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05 - Jesus of History by Terrot R. Glover · Jesus of History

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Speaker 1: Chapter four of The Jesus of History by t our Lover.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter four,
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Speaker 1: The Teacher and his Disciples. It was as a teacher
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Speaker 1: that Jesus of Nazareth first began to gather disciples round him.
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Speaker 1: But to understand the work of the teacher, we must
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Speaker 1: have some general impression of the world to which he came.
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Speaker 1: The background. Will harp Us understand what had to be
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Speaker 1: done and what it was he meant to do. Bishop Gore,
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Speaker 1: in a book recently published, suggested that the belief that
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Speaker 1: God is love is not axiomatic. Many of us take
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Speaker 1: it for granted as the point at which religion naturally begins,
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Speaker 1: But as he emphasized, it is not an obvious truth.
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Speaker 1: It is something of which we have to be convinced,
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Speaker 1: something that has to be made good to men. Unless
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Speaker 1: we bear this in mind, we shall miss a great
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Speaker 1: deal of what Jesus has really done. By assuming that
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Speaker 1: he was not needed to do it. Out of a
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Speaker 1: darker world than ours, came this new spring. We must
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Speaker 1: look at the world as it was when Jesus came.
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Speaker 1: In a later chapter, we shall have to consider more
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Speaker 1: fully the religions of the Roman world. One or two
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Speaker 1: points may be anticipated. First of all, we have to
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Speaker 1: realize what a hard world it was. Men and women
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Speaker 1: are harder than we sometimes think, and the natural hardness
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Speaker 1: to which the human heart grows of itself needed more
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Speaker 1: correction than it had in those days. Among the many
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Speaker 1: papyrus documents that have been found in late years in Egypt,
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Speaker 1: documents that have pictured for us the life of Egypt,
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Speaker 1: and have recorded for us also the language of the
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Speaker 1: New Testament in a most illuminative way, there is one
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Speaker 1: that illustrates only too aptly the unconscious hardness of the times.
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Speaker 1: It is a letter, no literary letter, no letter that
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Speaker 1: anyone would ordinarily have thought of keeping. It has survived
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Speaker 1: by accident. It was written by an Egyptian Greek to
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Speaker 1: his wife. She lived somewhere up the country, and he
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Speaker 1: had gone to Alexandria. She had been expecting a baby
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Speaker 1: when he left, and he wrote a rough, but not
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Speaker 1: an unkind letter to her. He writes, Hilarian to Alice, greetings,
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Speaker 1: know that we are still even now in Alexandria. Do
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Speaker 1: not fidget if at the general return I stay in Alexandria.
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Speaker 1: I pray and beseech you take care of the little child,
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Speaker 1: and as soon as we have our wages, I will
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Speaker 1: send you up something. If you were delivered, if it
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Speaker 1: was a male, let it live. If it was a female,
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Speaker 1: cast it out. How can I forget you? So don't fidget.
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Speaker 1: The letter is not an unkind one. It is sympathetic, masculine,
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Speaker 1: direct and friendly. And then it ends with this suggestion
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Speaker 1: inconceivable to us today, that if the baby is a girl,
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Speaker 1: it need not be kept. It can be put out,
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Speaker 1: either on the land or in the river, left to
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Speaker 1: kite or crocodile. The evidence of satirists is generally to
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Speaker 1: be discounted because they tend to emphasize the exceptional, and
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Speaker 1: it is not the exceptional thing that gives the character
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Speaker 1: of an age or of a man. It is the
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Speaker 1: kind of thing that we take for granted and assumed
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Speaker 1: to be normal, that shows our character or gives the
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Speaker 1: note of the day, and what we omit to notice
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Speaker 1: may be as revealing. In the plays of the Athenian
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Speaker 1: comic poets of the third and fourth centuries b c.
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Speaker 1: We find too wearisomeness. One recurring plot, the heroine turns
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Speaker 1: out to be not just a common girl, but the
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Speaker 1: daughter of the best family in Athens exposed when she
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Speaker 1: was a baby. When Plato sketched his ideal constitution, in
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Speaker 1: addition to the mating of suitable pairs to be decided
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Speaker 1: by government, he added that if the offspring were not
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Speaker 1: good enough, it should be put away where it would
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Speaker 1: not be found again. Aristotle allowed the same practice. The
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Speaker 1: most cultured race on earth freely exposed its infants, And
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Speaker 1: this left of Hilarian to Alice. A dated letter by
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Speaker 1: the way of September or October in the year one
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Speaker 1: a d. Makes it clear that the practice of exposure
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Speaker 1: of children still prevailed. And there is other evidence which
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Speaker 1: need not now detain us. It is a hard world
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Speaker 1: where kind people or good people can think of such
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Speaker 1: things as ordinary and natural. Evidence of a character of
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Speaker 1: an age is given by the treatment of criminals, and
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Speaker 1: that age was characterized by crucifixion. They would take a
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Speaker 1: human being, spread him out and a cross on the ground,
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Speaker 1: drive nails through his hands and feet, and then the
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Speaker 1: cross was raised. The agony of the victim during the
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Speaker 1: movement is not to be imagined. It was made fast,
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Speaker 1: and there the victim hug suspended between heaven and earth,
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Speaker 1: to live or die at his leisure. By and by
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Speaker 1: crows would gather around him. I have been good, said
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Speaker 1: the slave. Then you have your reward, says the Latin poet.
