible with the doing of all that was most essential in following Him. It is question¬ able how far even the Twelve understood at first that they were abandoning their secular callings forever; and there are indications that, after the death of their Master, the thought occurred to them that the time had come for returning to their original employments.
Perhaps, indeed, the cast-iron system of modern society in the West, in which everyone is fixed down in a position involving incessant duties, the punctual fulfilment of which is the prime mark of character, may cause the situation of those called by Jesus to appear to us more formidable than it actually was. The elementary necessaries of life, such as food, clothing and shelter, demand far more unremitting attention in a climate like ours than they did in the East, with its genial atmosphere and simple diet. In Palestine, even before the time of Christ, it seems to have been no uncommon thing for the disciples of a rabbi to follow him wherever he went; and I have been told by a living Jew that, if at the present day there were to appear anywhere in the Jewish world a teacher of exceptional genius and sanctity, pil grimages, to see and hear him, would be made from great distances by the devout, some of whom might be found staying for a prolonged period in his vicinity, for the purpose of picking up the crumbs of wisdom. Since the rise of monasticism in the fourth century it has been demonstrated on the great scale, in the history of both Eastern and Western Christendom, how ample a response may be given to a call to abandon the world with all its pursuits and prizes. Indeed, in certain states of mind there seems to be an attraction in renunciation, and motives of many kinds may constrain thereto. But the question difficult to decide is, how far Jesus aimed at this. Undoubtedly there were some whom He meant to employ as agents of His kingdom to such an extent that they could do nothing else, their time and strength being so covenanted to His peculiar mission that
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they could not have followed secular callings; but there is no reason to believe that these were the only hearers to whom He addressed the call, “Follow Me.” The majority even of those who obeyed must ultimately have returned to the usual occupations of human beings. Yet it was probably involved that, for a time at least, they should remain in close attendance on His person.
The purpose for which He desired to have near Him those whom He invited to follow Him was that they might hear His preaching and learn His doctrine. Jesus had in His own mind a system of truth — the final and perfect revelation of God to the world — and He kept His followers long enough about Him to stamp its leading principles on their minds. On scarcely any topic did he speak more copiously than on the inestimable advantage of hearing the truth from His lips. He declared that Mary, in sitting at His feet for this purpose, was doing the one thing needful; and, in concluding the summary of His doctrine delivered in the Sermon on the Mount, He solemnly averred that what He had spoken was the foundation on which the life of every hearer must be built, whereas the hearer who neglected what he had listened to must come to utter ruin, like a house on the sand swept away by a flood. Jesus was keenly aware of the advantages, with which every teacher is familiar, of continuous instruction. As a child sent to school only at irregular intervals will never have more than a smattering of education, and as anyone who has only a smattering of any subject, such as a foreign language, very soon, without practice, loses it altogether, so Jesus was acutely conscious that the knowledge which He had to communicate could only be acquired with time, patience and application, each acquisition being made the stepping-stone for another on a higher level; and, therefore, He coveted not only hearers, but “disciples” — the first name which His followers bore. This was precisely what was in His mind when He said, “Take heed how ye hear; for who¬ soever hath, to him shall be given, and, whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.” This saying is based on an observation of business-life which it may surprise us to find Him making, but which is familiar to all who have any acquaintance with this depart¬ ment of things, and it graphically illustrates His point. The man who has capital can buy on favour¬ able terms and can wait for a favourable market in which to sell; so that he who has much is in the way to have more. The man, on the contrary, without capital can make no terms with the buyer but must get quit of his property at once, what¬ ever it may bring; if he incur a bad debt, or if any other mischance befall him — and such accidents abound in every kind of business — he is blown over, and loses the little he has. Some striking case of
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this sort, with which perhaps He made acquaintance during His own business-life at Nazareth, must have made a deep impression on the mind of Jesus, for He employs the illustration more than once and for more than one purpose; but here, what He is insisting on is its application to the hearing of the truth, His meaning being this: he who knows but little of divine truth is very apt to lose it all; but he who advances far into this region sees new avenues opening before him on every hand, and, the more he knows, the keener grows his thirst for knowledge.
Not only did those who followed Jesus hear His teaching in its native order and connection, but they enjoyed the inestimable privilege of questioning Him in secret about anything they had not been able to understand in His public utterances. “When Jesus was alone,” says St. Mark, “He expounded all things to His disciples.” Of these private questionings and explanations some specimens have been preserved in the Gospels, and they show at a glance how much the disciples must have profited by these opportunities.
