Chapter XII: The Later Lessons (1)

Different cases receive different treatment. St Luke ix. 57-62.

“And as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, I will
follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, The
foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven _have_ nests; but
the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto
another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and
bury my father. But he said unto him, Leave the dead to bury their
own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of God. And
another also said, I will follow thee, Lord; but first suffer me
to bid farewell to them that are at my house. But Jesus said unto
him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back,
is fit for the kingdom of God.”

What caught attention and led to the collocation of these two (and in St Luke three) instances was the diversity of our Lord’s treatment of cases apparently similar. The disciples saw that our Lord repelled one who was willing to follow him at once, and imperatively summoned two others who asked for delay. But though they might be puzzled at this inconsistency, they felt sure that there was a purpose and a meaning in it; so they transcribed these contrasting cases side by side, to show that for different conditions of soul Christ had different treatment ready. The second and third(283) of these colloquies probably took place at a different time from the first. They seem to have been held between our Lord and some of the disciples who were summoned to go out on the mission of the seventy, for St Luke inserts this document in his history just before his account of the mission. Thus St Matthew in his narrative puts the passage where the first incident occurs, while St Luke fixes its place by the second and third.

This _individualising_ in our Lord’s treatment of men struck the disciples as something new; they do not indeed point it out as a novel feature, for they never remark upon our Lord’s ways, but the care of the Evangelists in preserving the most striking instances of this diversity of treatment shews that it caught their notice. To our Lord’s eye every human being had a moral and spiritual physiognomy of his own. He saw at once, what it was in each man which went to make him emphatically and distinctly his very self, and He addressed Himself largely to this.

I will now consider the separate instances one by one.

St Matthew, in the passage parallel to part of this,(284) tells us that the first speaker was a scribe, and it appears that he was, in some sort, also a disciple of our Lord, for on coming to the next case St Matthew speaks of “_another_ of the disciples.”

It was, I think, in Galilee, as St Matthew tells us, that this profession of adhesion was made. At the time he speaks of, popular feeling in our Lord’s favour was at its greatest height, and it was owing to the thronging of the multitude to the Lake shore near Capernaum that our Lord gave orders to depart unto the other side. The circumstances tally perfectly with the language of the passage, for our Lord was then going into a wild country. But where the passage stands in St Luke, our Lord is travelling “as it were in secret” from a village in Samaria to Jerusalem. In this journey, rapidly made, he would not have been likely to have fallen in with the scribe at all, and, as He did not preach as He went, we cannot account for the emotion which the scribe displays; moreover, it could hardly be said that at Jerusalem, He would not have “where to lay His head.”

What most particularizes the scribe is his impulsiveness. We have here another example of that mistrust of emotional fervour which our Lord uniformly shews. The woman who cried “Blessed is the womb that bare thee,”(285) the scribe in the case before us, and St Peter, when he said, “I am ready to go with thee both to prison and to death,”(286) all are answered by our Lord in the same tone of repression.(287)

Sudden transports and ebullitions of feeling like those just named, come mainly of temperament and of passing physical conditions which subjugate the agent, and our Lord does not regard them as betokening a character on which he can depend.

It speaks well for the right feeling of this scribe that he forbears to press his suit. He divined, with the delicacy of a well bred Oriental, that our Lord’s reply, though apparently only discouraging him from following for his own sake, shewed that He held it best that he should stay behind. He is satisfied that our Lord’s judgment will be right and he yields at once. A man with less perception might have protested against the imputation on his endurance, and have declared that he would go with the Master though he should have to lie on the bare earth.

That, however genuine his devotion may have been, it was best for the scribe to stay at home is easy to understand; he had been used to an indoors life and under hardships and exposure he would have broken down; besides, while being a burden to the rest, he could, as a jaded man, have gained little in moral or spiritual growth. He was moreover, both as to culture and social caste, of a different type from the rest, and his presence would have made the party less homogeneous. Another important consideration was this; by remaining where he was, he might do that particular kind of good for which he was suited by temper and condition better than by following our Lord. The course which had taken hold of his imagination may not have been that in which he could do the best work. By remaining in Galilee and mixing with other educated men, he, like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, might help to spread tolerance and leaven the mass.

The two cases which follow, no doubt, puzzled the disciples much. Our Lord had so strenuously enforced a man’s duty to his parents, that they would have expected these pleas for delay to be admitted without a word. They are however very positively rejected, and the refusal is put in so impressive a form that I cannot but infer that our Lord intended these colloquies to be recorded.