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Speaker 1: You will not feed the crows on the cross. There
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Speaker 1: is a very striking phrase in Saint Matthew. And sitting
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Speaker 1: down they watched him. There the soldiers nailed three men
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Speaker 1: to crosses and sat down beneath them to dice for
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Speaker 1: their clothes. Our tolerances, like our utterances, come out of
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Speaker 1: the abundance of the heart, and stamp us for what
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Speaker 1: we are. We cannot easily realize all that slavery meant
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Speaker 1: when we read in the Fourth Gospel that the Lamb
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Speaker 1: of God taketh away the sin of the world. That
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Speaker 1: was written before Jesus Christ had abolished slavery, for we
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Speaker 1: remember it was done by his people against the judgment
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Speaker 1: of the bixperts. Slavery met robbing the man of every
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Speaker 1: right that nature gave him. And as Homer said long ago,
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Speaker 1: far seeing, Zeus takes away half a man's manhood. When
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Speaker 1: he brings the day of slavery upon him, he became
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Speaker 1: a thief, a liar, dirty and bad and with the
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Speaker 1: woman it was still worse. The slave woman was a
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Speaker 1: little lower than the animal. She might not have offspring.
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Speaker 1: It was natural, Men said Nature had designed certain races
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Speaker 1: to be slaves. Slavery was written in nature. It was
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Speaker 1: nature's law. These were not the thoughts of vulgar people,
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Speaker 1: but of some of the best of the Greeks. Not
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Speaker 1: of all, indeed, But society was organized on the basis
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Speaker 1: of slavery. It was an accepted axiom of all social
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Speaker 1: and economic life. As to the spiritual background for the present,
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Speaker 1: let us postpone the heathen world and consider the Jews,
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Speaker 1: who represented, in some ways the world's highest at this period.
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Speaker 1: Modern scholarship is shedding fresh light on the literature and
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Speaker 1: ideas that were prevalence between the end of the Old
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Speaker 1: Testament and the beginning of the New. But what uncertainty
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Speaker 1: about God? Why some people should think that it was
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Speaker 1: easier to believe in God in those days than now?
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Speaker 1: I do not see. Far less was known of God.
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Speaker 1: The record of his doings was not so long as
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Speaker 1: it is for us, and it was not so well known.
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Speaker 1: No one could understand what God meant if he was
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Speaker 1: quite clear himself. Look at what he did with the nation.
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Speaker 1: He chose Israel, he established the Kingdom of David. They
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Speaker 1: did not get on very well, and at last were
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Speaker 1: carried away into captivity in Babylon. So much he did
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Speaker 1: for his people, and when he brought them back again
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Speaker 1: to the promised land, it was to a very trying
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Speaker 1: and difficult situation, and were still followed after Neemier's day.
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Speaker 1: Alexander the Great Conquest of the East left a Macedonian
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Speaker 1: dynasty ruling those regions, and one of their great kings,
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Speaker 1: Antiochus Epiphanes, tried to stamp out the religion of Jehovah altogether.
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Speaker 1: The Book of Daniel is a record of that persecution.
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Speaker 1: About one hundred and sixty six BC, the Maccabean brothers
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Speaker 1: delivered at Israel and rescued the religion of Jehovah, and
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Speaker 1: a kingdom of a sort was established with them. But
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Speaker 1: the grandsons of the liberators became tyrants. What did God
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Speaker 1: mean out of all the promises to Israel, to the
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Speaker 1: house of David, This is what comes follows a foreign
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Speaker 1: king and an easy light. And the Romans are over
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Speaker 1: all souzerains and rulers in despair of the present, men
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Speaker 1: began to forecast the future. A time will surely come,
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Speaker 1: they said, when God will give an anointed one, the Messiah,
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Speaker 1: he will set all Israel free. He will make Israel
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Speaker 1: rule the world instead of the Romans. He will gather
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Speaker 1: together the scattered of Israel from the four winds, reunite
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Speaker 1: and assemble God's people in triumph in Palestine. And then
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Speaker 1: when the prophet paused, a plain man spoke, I don't
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Speaker 1: care if he does. My father all his life looked
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Speaker 1: forward to that. What does it matter now if God
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Speaker 1: redeems his people or if he does not. My father
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Speaker 1: is dead. The answer was, why should your father not
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Speaker 1: come with the redeemed Israel? But what evidence is there
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Speaker 1: for that does God care for people beyond the grave?
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Speaker 1: Is their personal immortality? That became the anxious question. But
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Speaker 1: is this Kingdom of the Messiah to be an earthly
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Speaker 1: or a heavenly kingdom? Will it be in Jerusalem or
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Speaker 1: in heaven? Are you quite sure that there is any
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Speaker 1: distinction in the other world between good and bad, between
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Speaker 1: jew and gentile. Some people thought the kingdom would be
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Speaker 1: in Jerusalem. Others said it would be in heaven, and
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Speaker 1: added that the Jews will look down and see the
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Speaker 1: gentiles in hell, something worth seeing at last. But after
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Speaker 1: all it was still guesswork. Perhaps was the last word.
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Speaker 1: When the question is asked, was Jesus the Messiah? The
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Speaker 1: obvious reply is which Messiah? For there seems to have
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Speaker 1: been no standard idea of the Messiah. The Messiah was
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Speaker 1: on the whole as vague a term as in modern politics,
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Speaker 1: socialism or tariff reform. Neither of them has come. Perhaps
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Speaker 1: they never will come, and nobody knows what they will
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Speaker 1: be till they do come. Jesus is not what they expected.
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Speaker 1: A Jewish girl at an American student conference a year
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Speaker 1: or two ago said about Jesus, I do not think
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Speaker 1: he is the Messiah, but I do love him. Of
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Speaker 1: course he was not in her Jewish sense. The term
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Speaker 1: was a vague one. The main point was that men
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Speaker 1: were uncertain about God. God was unintelligible. They did not
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Speaker 1: understand his ideas, either for the nation or for the individual.
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Speaker 1: God's plans miscarried with such fatality, or if he had
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Speaker 1: some deeper design, it was still all guesswork. It seemed likely,
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Speaker 1: or at least right, that he should achieve somehow the
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Speaker 1: final damnation of the Gentiles, the Romans, and the rest
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Speaker 1: of us. But nothing was very clear in the meantime.