There is another in the New Testament besides Jesus who says to others, “Follow me.”* This is St. Paul. We should hardly have expected any mere man to be so bold; only, when he says, “Be ye
* 2 Tim. iii. io; cf. I Tim. iv. 12. followers of me,” he is careful to add, “As I also am of Christ”; * so that, after all, here also it is the following of Christ which is involved. When, however, St. Paul said this, it is evident he was not inviting others to come after him in the sense of joining his company and performing along with him his missionary journeys, but to imitate him in his “doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering charity, patience.” This supplies us with another interpretation of the language of St. Paul’s Master,! when He says, “Follow Me”: He means, “Imitate Me.”
It is, indeed, not a little curious that St. Paul, in challenging the imitation of his own example, employs language more strong and direct than Jesus does in the same circumstances.! Jesus rather invites His hearers in unmistakeable terms to be imitators of God, that they may thereby prove themselves to be His genuine children, as when He says, in the Sermon on the Mount, “But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
* 1 Cor. xi. 1.
t Huther, in Meyer’s Commentary, is of opinion that in this verse irap^KokovOrjaas does not mean exactly “imitate’’; but between this and the meaning assigned by him there is hardly a shade of difference.
y Mineral pov yiveaOe in i Cor. iv. 16, and xi. 1 — in Revised Version translated “imitators.’’ In 1 Thess. i. 6 (same verb), “Ye became imitators of us and of the Lord,” and ii. 14, “Ye became imitators of the churches of God.” In Phil. iii. 17 we have the variation (vppipr]Tai puv yiveade.
THE ETHIC OF JESUS
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” or, a little farther on, utters the marvellous injunction, “Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” But, even if the idea of imitation were not involved linguistically in that of following, we might well look upon it as included, every time our Lord uttered this call, on account of the nature of the case; for those who responded to His call, if they did so to any extent in the spirit of sympathy and comradeship in which they had been invited, must have been unawares involved in imitation. Not only had they His perfection before their eyes, as one may have a model which is being copied, but from day to day there were being wafted towards them those subtler influences which flow from personality, and their susceptibility to these was growing from month to month by the growth of their attachment to Him¬ self. If it is a commonplace of ethical doctrine that character is formed by friendship, and if most of those who have attained to anything remarkable in this direction have traced their excellence to association with the good and wise, it was inevitable that those who associated with Jesus as long and closely as did the Twelve should catch something of His spirit and be touched with His greatness, unless there was some impenetrable obstacle, as there was in the case of Judas. In point of fact, this unique opportunity did thus benefit the Twelve; for, while they were born in an obscurity from which there is no reason for thinking any of them would ever, but for Him, have emerged, they grew, in association with their Master, to such moral stature and spiritual power that what they became is now one of the most eloquent of all testimonies to the character of Christ.
What the character of Jesus was many have attempted to tell; and such attempts will be multiplied in the future, as they ought to be; because none of them are either altogether successful or altogether in vain, and every increase of experience helps to open the mystery. This is a topic with which American theology has specially concerned itself, and many striking portraitures of the Divine Man are to be reckoned among its productions. Of these the very latest speaks of His strength, His sincerity, His reasonableness, His poise, His originality, His narrowness, His breadth, His trust, His brotherliness, His optimism, His chivalry, His firmness, His generosity, His candour, His enthusiasm, His glad¬ ness, His humility, His patience, His courage, His indignation, His reverence, His holiness, His greatness, in successive chapters.* In an effort of this kind
* Jefferson, The Character of Jesus.
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justly famous,* the combination in His character of opposite virtues — such as those of the masculine with those of the feminine type, habits of activity with habits of contemplation, sympathy with God with sympathy with man — is employed with the happiest result. It would be possible to take a single quality of outstanding prominence in His character, such as love, and group round it all the rest or develop them out of it; or one of His haunting ideas, such as the will of God, might be taken as the key. In spite of the narrow limits of the Gospels, so much is crowded into their narratives that it is possible to follow Jesus through nearly every department of human existence and observe His demeanour and bearing in characteristic experiences, and in this way there may be constructed an image of Christ in the home, in the State, in the Church, in friendship, in society, as a man of prayer, as a student of Scripture, as a worker, as a sufferer, as a philanthropist, as a winner of souls, as a preacher, as a teacher, as a controversialist, as a man of feeling, as an influence.