It has commonly been taken for granted, that the father of the spokesman in the first of these cases was lying dead when our Lord met him and bade him follow; but Eastern usages almost preclude this view, for the Jews buried within twenty-four hours of the death, and for a son to be seen in public while his father was lying dead would to their minds have been highly indecent. Some think that, the father being in extreme age, the son asked to be allowed to stay with him till he died; what seems to me more likely is that the completion of the ten days of strict mourning was regarded as part of the obsequies, and that the word “buried” applies to this. The father might have been laid in the ground, but the ten days not having expired, the funeral solemnities were not considered over.

I think that our Lord meant in this case to leave a lesson, and that the lesson was this. Family ties and duties, blessed though they usually are, must not be turned into idols or suffered to hamper the “clear spirit” in its ascent to God. There is such a thing as the tyranny of family just as there is of social usage or public opinion, and from each and all of these our Lord would set men free. This kind of freedom would cost a struggle as other kinds also would, and owing to divisions caused by change of Faith even parents might be set against children and children against parents—a heavy price indeed, but one that vanishes compared with the opening of eternal life to mankind. Supposing, as I do, that these disciples were summoned by our Lord to go forth with the seventy, I find in this inflexibility which our Lord displays something quite of a piece with the order to “salute no man by the way,”(288) and to wipe off the dust from their feet when not received; all this is consistent, when taken together, and viewed as a lesson in the dignity of consecration to God and the imperative character of the charge imposed.

It is important to observe that though these disciples make excuse, and our Lord has usually little tolerance for excuses, yet, instead of being dismissed, these men are despatched to preach the Kingdom of God. This shews that the defect in them was not organic, and that it had not touched the vital centres. Their malady was of a different order from that of the guests invited to the great supper who said, “I pray thee have me excused,” for these latter made light of the invitation; while, if my view be correct, these two men were terrified and overawed by being called to duties which their imagination painted as beyond their powers. They were sensitive and distrustful of self, with highly strung nerves, and the suddenness of the call to preach the Kingdom of God took away their breath. They do not refuse, but they beg for delay. If they had obtained such a postponement it would have been all the worse for them, because they would have been working themselves into a fever all the while. They are panic stricken at the idea of going into strange districts proclaiming the Kingdom of God. They were quailing under a nerve-storm and by devising excuses they only gave it greater force; every moment that they lingered increased the hold of the morbid impression: a foreign will must come to their help and take the place of that which was failing. Such a will acts most effectively in the form of an imperative command, calling the patient to immediate positive action. This treatment is followed here. These two men, no doubt, followed as they were bidden. They yielded to authority and herein they found their cure; they, like the rest, set out with only their staves in their hands and came back exulting that the devils were subject to them through the Lord’s name. Thus each of the three personages receives the proper specific for his case; Christ divines the treatment that every particular diathesis requires.

But the crowning case of all is yet to come. It belongs to a later time than the above, and is related more at length. It was soon after our Lord had entered on his final public journey to Jerusalem, teaching and discoursing as He went, that a young man, “a certain ruler,” in St Luke’s words, ran to Him and threw himself at His feet. St Mark’s account is the most full of detail.

“And as he was going forth into the way, there ran one to him, and
kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I
may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest
thou me good? none is good save one, _even_ God. Thou knowest the
commandments, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal,
Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour thy father and
mother. And he said unto him, Master, all these things have I
observed from my youth. And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and
said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go, sell whatsoever thou
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven: and come, follow me. But his countenance fell at the
saying, and he went away sorrowful: for he was one that had great
possessions.”(289)

Behind the young man’s question there lay this view. He regarded eternal life as the reward of certain good works and the punctilious observance of what was divinely enjoined. Our Lord on the other hand represents it, not as being granted or withheld according to the record of performances, but rather as coming “of congruity”(290) along with the fitness for it which has been acquired in the whole education of a life. The man’s works have no doubt had very much to do with making him what he is, but other influences have acted as well.