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Speaker 1: If God was going to damn the Gentiles in the
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Speaker 1: next world, why should not the Jews do it? In
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Speaker 1: this Human nature has only too ready an answer for
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Speaker 1: such a question, as we can read in too many
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Speaker 1: dark pages of history, in the stories of wars and
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Speaker 1: religious persecutions. The uncertainty about God in Judaism reacted on
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Speaker 1: life and made it hard. Even the virtues of men
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Speaker 1: were difficult. They were apt to be nerveless and uncertain
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Speaker 1: because their aim was uncertain and they wanted inspiration. Of course,
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Speaker 1: there are always kindly hearts, but a man will never
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Speaker 1: put forth quite his best for an uncertainty. There was
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Speaker 1: a want of center about their virtues, a want of faith,
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Speaker 1: and as a result they were too largely self directed.
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Speaker 1: A man was virtuous in order to secure himself in
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Speaker 1: case God should be awkward. There was no sufficient relation
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Speaker 1: between God and man. God was judged, no doubt, but
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Speaker 1: his character could be known from his attitude to the Gentiles.
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Speaker 1: Could a man count on God? And how far could
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Speaker 1: he rely on God? Supporting him on God? Wishing to
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Speaker 1: have him in this world? And the next, no, not
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Speaker 1: with any certainty. It comes to a fundamental unbelief in God,
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Speaker 1: resting as Jesus or on an essential misconception of God's nature,
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Speaker 1: And this resulted in the spoiling of life. Men did
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Speaker 1: not use God. Where your treasure is there, will your
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Speaker 1: heart be also, Jesus said, And it was not in God.
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Speaker 1: Men's interest and belief were elsewhere. Now, the first thing
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Speaker 1: that Jesus had to do as a teacher was to
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Speaker 1: induce men to rethink God. Men he saw do not
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Speaker 1: want precepts. They do not want ethics, morals, or rules.
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Speaker 1: What they do need is to rethink God, to rediscover him,
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Speaker 1: to re explore him, to live on the basis of
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Speaker 1: relation with God. There is one striking difference between Christianity
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Speaker 1: and the other religions, in that the others start off
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Speaker 1: with the idea that God is known. Christians do not,
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Speaker 1: so start exploring God on the lines of Jesus Christ,
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Speaker 1: rethinking God all the time, finding him out. That is
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Speaker 1: what Jesus meant us to do. If Jesus had merely
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Speaker 1: put before men an ethical code, that would have been
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Speaker 1: to do what the moralists had done before him. What
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Speaker 1: moralists always do with the same naive idea that they
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Speaker 1: are doing a great deal for us. His object was
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Speaker 1: far more fundamental. The first thing was to bring people
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Speaker 1: onto the very center, and to get there at once.
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Speaker 1: To get men away from the accumulation of occasional and
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Speaker 1: self directed virtues, from the self sustained life, from self
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Speaker 1: acquired righteousness, and to bring them to face the fact
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Speaker 1: of God, to realize the seriousness of God and of life,
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Speaker 1: and to see God. When he preached self denial, he
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Speaker 1: did not mean the modern virtue self denial, with all
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Speaker 1: its pettinesses, but a genuine negation of self, a total
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Speaker 1: forgetfulness of self, by having the mind set entirely on
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Speaker 1: God and God's purposes, a readjustment of everything with God
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Speaker 1: as the real center of all. This is always difficult.
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Speaker 1: It is not less difficult where the conception of God is,
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Speaker 1: as it was with Jesus, entirely spiritual. The whole experience
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Speaker 1: of mankind was against the idea that there could be
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Speaker 1: a religion at all without priest, sacrifice, alter, temple, and
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Speaker 1: the like. There is a very minimum of symbol and
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Speaker 1: cult in the teaching of Jesus, so little that the
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Speaker 1: ancient world thought the Christians are atheists because they had
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Speaker 1: no image, no temple, no sacrifice, no ritual, nothing that
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Speaker 1: suggested religion in the ordinary sense of the word. We
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Speaker 1: shall realize the difficulty of what Jesus was doing when
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Speaker 1: we grasp that he meant people to see God into
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Speaker 1: dependently of all their conventional aids. To lead them to
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Speaker 1: commit themselves in act to God on such terms was
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Speaker 1: a still far more difficult thing to believe in God
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Speaker 1: in a general sort of way. To believe in providence
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Speaker 1: at large is a very different thing from getting yourself crucified.
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Speaker 1: In the faith that God cares for you, and yet
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Speaker 1: somehow wishes you to endure crucifixion. How far will men
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Speaker 1: commit themselves to God? Jesus means them to commit themselves
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Speaker 1: to God right up to the hilt, as Bunyan put
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Speaker 1: it to hazard all for God to clap decision for God,
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Speaker 1: obedience to God, that is the prime thing action on
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Speaker 1: the basis of God and of God's care for the individual.
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Speaker 1: His purpose that this shall not be merely the religion
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Speaker 1: of choice, spirits or of those immediately around him, but
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Speaker 1: shall be the one religion of all the world, makes
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Speaker 1: the tasks to a vaster. He means not merely to
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Speaker 1: touch the Jews. Whether he says so in explicit terms
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Speaker 1: or not, it is implied in all that he says
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Speaker 1: and does that the new movement should be far wider
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Speaker 1: than anything the world had ever seen. It was to
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Speaker 1: cover the whole of mankind. He meant that every individual
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Speaker 1: in all the world should have the center of gravity
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Speaker 1: of his thinking shifted again. He had to think of
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Speaker 1: a recreation of the language of men, till God should
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Speaker 1: be seen as a new word, owur a constant problem
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Speaker 1: is to give his word, his value, his meaning. He
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Speaker 1: meant that men should learn their religious vocabulary again, till
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Speaker 1: the words they used should suggest His meanings to their minds.
