John the Self-Surrendered
As I pass from the figure of the Baptist I am arrested by two other portraits hanging side by side. The bystanders tell me that they are intended to represent one and the same character — John, Son of Zebedee. One of the portraits, indeed, admits of no doubt on this point; it has the name ‘John, Son of Zebedee’ appended to it. The other has no title, no inscription; but all the spectators say with one breath, ‘That is another likeness of John.’ As I look into the faces of these two portraits I am by and by startled — not by their likeness but by their disproportion. They are altogether dissimilar. It is not a question of light hair or dark, pale cheeks or rosy. It is a difference more vital than that — a difference of expression. The professed Son of Zebedee has an air of self-consciousness
about him. I do not say he is selfish; but he 45 is self-conscious. He is playing a noble part; but he is aware that he plays it. In a more pronounced sense than Peter he has a tendency to take the lead. He makes a bid for one of the two uppermost seats in the Messianic Kingdom. He takes a portion of Christ’s government into his own hands in the meantime — he interrupts on his own account the charities of a man who refused to take the name of Christian. He comes forward as spokesman when a Samaritan village shuts its gates — he counsels a return to the old policy of fire and sword. There are circumstances in his life which are favourable to self -consciousness. He is not so poor as the other disciples. He has more outlets to worldly influence than his Galilean brethren — even the High Priest Caiaphas has a knowledge of him. Above all, he is a mother’s darling — the child of one who rates him far beyond his present merits, who thinks him good enough for anything, and who is eagerly ambitious to advance his interests.*
* Her ambition, however, was only maternal; her personal attitude to Christ was most unworldly (Matt, xxvii. 56 •, Mark xv. 40, and xvi. i).
There is no mirror which a young man should subject to such close criticism as that which reflects a mother’s heart. On the whole, the impression conveyed to my mind by this portrait of the professed Son of Zebedee is that of a misguided and spoiled boy.
But turn now to the other, the nameless picture. It is a complete contrast. If the former was self-conscious, this is self-forgetting. We look into a face whose own look is far away. We feel that we are in the presence of a personality which is almost oblivious of its outward surroundings, altogether oblivious of itself. There is no phrase which to my mind would describe him so well as ‘the anonymous man.’ It is not only that he never gives his name; he never thinks of his name. In all that he does, in all that he meditates, he keeps hid from himself. The typical attitude in which he is painted is that of a man lying on Christ’s bosom. And it truly describes him. This later portrait is that of one who rests upon the bosom of humanity. There is one word which has become his keynote — brotherhood. The man who in the former painting asked a private seat above the reach of the common crowd is found in this later delineation elbowing his way into the heart of that crowd and seeking to bury the very memory of his name in the sense of a life which made him one with the multitude.
These are the two portraits. What is their relation to one another.’’ The bystanders who first occupied the Gallery were convinced that they represented one and the same man. But the modern bystanders have been divided in opinion. Some have held by the original spectators — recognising that there may be two sides to the same character. Others have been unable thus to bridge the chasm. They have felt that these two portraits are separated by the gulf of Dives, that they cannot be thought of as two sides of a life or two phases of a character, that they belong to different atmospheres — one to earth and the other to heaven — one to the mist over the river, and the other to the mountain peak lit by the morning sun.
Now, I want to put a question. In point of fact, there is in the New Testament Gallery an instance in which two portraits of the same man are even more pronouncedly different than those attributed to the Son of Zebedee. I allude to the picture of Saul of Tarsus and the subsequent picture of Paul the Apostle. The question I put is this, Why does no one say that these cannot represent the same man? Of course the answer will be immediate. You will say, This man, Saul of Tarsus, admittedly turned a somersault; his was a conversion, a transformation, an emergence from darkness into light. And it is quite true that Saul of Tarsus turned a somersault. It is quite true that, as he says himself, he passed through a change equal to that of creation in its emergence from chaos. What is not true is the notion that in this transformation of Saul there is anything exceptional. If we exclude John the Baptist, who was in the deepest sense a forerunner, I do not know a man of the Gallery who had not as much need of transformation as Saul of Tarsus. It is true he was a persecutor; but negative indifference is often a bigger gulf than positive opposition. What separated the Christian and the Jew was not their hostility; it was their ideas. The chasm between them was as great ere ever one opposing voice had been raised on either side. I must repeat what I have already said — the New Gallery is not a painting of qualities but a painting of transformations. Each is a different transformation; Paul exhibits one, John exhibits another. If we allow the double, nay, the contradictory delineation for Paul, why should we not make the same allowance for John! What we see in his case is what we see in the case of the man of Tarsus — transformation. It is the change from egotism into impersonality, from consciousness into forgetfulness, from self into self - surrender. What happened to John was the breaking of his mirror — the smashing into fragments of that glass by which he had shone reflected in his own sight and had appeared the prime actor in the great drama.