Our Lord rejects the appellation “Good Master.” In these terms, scholars addressed the Rabbi at whose feet they sat, they accepted his dicta, and gave up all independent judgment of their own. But our Lord, fostering and, in some sort, respecting the individual principle in each man, would free them from fetters of all kinds, those of the Rabbis among the rest. Here He would say, “Why do you run to a human master” (for as such only could the mass regard our Lord) “to tell you what it is right to do? About this no authority can be absolute but God, and His commandments you know.” These commandments the young ruler had kept, indeed it was hardly possible that one in his position could have done otherwise, but an empty place was still left in his soul. Life he felt sure must have a higher meaning and more satisfying occupations than any he had yet found. Surely he thought “The Master cannot mean to put me off with telling me to keep the commandments;” and he was right. He had known of no other guide to virtuous life than rules of conduct, and so he had come asking for a fresh set of such rules; but a new light was breaking on his soul and what he really wanted was for the clouds to be cleared away. This young man had a noble soul and our Lord “looking on him loved him.” The scribe, spoken of above, would do best by remaining where he was; but this young man would do best by following. He was worth rescuing from the conventionalities and littlenesses of his every day life and lifting into communion with God. Had he the force to wrench asunder the bonds, slender singly but countless in number, which fastened him down, and to give up, not merely soft living—that he would abandon with joy—but the social consideration and what went with it, personal connections and all, which he would fling away by doing as Christ bade? This was the question.

Our Lord had not told the scribe to sell all he had and give to the poor. He laid no such rule on His disciples, but here it was these possessions and, more than all, the position they conferred that clogged the soul and prevented its rise. The “giving to the poor” is not enjoined merely as benevolence; in that virtue it was not likely that this young man would fail, it is only a means of disposing of the weight that drags him down; the magnitude of the sacrifice required staggered the young ruler and he went sorrowful away; but perhaps there was more hope of him than if, at our Lord’s word, he had impulsively surrendered all that he had. He may have been one of those who afterwards sold their land or houses “and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them at the Apostles’ feet.”(291) From this interview our Lord draws the moral, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God;” this is not a denunciation of the rich but rather a commiseration of them, owing to the peculiar and insidious temptations to which they are unceasingly exposed.

The Apostles are “astonished exceedingly”(292) at our Lord’s severity, they had perhaps been pleased at the prospect of the accession to their community of a man who was rich and high in station and well spoken of on all sides. As soon as they had heard him told to give up all and follow, Peter, with a touch of almost infantine nature which stamps the narrative as authentic, looking to his own case says, “Lo we have left all and have followed thee.” This was no boast or our Lord would not have answered as he does; it was rather an expression of relief at finding that this special difficulty which beset the young ruler no longer stood in their way. They had been called to leave settled homes and they had done so. Peter, we know, had a wife, and James and John had a father and mother alive. Our Lord seems to give them very positive comfort. Those who had left home or family or lands for His sake and the Gospel’s should now, in this time, receive the same a hundred fold(293) as well as life hereafter.

We seem to find here a direct promise of worldly benefit, which would be strangely out of accord with the general tenour of Christ’s words; but then comes a clause, preserved only by St Mark, which alters all the meaning. It contains but two words “with persecutions.” This appears to unsay all that was said before; for of what good, in the way of enjoyment, are family and possessions “in the midst of persecution”? Our Lord, to my thinking, in this passage has His eye on a certain time to come; the “brethren and sisters and mothers and children” must mean the great Christian family, and the “lands” are the possessions of that community which, while the Church was confined to Jerusalem, had all things common, “When the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own.”(294) In the exaltation of spirit in which that community lived, persecution would seem only a superficial ill, without which their happiness would have been too ecstatic for permanent spiritual health. Their condition as we know from the Acts was replete with joy; over and over again we are reminded of the gladness which filled the souls of the early converts. The reward promised, when qualified by this phrase, might rightly be set before the Apostles, for it was no reward at all except to spiritually minded men. These two words, which are omitted by St Luke, enable us to understand—what seems a little strange—why this promise is not accepted with joy and with eager questions as to when this happy time should come; it puzzled the hearers. Any rising exultation is checked by the words, “with persecutions,” and the hearers are perhaps set wondering why Christ often drops difficulties into His speech, just when He seems to be going to reveal what men particularly want to know, and why, when holding out a promise, He should dash the cup from their lips.

Parable of the unjust Steward. St Luke xv., xvi.

More and more, as our Lord’s work draws near the close, do we notice that His eye, somewhat diverted from what is passing about Him, is directed to a condition of things foreseen “being yet far off.” It is to provide for this that He is ever taking thought and imparting lessons; and if no state of things had come about in which these lessons might find a field of exercise, we should be at a loss to understand what they meant or why they were there. The explanation is found in the early history of the Church of Christ. In the parables and discourses of the later ministry there is one image to which our Lord again and again recurs. It is that of men labouring in a Master’s service, and most commonly in that of a Master who is away from home and may at any time come back. It may be that the Master is a great King, in which case the labourers are his ministers, and frequently there is mention made of diversity of office and of some who exercised authority over “men-servants and maid-servants.” In these cases we frequently find, either in the parable itself or in the “hard saying” which commonly closes it, an allusion to some special danger attaching to delegated power.

