CHAPTER V. THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR - PART B

84. The Teacher. --The other great instrument with which Jesus did His work was His teaching. It was by far the more important of the two. His miracles were only the bell tolled to bring the people to hear His words. They impressed those who might not yet be susceptible to the subtler influence, and brought them within its range.

85. The miracles probably made most noise, but His preaching also spread His fame far and wide. There is no power whose attraction is more unfailing than that of the eloquent word. Barbarians, listening to their bards and story-tellers, Greeks, listening to the restrained passion of their orators, and matter-of-fact nations like the Roman, have alike acknowledged its power to be irresistible. The Jews prized it above almost every other attraction, and among the figures of their mighty dead revered none more highly than the prophets--those eloquent utterers of the truth whom Heaven had sent them from age to age. Though the Baptist did no miracles, multitudes flocked to him, because in his accents they recognized the thunder of this power, which for so many generations no Jewish ear had listened to. Jesus also was recognized as a prophet, and accordingly His preaching created wide-spread excitement. 'He spake in their synagogues, being glorified of all.' His words were heard with wonder and amazement. Sometimes the multi-tude on the beach of the lake so pressed upon Him to hear, that He had to enter into a ship and address them from the deck, as they spread themselves out in a semicircle on the ascending shore. His enemies themselves bore witness that 'never man spake like this man;' and, meager as are the remains of His preaching which we possess, they are amply sufficient to make us echo the sentiment and understand the impression which He produced. All His words together which have been preserved to us would not occupy more space in print than half a dozen ordi-nary sermons; yet it is not too much to say, that they are the most precious literary heritage of the human race. His words, like His miracles, were expressions of Himself, and every one of them has in it something of the grandeur of His character.

86. The form of the preaching of Jesus was essentially Jewish. The Oriental mind does not work in the same way as the mind of the West. Our thinking and speaking, when at their best, are fluent, expansive, closely reasoned. The kind of discourse which we admire is one which takes up an important subject, divides it out into different branches, treats it fully under each of the heads, closely articulates part to part, and closes with a moving appeal to the feelings, so as to sway the will to some practical result. The Oriental mind, on the contrary, loves to brood long on a single point, to turn it round and round, to gather up all the truth about it into a focus, and pour it forth in a few pointed and memorable words. It is concise, epigrammatic, oracular. A Western speaker's discourse is a systematic structure, or like a chain in which link is firmly knit to link; an Oriental's is like the sky at night, full of innumerable burning points shining forth from a dark background.

87. Such was the form of the teaching of Jesus. It consisted of numerous sayings, every one of which contained the greatest possible amount of truth in the smallest possible compass, and was expressed in language so concise and pointed as to stick in the memory like an arrow. Read them, and you will find that every one of them, as you ponder it, sucks the mind in and in like a whirlpool, till it is lost in the depths. You will find, too, that there are very few of them which you do not know by heart. They have found their way into the memory of Christendom as no other words have done. Even before the meaning has been apprehended, the perfect, proverb-like expression lodges itself fast in the mind.

88. But there was another characteristic of the form of Jesus' teaching. It was full of figures of speech. He thought in images. He had ever been a loving and accurate observer of nature around Him--of the colors of the flowers, the ways of the birds, the growth of the trees, the vicissitudes of the seasons--and an equally keen observer of the ways of men in all parts of life--in religion, in business, in the home. The result was that He could neither think nor speak without His thought running into the mould of some natural image. His preaching was alive with such references, and therefore full of color, movement and changing forms. There were no abstract statements in it; they were all changed into pictures. Thus, in His sayings, we can still see the aspects of the country and the life of the time as in a panorama,--the lilies, whose gorgeous beauty His eyes feasted on, waving in the fields; the sheep following the shepherd; the broad and narrow city gates; the virgins with their lamps awaiting in the darkness the bridal procession; the Pharisee with his broad phylacteries and the publican with bent head at prayer together in the temple; the rich man seated in his palace at a feast, and the beggar lying at his gate with the dogs licking his sores; and a hundred other pictures that lay bare the inner and minute life of the time, over which history in general sweeps heedlessly with majestic stride.

Parable of the Prodigal Son.