When did this destruction of the mirror take place.? Why should we speak of it as a ‘smashing’? Would it not be the result of development.? Undoubtedly. But in all development there is one crucial moment — a moment which marks the boundary-hne. The building up of individual life is a development — a progress from stage to stage. But there is a special instant in which what we call deadness passes into life. It matters not what theory of life you hold. You may say, if you like, with Herbert Spencer, that it is simply the adjustment of the organism to its environment. Very well. But there is a moment, a crisis moment, in which that adjustment is complete, and in that moment we pass from death unto life. Death in its natural course is also a development — a gradual process of exhaustion. But there is a point in which the process becomes an act, a moment of immediate transformation in which there is no longer any room for development, and in which the change is abrupt, ungraduated, instantaneous — we say, ‘The man is dead.’
And John had a crisis moment. It came, I believe, in that hour when his egotism seemed to have soared into its climax — when, swayed by a mother’s ambition, he asked the front seat in the Kingdom. ‘And it was with him as with Paul — the hour of his deepest moral need was the hour of his revelation. For a moment the man of Galilee, like the man of Tarsus, saw heaven open. And what a heaven it was! It was a reversal of all his dreams. In answer to his ignorant and presumptuous prayer Christ simply raised the curtain and let the man see in. The sight which met his gaze paralysed his earthly wings for evermore; the soaring ceased, the bird fell. For, what was it he saw — what was it we all saw .-’ It was a new ideal of greatness. It was not only John the fisherman who was transformed by that hour. We were all transformed — kings and senators, empires and civilisations. The world never got back to its old regime. What was that old regime.’’ It was the idea that the greatest man is he who has the million for his servants. But when Jesus said to John, ‘Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister,’ He
‘On mature reflection, I would place this incident much earlier than I did in my Studies of tJie Portrait of Christ.
founded a new regime; He declared that the greatest man is he who is the servant of the milHon. That the Son of Man — the ideal of all royalty, the synonym for all heroism, should be linked not with mastery but with subordination, that the name to a child of Israel most suggestive of power should be associated with subservience to classes and masses alike, that the life of the potentate should be identified in its deepest essence with a voluntary adoption of the life of the slave — this was not only an epoch-making thought but a thought which has re-moulded all the epochs. We need not wonder that it re-moulded John.
I should say, then, that this was to John the smashing of the mirror. It was his crisis moment. In one of his letters which has always seemed to me to have a ring of autobiography he speaks of having ‘passed from death unto life.’ Those are the words of a man who has been conscious of a crisis. They express the sense, not of a process, but of an act. Doubtless there had been a process too — subtle, hidden, underground; the greater part of our preparation for the Kingdom is an unconscious preparation. But, as I have said, to John as to every developing man there comes a boundary moment, a point at which the soul must pass over. We may have a very long walk to the river; but, when we have reached the river, walking is at an end — the remainder of the journey is to be completed by a plunge. John is conscious of a plunge — of having ‘passed over.’ He is conscious of having been on two banks of the river — of having made the transition from the bosom of his mother Salome to the bosom of the Son of Man. He has exchanged the love of self for the love of humanity, ambition for ardour, egotism for enthusiasm. He feels that the former man is dead — that death itself could not produce a greater change. He forgets all the rest of the process in the transition of a single moment; and no moment is to my mind so likely as that in which on the plains of earth the Son of Man revealed to him the ideal of heavenly greatness.
But there is one point on which I think many of us have been under a great misapprehension. The popular notion seems to be that John made a transition from a very masculine to a very effeminate nature. I believe it to have been exactly the reverse. I have already expressed the opinion that the influence of John’s mother was in the first instance unfavourable to him. He was too much under her tuition and imbibed too much of her spirit. It was a great mistake to imagine that the early petulance and vehemence of John are the mark of a nature not effeminate. They come direct from effeminacy. If the original picture is less gentle than the later picture, it is precisely because it is more effeminate. Those sudden gusts of temper, those sweeping breezes of passion, those eruptions of the lava stream that destroy Samaria and wither even a good man if he refuse to join the Church — whence come they.-* Just from that which is the root of effeminacy — the absence of self-restraint, the inability to pause and deliberate, the inefficiency of that protective wall which prevents the impulses of the heart from running over.