One such moral danger there is besetting those entrusted with any charge, and above all with a spiritual charge, which is very insidious, and more easily corrected by a lesson given in a story than by direct reproof; it is that of the severity and rigour which comes of over-scrupulosity and over-zeal. The trustee of a property will sometimes feel morally or legally bound to exact the very uttermost, and to use a hardness which he would never think of shewing in his own affairs; and by habitually constraining himself to use hardness he may become actually hard of nature himself. When we come to matters spiritual and ecclesiastical all this is true in an intensified degree.

The more exalted the priest’s notion of his function and the more genuine his appreciation of the Majesty of God, the more impossible it seems to him to abate one iota of God’s claims. Things sacred, he has been taught to think, differ in kind from things secular, and demand rules of management of their own. He holds it unlawful to make composition with offenders against God; he is the appointed upholder of the rights and dignities of the Almighty and he dares not bate a hair. Honestly awe-stricken at the tremendous responsibility, he flies where he can to a written Law, and, pointing to the letter, he takes refuge in the sacerdotal “non possumus” as an answer to every extenuating plea.

I believe that when our Lord delivered the parable of the unjust Steward, He had in view this particular evil which is all the more dangerous because it wears the garb of “jealousy for the Lord God.”

If the Apostles, feeling that they formed the personal staff of a King endowed with all power from on high, had _not_ been lifted up and shewn some touch of imperious and exclusive spirit, they must indeed have been more or less than men. That symptoms of such a spirit had appeared and caused our Lord concern may be gathered, not only from the positive instances, such as, the forbidding one who followed not with them to cast out devils in the Lord’s name; the demand to be allowed to call down fire from heaven; and the rebuking of those who brought to Christ “their babes that He might touch them;” but, even more certainly, from the repeated animadversions, in the later teaching of our Lord, on personal ambition and the over-straining of authority. Moderation, as to what may be expected from human nature, though not enforced by positive injunctions, is commended to us, after our Lord’s way, by a gentle influence everywhere present, and by a current in the teaching setting steadily towards the point in view. Our Lord had been speaking to the people in a series of parables—the lost sheep, the lost piece of silver, the Prodigal Son,—all set in one key, all bearing on the “joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,”(295) and He then turned to the disciples, with, as I believe, the same thought still uppermost in His mind, and urges them as the “pastors and masters” of the future, not, by insisting on the utmost, to make reformation too hard.

The parable of the unjust Steward was addressed, we are told, to the disciples, and as the disciples had no worldly goods at all, it cannot be the main drift of the parable, as has been sometimes maintained, to inculcate Christian prudence in the use of these. I find in this parable a closing comment in a very terse form; this leads me to suspect that the key to the main purport lies therein. The verse is this, “For the sons of this world are for their own generation wiser than the sons of the light.”(296) The drift of the parable is, indeed, to teach a kind of prudence, but not one in which _money_ is concerned. The administration of property is only the vehicle in which the lesson is conveyed. What I take to be inculcated here is true Christian wisdom as to the exercise of authority—spiritual authority above all. The moral that I discern is this; that the Apostles and their successors may do more good by shewing a little indulgence—by conceding something to weak human nature, not enforcing Jewish formalities, and not insisting too inflexibly upon every point which they think may touch the honour or the privileges of Christ’s Church—than by adhering to the strictest regard for observances, and imposing rules for sanctity of thought and conduct with which only a chosen few would be able to comply. How many have been repelled from religion by the rigour, which Priests or Puritans fancied themselves under compulsion to employ, and how has this fretful anxiety for discipline sometimes soured the natures of those who had it in charge!

I proceed to a short examination of the parable, of which I will quote the whole.

“And he said also unto the disciples, There was a certain rich
man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that
he was wasting his goods. And he called him, and said unto him,
What is this that I hear of thee? render the account of thy
stewardship; for thou canst be no longer steward. And the steward
said within himself, What shall I do, seeing that my lord taketh
away the stewardship from me? I have not strength to dig; to beg I
am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of
the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. And
calling to him each one of his lord’s debtors, he said to the
first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, A hundred
measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bond, and sit down
quickly and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much
owest thou? And he said, A hundred measures of wheat. He saith
unto him, Take thy bond, and write fourscore. And his lord
commended the unrighteous steward because he had done wisely: for
the sons of this world are for their own generation wiser than the
sons of the light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends
by means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when it shall
fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles. He that
is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that
is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much. If
therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who
will commit to your trust the true _riches_? And if ye have not
been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that
which is your own?”(297)