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Speaker 1: Something of this was achieved when some of his disciples
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Speaker 1: came to him and said, teach us to pray. As
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Speaker 1: John taught his disciples. Further, he had to secure that
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Speaker 1: men should begin the rethinking of all life, personal, social,
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Speaker 1: and national from the very foundations on new lines, what
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Speaker 1: is called a transvaluation of all values. With a new center,
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Speaker 1: everything has to be thought out anew into what Saint
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Speaker 1: Paul calls the fullness of Christ. Then, finally the question
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Speaker 1: comes how to secure continuity, will the movement outlast his
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Speaker 1: personal influence? These are his problems, large enough, every one
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Speaker 1: of them. How does he face them? The Gospel began
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Speaker 1: with friendship, and we know from common life what that
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Speaker 1: is and how it works. Old acquaintance and intimacy are
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Speaker 1: the heart of it. The mind is on the alert
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Speaker 1: when we meet the stranger, quick and eager to master
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Speaker 1: his outlook and his ways of thought, to see who
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Speaker 1: and what he is. It is critical, self protective, rather
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Speaker 1: than receptive. But as time goes on we notice less,
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Speaker 1: we study the man less as we see more of him.
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Speaker 1: Yet in this easier and more careless intercourse, when the
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Speaker 1: mind is off guard, it is receiving a host of
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Speaker 1: unnoticed impressions which in the long run may have extraordinary influence.
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Speaker 1: Pleasant and easy going, a perpetual source of interest and
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Speaker 1: the rest of mind. The friendship continues till we find,
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Speaker 1: to our surprise that we are changed stage by stage.
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Speaker 1: As one comes to know one's friend by unconscious and
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Speaker 1: freely given sympathy, one lives the other man's life, sees
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Speaker 1: and feels things as he does, slips into his language
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Speaker 1: and by degrees into his thoughts, and then wakes up
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Speaker 1: to find oneself as it were remade by the other's personality.
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Speaker 1: So close has been the identification with a man we
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Speaker 1: grew to love. This is what we find in our
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Speaker 1: own lives, and we find it in the Gospels. A
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Speaker 1: sentence from Saint Augustine's confessions gives us the key to
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Speaker 1: the whole story. Said ex animata alio accented to alias,
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Speaker 1: one loving spirit sets another on fire. Jesus brings men
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Speaker 1: to the new expiration of God, to the new commitment
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Speaker 1: of themselves to God, simply by the ordinary mechanism of
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Speaker 1: friendship and love. This in plain English, is, after all,
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Speaker 1: the idea of the incarnation, friendship and identification. Jesus has
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Speaker 1: a genius for friendship, a gift for understanding the feelings
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Speaker 1: of men. Look for example, and the quick word to Gyrus.
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Speaker 1: As soon as the message comes to him that his
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Speaker 1: daughter is dead, Jesus wheels round on him at once
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Speaker 1: with a word of courage. This quickness in understanding, in
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Speaker 1: feeling with people marks him throughout. An instinctive care for
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Speaker 1: other people's small necessities is a great mark of friendship,
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Speaker 1: and Jesus has it. We find him saying to his
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Speaker 1: disciples come ye yourselves apart privately into a desert place
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Speaker 1: and rest. Awhile, what a beautiful suggestion. He himself, it
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Speaker 1: is clear from the records, felt the need of privacy,
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Speaker 1: being by oneself, of quiet, and he took his quiet
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Speaker 1: hours in the open, in the wild, where there was
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Speaker 1: solitude in nature, and there he would take his friends.
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Speaker 1: There were so many coming and going that they had
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Speaker 1: no leisure to eat. And Jesus says to them, in
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Speaker 1: his friendly way, let us get out of this away
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Speaker 1: by ourselves to a quiet place. What you want is rest.
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Speaker 1: What a beautiful idea to go camping on the hillside
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Speaker 1: under the trees, to rest, and with him, to share
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Speaker 1: the quiet of the lonely place. It is not the
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Speaker 1: only time when he offers to give people rest. Come
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Speaker 1: unto me, and I will give you rest. How strange
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Speaker 1: when one thinks of the restless activity of Christian people today,
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Speaker 1: with typewriters and conventions and every modern method of consuming
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Speaker 1: energy and time. How sympathetic he is. We may notice
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Speaker 1: again his respect for the reserve of other people on
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Speaker 1: the whole, How slowly Jesus comes to work with men.
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Speaker 1: He never rushes the human spirit. He respects men's personalities.
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Speaker 1: Men and women are never pawns with him. He does
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Speaker 1: not think of them in masses. The masses appeal to him,
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Speaker 1: but that is because he sees the individual all the time.
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Speaker 1: To one of his disciples, he says, I have prayed
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Speaker 1: for thee. What a contrast to the conventional friend of
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Speaker 1: man in the abstract, with all that hangs upon him,
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Speaker 1: he has the leisure to pray intensely for a single man.
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Speaker 1: It gives us an idea of his gifts and friendship.
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Speaker 1: His faith in his people is quite remarkable when we
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Speaker 1: think of it. He believes in his followers. He shares
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Speaker 1: with them some of the deepest things in his life.
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Speaker 1: He counts them fit to share his thought of God.
25:34
Speaker 1: He makes it quite clear to them how he trusts them.
25:37
Speaker 1: He puts before them the tremendous work that he has
25:40
Speaker 1: to do, work more appealing in its vastness the more
25:44
Speaker 1: one studies it. And then he tells them that he
25:47
Speaker 1: is trusting the whole thing with them. What a faith
25:52
Speaker 1: implies their moral capacity? What acceptance of the dim beginnings
25:56
Speaker 1: of the character that was to be Christian spoken of
26:00
Speaker 1: his apparently unjustified faith in Peter? What names he can
26:05
Speaker 1: give his friends as a result of his faith in them.
