CHAPTER XXXV. THE CHOICE OF THE TWELVE, AND THE SERMON ON THE HOW MOUNT. OW long Jesus remained at Capernaum is not told us, but we may readily believe that He was glad to leave it, with its gathering opposition, as soon as possible. Though it was His centre of action, the Kingdom needed to be proclaimed over the whole land. Preaching was the special agency on which He relied, far more than on any displays of supernatural power. It was by it He designed to work the stupendous spiritual miracle of the new birth of Israel and of Humanity. As the Founder of a religion which had no code of laws and repudiated force, addressing itself solely to the free convictions of men,-the living word and its illustration in His own life, were alone open to Him as means for its diffusion. The hearts and souls of men must be won to the highest truth, by persuading the conscience, and thus influencing the will. In these earlier months He took advantage of the facilities of the synagogue service, to gain the ear of the people, but His preaching was very different from the stereotyped lifelessness of the Rabbis, and excited universal astonishment by its originality, power, and resistless enthusiasm.1 At a later time, when His "new doctrine" had roused the opposition of the authorities, the use of the synagogues was no longer granted Him.2 But, even from the first, He did not confine Himself to fixed times or places. He addressed the people on the shores of the lake, on the lonely slopes and valleys of the hills, in the streets and market-places of towns and villages, at the crossing points of the public roads, and even in houses; any place, indeed, that offered an audience, was 1 Mark i. 22. 2 Mark iii. 22. 3 Mark ii. 13. ii. 1. Luke iv. 16. Matt. xi. 24. Luke xi. 15. Mark vi. 1. Luke iv. 29. Matt. xvi. 1; xxii. 9. Mark THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 39 alike to Him. The burden and spirit of His preaching may be gathered from the Gospels throughout. He proclaimed Himself the Good Shepherd seeking to bring back the lost sheep to the heavenly fold; to quicken and turn towards God the weak, sinful, human will, and to breathe into the soul aspirations after a higher spiritual life, from the fulness. of His own perfect example.1 To win all, He moved as a man among men, a friend among friends, a helper amongst all who needed help; declining every outward honour or flattery, or even the appearance of either. 2 While advancing the most amazing pretensions as His kingly prerogative, He was, personally, so meek and lowly that He could make this gentle humility a ground for the trust and unembarrassed approach of all who were troubled. Content with obscurity, and leaving to others the struggle for distinction or place, He chose a life so humble that the poorest had no awe of His dignity, but gathered round Him as their special friend. His tastes were in keeping with this simplicity, for He delighted in the society of the lowly, and children clustered in His steps with the natural instinct that detects one who loves them. He was never engrossed by His own affairs, but ever ready to give Himself up to those of others-to counsel them in difficulties, to sympathize with them in their sorrows or joys, and to relieve their sickness or wants. It is His grand peculiarity, that there is a total oblivion of self in His whole life. The enthusiasm of a Divine love, in the pure light of which no selfish thought could live, filled His whole soul. He showed abiding sympathy for human weakness, and to cheer the outcast and hopeless, He announced that He came to seek such as to others seemed lost. In His joy over a sinner won back to righteousness He hears even the angels. of God rejoicing. There had never appeared in any age such a man, such a friend, or such a helper. He seemed the contrast of a king or prince, and yet all His words were kingly, all His acts a succession of the kingliest deeds, decisions, and commands, and His whole public life, the silent and yet truest foundation of an everlasting kingdom. He must, indeed, have seemed anything rather than the founder of a new society, or of a new empire, and it must have startled men when 1 Bibel Lex., vol. ii. p. 396. 2 Mark x. 17. they found that He had, by His works and life, established in the midst of the old theocracy the framework of the most imperishable and the widest-reaching empire this earth has ever seen; an empire before which all former religious systems were to fade away. But though His absolute selfcontrol was never intermitted, there were times when the claims of the truth, or the service of His kingdom, brought out the full grandeur of His power and kingly greatness. It was thus when He had to meet and confute prejudice and error, or to heal the sick and diseased. At times we shall see Him forced to blame and condemn, but this was only a passing shadow on the clear heaven of His unvarying grace and love. It is impossible to realize such an appearance, but we can imagine it in some measure. The stainless truth and uprightness which filled His whole nature; the exhaustless love and pity which were the very breath of His spirit; the radiant joy of the bridegroom wedding redeemed humanity; the calm light as of other worlds in His every look, may well account for the deathless love and devotion He inspired in those whom He suffered to follow Him. 1 The widening success of His work had already required an addition to the small circle of His immediate attendants. But a single accession, like that of Matthew, was, erelong, not enough. It soon became necessary to select a larger number who should be constantly in His company, and receive His instructions, that they might, in due time, go forth to proclaim the Kingdom over a wider area than He could Himself reach. Its laws, its morality, its relations to the Old Dispensation, must be taught them, and they must catch His enthusiasm by such a lengthened intercourse in the familiarity of private life, as would kindle in their souls the ideal He presented. That they should follow Him at all would be left to themselves, but the choice would be made by Himself, of such as, on various grounds, He saw fittest. They were to be apostles, or missionaries, and would have, for their high commission, the organization of the new kingdom of God, first in Israel, and then through the world. 