I do not pretend to have made out for every particular in the story of the parable a spiritual parallel after my own view, indeed I think that interpreters sometimes look for too complete a correspondence. I can quite understand that a detail might be introduced which should give life to the story and so help to fix it in the hearers’ minds, which might have no analogue in the spiritual interpretation at all. This parable is, as we are told, addressed neither to the people nor to the scribes, but to the disciples, and, as it must have been delivered during our Lord’s journeys in the north of Judæa or its neighbourhood when He was but slightly attended, it is probable that when He spoke it few beside the Apostles were by. One peculiarity, which strengthens my impression that it was uttered for the special benefit of the first hearers of it, is, that it turns on a matter which only those who were conversant with the customs of that place and time could fully understand. We know so little of the way in which estates were managed in Palestine, that the relations between the steward and his Lord are imperfectly conceived, and much of the difficulty of this parable arises from this cause: in the other parables the circumstances forming the shell of the story belong to all countries and all times alike. If now, as I have supposed, the primary use of this parable was for those who first listened to it; if it were specially intended to teach the Twelve and their immediate successors not to make too heavy demands on their converts; then it would matter less, if the story should not be so clear for men of later times.

What I regard as the point of the story is this, that it is just as unwise to exact the utmost that is due in moral and spiritual matters—casting off every one who falls short in conduct or differs in religious views—as it would be in worldly business to stand out always for the utmost penny of your rights. The honesty or dishonesty of the steward is not the central point on which the moral turns, it is his tact in remitting part of his claims with a long-sighted view. I do not think that we need now trouble ourselves with the question of who it is that answers to the “rich man which had a steward;” but that he does not represent Providence is clear from the eighth verse, which includes him among the “sons of this world;” for it is his sense in commending the steward which draws forth the moral, “The sons of this world are for their own generation wiser than the sons of the light.” This rich man’s verdict on his steward’s conduct may be taken to represent the view which practically minded men, versed in affairs and regarding matters little on their ethical side, would take of the case in hand; in fact he stands for the public opinion of his class.

Next comes the question, What was the business position of the steward? It agrees best both with the circumstances before us and with such extraneous information as we possess, to suppose that the functionary, called here steward, managed absolutely his master’s property, and that he was paid by a poundage on the net receipts, or by some similar method, so that his interest and his master’s would, generally speaking, coincide. There is no allegation against him of fraud or corrupt bargaining, and indeed, his being in danger of beggary shews that he is not supposed to have made himself a purse. He is charged with having “wasted the goods,” but this may mean in the way of over leniency with creditors or of unproductive outlay, not in that of personal appropriation. He was clearly not treated as though he were liable to criminal prosecution. It is of course meant to represent him as a _bad steward_, and the word here construed _unjust_ sometimes means little more than _bad_, as will be seen from Archbishop Trench’s note, in the sense of being ineffective and unsatisfactory to his employers.

Dr Edersheim observes as follows:(298)

“It must be borne in mind that he is still steward, and as such has full power of disposing of his master’s affairs. When, therefore, he sends for one after another of his master’s debtors, and tells each to alter the sum in the bond, he does not suggest to them forgery or fraud, but, in remitting part of the debt, whether it had been incurred as rent in kind or as the price of produce purchased, he acts, although unrighteously, yet strictly within his rights.” His master praised his astuteness, he had kept within the law and so long as this was done the current code of morality was satisfied. It is a point to be noted that no bargain is made with the debtors, he trusts to their gratitude to receive him into their houses.

A lesson prominent in the parable and which is brought out in the application is, that as he had made friends by his leniency in administering the substance of the master so they, Christian pastors and masters, should make to themselves friends out of something which is called the “mammon of unrighteousness” (about which we shall presently enquire). These friends would, out of gratitude, receive them into “the eternal tabernacles.” For these friends are to be in Heaven themselves, and they must have got there—if we are to keep to the story—not only through their pastor’s teaching and ministrations, but they must have partly owed their salvation to the loving and merciful treatment they had met with. An offender may be sometimes won over and completely changed for the better by feeling that he has been treated more kindly and leniently than he deserves. The parable implies that these might not have reached heaven if their guides had been more hard with them, if they had exacted every religious duty, and had been severe upon every failing. These men having reached the eternal tabernacles welcomed into them those who by lessening their burdens had been the means of their getting there themselves.