89. But the most characteristic form of speech He made use of was the parable. It was a combination of the two qualities already mentioned--concise, memorable expression and a figurative style. It used an incident, taken from common life and rounded into a gem-like picture, to set forth some corresponding truth in the higher and spiritual region. It was a favorite Jewish mode of putting truth, but Jesus imparted to it by far the richest and most perfect development. About one-third of all His sayings which have been preserved to us consists of parables. This shows how they stuck in the memory. In the same way the hearers of the sermons of any preacher will probably, after a few years, remember the illustrations they have contained far better than anything else in them. How these parables have remained in the memory of all generations since: The Prodigal Son, the Sower, the Ten Virgins, the Good Samaritan,--these and many others are pictures hung up in millions of minds. What passages in the greatest masters of expression--in Homer, in Virgil, in Dante, in Shakespeare--have secured for themselves so universal a hold on men, or been felt to be so fadelessly fresh and true? He never went far for His illustrations. As a master of painting will make you, with a morsel of chalk or a burnt stick, a face at which you must laugh or weep or wonder, so Jesus took the commonest objects and incidents around Him--the sewing of a piece of cloth on an old garment, the bursting of an old bottle, the children playing in the market-place at weddings and funerals, or the tumbling of a hut in a storm--to change them into perfect pictures and make them the vehicles for conveying to the world immortal truth. No wonder the crowds followed Him I Even the simplest could delight in such pictures and carry away as a life-long possession the expression at least of His ideas, though it might require the thought of centuries to pierce their crystalline depths. There never was speaking so simple yet so profound, so pictorial yet so absolutely true.

90. Such were the qualities of His style. The qualities of the Preacher Himself have been preserved to us in the criticism of His hearers, and are manifest in the remains of His addresses which the Gospels contain.

91. The most prominent of them seems to have been Authority: 'The people were astonished at His doctrine, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.' The first thing which struck His hearers was the contrast between His words and the preaching which they were wont to hear from the scribes in the synagogues. These were the exponents of the deadest and driest system of theology that has ever passed in any age for religion. Instead of expounding the Scriptures, which were in their hands, and would have lent living power to their words, they retailed the opinions of commentators, and were afraid to advance any statement, unless it were backed by the authority of some master. Instead of dwelling on the great themes of justice and mercy, love and God, they tortured the sacred text into a ceremonial manual, and preached on the proper breadth of phylacteries, the proper postures for prayer, the proper length of fasts, the distance which might be walked on the Sabbath, and so forth; for in these things the religion of the time consisted. In order to see anything in modern times at all like the preaching which then prevailed, we must go back to the Reformation period, when, as the historian of Knox tells us, the harangues delivered by the monks were empty, ridiculous and wretched in the extreme. Legendary tales concerning the founder of some religious order, the miracles he performed, his combats with the devil, his watchings, fastings, flagellations; the virtues of holy water, chrism, crossing, and exorcism; the horrors of purgatory, and the numbers released from it by the intercessions of some powerful saint,--these, with low jests, table-talk, and fireside scandal, formed the favorite topics of the preachers, and were served up to the people instead of the pure, salutary, and sublime doctrines of the Bible.' Perhaps the contrast which the Scottish people three and a half centuries ago felt between such harangues and the noble words of Wishart and Knox, may convey to our mind as good an idea as can be got of the effect of the preaching of Jesus on His con-temporaries. He knew nothing of the authority of masters and schools of interpretation, but spoke as one whose own eyes had gazed on the objects of the eternal world. He needed none to tell Him of God or of man, for He knew both perfectly. He was possessed with the sense of a mission, which drove Him on and imparted earnestness to every word and gesture. He knew Him-self sent from God, and the words He spoke to be not His own, but God's. He did not hesitate to tell those who neglected His words that in the judgment they should be condemned by the Ninevites and the Queen of Sheba, who had listened to Jonah and Solomon, for they were hearing One greater than any prophet or king of the olden time. He warned them that on their accept-ance or rejection of the message He bore would depend their future weal or woe. This was the tone of earnestness, of majesty and authority that smote His hearers with awe.