26:09
Speaker 1: Ye are the light of the world, he says, the
26:11
Speaker 1: salt of the earth. When we remind ourselves of his
26:15
Speaker 1: clear vision, his genius for seeing fact, How much must
26:19
Speaker 1: such praises have meant to those men? Think how he
26:24
Speaker 1: gives himself to them in earnest, how he is at
26:27
Speaker 1: their disposal, He is theirs. They can cross question him
26:32
Speaker 1: at leisure. They can tell him that the Pharisees did
26:34
Speaker 1: not like what he said. They doubt with Peter the
26:38
Speaker 1: wisdom of his open speech. They criticize him if they
26:42
Speaker 1: do not understand his parable They ask what he means,
26:46
Speaker 1: and keep on asking till he makes it plain. He
26:50
Speaker 1: is in no hurry. He is the master and their teacher,
26:55
Speaker 1: and he is at the service of the slowest of them.
27:00
Speaker 1: But there is another sight of friendship. For one great
27:03
Speaker 1: part of it is taking what our friends do for us,
27:06
Speaker 1: as well as doing things for them. How he will
27:09
Speaker 1: take what they have to give. He lets them manage
27:12
Speaker 1: the boat while he sleeps, and go and prepare for him,
27:16
Speaker 1: and see to the passover meal. The women we read
27:20
Speaker 1: ministered to him of their substance. There is a very
27:24
Speaker 1: significant phrase in Saint Luke, where he says to them
27:27
Speaker 1: at the end, ye are they that have continued with
27:30
Speaker 1: me in my temptations? He tells them there that they
27:34
Speaker 1: have helped him. How apparently by being with him is
27:40
Speaker 1: not that friendship. In the same chapter we find an
27:45
Speaker 1: utterance that reveals the depth of his feeling for his friends,
27:48
Speaker 1: with desire, I have desired a Greek rendering of Semitic
27:52
Speaker 1: intensive tweat this passover with you before I suffer. They
27:56
Speaker 1: are to help him again by being with him, and
27:59
Speaker 1: he has longed for it, he says. The Gospel of
28:04
Speaker 1: John sums up the whole story in a beautiful sentence. Jesus,
28:09
Speaker 1: having loved his own which were in the world, loved them,
28:13
Speaker 1: and to the end Augustin is right. One loving spirit
28:19
Speaker 1: sets another on fire. Note again the word he uses
28:24
Speaker 1: in speaking to them techner. It is a diminutive a
28:29
Speaker 1: little disguised as children in our English version. It reappears
28:34
Speaker 1: in the Fourth Gospel in even more diminutive forms, with
28:37
Speaker 1: a particularly tender suggestion. The word of Mark answers more
28:42
Speaker 1: closely than anything I know to boys, as we use
28:45
Speaker 1: it in the Canadian universities, men or undergraduates, is the
28:50
Speaker 1: words in the English universities students in Scotland and in India,
28:55
Speaker 1: in Canada, we said, boys, and I think we get
28:57
Speaker 1: nearer and like one another better with that easy name.
29:02
Speaker 1: And it was that easy, pleasant word, or one very
29:06
Speaker 1: like it, that he used with them. Nor is it
29:09
Speaker 1: the only one of the kind. Fear not, little flock,
29:13
Speaker 1: he said, Do not the diminutives mean something? Do they
29:18
Speaker 1: not take us into the midst of a group where
29:21
Speaker 1: friendship is real and in the center is the friendliest
29:26
Speaker 1: figure of all. Look for a moment at the men
29:31
Speaker 1: who followed him, at the type he calls. They are
29:35
Speaker 1: simple people in the main, warm hearts and impulsive natures.
29:39
Speaker 1: The politics of Simon the Zealot might at one time
29:42
Speaker 1: have been summed up as the knife and plenty of it,
29:45
Speaker 1: a simple and direct enough type of political thought in
29:48
Speaker 1: all conscience, however hopeless and ineffectual, as history showed. But
29:54
Speaker 1: he gave up his politics for the friendship of Jesus.
29:58
Speaker 1: Peter again is the champion example of the impulsive nature.
30:03
Speaker 1: Why Jesus called James and John the sons of Thunder?
30:06
Speaker 1: I am not sure, Doctor Rendell Harris thinks, because they
30:10
Speaker 1: were twins. Other people find something of a thunderstorm in
30:14
Speaker 1: their ideas and outlook. The publican in the group is
30:17
Speaker 1: much of the same type. He is ready to leave
30:20
Speaker 1: his business and his custom house at a word, once more,
30:24
Speaker 1: the impulsive nature and the simple. It is possible that
30:28
Speaker 1: Jesus looked also to another type of which he gained
30:31
Speaker 1: very little in his lifetime. For he speaks of the
30:35
Speaker 1: scribe who has turned disciple again and brings out of
30:37
Speaker 1: his treasure things new and old, the more complicated type
30:41
Speaker 1: of the trained scholar, full of the old learning, but
30:45
Speaker 1: open to new views. In the meantime, he draws to
30:49
Speaker 1: him people with the warm heart, yes, he said, but
30:53
Speaker 1: cultivate the cool head again and again. He will have
30:58
Speaker 1: men count the cost, know what they are doing, be
31:02
Speaker 1: rid of delusions before they follow him. What did they expect?
31:06
Speaker 1: They had all sorts of dreams of the future. When
31:10
Speaker 1: we first find them. There is friction among them, which
31:13
Speaker 1: is not unusual in a group of men with ambitions.
31:17
Speaker 1: Even at the last supper. Their minds run on thrones.
31:21
Speaker 1: They are haunted by taboos. Peter long after boats that
31:26
Speaker 1: nothing common or unclean has entered his lips. They fail
31:30
Speaker 1: to understand him. Are ye also without understanding? He asks,
31:36
Speaker 1: not without surprise. At the very end they run away.
31:43
Speaker 1: There then is the group. What is to be the method?