What John received from his transformation was a virile soul; and it was his virile soul that made his gentleness. I have said that his outburst over Samaria came from the unrestraint of a nature too soft to bind its wrath. But we shall commit a great error if we imagine that the calmness of his after-life came from a suppression of his power to feel. I have no hesitation in saying that there is more evidence of intense and burning feeling in the second picture than in the first. You look at a windless, waveless sea whose surface is unruffled and whose bosom is unclouded. But you do not look long before you find that the stress has been only transferred into the interior. You see heavings below; you hear repressed mutterings underneath; you detect the shadow of a submarine hand holding back the depths with iron grasp and creating the surface calm by the very force of its inward struggle. Listen to the cry that breaks out in one of John’s letters! — ‘If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.’ Is that the language of a weakling, of a man emasculated, enervated, emptied of his spirit of fire! Is it not clear that it is the fire which is trying John’s work — subjecting him to the crucial test of whether his gentleness has yet made him great, whether he has reached that gift which was absent from his boyhood — the power to be scorched without scorching, to be smitten and not smite!
Do you know what I think the strongest evidence of that self-restraint which became the flower of the Son of Zebedee? It lies, I believe, in something not on the surface, something for which you must read between the lines. There are many moments of love which are not self-restraint, but, in the most sublime sense, self-indulgence. I would not say, for example, that the lying on the Master’s bosom was a mark of restraint; I can imagine no greater luxury. I would not say that the standing at the foot of the cross was a mark of restraint; we wonder that the others could restrain themselves from being there. But the fact which I think reveals the transformed John in his summer bloom is his attitude to Judas Iscariot. In nothing does he come so near his Lord. I believe that the only two of the primitive band who detected Judas before the time were John and his Master; upon the rest the betrayal fell like a clap of thunder. John and his Master alone saw the blemish in the bud. We know that the Son of Zebedee shared in the perception which had broken upon his Master, because he tells us so. Nobody can read the Fourth Gospel without being impressed with the bitter and implacable loathing which this man by nature entertained for Judas — a loathing more strong, more deep, and more outspoken than is displayed by any of his comrades. This is the fact as it appears on the face of the narrative. The beloved disciple has come into the dark secret of his Master. He has detected the blackness in a human soul. How does he act in these circumstances .-* Does he repeat the vituperation that he launched at the Samaritan village.? Does he call upon the fire to come down and consume the miscreant? Does he denounce this man as he denounced the other man for working in a Name he did not worship.’’ No; he has learned self-restraint now. He conceals his revelation. He meets Judas as he meets Peter. He meets him at the council, he meets him at the feast, he meets him in that solemn hour sacred to the coming bereavement — the hour of all others when we sigh for kindred souls. He meets him, he greets him, as a brother; he represses the pent-up fury of his heart.
The question is, Why.’’ I have said it was self-restraint; but the question still remains — Why.? There is no such thing in Christianity as self-restraint for its own sake. It is not a Christian virtue; it is a Stoic virtue. There are hundreds who have passed through the fiery furnace and never revealed that they got any hurt; the mind can be taught to suppress its cries. But Christian self-restraint is not suppression; it is surrender. I may keep back my cry from pride, or I may keep back my cry because I have seen a possibility of succour. John’s attitude to Judas is the latter of these. Why does he treat him as a brother.? Because in the companionship of the Master he had awakened to the sense of brotherhood. As long as the shell had not burst, John and his Master had a ray of hope for Judas. Did you ever ask yourself the reason of Christ’s open proclamation of the prophecy, *One of you shall betray me.’ ‘To show His miraculous power, ’ you say. What I regard as an unhappy gloss has put that reason into Christ’s mouth; but He Himself would have repudiated it. It required no miraculous power to see through Judas, nor was there any miracle in the vision. I ask again, therefore, Why does Christ in the presence of Judas himself keep ringing the changes of the prophecy, ‘One of you shall betray me’ y And I answer, ‘It is in the hope that the prophecy will not come true.’ He wants the man to take fright at the mirror of himself — as David did when he was painted by Nathan, as Nineveh did when it was pictured by Jonah. If by any chance he could see himself — if for him, bad as he was, lurid as he was, repulsive as he was, there could lurk in some corner, however small, the tiniest patch of green — if any stray word could waken him, any chance light scorch him, any sudden snapshot reveal him to himself — the Master would be proud that His prophecy should fail.
Now, I believe Christ’s first work for the transformed John was the bearing with Judas.
