bring Him before their Court for His disregard of their traditions; and finding this, from the disposition of the people towards Him, not yet practicable, striving to poison the people's minds against Him, following Him with their hate, showing their spite in those many indirect ways in which such resentment can make itself felt. And to such a degree did they carry on this kind of persecution, that our Lord finds Himself compelled to take notice of it, and take some opportunity to justify His conduct to them, and to show them the commanding position in which He stood. He does not appeal here to this being a work of mercy, and to the reasonableness of doing on the Sabbath what He had done; though He might have occupied this ground, as indeed on other occasions we know He did.' But now He takes yet higher 1 Coleridge, in his Table Talk, comparing the Christian Lord's Day with the Jewish Sabbath, has some strong remarks upon those gentlemen in his day who were "for not letting a poor labouring man have a dish of baked potatoes on a Sunday," and yet were "foremost among those who seem to live but in vilifying, weakening, and impoverishing the National Church," equally with the other an institution of Christ. Indeed those who deny, as such mostly do, the authority of the Church, are simply cutting away the ground from under their own feet. For the change of day at least comes to us upon the authority of the Church, just as the Canon of Scripture and other things which all prize. One may not pick and choose, or erect a little Court of Private Judgment on those points on which we have the universal consent of the Primitive Church. Coleridge notes "how the Sabbatarian spirit unites itself with a rancorous hostility to that one Institution which alone, according to reason and experience, can ensure the continuance of any general religion at all in the nation at large." The Judaising observance of the day (which after all is not the seventh day but the first) is generally found among those persons and communities which, rejecting as superstitious the observance of all other days, still more superstitiously cling to this. It would seem as if, having rashly cut off all other cables, an instinctive feeling inspires them to catch at this straw. Thus they magnify the only thing they have left to themselves, as the spendthrift becomes a miser, and hoards the little wreck of his fortune. The Lord's Day is, in defiance of history and etymology, called the Sabbath among those with whom even Christinas Day and Good Friday have no religious recognition. It is strange that those amongst whom irreverence towards what universal Christendom from the first agreed to reverence (the consent of the Church) is regarded as a virtue, or who at least regard this reverence as a weakness, should themselves be guilty of a superstitions reverence to a fond opinion which history proves to be not older than three centuries. The whole error doubtless is suspended upon that literal interpretation of the Fourth Commandment which originated with the Puritans. Dare we as literally apply the latter clause of the Commandment which comes next? That land was the land of promise. It is ground. He justifies Himself on the ground that He is one with the Father. His argument is: I am doing even as my Father does. He is continually working; sustaining continuously and reproducing the fabric which at first He framed, repairing ever that which is being ever impaired, causing life and growth to proceed without pause. I claim the right to do the same. This claim of course implies His equality with the Father; and so the Jews perceived. They saw in His words what modern misbelievers refuse to see. "Thus we obtain from the adversaries of the Faith a most important statement of one of its highest and holiest doctrines." 2 CL. HE CLAIMS EQUAL HONOUR WITH THE FATHER. St. John v. 19-23. Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, 1 say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Our Lord had been justifying Himself to the Jews, and the spirit doubtless which in either case we must strive to seize. See the citations from Selden and Whewell in Dr. Hessey's Bampton Lecture, pp. 145, 438. 1 Our Lord's statement here is not inconsistent with Gen. ii, 2. It is the original framing of the world which is there spoken of, Heb. i. 3. If He did not thus work, where (as Bengel asks) would be the Sabbath itself? 2 Alf. Our Lord This indi here He repeats and amplifies the argument He had already addressed to these objectors. The Son can do nothing contrary to the Father.' The Father and the Son are in perfect accord. The argument proceeds upon the just assumption that He is the Son of God, that He and the Father are in essence one; as light is inseparable from fire. had spoken of "what He seeth the Father do." cates such an acquaintance and communion as was never granted unto any man. And the words which follow intimate the unreserved communication which subsists between them. "The Father loveth the Son," in a special sense which can only be applied to the Only-begotten. The Son cannot but see all that the Father doeth. The Father cannot but show all that He doeth to the Son.5 Hence the wonderful works our Lord had already done. Hence also the still greater works He is about to do. To two of these he makes prophetic allusion: His power to make alive, and His power to judge. Those who wondered to see an impotent man made whole, what would they say to see a dead man made alive? Yet this they should see both in the raising of some who were physically dead, and in the raising of many to a spiritual life. This the admitted prerogative of God was exercised equally by Christ. The words "whom He will" are not to be understood as "implying any selection out of mankind, nor said merely to remove the Jewish prejudice, that their own nation alone should rise from the dead: but meaning that in every instance where His will is to vivify, the result invariably follows." The other greater thing to which our Lord referred is His power to judge. In this the Father works entirely by Him. By Him He now governs the world, by whom in the beginning He made the world; and by Him in the end He shall judge the world. And the reason for Compare St. John xvi. 13-15. This twofold sense is brought out distinctly in vv. 25-29, below, where we have mention both of a spiritual and of a literal resurrection, analogous to that double prophecy of the end of the Jewish polity and of the end of the world. Alford; and so in Bengel. * Roni, xiv. 10-12. this, the end of all this is, "that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father." Our Lord adds that no man can honour the Father aright, without thus honouring the Son. This is the right belief on the subject, this is the Catholic Faith: Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect Man. It was His human sympathy that attracted the impotent man at Bethesda; it was His Divine power that made him whole.2 CLI. THE FIRST AND THE SECOND RESURRECTION. St. John v. 24. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. To hear, in this passage, is nothing else than to obey.3 It is coupled with faith; such a faith as leads to obedience, for anything short of this is not faith. Believing is yoked to hearing; and hearing is put first, for "faith cometh by hearing." But what do these hear? "My word," "the voice of the Son of God." And on whom do these believe? "On Him, the very essence of belief in whom is this, that He sent me."4 And what is said of every one who so hears and believes? "He hath everlasting life." Our Lord uses not the future but the present. He says not shall have, but hath. The future indeed is implied in the present; but such have it even now. Even now it is begun. in them. They have now the germ which shall be developed into that immortal plant. And He adds that such come 1 Phil. ii. 6-11. 2 St. John in his histories seems to bring out especially the human side of our Saviour Christ; as in the discourses recorded he dwells chiefly on the divine. Aug. Tr. xix. 10. not, come never, into condemnation.' And He subjoins the reason. He who so believes in Christ is passed from what is represented as a state of death, unto a state of life; figurative yet real. Death represents unconsciousness. The dead no longer walk among us, sentient beings, susceptible of our emotions; and these, before they believed, had, it may be, no more feeling Godward than the dead. This state is the development of that in which we are by the Fall; a state of death as regards the service of God, a state of death as regards His final favour. But the believer is passed from this state into the state of life, a state in which he experiences living emotions of love to God, and in which he strives to do Him reasonable service. This is that passage from "the death of sin unto the life of righteousness," which shall issue in "the life of the world to come.' 3 CLII. THE SAME SUBJECT-continued. St. John v. 25-27. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Our Lord proceeds to open further what He has already announced. He speaks first of His quickening power and work, whereby He quickens those dead in trespasses and sins. This operation is both present and prospective; "the hour is coming and now is." The quickening work of the 1 The verb in the original is not in the future, but the present implying the future. It is a forensic phrase, and vividly depicts the condition of the criminal. 2 See the Ministration of Public Baptism, and the Burial of the Dead. * Creed of Nicæa. Eph. ii. 1; 1 St. John iii. 14; St. John iii. 16-18. |