92. Another quality which the people remarked in Him was Boldness: 'Lo, He speaketh boldly.' This appeared the more wonderful because He was an unlettered man, who had not passed through the schools of Jerusalem, or received the imprimatur of any earthly authority. But this quality came from the same source as His authoritativeness. Timidity usually springs from self-consciousness. The preacher who is afraid of his audience, and respects the persons of the learned and the great, is thinking of himself and of what will be said of his performance. But he who feels himself driven on by a divine mission forgets himself. All audiences are alike to him, be they gentle or simple; he is thinking only of the message he has to deliver. Jesus was ever looking the spiritual and eternal realities in the face; the spell of their greatness held Him, and all human distinctions disappeared in their presence; men of every class were only men to Him. He was borne along on the torrent of His mission, and what might happen to Himself could not make Him stop to question or quail. He discovered His boldness chiefly in attacking the abuses and ideas of the time. It would be a complete mistake to think of Him as all mildness and meekness. There is scarcely any element more conspicuous in His words than a strain of fierce indignation. It was an age of shams above almost any that have ever been. They occupied all high places. They paraded themselves in social life, occupied the chairs of learning, and above all debased every part of religion. Hypocrisy had become so universal that it had ceased even to doubt itself. The ideals of the people were utterly mean and mistaken. One can feel throbbing through His words, from first to last, an indignation against all this, which had begun with His earliest observation in Nazareth and ripened with His increasing knowledge of the times. The things which were highly esteemed among men, He broadly asserted, were abomination in the sight of God. There never was in the history of speech a polemic so scathing, so annihilating, as His against the figures to which the reverence of the multitude had been paid before His withering words fell on them--the scribe, the Pharisee, the priest and the Levite.

93. A third quality which His hearers remarked was Power: 'His word was with power' This was the result of that unction of the Holy One, without which even the most solemn truths fall on the ear without effect. He was filled with the Spirit without measure. Therefore the truth possessed Him. It burned and swelled in His own bosom, and He spoke it forth from heart to heart. He had the Spirit not only in such degree as to fill Himself, but so as to be able to impart it to others. It overflowed with His words and seized the souls of His hearers, filling with enthusiasm the mind and the heart.

94. A fourth quality which was observed in His preaching, and was surely a very prominent one, was Graciousness: 'They wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.' In spite of His tone of authority and His fearless and scathing attacks on the times, there was diffused over all He said a glow of grace and love. Here especially His character spoke. How could He who was the incarnation of love help letting the glow and warmth of the heavenly fire that dwelt in Him spread over His words? The scribes of the time were hard, proud and loveless. They flattered the rich and honored the learned, but of the great mass of their hearers they said, 'This people, which knoweth not the law, is cursed. But to Jesus every soul was infinitely precious. It mattered not under what humble dress or social deformity the pearl was hidden; it mattered not even beneath what rubbish and filth of sin it was buried; He never missed it for a moment. Therefore He spoke to His hearers of every grade with the same respect. Surely it was the divine love itself, uttering itself from the innermost recess of the divine being, that spoke in the parables of the fifteenth of Luke.

95. Such were some of the qualities of the Preacher. And one more may be mentioned, which may be said to embrace all the rest, and is perhaps the highest quality of public speech. He addressed men as men, not as members of any class or possessors of any peculiar culture. The differences, which divide men, such as wealth, rank and education, are on the surface. The elements in which they are all alike--the broad sense of the understanding, the great passions of the heart, the primary instincts of the conscience--are profound. Not that these are the same in all men. In some they are deeper, in others shallower; but in all they are far deeper than aught else. He who addresses them appeals to the deepest thing in his hearers. He will be equally intelligible to all. Every hearer will receive his own portion from him; the small and shallow mind will get as much as it can take, and the largest and deepest will get its fill at the same feast. This is why the words of Jesus are perennial in their freshness. They are for all generations, and equally for all. They appeal to the deepest elements in human nature to-day in England or China as much as they did in Palestine when they were spoken.

96. When we come to inquire what the matter of Jesus' preaching consisted of, we perhaps naturally expect to find Him expounding the system of doctrine which we are ourselves acquainted with, in the forms, say, of the Catechism or the Confession of Faith. But what we find is very different. He did not make use of any system of doctrine. We can scarcely doubt, indeed, that all the numerous and varied ideas of His preaching, as well as those which He never expressed, co-existed in His mind as one world of rounded truth. But they did not so co-exist in His teaching. He did not use theological phraseology, speaking of the Trinity, of predestination, of effectual calling, although the ideas which these terms cover underlay His words, and it is the undoubted task of science to bring them forth. But He spoke in the language of life, and concentrated His preaching on a few burning points, that touched the heart, the conscience and the time.

97. The central idea and the commonest phrase of His preaching was 'the kingdom of God.' It will be remembered how many of His parables begin with 'The kingdom of Heaven is like' so and so. He said, 'I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also,' thereby characterizing the matter of His preaching; and in the same way He is said to have sent forth the apostles 'to preach the kingdom of God.' He did not invent the phrase. It was a historical one handed down from the past, and was common in the mouths of His contemporaries. The Baptist had made large use of it, the burden of his message being, 'The kingdom of God is at hand.'

