A Regal Consciousness

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to Grod; He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments: and took a towel, and girded Himself.” — John xiii. 3, 4.

What an amazing succession is here revealed! We ascend height upon height, as though we were climbing some towering Alpine range, and just as we reach the shining culmination we seem to pass into sheerest commonplace! The sequence appears altogether unworthy of its antecedents. We are taken along a road, which abounds in arresting and awful surprises, to a most ordinary and homely issue. Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God,” having this superlative consciousness, knowing ‘’ these things, what will He do? — “He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself... and began to wash the disciples’ feet.” The succession almost disappoints us, for it would appear as if the tame conclusion does not justify the majestic premises. Such violence would never be the device of fiction; fiction would have fashioned a more congenial consummation. It must be born of the stern and inevitable logic of life. Jesus of Nazareth, possessed by this unique and spacious consciousness, put on the apron of the slave, and instinctively addressed Himself to menial service.

Now, in this succession I discern a very vital principle. We need something of these antecedents if we would have something of these consequents. A big consciousness is the primary requisite for chaste and delicate service. It is the small artist who always pines for big canvas. Turner could put the infinite into a square inch. The really big man can be at home in small spaces; the man of small make-up wants nothing less than the hoardings! If you want fine detail in anything you require a full man to produce it. Passion is needed to carve a cherry stone. A poet of vast and commanding consciousness can spend a whole day fashioning the vowel-music of a single line. We need great minds for lace-like ministries. If we want fine manners we must make fine men. Tender graces belong to men whose being is the incarnation of grace. And, therefore, I am proclaiming that the order of this narrative is not an accidental coincidence, but a vital and blood-linked succession. The roomiest consciousness expresses itself in the finest and loveliest services. Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God: He riseth from supper,’ and discharged the humble duties of a slave.

And now we are ready for an inference. The only really effective way to foster and enrich mutual ministries among men is to seek the enlargement of their consciousness. If we would have finer ‘’ doing ‘^ we must seek larger “knowing,” A man’s demeanour among his fellows is determined by the range of his own mystic relationships. What is the scope and quality of his consciousness? How does he conceive his lineage and his kinships? In the secret sanctuary of his own soul, with whom does he claim communion? Answer me these questions, and I can infer all the rest. If he be a man of dwarfed and narrow consciousness the external hospitalities will be artificial or denied. Take the disciples as they stand unveiled to us in this very chapter. The doors of their consciousness are thrown open, and we are permitted to enter into their secret place. And what do we find? No far-stretching vistas of noble lineage and descent, but a mean prison of petty self-conceit, an ambition which never wings its way to a distant horizon. They are men of a tiny consciousness, and so they each and all refuse the servant’s task. We require a consciousness so extensive and glorious that, like a full and brimming spring-tide, easily filling every creek and crevice along the varied shore-line, shall spontaneously enter into every trifling gap of human need and ministry, and fill and glorify it. ‘’ Jesus knowing “— there you have the brimming, tidal consciousness — “began to wash the disciples’ feet” — and there you have the oceanic fulness in the homely creek. Expand the consciousness, and you will fill the creeks.

Now, it is the mission of Christianity to create this vast and expanded consciousness. How does the Christian religion find us? It finds us possessed of a consciousness which is little and belittling. We have lost our real and vitalising dignity, and what we commonly call our dignity is only a poor little mushroom growth which breeds upon the hotbed of feverish vanity and pride. False dignity has its shallow roots in a rubbish-heap: true dignity sucks its nutriment from the Infinite. But we may lose the finer dignity. “This, my son, is dead! ‘’ Dead to what? Dead to his own sonship: it is the atrophy of a relationship. ‘’ This, my son, is dead! ^’ That particular kinship is as if it were not; there is no communion; it is as if the wire between the provincial centre and the metropolis were cut or impaired, and all communication has ceased.” This, my son, is dead ^’; the wire between father and son is not worked, the kinship is not recognised, the life has become utterly and entirely provincial, of the earth, earthy, and the spiritual metropolis is ignored. The noble lineage is neglected, and human life toys with the slender tinsel of smaller dignities which make no blood contribution its service. “This, my son, was dead, and is alive again!” That is the conscious recovery of the lost lineage, and the birth-movement of a new life. “When he was come to himself!” He had been far away from himself, enmeshed in petty and unclean communions which had drained away his nobler sentiments. But ^’ when he was come to ihiinself ‘’ — in one still and pregnant hour, he faced his very self, and piercingly cross-examined it — “Who art thou? Thou art here among the swine, famished and disquieted, and thou wouldst fain appease thy cravings with the husks that the swine do eat! But who art thou? What is thy lineage? Whose blood runs in thy veins? Wert thou purposed for this condition and for this companionship? Who art thou?” And, in response to this recovering quest, the long-ebbed tide of regal consciousness began to flow again, and the powers of a long neglected lineage were restored. And the prodigal knowing ‘’ his pedigree, ^’ knowing ‘’ his fathers afl9.uence and goodness, and ‘’ knowing ‘^ his own poverty and shame, said to himself, ‘’ I will arise, and go to my father! ‘’ And in that recovered lineage the atrophied relationship was revitalised, communion between the metropolis and the provinces became operative again, spiritual commerce and inspiration were brought from afar, and the life regained its wealthy and protective dignity. The dwarfed and withered consciousness recovered the vast and healthful energies which were his by right of noble birth. You have it all, in forceful analogy, in Shakespeare’s story of the lapse and recovery of Prince Hal. When Prince Hal forgot his kingly lineage, and lived and moved as though no royal blood coursed in his veins, he became the boon companion of the social riff-rafif of his day, and Falstaff and his revelling boisterous crew afforded congenial society. The kings son was dead! No large and dignified relationship selected his ways and protected the purity and sweetness of his intercourse. But stride on to the further unfoldings of the great drama, where Prince Hal awakes from his tragic sleep, and his consciousness expands, and in the now illumined country of his soul there tower the longeclipsed heights of his own lineage and nobility. And Prince Hal came to himself; once dead, he is now alive again! And mark how the recovered sense of great relationships purifies and chastens his life. It is with him as with the prodigal, the swinecompany no longer affords congenial nutriment for his heightened cravings and desires. Hear this little snatch of final intercourse between Palstaff and the recovered son:

Fal. *’ Save thy grace, King Hal! my noble Hal!

My King! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!”

King.” I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers:

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!

I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,

So surfeit swelled, so old, and so profane:

But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
* * *

Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:

Presume not that I am the thing I was:

For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive

That I have turned away my former self:

So will I those that kept me company.’*

The recovery of an enlarged and kingly consciousness hallowed and refined his entire life. He found his pedigree-roll, and he moved like a king!

ITow, the Christian religion seeks to create this vast and dignified consciousness in the minds of all men. It seeks to destroy a small and poisonous self-conceit, and to replace it by a splendid self-esteem. Christianity comes to me with this ennobling ministry. It says to me, ‘’ What a mean little consciousness thou hast! How near is thine horizon! How low is thy heaven! Let me enlarge thee! ‘’ That is ever the mission and ministry of Christianity; indeed, one might say that the whole of the inspired word, from end to end, is the kindly minister of enlargement. The good Lord seeks to take down the walls of our mental prison house, and give our souls outlook and breathing-space in the infinite. And how does He do it? He does it, first of all, by recalling us to the knowledge of our pedigree: “this my son! ^’ There is royal blood in our veins. We have made sorry wrecks of ourselves, as indeed do many members of our social aristocracy, but I have never yet gazed upon an aristocratic ruin without discerning some birthmarks of an original distinction; some bit of a capital remained, some fine line of tracery about a broken window or a halfdemolished porch — something glorious was left of the original glory. And so it is with the aristocratic family of God: in our ruins there are abundant signs of the purposed temple, a broken fragment here and there suggestive of the grandeur of the finished pile; but, even if there were nothing else to remind us of our lineage, there is the neglected voice of conscience moaning over the ruin like the wail of a cold night-wind. But be all that as it may, the Lord comes to us in His gracious evangel and seeks to recall our minds to the vastness and splendour of our forgotten kinships. “Thou art a son of the Almighty, thou art a daughter of the xllmighty? Are these fitting habits, is this a suitable attire? Why these rags? Where is thine imperial purple? Where is thy kingly stride and thy splendid yet easy demeanour? ‘The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but My people do not consider! ‘Thou hast forgotten Me, and thou hast therefore lost thyself! ‘’ And so the good Lord comes to tell us that we were never purposed to be the imprisoned victims of a small ambition, circling gin-like in the petty round of the immediate day, but to step out, with fine, swinging, progressive stride, in” the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Dost thou know who thou art? Thou art the kinsman of the Almighty. Ransack thy pedigree! And ‘^ knowing” it, what shall be thy life?

‘’ Can you see the castle? “I once asked of two humble cottagers, who lived in a little house not far from one of ‘’ the stately homes of England “;” can you see the castle? “And they answered me:” Only in the winter time! “When the green foliage was thick and massy the castle was hidden, but when the nipping winter began to strip the trees and lay them bare the castle came into view. ‘’ Only in the winter time,” said my humble friends. And it is when the foliage round about our life is thick and plentiful, and we are embosomed in summer fulness and glory, that God’s castle is so frequently hidden, and we lose the mind of the spiritual and the eternal. And then He sends an apparently cruel but kindly winter, our trees are stripped and bared, and in our impoverishment we see our Fathers house! “And there arose a mighty famine in that land.... And he said, How many hired servants of my father!” The castle was in view! O, kindly sable ministry, that opens our souls to the Infinite!

But we need not wait the unveiling calamity. Let us quietly take our pedigree, keep it by us, and continually rehearse it; let us con our lineage, and nourish a holy and defensive self-esteem. And let us address noble affirmatives to our own souls. “My soul, thou hast unutterably great relationships! The Lord Almighty thinks upon thee, and loves thee, and seeks thy company! The Lord Jesus Christ is thy elder brother, and is waiting to share with thee things hidden from the foundations of the world! Rise, my soul, and humbly claim thy destined dignity! ‘^ And, believe me, that vast and ample consciousness will express itself in gentle and kindly ministries among our fellow-men. ^’ Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God: He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself, and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”