3 4 To accept such an invitation implied no little enthusiasm. No earthly reward was held out, but, on the contrary, the CITIZENSHIP OF THE NEW KINGDOM. 41 sacrifice of all personal claims was demanded. They were to abandon their former calling, whatever it might be, with all its present or prospective advantages, to give up all family ties, to bear the worst indignities and ill-treatment, and yet repress even just resentment. They were to hold their lives at His service, and willingly yield them, if it required the sacrifice.1 A measure of self-restriction is implied as the basis of any state, for no society could flourish where its interests, as a whole, are not spontaneously considered before those of the individual citizen. But the self-abnegation required by Jesus in those admitted to the Kingdom He was now founding, was without a parallel, for while earthly states return an equivalent, in many ways, for the selfsurrender they impose, He proclaimed from the first that those who became His followers must do so "hoping for nothing again" to compensate for any self-sacrifice, even the greatest. In the case of the "Apostles," the self-surrender was not merely contingent, but present and final, for He held before them no prospect through life but privation and persecution, and even possible martyrdom. In the next world, indeed, He promised rewards, but He precluded mere mercenary hopes even of these, by making them conditional on unfeigned sincerity in the obedience to His laws and love of His person. The mere hypocrite-or actor-could have no object in joining Him, and was indignantly denounced. The truest honesty in word and deed were alone accepted, and the want of it, in any degree, was the one fatal moral defect.2 It is not surprising, therefore, that all who offered themselves as His followers were not accepted. Where He saw unfitness, he repelled advances. To a Rabbi who came saluting Him as "Teacher," and professing his willingness to follow Him as His disciple, He returned the discouraging answer, that the foxes had holes, and the birds of the air nests, but the Son of Man-the Messiah-had not where to lay His head. It might have seemed of moment to secure the support of a Rabbi, but Jesus had seen the worldly bent of his thoughts, and thus turned him aside, by blasting any hopes of advantage or honour in joining Him. Even indecision or hesitation, whatever the ground, was fatal to admittance to His favour. The request of a disciple to go first and bury his father, before finally following Him, was 1 Ecce Homo, p. 120. 2 Ecce Homo, p. 122. Matt. viii. 19. only met by the command to follow Him at once, and leave the spiritually dead to bury the corporeally dead: to put off decision, even for so worthy a cause as desire to perform the last offices to a father, was dangerous! "Go, thou, and preach the kingdom of God."1 The devotion due to it, unreservedly, could not be shared, even by the claims of affection and earthly duties. A request to be allowed to bid his household farewell, before finally leaving them, was met by a similar answer-"No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”2 The indispensable condition of admittance into the select band who followed and lived with Him, was an engrossing enthusiasm for Himself and His work, which permitted concern for no second interest whatever.3 He had determined to surround Himself with a small body of such trustworthy followers, limiting the number, by an association natural to His race, to twelve. They were to form the closest, inmost circle of His disciples, and to be, in fact, His friends and companions. He would give them His fullest confidence: open His mind to them more fully than to others: and, by living among them, inspire them with His own fervour, and mould them to His own likeness. They would see how His soul never unbent from its grand enthusiasm: how He never wearied in His transcendent devotion of body and spirit to His work. In seeing and hearing Him, they would gain experience: in the opposition and trials they met in His company, their fidelity would be put to the test, and, in the end, they would be qualified for the special work for which they had been chosen to be sent forth to preach, and to repeat the miraculous works of their Master, as evidence of His Divine authority.1 It is not stated definitely where the selection of the Apostles was made. His preaching had already gained a 'great multitude "5 of disciples, who followed Him in His journey from town to town, along with a vast crowd drawn after Him by various motives. The movement was rapidly assuming an importance like that of John; it was extending over the nation. Withdrawing Himself from the throng, by night, as was His frequent custom, He retired once more into the hills to pray, and continued in devotion till 1 Luke ix. 60. 3 Ewald, vol. v. p. 391. 2 Luke ix. 62. 4 Mark iii. 14. 5 Luke vi, 17. So the Sinaitic and the Vatican MSS, |