31:46
Speaker 1: There is not much method, as Harnuck says about the
31:50
Speaker 1: spread of the Early Church, a living faith needs no
31:53
Speaker 1: special methods. A sentence worth remembering. Infinite love in ordinary
32:00
Speaker 1: course is another phrase of Harnarch in describing the life
32:03
Speaker 1: of the early Church. It began with Jesus. He chose twelve,
32:10
Speaker 1: says Mark, that they may be with him. That is all.
32:14
Speaker 1: And they are with him under all sorts of circumstances.
32:19
Speaker 1: The son of Man hath not where to lay his head.
32:22
Speaker 1: They saw him in privation, fatigued, exhausted, with every chance
32:28
Speaker 1: to see weakness in his character. They did not find
32:31
Speaker 1: much amiss with him. That is surely significant. They lived
32:36
Speaker 1: with him all the time in a genuine human friendship,
32:39
Speaker 1: a real and progressive intimacy. They were with him in
32:44
Speaker 1: popularity and in unpopularity. They were with him in danger
32:49
Speaker 1: when Herod tried to kill him, and he went out
32:51
Speaker 1: of Herod's territory. But friendship depends not only in great moments.
32:57
Speaker 1: It means companionship in the trivial too. It means idle
33:01
Speaker 1: hours together, partnership in commonplace things, meal and garden chares,
33:07
Speaker 1: as well as books and crises, ordinary life, ordinary talk,
33:12
Speaker 1: gossip chat, every kind of conversation about herods and Roman
33:17
Speaker 1: governess and the Zealots, custom house memories, tells of the
33:22
Speaker 1: fisherman's life on the lake, stories of neighbors and home
33:26
Speaker 1: rumors about the Galileans who were murdered by Pilot. All
33:30
Speaker 1: the babbling talk of the bazaar is round Jesus and
33:33
Speaker 1: his group, and some of it breaks in on them,
33:36
Speaker 1: and his attitude to it. All is to those men
33:39
Speaker 1: a constant revelation of his character. They are with him
33:44
Speaker 1: in the play of feelings, with him in the fluxes
33:47
Speaker 1: and refluxes of his thought, learning his ways of mind.
33:52
Speaker 1: Without realizing it. They slip into his mind and mood
33:56
Speaker 1: by a series of surprises when they are imagining. Notice
34:00
Speaker 1: which thing, anything, everything serves to reveal him. They tramp
34:06
Speaker 1: all day and ask some village people to shouter them
34:09
Speaker 1: for the night. The villagers tell them to go away.
34:13
Speaker 1: The men are hungry and fatigued. What a splendid thig
34:17
Speaker 1: it would be if we could do like Elijah and
34:20
Speaker 1: burn them up with a word. So the hot thought rose.
34:25
Speaker 1: He turned and said, you know not what manner of
34:28
Speaker 1: spirit you were, of what a gentle rebuke. The son
34:33
Speaker 1: of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but
34:36
Speaker 1: to save them. Then follows one of the wonderful sentences
34:40
Speaker 1: of the Gospel. They went unto another village, very obvious,
34:45
Speaker 1: but very significant. A missionary from China told me how
34:50
Speaker 1: thirty years ago or more he was driven out of
34:53
Speaker 1: the town where he lived. How the gentle folk egged
34:57
Speaker 1: on the mob, and they wrecked his house, and how
35:00
Speaker 1: him out of the place. He told me how it felt,
35:04
Speaker 1: the misery and the indignity of it. Jesus took it undisturbed.
35:11
Speaker 1: He taught a lesson in it which the Church has
35:14
Speaker 1: never forgotten. Their life was full of experiences shared with him.
35:21
Speaker 1: He has his reserve, his secret. Yet in another sense,
35:26
Speaker 1: he gives himself to them without reserve. There is prodigality
35:30
Speaker 1: of self impartation in his dealings with them. He lets
35:34
Speaker 1: them have everything they can take. He becomes theirs in
35:39
Speaker 1: a great intimacy. He gives himself to them. Why because
35:45
Speaker 1: he believes, as he put it in seed. Socrates saw
35:50
Speaker 1: that at the teacher's real work. His only work is
35:53
Speaker 1: to implant the idea like a seed. An idea, like
35:57
Speaker 1: a seed, will look after itself. A king builds a
36:01
Speaker 1: temple or a palace. The seed of a banion drifts
36:04
Speaker 1: down into a crack and grows without asking any one's leave.
36:09
Speaker 1: There is life in it. In the end the building
36:13
Speaker 1: comes down. But for what the banion holds up. The
36:17
Speaker 1: leaven in the mule is the most powerful thing there.
36:20
Speaker 1: There is very little of it, but that does not matter.
36:24
Speaker 1: It is alive. Life is a very little thing, but
36:29
Speaker 1: it is the only thing that counts. That is why
36:32
Speaker 1: the farmer can sow his fields and sleep at night
36:35
Speaker 1: without thinking of them, and the crop grows in spite
36:38
Speaker 1: of his sleeping, and he knows it. That is why
36:42
Speaker 1: Jesus believes so thoroughly in his men and in his message.
36:46
Speaker 1: God has made one for the other, and there is
36:48
Speaker 1: no fear of mischance. Look at his method of teaching.
36:54
Speaker 1: People marveled at his words of charm, hung about him
36:57
Speaker 1: to hear him. He said that the word is the
37:01
Speaker 1: overflow of the heart. Out of the abundance of the heart,
37:06
Speaker 1: the mouth speaketh what a heart. Then his words reveal
37:10
Speaker 1: how easy and straightforward his language is. Today we all
37:14
Speaker 1: use abstract nounds to convey our meaning we cannot do
37:17
Speaker 1: without words ending in aality and anon. But there is
37:22
Speaker 1: no recorded saying of Jesus where he uses even personality.