We now come to the hard question, What is meant by the words “the mammon of unrighteousness” or “unrighteous mammon”—which are identical? I think they must mean the temporal authority in regulating things outward which the earliest rulers of the Church necessarily possessed. The word translated “unrighteous” does not here imply inherent badness, but that the seeming wealth has only a value according to worldly judgment and worldly measure, without intrinsic worth in itself. This may corrupt its possessor as much as worldly riches. I give, in a note, Archbishop Trench’s discussion of the Greek word.(299) Riches, _as riches_, are never called unrighteous by our Lord. I do not think, however, that wealth in its common sense can be intended by the word “mammon” here, for of “silver and gold” the Apostles would have none. But though the Apostles had not money, yet they had advantages for the use of which they must answer; they had, in authority and position, what answered to wealth; they could regulate the lives of the converts; they could lay hands on those chosen for the Ministry; they could enforce or remit certain of the Laws of Moses. This power dealt with things outward,—contributions, observances, rules of discipline and the like,—and so, if, as the authorities quoted seem to shew, the word here translated _unrighteous_ may mean false, in the sense of unreal, as paste to diamond, then this possession of theirs which gave room for the exercise of clemency—this apparel of dignity—might be so termed in contrast with inward spiritual riches, which form part of the condition of the individual man.

Of such real wealth we presently hear. Soon after this “the Apostles said unto our Lord, Increase our faith,”(300) but this faith is not to be given from without; it cannot be transferred into them as though it could be poured from one receptacle into another. They are to fit themselves for it and grow into it in the exercise of their work; when attained it would move mountains, it would be a wealth that no man could take from them, something inalienably bound up in their existence, comprising the blessing of feeling God present in their souls. Here indeed is a treasure compared to which not only silver and gold, but power and authority and the right of ordering of matters in the churches, would seem trifling and unreal like glass beside the gem.

Again what is the “little” and the “much” of verse 10? According to my view the “little” answers to the externals of religious management, and the “much” to the spiritual verity which passes from soul to soul: those who are unfaithful in matters of administration which are comparatively little, will find that this spreading laxity will overgrow their whole nature and that they will soon become unfaithful in that which is great.(301)

If God’s servants had not been faithful in administering their rule, if they had not in God’s affairs used good sense and judgment, such as men employ in their own business, if they had not controlled their tempers, disregarded their personal interest and suppressed that temptation to lord it over others which goes with new-born power;—if they had not, that is, been faithful in the use of that wealth which is by comparison unreal, then, not being faithful in the discharge of this delegated trust, “that which is another’s,” who would give them that “clear-eyed Faith,” that sense that God was abiding in their hearts, which would be essentially their very “own.”

Thus we reach what I take to be the close of the parable; for the verse about serving two masters, which occurs also in the Sermon on the Mount, does not, I think, belong to this parable, but has only been _attracted_, so to say, into its place by the occurrence in both passages of the rare word “mammon,” which induced St Luke to put the two together.

I need hardly say, how far from positive I must be about the interpretation of a parable which has caused such an infinitude of comment.

Our Lord refusing to judge.

If we regard the Gospels in the light of memoirs of our Lord’s actual life upon earth, it may seem strange that so few occasions are noticed in which we are shewn our Lord dealing with the business of ordinary life. Whenever we do find Him forced to take part in any secular proceeding, He is uniformly careful to avoid such decisive action as would establish an authoritative precedent in regard to things which might be left to men to manage. Some people are now disappointed at His not having furnished a wholly new and perfect scheme of human society. So far is He from doing this, that He will not even put patches upon that which He found existing. God had supplied men with faculties to frame social institutions for themselves, and these faculties Christ would leave free to work. If He had interposed to set the world right by absolute power, it might have been asked, Why this had not been done before? and, Whether it was owing to accident that the world had been let to go wrong?

Living among the people as our Lord did, He must commonly have conformed to Jewish usages. He could hardly have performed any act without coming into contact with their ways. If the particulars of every little occurrence in His private life had been set down, perhaps we might have realised, what we now hardly perceive, that in the Gospel we are reading of Jewish life in Galilee two thousand years ago. This absence of what is called “local colour” is partly due to the omission of small particulars. An outline can be more general and more universal than a picture of minute elaboration; and the portraiture of our Lord would have lost much of its singular character of belonging to every age as its own, if the draughtsman’s attention had been distracted from what was characteristic, in order to present every detail with equal care.

