Germs of
of Thought.

The Silence of Christ.

"AND HE ANSWERED HIM TO NEVER A WORD."-Matt. xxvii. 14.

"THERE is a time to keep silence and a time to speak," said the wise man. The difficulty is to know the right time for each. We may be led toward the solution of this difficulty by observing the life of the "Greater than Solomon." Jesus refrained from public speech till He was thirty years of age, with but one exception, and that hardly to be so termed, namely, the occasion whereon, as a lad of thirteen, He asked questions of, and rendered answers to, the doctors of the law at Jerusalem. It were well if in many cases longer silence preceded public speech. Some fruit trees are not allowed to bear for years, the result being a greater subsequent productiveness. Amongst mankind a like repression of precocity would often result in a corresponding measure of fruitfulness.

At last Christ broke the silence and taught His disciples and preached to the multitudes; but His public ministry was short, and at the period from which our text is taken may be said to have ended. He has preached His last sermon to the crowd in Jerusalem, and delivered His last address to His followers amidst the shadows of the olive trees in Gethsemane's garden. Henceforth for the most part He is silent.

But His silence is not absolute. When His character and person are in question before Caiaphas, He speaks, though briefly. He was no masked conspirator, and had no esoteric doctrine for the select few, with an exoteric doctrine for the general multitude. "I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou Me? Ask them which

heard Me what I have said unto them: behold they know what I said." Thus did Jesus reply (John xviii. 19-21) to the High Priest when enquired of concerning His disciples and His doctrine. Further, as Matthew tells us, He confessed that He was the Son of God, and that hereafter He should be seen sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.

When His claim and object were in doubt before Pilate, He broke silence, affirming that He was the King of the Jews; but in a wholly spiritual sense. "My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world then would My servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but now is My kingdom not from hence." I am not come, He virtually said, to interfere with Cæsar, or his procurator, but to lift men to a nobler plane of life. But before the curiosity of the profane Herod, and the clamorous Babel of false accusations that arose from His enemies, "He answered to never a word."

Yet His silence was not guilty. In the parable of the Marriage of the King's Son we read of one who came in, not having on the wedding garment, with which he should and might have been provided. To him the King, coming in to see his guests, exclaims, "Friend, how comest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless." Christ was King of the Jews, yet wore no royal robe. He was clothed, however, in perfect sanctity, so that the centurion said, "Surely this was a righteous man"; the thief on the cross, "This Man hath done nothing amiss"; and Pilate himself affirmed, "I find no fault in Him." Our Saviour's stainless life was more eloquent than any words.

Nor was His silence apathetic. This closing quietude of Christ's visible career was foretold by the prophet as he said, "He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb so He openeth not His mouth." But the sheep goes unmurmuring to its doom in ignorance thereof. Christ knew all that lay before Him, to its minutest detail. Aye, even from those early days, when to questing parents He said, "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business.'

Apathetic? We know how He agonized in Gethsemane ! never was more sensitive nature than His!

Neither was His silence stoical. He did not, could not say "the cross is inevitable, whether I approach it reluctantly or with alacrity, it cannot be evaded. It will be best, therefore, to meet it with silent if seeming indifference." The cross was not inevitable. He had power to lay down His life and power to take it again. A volition would have brought twelve legions of angels to His succour, or have removed Him far from peril. The great conflict was involved in the decision to which at that critical moment He must arrive. He spoke, ere entering Gethsemane for the last time, of the approach of the prince of this world with whom there was to be a final contest. Should He lay down His life for a godless and brutal race, or on behalf of a cowardly group of followers, one of whom had already added treachery to deceit? We know the conclusion to which He came, and something of our indebtedness to His victory. He was "tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin"; and if we are worth aught, we have known something of the struggle between selfinterest and self-sacrifice, and something of the joy that follows the triumph of the latter.

Christ's silence was compassionate. To have spoken further to those who were resolved on His condemnation would have been to augment at once their responsibility and guilt. Christ's speech and silence were both determined by love. When with uncompromising words of condemnation He scathed the Pharisees, the prompting impulse was love. The Great Physician would not refrain from stern measures in an almost desperate case, or spare the infliction of pain if thereby He could save life; neither would He tease the hopeless with unavailing lancet and medicine. It is in compassion that He answers to never a word the persistent ravings of malice.

And His silence was holy. Peter tells us how, "when He was reviled, He reviled not again; and when He suffered He threatened not." Be the surface of the sea never so placid, the fierce wind will not blow long thereon before it is lashed to responsive wrath; and how quickly in fallen humanity does anger beget anger.

But the storm of hatred that burst on Christ produced no ripple of resentment in the tranquil breast of Him who, being the Water of Life, was calm as pure. If ever He was angry, it was for wrong done to others and not to Himself.

Prescient was Christ's silence. He foresaw not only the cross but the crown, and "for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame," quietly anticipating a sure emergence from the shadow of conflict into the sunshine of victory. The time for speech and action was now for the most part over; that for suffering and silence had come. quiescent, knowing that the story of the cross should move and save the world. He was by His endurance making the Gospel which His disciples were subsequently to preach to every creature.

He was

So Christ knew just when to be silent and when to speak. And the principle that guided Him in either course was love to others. When He could do men more good by speech than silence, He spake; when more by silence than speech, He "uttered never a word." Let such principle govern us in our communications with those around. We are too apt to be voluble in our own justification, when it would be better to allow quiet and consistent lives to tell their own tale. We are often tempted to proclaim, directly or indirectly, our own sacrifices, toils, or virtues. Let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth, a stranger and not thine own lips." But what if others never do commend? Better go without their approbation than secure it by demand, or forestall it by self-laudation. Tread simply the path of duty.

"Go labour on, whate'er thy lot;

All earthly loss is heavenly gain.

Men heed thee, love thee, praise thee not;

The Master praises, what are men?"

All silence is impressive. That of nature, as its resistless forces pursue their destined ends; as the heavenly host tread their mazy courses. The poet says

"For ever singing as they shine";

but the music of the spheres is silent, and the Psalmist is nearer the truth when he says, "There is no speech nor language, their voice is not heard." The silence of the grave-yard is impressive, where the dust of those who once formed part of the tumultuous throng of contending and rejoicing men sleeps in stillness, unbroken only by the wind that sighs betwixt cypress and sepulchre.

Impressive is the stillness of death, as Thomas Hood made clear when he represented Eugene Aram as saying of his victim :—

"There was nothing lying at my feet,

But lifeless flesh and bone!

Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone,
That could not do me ill,

And yet I feared him all the more
For lying there so still."

Christ bade His disciples preach, and continue so to do, but one by one they are silenced, and it may be questioned if the stillness that seals their lives, as they are borne to the grave, is not even more eloquent than the words they formerly uttered.

But most impressive of all is the silence of Christ, maintained unbroken through successive centuries. Yet He pleads by His servants; inaudibly, though not ineffectually by His providences -both severe and gracious; and by His Spirit, which communicates through conscience. Yet "the day is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of condemnation." Will it be ours to hear Him say, with a voice tremulous in its pity, "Depart"; or with an utterance whose vibrations are all joyful, "Come, ye blessed of my Father?"

WORCESTER.

SEPTIMUS MARCH, B.A.

"It is one of the most precious mysteries of sorrow that it finds solace in unselfish thought."-GARFIELD.