37:28
Speaker 1: He does not use abstract nouns. He sticks to plain words.
37:33
Speaker 1: When he speaks about God. He does not say the
37:36
Speaker 1: great first Cause, or providence or any other vague abstract.
37:42
Speaker 1: Still this does he use an adverb from the abstract,
37:45
Speaker 1: like Providentially, he says your heavenly Father. He does not
37:53
Speaker 1: talk of humanity. He says your brethren. He has no jargon,
37:59
Speaker 1: no technical terms, no scholastic vocabulary. Yurgs meant not to
38:05
Speaker 1: over study language. Their speech must be simple, the natural
38:09
Speaker 1: spontaneous overflow of the heart. Jesus told his disciples not
38:14
Speaker 1: to think out beforehand what they would say when on trial.
38:18
Speaker 1: It would be given to them. He is perfectly right,
38:22
Speaker 1: and when Christians obeyed him, they always spoke much better
38:25
Speaker 1: than when they thought out speeches beforehand. They said much
38:28
Speaker 1: less for one thing, and they said it much better.
38:32
Speaker 1: Take the case of the martyr, an earl and historical one,
38:35
Speaker 1: whose two speeches were during her trial Christiana's sum and
38:40
Speaker 1: on her condemnation, Deogratius with this remark his own gift
38:47
Speaker 1: of arresting phrase, the freshness of his language, how free
38:51
Speaker 1: it is from quotation, how natural, and how extraordinarily simple.
38:57
Speaker 1: Everything worthwhile could be put in simple langelanguage. And if
39:01
Speaker 1: the speech is complicated, it is a call to think again.
39:05
Speaker 1: As a woman over curiously trimmed is to be mistrusted,
39:09
Speaker 1: so is a speech, said John Robinson of Leyden, the
39:13
Speaker 1: Minister of the Pilgrim Fathers. The language of Jesus is
39:17
Speaker 1: simple and direct, the inevitable expression of a rich nature
39:22
Speaker 1: and a habit of truth. You feel he does not
39:25
Speaker 1: strain after effect epigram, antithesis or alliteration. Of course, he
39:30
Speaker 1: uses such things like all real speakers, but he does
39:34
Speaker 1: not go out of his way for them. No, and
39:37
Speaker 1: so much the more significant are such characteristic antitheses as
39:41
Speaker 1: you cannot serve God and Mammon, and whosoever shall save
39:45
Speaker 1: his life shall lose it. Coming with a spontaneous flash
39:49
Speaker 1: and answering in their sharpness to the sharp edges of life,
39:54
Speaker 1: his words caught the attention and lived in the memory.
39:58
Speaker 1: They revealed such a nature they were so living and unforgettable,
40:05
Speaker 1: remark once again his preference for the actual and the ordinary.
40:11
Speaker 1: There are religions in which holiness involves unusual conditions and
40:15
Speaker 1: special diet. Some forms of mysticism seem to be incompatible
40:20
Speaker 1: with married life. But the type of holiness which Jesus
40:24
Speaker 1: teaches can be achieved with an ordinary diet and a
40:27
Speaker 1: wife and five children. He had lived himself in a
40:31
Speaker 1: family of eight or nine. It is perhaps harder, but
40:34
Speaker 1: it is a richer sanctity. If the real mark of
40:37
Speaker 1: a saint is as we have been told that, he
40:40
Speaker 1: makes it easier for others to believe in God. In
40:44
Speaker 1: any case, the ordinary is always good enough with Jesus
40:49
Speaker 1: only he would have men go deeper, always deeper. Why
40:54
Speaker 1: can you not think for yourselves? He asks? Signs were
40:57
Speaker 1: what men demanded? He pictures dive as his mind running
41:02
Speaker 1: on signs, even in hell. What can you do with signs?
41:06
Speaker 1: Look at what you have already? You read the weather
41:09
Speaker 1: for tomorrow by look at the sky today. The south
41:12
Speaker 1: wind means heat, the red sky fair weather. Study Look
41:17
Speaker 1: think His animals, as we saw, are all real animals.
41:21
Speaker 1: It is real observation, real analogy. When he speaks of
41:26
Speaker 1: the lost sheep. It is not a fictitious joy that
41:29
Speaker 1: he describes, or an imaginary one. It is real. The
41:34
Speaker 1: more we examine his sayings with any touch of his spirit,
41:38
Speaker 1: the more we wonder. Of course, it is possible to
41:41
Speaker 1: handle them in the wrong way, to miss the real thought,
41:44
Speaker 1: and make folly of everything. Thus, when he says he
41:48
Speaker 1: is the door, the interpreter may stray into silly detail
41:51
Speaker 1: and make faith the key. And I don't know what
41:54
Speaker 1: the panels and hinges could be. That is not the
41:57
Speaker 1: style of Jesus. The so of the thing. The great
42:01
Speaker 1: central meaning, the real analogy is his concern seriousness in observation.
42:08
Speaker 1: Seriousness in reflection is what he teaches men and women
42:14
Speaker 1: break down for want of thinking things out. Many things
42:19
Speaker 1: become possible to those who think seriously as he did,
42:23
Speaker 1: And so to speak, without watertight compartments. Jesus is always
42:30
Speaker 1: urging seriousness in reflection. Seriousness in action, too, is one
42:35
Speaker 1: of his lessons. An emphasis on doing put on doing
42:39
Speaker 1: with a clear sent of what one is about and why.
42:43
Speaker 1: A part of the action is clear thought, always exactness, accuracy.
42:49
Speaker 1: You must think the thing out, he says, and then
42:51
Speaker 1: act or let it alone. The artistic temperament we all
42:55
Speaker 1: know is very much in evidence today. In the comment bagshot,
43:01
Speaker 1: we are told that the drawback is that there is
43:03
Speaker 1: so much temperament and so little art. Why because the
43:08
Speaker 1: artistic temperament means so little by itself. It is one
43:13
Speaker 1: of the secrets of Jesus that it is action that illuminates.