Now arises the question, How far did our Lord Himself determine which among His doings and sayings should be recorded and which not? If He had Himself left a record, every word would have been regarded as inspired, and the Christian church would have been ruled, not by an indwelling Spirit, but by a book written once for all. It could not have been ruled by both,—for men cannot walk after the letter and after Faith at the same time—and that wooden fixity which characterised Rabbinical Judaism, would have affected Christianity as well. It pleased God that it should be left to men to tell the tale, and so other men may venture to use their judgment about it. But as Christ passed on His course, He must Himself have felt that this or that incident or discourse ought to be handed down. How could He effect this without miracle of any kind? It seems to me that He may have selected, as it were, matters for preservation thus. When He desired an incident to be known, “Wheresoever the Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world,”(302) He emphasizes it, by some action or declaration, as above, viz. by letting drop some vivid expression which takes hold of the minds of men. Thus the story of the denials of Peter is rendered indelible by the words, “before the cock crow twice.” The hard saying or striking expression, sometimes because it touched the quick of men’s understandings, and sometimes because it puzzled them to make it out, was thought of again and again, and remained by them as part of themselves. The incident which called the saying forth, or the colloquy in which it occurred would have to be recorded to explain the saying itself: a mass of the matrix would go along with the precious metal embedded in it. What it was not thought needful to preserve, was not enriched with these pregnant sayings and has not survived.

Hence I believe that the withdrawal from us of those “many other things that Jesus did” was not without design. The consequences of this may be of service to us in many ways, but the only one of which I shall speak is this. If every detail of our Lord’s acts had been set down, many more of those matters of daily life, on which judgment is now left open, would have been determined for us by the recorded example of our Lord. Many Christians would have felt bound to act as Christ had done, even in those concerns of ordinary life which might well be left to the individual; and many inexorable necessities—many rigid lines for which there was no occasion—would have traversed the field of Christian action.

That our Lord should have thus placed a limit on the particulars that should be recorded about Him falls in with the views taken in this book, viz. that He was anxious to preserve individual freedom of action, and that He looked forward with a general prescience to the course of events.

It is my opinion that our Lord foresaw, that, in time to come, men of different races and under different conditions would desire to fashion their lives after His, and that therefore He purposely freed the account of Himself that should come into their hands from all that was immaterial, and particularly from all that was exclusively Jewish in its garb; but whether this were so or not, the fact remains that no particular national institutions or social usages are consecrated by our Lord’s words or practice. Supposing that our Lord knew that posterity would regard His example as a sacred rule, and that He wished men not to be hampered in this way, but to retain free play of thought and will, it is hard to devise for Him a course more expedient for the end in view than that which he actually took.

Several instances occur in the Gospels, of appeal being made to our Lord about vexed matters belonging to the life of that time. Such appeals He always meets much in the same way. He puts the matter aside, either by positively refusing to judge or by giving the question an unexpected turn.

The cases to which I shall refer are, (1) the disputed inheritance, (2) the woman taken in adultery, (3) the paying of the didrachma, (4) the judgment on the tribute to Cæsar.

1. It seems to have been during the ministry in some city, either in Judæa or Peræa, when the people were pressing on one another to get near our Lord, that one of the multitude said to Him, “Master bid my brother divide the inheritance with me.”(303)

This man was influenced by some notion that he had been wronged, a notion which was very likely born of cupidity. This greed he carried always about him, it was uppermost in his mind, and when he found the crowd listening to the Preacher of righteousness, he thought that he might turn the influence of this Preacher to account for his own ends. If, by an _ex parte_ statement he could get Christ’s judgment on his side, possibly his brother would do His bidding. The Jewish Law of inheritance was plain and courts of Law were accessible, but perhaps his claim had been disallowed; at any rate he thought it a cheaper plan to get the great Preacher to interfere.

Our Lord repudiates in strong terms the notion that He is a “judge or a divider.” Judges and dividers through many ages had been provided for regular duty in a regular way; but Christ’s coming was an act standing by itself in the History of the race. It had nothing to do with the internal concerns of this people or of that. Its influence was worldwide. He was to kindle the new fire, to set alight the spiritual passion in mankind. He notes how, in the man who appeals to Him, every affection had been absorbed and killed by his covetousness. He turns to the multitude and inveighs against this insidious vice, and delivers to them the parable(304) of the rich man who would pull down his barns and build greater. There is no hidden meaning lying behind this parable as there is in those in which He set the Kingdom forth, it is only an instructive story for the hearers to carry away. Then, turning to the disciples, He puts the matter in a higher light. His moral is ever this, that to improve a man’s well being, whether of a material or a social kind, you must begin by making the man himself as good as you can. Such material well being as is needed for society will follow on the moral and spiritual improvement of individual men. “Seek ye _first_,” says He, “the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, _and all these things shall be added unto you_.”(305)

Let us suppose for a moment that our Lord had listened to this man and reviewed his case and left a judgment. What would have been the result? We should have had an isolated case of the Law of inheritance, on which an irreversible decision had been pronounced. Every code framed for Christian lands would have had to accept and embody this. Endless comments on this particular case would have been written, endless guesses at the circumstances of it would have been made, and every one who contested a distribution would have endeavoured to shew that this decision covered his claims. Moreover, whenever the Christian missionary came to a new country, instead of holding a purely spiritual position he would have brought with him a new law of inheritance as part of the new religion, and people could not have accepted his teaching without changing usages to which they clung.