But our present design leads us to look for an indication in His own words; and this can be found in the Beatitudes. In an earlier part of this book there has been occasion to show that these remarkable statements are not primarily intended to enumerate the virtues of the character demanded or created by Christ, but rather to exhibit the blessings and rewards
* In Bushnell s Nature and the Supernatural. which Christianity brings to those who accept it, and that, therefore, the final part of every beatitude is the most essential. Nevertheless, the Beatitudes do give prominence to certain elements of character, which might be capable of being combined into a complete picture. These Jesus demanded in others; but He exemplified them in Himself. In the Beatitudes He praises the aspirations of others, but He at the same time describes His own attainments; He is the character which He describes. How fully, for example, to Him must have come the blessedness of the “peacemakers”; the very aim of His life being to make peace between God and man, and between man and man. When He says, “Blessed are the merciful,” we are reminded of such a characteristic notice as that which says that “He had compassion on the multitude, because they were hungry and were scattered like sheep without a shepherd,” or of His prayer on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” or of the gracious word which He s’poke at the same time to the penitent thief. It requires no demonstration that the blessedness of “the pure in heart” must have been His portion beyond that of any other of the children of men. None ever so passionately as He “hungered and thirsted after righteousness,” the earliest recorded word of His maturity being, “Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,” and the same aspiration after the
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approving verdict of God accompanying Him to the end, as we easily assure ourselves by listening to His prayer in Gethsemane. “Blessed are they that mourn” was realised in the Man of Sorrows, who, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews reflects, was made perfect through sufferings. If it is a quality of character which is expressed in the last of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely,” it is needless to prove that it belonged in unparalleled measure to Him.
There is still, however, something lacking to bind into one these scattered features of character; and there was one occasion when Jesus called upon men more directly to imitate His example than when He merely said “Follow Me”; and then He singled out a quality as peculiarly His own. This was when He said, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.”
The quality designated by these adjectives was one familiar to those who first heard the words of Jesus; for it is often designated by the same terms, and by other kindred ones, in the Old Testament, where it is the special character of the people of Jehovah, who promises all blessings to those who are distinguished by it. It was the constant aspiration of the circle in which Jesus was brought up, as can be seen in the prevalence of the same language in the songs with which the advent of the Messiah was greeted by such worthies as Simeon and Elizabeth. Before attributing it to Himself, Jesus demanded it from others, if they wished to be His disciples; for not only is the third beatitude, “Blessed are the meek,” but the very first, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” might, as far as the meaning is concerned, have been, “Blessed are the meek and lowly in heart.” Indeed, the third beatitude is a translation from Psalm xxxvii., and the Hebrew word there rendered “meek” is not infrequently rendered “poor” in other Old Testament passages.*
Here, then, we apparently have not only a favourite idea of Jesus, but the most outstanding feature of His character, to which those must specially direct their attention who desire to copy His example. It be¬ tokens both a certain attitude towards God and a certain behaviour towards man. Towards God it is an attitude of perfect submission to His will, however hard it be to bear, as well as perfect loyalty to His commands, however difficult these may be to execute; and towards man it is patience with his errors, as well as helpfulness in every time of need. All the qualities placed in the forefront of the Beatitudes are but different forms of a receptiveness which lays the heart open before God, empty, that He may fill it with His forgiveness, grace and strength. Divine forgiveness, however, begets a disposition to forgive,
* See the excellent articles on 7 rpavs and raneivos in Cremers
Dictionary of Biblical Theology.
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and, where the divine fulness has been received, there is a tendency to pour forth on others the overflow of this wealth.