43:17
Speaker 1: What is it that makes the poem? The poet sees
43:21
Speaker 1: beggar children running races, or little Edward and the weathercock,
43:24
Speaker 1: or something greater. If you like the light of the
43:27
Speaker 1: woman's hair or a flower, and you say he has
43:30
Speaker 1: his poem, he has not. He must work at the thing.
43:36
Speaker 1: When we study the great poets, we realize how these
43:39
Speaker 1: things are worked out to the point of nerve, strain,
43:41
Speaker 1: and exhaustion. The poet devotes himself, heart and soul to
43:46
Speaker 1: the work. He alters this and that once and again.
43:50
Speaker 1: He sees a fresh aspect of the thing, and he
43:53
Speaker 1: aughters all again, He writes and rewrites, getting deeper and
43:57
Speaker 1: deeper into the essential values of the thing all the time.
44:02
Speaker 1: Where in all this is the artistic temperament. It gave
44:07
Speaker 1: him the impulse. But something else achieves the work of art.
44:11
Speaker 1: I have the feeling that the great works of art
44:14
Speaker 1: are achieved by the shopkeeper virtues, in addition to the
44:18
Speaker 1: artistic temperament that sees and feels them at the beginning.
44:22
Speaker 1: It is action that gives the value of a thought.
44:26
Speaker 1: Jesus sees that. He says that frankly to his disciples.
44:31
Speaker 1: If you want to understand in the long run, it
44:33
Speaker 1: is carrying the cross that will teach you the real values.
44:39
Speaker 1: I have been treating him almost as if he were
44:42
Speaker 1: an authority on pedagogy. Fortunately he never discussed pedagogy, never
44:47
Speaker 1: used the terms I have been using. But he dealt
44:51
Speaker 1: with men, He taught, and he influenced them, And it
44:54
Speaker 1: is worth our study to understand how he did it.
44:57
Speaker 1: To master his methods, one loving spirit set another on fire.
45:03
Speaker 1: As for the effects of his words, at once, as
45:06
Speaker 1: see THEE put it, they were seething effervescence, broodings, resolutions,
45:12
Speaker 1: traveil of heart. Men were brought face to face with
45:17
Speaker 1: a new issue. It was a time of choice. Things
45:20
Speaker 1: would not be as they were. Men must be with
45:23
Speaker 1: him or against him, must accept or reject the new teaching,
45:27
Speaker 1: the new teacher, the new life. As he said, I
45:32
Speaker 1: came to send fire on the earth, to divide families,
45:35
Speaker 1: to divide the individual's soul against itself, till the great
45:39
Speaker 1: choice was made. And so it has always been where
45:42
Speaker 1: men have really seen him. We have to notice further
45:46
Speaker 1: the transformation of the disciples, who definitely accepted him. Very
45:51
Speaker 1: wonderful to me, wrote Philips Brooks. To see how the
45:54
Speaker 1: disciples caught his method. The promise was made to them
45:58
Speaker 1: that they should become fishers of men, and it was fulfilled.
46:03
Speaker 1: Jesus made them strong enough to defy the world and
46:07
Speaker 1: to capture the world. There is something attractive about them.
46:12
Speaker 1: They have his secret, something of his charm. They are
46:16
Speaker 1: magnetic with his power. A new impulse to win men
46:20
Speaker 1: marks them, a new power to do it, a new
46:24
Speaker 1: faith which grows in significance as you study it. The
46:27
Speaker 1: faith of William Carry a hundred years ago was the
46:30
Speaker 1: same thing, a perfectly incredible faith that they actually will
46:34
Speaker 1: win men for God and Christ. And they did, and
46:37
Speaker 1: along his lines and by his methods of love, even
46:42
Speaker 1: for gentiles. Woe is me if I preach not the gospel,
46:47
Speaker 1: said Saint Paul, who to preach the gospel shipwrecked his
46:50
Speaker 1: life and suffer the loss of all things. But these
46:55
Speaker 1: men are sure that it is worth while. They have
47:00
Speaker 1: a new passion for men and women, an interest not
47:05
Speaker 1: merely in saving of their souls, but in every real
47:09
Speaker 1: human need. The early Church made a point of teaching
47:14
Speaker 1: men trades when they had none. They learnt all this
47:18
Speaker 1: from him. The greatest miracle in history seems to me
47:23
Speaker 1: the transformation that Jesus effected in those men. Everything else
47:28
Speaker 1: in Christian or secular history, compared to it, seems so
47:32
Speaker 1: easy and explicable, And it was achieved by the love
47:37
Speaker 1: of Jesus. The Church spread over the world without social machinery.
47:45
Speaker 1: The gospel was preached instinctively naturally. The earliest Christians were
47:51
Speaker 1: persecuted in Jerusalem and were driven out. I picture one
47:55
Speaker 1: of them in flight on his journey. He falls in
47:58
Speaker 1: with a stranger. Before he knows what he is doing.
48:02
Speaker 1: He is telling his fellow traveler about Jesus. It follows
48:06
Speaker 1: from his explanation of why he is on the road.
48:10
Speaker 1: He warms up as he speaks. He never really thought
48:13
Speaker 1: about the danger of doing so, and the stranger wants
48:16
Speaker 1: to know more. He is captured by the message, and
48:20
Speaker 1: he too becomes a Christian, and that this involuntary preacher
48:25
Speaker 1: of the gospel is embarrassed to learn that the man
48:27
Speaker 1: is a gentile. He had not thought of that. I
48:32
Speaker 1: think that is how it began, so naturally and spontaneously.
48:38
Speaker 1: These people are so full of love of Jesus that
48:41
Speaker 1: they are bound to speak. One loving heart sets another
48:47
Speaker 1: on fire. End of Chapter four