(2) Next comes the case of the woman taken in adultery (see p. 370). In the criminal jurisdiction of Moses the leading thought was to “put away evil;” but men had grown less cruel, and pity for the offender and hope of his reformation were coming into play. If the Lord had given judgment either in one way or the other we should have been landed in endless perplexity. The difficult questions of the distinction between a sin and a crime, and whether it is advisable for a state to enforce morality, would have been complicated by a Divine decision in a case of which the relation would not, unless the account were fuller than the Gospel notices usually are, contain all the particulars that are material.

The two cases that remain refer to polity rather than to law.

(3) The “didrachma” were levied apparently as a tax for the Temple service, enforced by custom, if not by positive law. Those who collected it ask Peter if our Lord does not pay this annual sum, and Peter at once declares that He does. But our Lord will not leave the matter so. The money shall be paid, because to refuse the payment would waken ill feeling and give an impression altogether false; but our Lord will not sanction such a payment with His authority, without protest and explanation. It might have been made the ground of supporting many kinds of religious impost if He had. He puts the question in such a light that His practice can never be quoted in support of any such demand.

(4) Those who came asking whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar, like those who brought the woman taken in adultery, had a hostile intent. They asked with a view only to entangle, not with a desire to learn. Our Lord always baffles those who address Him in this spirit. In dealing with the question of the tribute, He avoids each horn of the dilemma and teaches a grand lesson to the people who heard. For they were to render to God “the things that were God’s,” that is to say, not a man’s money, but the whole man himself, for he is made in God’s image and carries the likeness of it in his personality, just as the coin carries on its face the name and the impress of Cæsar. Thus, in these words, the whole man is claimed as God’s own by Christ.

If our Lord had either enforced or forbidden these two payments, His authority, appealed to on this side or that, would have further embittered questions which are bitter enough of themselves. Men have often pored over Scripture to extract an authority for what they wanted to do, and the case of the tribute money, notwithstanding our Lord’s answer, has been pressed into the service of the upholders of imperial power.

Dr Bryce speaking of the Mediæval Empire says:—

“From the New Testament the authority and eternity of Rome herself
was established. Every passage was seized on where submission to
the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where
obedience had actually been rendered to imperial officials, a
special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself
had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through
Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying
tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate, ‘Thou couldest have no
power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.’ ”

In finishing this notice I must remark that there is one social institution about which our Lord does not shun to speak; this is marriage. He upholds the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage tie more stringently than did the Jewish Law. The scribe who came “making trial” of our Lord is confounded—not by being put off without an answer—as usually happens in these cases, but by the singular positiveness of the reply.

“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for
fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he
that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.”(306)

This exception is not inconsistent with the principles governing our Lord’s acts. Christ’s teaching was meant for all mankind, and Christianity would have been less adapted for universal use if it had been bound up with particular institutions. But marriage is not a particular institution, it is declared to be as universal as the human race; it goes down deeper than all divisions, it belongs to the stock below the point where the branches sprout. Thus Christ’s recognition of the sanctity of marriage does not hamper human legislation, or prevent the growth of Humanity in any manner consistent with its health.

Close by the side of this matter lies another on which I must only say a word. It is one of the Gesta Christi that He has put woman into her right place. Slowly and quietly has this come about, as a growth from seed turned up in the soil, and not a construction upreared by men,—as indeed, with the changes that are wrought by Christ is mostly the way. He says not a word about the social condition of women or their position in the eye of the Law; He puts forward no grievances, He asserts no claim. To have done either one or the other in His day would have been to bring about a violent upheaval, which would have destroyed all chance of the germination of the seed. Nowhere do men cling to old usages with more tenacity than in the matter of relations between sex and sex. These variations of usage may rest upon solid grounds, and it would have stood in the way of the adaptability of what He left to the needs of all races and all times, if by one rigid ordinance He had enforced uniformity, even in the justest way. But though our Lord says little about the right place of women yet He treats them as though that proper place were already theirs; for parts are given them in His great world-drama consistent with those they take in the common life of family and home.(307)