The Representative Men of the New Testament

There are moments in the history of this world which may be called moments of ingathering. Their mission is to collect the experiences of the past and bind them into unity. The most striking of all such moments is the advent of Christ. To the men who witnessed that advent it presented an appearance which they have described by one word, ‘fulness. ‘In the heart of the Roman Empire there stood forth a man who resembled in His nature nothing so much as that empire itself. Rome was not a country of the earth; she was a country that had become the earth. She had gathered into her bosom the once separate lands and bound them by a silver chain; she represented to the view of the spectator not a nation, but the human

race. So was it with the man Christ Jesus. I

He was a mirror of that empire into which He was born. If Rome united in her constitution all dominions and powers, Jesus united in His person all types of character. The rivers of every land had run into this human sea. The earnestness of Judah was there; the buoyancy of Greece was there; the mysticism of India was there; the practicalness of China was there; the legal acumen of Rome herself was there. There dwelt the self-restraint of the Stoic, the easy mind of the Epicurean, the winged imagination of the Platonist. There repose side by side things which naturally fly apart — the simplicity of Galilee and the subtlety of Jerusalem, the gravity of the East and the sparkle of the West, the devotion of the Brahman to the soul, and that care for the wants of the body which constitutes the essence of the European life.

If you wish to see the fulness of the life of Christ just put to yourself one question. Retracing the steps through that Gallery of the Old Testament which we have traversed, and taking at random any great quality expressed by any figure, simply ask yourself. Is not this equally represented in the life of Jesus? Has Enoch a vision of immortality; Christ professes to reveal life eternal. Is Noah a preacher of righteousness; Christ calls sinners to repentance. Has Abraham a dream of universal empire; Christ claims to found a kingdom of God. Does Isaac represent home-life; so does Christ at Bethany. Does Jacob aspire to a priesthood; Christ offers Himself for a world’s sin. Is Moses the lawgiver on Sinai; Christ is the law-giver on Hermon. Is David chivalrous to his foes; Christ forgives His enemies. I do not know a phase of Old Testament heroism which has not been reproduced in the Picture of Jesus. The calm wisdom of Solomon is here, side by side with the flashing of Elijah’s fire. The fine courtesy of Boaz is here, hand in hand with Elisha’s denunciation of wrong. The daring fearlessness of Daniel is here, blended in equal measure with Job’s patient endurance. The humanitarian sweep of Isaiah is here, but along with it there is something which such universal sympathy is apt to exclude — the capacity for individual friendship which marks the soul of Jonathan.

It seems to me that such a mode of experimenting on the Sacred Gallery would be a real test of ’ the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.’ One who was almost a contemporary of the Galilean ministry speaks of Christ as destined in the future to gather all things to Himself. But, from an artistic point of view, this gathering was already completed. The Portrait of Jesus is not the representative of a phase of humanity; it is humanity itself. He unites in one face and form the faces and forms of the whole past Gallery. He represents no special quality; He expresses all qualities and He expresses all specially — in a pronounced degree. It is written, ‘When the fulness of the time was come God sent His Son.* The fulness of the time was the time for fulness. It was the age when the rivers were to be ripe for being gathered into the sea, when the planets were to be ready for incorporation in the solar beam. The human side of Christianity was to be not the revelation of a man, but the revelation of Man. I read in the Book of Genesis that * in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ’ — that the first thing on which He gazed was not a part but the whole. So has it been with the genesis of Christianity. The first thing which appeared to the eye of the spectator was its entire heaven and its entire earth. Future years would exhibit the separate items — sun, moon, and star — herb, plant, and tree. But the vtoming of Christianity was the union of all things. All gifts and graces were embraced in a single life — the man Christ Jesus. The colours of that life, which one day were to be distributed among different flowers, were beheld at first concentrated in a rainbow. The garment which to-morrow was to be parted among many bore to-day the aspect of a single robe whose richness enwrapped one human spirit, and whose folds were covering one individual form.

In the primitive stage of village life we commonly find all commodities embraced in a single store. People go there for the most unlike things — daily food, medicine, millinery, house - letting, carriage - driving, registration, banking, the offices of the smith and the carpenter — perhaps even of the lawyer and the preacher. The time will come when each of these will form its separate craft. But in the primitive village they are apt to be vested in a single life — a life of which we might say, in adaptation of the words of Scripture, ’ of its fulness have we all received.’ Now, this is precisely the case of primitive Christianity. All its varied glories which one day are to be disseminated are heaped up in a single soul. Like the nebular fire-cloud, it holds the fulness of all things. There sleeps the summary of the past; there lies the germ of the future. Experiences the most diverse are there. The uncanonical Melchisedek and the priestly Aaron, the strong Ishmael and the tender Abel, the optimistic Joseph and the sad Jeremiah, the child Samuel and the manly Joshua, the expectant Caleb and the retrospective Hezekiah, the dependent Mephibosheth and the all-conquering Gideon — they each rest there. It would seem as if the river of Paradise had for a moment gathered back into her bosom those streams from which she had parted, and revealed within the compass of one garden the manifold grace of God. Christianity began where all life begins — in a single cell — enfolding within the walls of a seemingly insignificant dwelling the nucleus of a new heaven and a new earth.

And now I come to a crucial question. I hear the reader say: ‘If this Portrait of Jesus has gathered up the past, and if the future is to be simply a repetition of its glories, why do you speak of new representative men! Nay, on such a principle, why should you even speak of a New Testament! What is new about it! You have shown in the Old Gallery every conceivable quality depicted that can belong to a human soul. You show at the opening of the Christian dispensation these qualities united in a single life. You tell us that in the coming section of the Gallery the qualities thus united are again to be distributed in separate individual portraits. In such a process where is there any room for novelty! Is it not simply a repetition of old qualities! Do we not get out of the box exactly what we put in! Has the Old Testament Gallery left any phase of mind without a record! How shall we distinguish between the fire of an Elijah and the fire of a Peter! How shall we discriminate between the unselfishness of an Abraham and the unselfishness of a Paul! How shall we draw the line between the friendship of a Jonathan and the friendship of a John! ‘These are crucial questions, and they -are pertinent questions. They await every man who attempts to deal with the representative men of the Bible. If Christ is at once the flower of the past and the bud of the future, then the qualities of the future must be simply the qualities of the past. And if it be so, is not our progress merely a circle, our development only a dream! It seems a misnomer to speak of ’ the new man ’ — to say that if a man is in Christ he is ’ a new creature. ‘Where is the novelty if I have simply climbed the wall to see the fields of childhood! Would it not be more correct to reverse the words of Paul and say, *To be in Christ is to retrace our yesterday; new things have passed away and all things have become old’! But let us look deeper and this impression itself will pass away. What is the account which the New Testament Gallery gives of its own development? — by that it ought to be judged, by that it should stand or fall. Now, it so happens that a spectator of this gallery has given us a very clear view of what in his opinion its figures were meant to represent. He says, * It was worthy of Him of whom are all things and to whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.’ Here, by the glance of one piercing eye, is the nature of the New Gallery revealed! It is not a new assemblage of qualities; it is a new mode of acquiring them. In the old dispensation these qualities were the gifts of Nature. Men were born with them; they were the native soil of the heart. They came to each soul as naturally as air comeSj as food comes, as pastime comes. But in the new dispensation — in the section of the Gallery which was about to open, there was to be a change of ground. The qualities which had been native to the soul were to become the fruit of struggle. Men were no longer to be born lo THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

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