When he had reached the spiritual shore — that state which, though on earth, he called the world beyond death — the first work that awaited him was a reversal of his past. As an arrogant youth, he had called upon the flames to wrap round and round the walls of a Samaritan village that had closed its gates on Jesus. But here was a spectacle compared to which the guilt of Samaria’s village grew pale! Here was a life closing its gates — body and soul, nerve and sinew, heart and brain; here was a mind so dark, so irresponsive, so unsympathetic that John himself in a moment of self-communion calls him the ’ son of perdition ‘! ‘But a voice says: ‘Do not accelerate the perdition; do not anticipate the perdition; give the man a chance — a chance in your own heart! Do not let the fire come down upon Samaria even in imagination! Keep it away from your fancy; hope against it; pray against it; love against it!
‘I believe the words, ‘None of them is lost, but the son of perdition ’ to be John’s passing comment on the statement of Christ’s prayer, ‘Those that Thou gavest me I have kept’ (John xvii. 12).
I do not say, ‘Restrain yourself, curb yourself, control yourself! ’ — I would rather prescribe the wing than the chain. Bathe yourself in brotherhood, lave yourself in love, hide yourself in humanity, sun yourself in the service of man; and you will no more need to pray, “Keep back my angry soul!” ’
Here is a fitting place to bid John farewell — in that haven of love which was to him the other side of death. Three times, in the testimony of after-days, the curtain rises on the man. Very surprising to me are these successive risings. Viewed as historical or viewed as traditional, they mark the true sequence of the spiritual life. Life has ever three typical periods; I would call them the age of imagination, the age of reason, and the age of simplicity. We all begin with our Apocalypse — our sight of a city of gold with pearly gates and crystal fountains and nightless skies. We do not move /orzvard through, life; we move backward. The first thing we see is the drama completed. The dawn that greets the eye of youth is not the dawn of its own morning but the dawn of futurity. Yesterday has no power, to-day has no power; we light our torch at the sun of to-morrow. Then comes the second step, and it is a step backward. We fall into the present world. Reason takes the place of imagination. To-morrow fades in to-day. Instead of looking forward we look round. We begin to ask. Who are we.^ — Where are we.? — What is the cause of our being.’’ — Why are there so many streets that are not golden, so many gates that are not of pearl, so many skies that are all night t By and by there comes a third and final stage. It is what we should have expected to come first — the past of the man. He ends where we should have looked for him to begin — in the simplicity of a child. Arguments lose their interest; theories cease to trouble; questionings are not long harboured in the mind — after the days of tracing come the days of trusting.
And these are the curtains that rise over the subsequent life of John. We see the heart of youth swelling with the anticipation of future glories — the man of the Apocalypse, the man of Patmos. Then we see the heart of maturity — the sober, grave, and reverent senior, living entirely in the problems of his age, and striving to mould philosophy into the image of his Christ; it is the man of research, the man of the Fourth Gospel. At last there comes the final raising of the curtain; and we see a little child. He has gone back to the past. We have a series of charmingly simple letters which make the close of his life a tribute to the instincts of childhood. The harp of youth may have lost most of its strings, the accents of philosophy may have ceased to charm; but there is one primitive word that dominates, rules, over-rules — it is ‘love.’ That word — the child’s first medium of revelation — becomes to this old man the one test of all spiritual beauty, the one proof that God is true, the one unassailable evidence of the destiny and the mission of man.
MY Father, when I look at Thy Great Gallery of Christian souls, it brings a deep comfort to my heart to know that they were not always beautiful. If theirs had been a native splendour, I should have sunk beneath the glow.
But I bless Thee that these beautiful faces have been gifts from Thee. I bless Thee that in the opening of their lives they were so very plain. It is not a prodigy that gives me hope; it is a dull boy rising to distinction. Even so, my hope of loveliness is when I see beauty come from unpromising soil. I thank Thee that Thou hast let me see the dust of the earth out of which came the beloved disciple — the egotism, the vanity, the worldly ambition, the forgetfulness of others, the unrestrained passion, the dictatorial pride, the mirror of self-consciousness filling all the heart. It is an unholy picture; but it makes me throb with the promise and potency of holiness. For, this is the man who summers in the bowers of eternal beauty — in the haven of cloudless love! This is the man that rests on the bosom of Thy fair Christ! He has climbed from rags into radiance. He has soared from dust into divinity. He has mounted from the shadow into the sunshine. Therefore, my Father, there is hope for me — not of bare salvation, but of the glory of an archangel. I too may bask in Thy heights; I too may dwell in
Thy nightless skies. Only let Thy Christ stand over my dust, and it will bloom. One sight of Him will break the mirror of my vanity. One touch of Him will still the beatings of my ambition. One tone of Him will give my passions calm. One sigh of Him will shatter all my pride. One memory of Him will make me remember myself no more. Transform me by Thy Christ, O my God!