As this was the secret of Jesus’ own character, it is no wonder that He recommended it on all occasions to others. Of pride in all its forms He was a determined enemy; for He detected in it not only selfishness and lovelessness towards man, but a setting-up of man against God. He scourged it, as we have seen, in the conduct of the Pharisees. He had to rebuke it, too, in His own disciples, who, to the very last, were contending among themselves which of them should be the greatest. He seems to have had the maxim often in His mouth, that “he that exalteth himself shall be abased, but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
In all ages, when men have contrasted the spirit of Christ with the spirit of the world and the estimates of philosophy with those of Christianity, it has been recognised that there is no more distinguishing mark of Christian Ethics than this preference for the character which can be described as “meek and lowly.” As if to emphasize the contrast beforehand, Aristotle places, as the crown of the human character which his philosophy was intended to form, two qualities — magnificence and highmindedness. The former was lavish expenditure on worthy objects. It never entered the mind of the heathen thinker that the highest virtue could be
21 1
attainable by a poor man, not to speak of a slave; but he encouraged the rich to give liberally for public objects and especially for adorning the worship of the gods. The other chief virtue — highmindedness — is the state of mind of one who both deserves and claims the highest things; and, as there is nothing higher than honour, this is especially the aim of his ambition. The Aristotelian highmindedness is the self-consciousness of a great man, who walks among his fellow-creatures with nonchalance, not concerning himself about their observation or criticism, because he is aware of his own merit. This strain has been taken up in modern times by the German philosopher Nietzsche, who contrasts what he calls the morality of gentlemen with the morality of slaves, identifying the latter with Christianity* But Thomas Aquinas was wise enough to see that both the supreme virtues of the ancient philosopher are capable of incorporation in the Christian system, though they
* Nietzsche is not without feeling for some of the ethical secrets of Jesus — for example, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” and, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” — and these impart to his works whatever of ideality they possess; but he sinks down with fatal ease and frequency into mere paradox and violence. That which it is difficult for those living outside of Germany to understand is not his popularity with the masses, but the amount of attention paid to him by such scholars as Eucken and Haring; for his habit of thinking by the mere process of starting objections of all kinds to every accepted proposition is surely puerile and soon becomes wearisome.
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may hold in it but a subordinate place. In the character and career of Jesus Himself, while the qualities that are “meek and lowly” were prominent, they had behind them qualities to which the very names of Aristotle’s principal virtues might be applied; and this union is an essential feature of His whole history. For our sakes He became poor, but “He was rich”; He emptied Himself, but of what a fulness! His is a “glorious infamy”! The Byzantine conception of the “meek and lowly” Saviour, in its abjectness and hideousness, misses this side of the image and thereby becomes so untrue that even a protest as strong as Nietzsche’s may have a relative justification.
In Christians, according to the directions of Jesus, there ought to be a consciousness having not a little in common with the highmindedness and magnificence of the ancient thinker. They are the salt of the earth and the light of the world; they are sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty; they carry on their hearts the destiny of their fellow-creatures and strive to bring them up to the level of their own blessed¬ ness. In actual fact many of the followers of Christ have, in every generation, risen to this level; and some of the poorest and least considerable of them, as far as this world’s means are concerned, have been invested with a dignity which has been sacerdotal and has extorted the involuntary homage of the world; for the restriction of the highest virtue to a single class, and that the smallest, can have no force in the Christian fellowship.
Thus are there two opposite poles of Christian character — meekness and self-consciousness, lowliness and prodigality — and the link which binds them is Service — a watchword also prominent in the vocabulary of Jesus. The position of a servant is lowly, and his heart meek; for he looks up to those above him, and his excellence consists in remembering their interests and forgetting his own. Yet, on the other hand, a servant must have resources to be of value, and, the finer in quality and the ampler in quantity the benefits anyone is able to confer, the more is service redeemed from drudgery and raised to blessed¬ ness; for “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Therefore, Jesus advised those who heard Him to seek their satisfaction, not where the world seeks it, in being served, but in serving: “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” It was for this reason that He commended children to their imitation, rebuking the rivalries of the Twelve by taking a little child and setting him in the midst of them. But His own example was constantly before their eyes: “I am among you as one that serveth.” Such, He was conscious, had been His unvarying attitude all the time they had companied with Him, and such it was to be to the end, only with the meekness and lowliness always deepening and the benefits thereby accumulated on their heads
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increasing in value; “for the Son of Man is come, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
The ethical qualities which we abstract from the life of Jesus and attempt to shape into a consistent image of human goodness are apt to stiffen in our hands into mere abstractions, with no personality behind them; and we sigh for those three splendid years when the Twelve actually walked the earth in company with Him who was all these forms of excellence in living flesh and blood. But the man¬ hood of Jesus still exists and is, in essence, not different from what it was when it pervaded the fields of Galilee and moved in the streets of Jerusalem; and the spiritual presence, which is with us always and everywhere, according to His promise, is identified both with the glorified manhood now at God’s right hand and with the bygone earthly life, the incidents of which have been preserved to us in the Gospels; so that a communion with Christ, wonderfully real and wonderfully similar to that enjoyed by the Twelve, is still accessible to those who covet it. There are men and women now breathing above ground who are more intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ than with any other friend, and these cannot but exhibit the influence of His character on their own.