98. What did it signify? It meant the new era, which the prophets had predicted and the saints had looked for. Jesus announced that it had come, and that He had brought it. The time of waiting was fulfilled. Many prophets and righteous men, He told His contemporaries, had desired to see the things which they saw, but had not seen them. He declared that so great were the privileges and glories of the new time, that the least partaker of them was greater than the Baptist, though he had been the greatest representative of the old time.

99. All this was no more than His contemporaries would have expected to hear, if they had recognized that the kingdom of God was really come. But they looked round, and asked where the new era was which Jesus said He had brought. Here He and they were at complete variance. They emphasized the first part of the phrase, 'the kingdom,' He the second, 'of God.' They expected the new era to appear in magnificent material forms--in a kingdom of which God indeed was to be the Ruler, but which was to show itself in worldly splendor, in force of arms, in a universal empire. Jesus saw the new era in an empire of God over the loving heart and the obedient will. They looked for it outside; He said, 'It is within you.' They looked for a period of external glory and happiness; He placed the glory and blessedness of the new time in character. So He began His Sermon on the Mount, that great manifesto of the new era, with a series of 'Blesseds.' But the blessedness was entirely that of character. And it was a character totally different from that which was then looked up to as imparting glory and happiness to its possessor--that of the proud Pharisee, the wealthy Sadducee, or the learned scribe. Blessed, said He, are the poor in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

100. The main drift of His preaching was to set forth this conception of the kingdom of God, the character of its members, their blessedness in the love and communion of their Father in heaven, and their prospects in the glory of the future world. He exhibited the contrast between it and the formal religion of the time, with its lack of spirituality and its substitution of ceremonial observances for character. He invited all classes into the kingdom--the rich by showing, as in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the vanity and danger of seeking their blessedness in wealth ; and the poor by penetrating them with the sense of their dignity, persuading them with the most overflowing affection and winning words that the only true wealth was in character, and assuring them that, if they sought first the kingdom of God, their heavenly Father, who fed the ravens and clothed the lilies, would not suffer them to want.

101. But the centre and soul of his preaching was Himself. He contained within Himself the new era. He not only announced it, but created it. The new character which made men subjects of the kingdom and sharers of its privileges was to be got from Him alone. Therefore the practical issue of every address of Christ was the command to come to Him, to learn of Him, to follow Him. 'Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,' was the key-note, the deepest and final word of alt His discourses.

102. It is impossible to read the discourses of Jesus without remarking that, wonderful as they are, yet some of the most characteristic doctrines of Christianity, as it is set forth in the epistles of Paul and now cherished in the minds of the most devoted and enlightened Christians, hold a very inconsiderable place in them. Especially is this the case in regard to the great doctrines of the gospel as to how a sinner is reconciled to God, and how, in a pardoned soul, the character is gradually produced which makes it like Christ and pleasing to the Father. The lack of reference to such doctrines may indeed be much exag-gerated, the fact being that there is not one prominent doctrine of the great apostle the germs of which are not to be found in the teaching of Christ Himself. Yet the contrast is marked enough to have given some color for denying that the distinctive doctrines of Paul are genuine elements of Christianity. But the true explanation of the phenomenon is very different. Jesus was not a mere teacher. His character was greater than His words, and so was His work. The chief part of that work was to atone for the sins of the world by His death on the cross, But His nearest followers never would believe that He was to die, and, until His death happened, it was impossible to explain its far-reaching significance. Paul's most distinctive doctrines are merely expositions of the meaning of two great facts--the death of Christ and the mission of the Spirit by the glorified Redeemer. It is obvious that these facts could not be fully explained in the words of Jesus Himself, when they had not yet taken place; but to suppress the inspired explanation of them would be to extinguish the light of the gospel and rob Christ of His crowning glory.

103. The audience of Jesus varied exceedingly both in size and character on different occasions. Very frequently it was the great multitude. He addressed them everywhere--on the mountain, on the sea-shore, on the highway, in the synagogues, In the temple courts. But He was quite as willing to speak with a single individual, however humble. He seized every opportunity of doing so. Although He was worn out with fatigue, He talked to the woman at the well; He received Nicodemus alone ; He taught Mary in her home. There are said to be nineteen such private interviews mentioned in the Gospels. They leave to His followers a memorable example. This is perhaps the most effective of all forms of instruction, as it is certainly the best test of earnestness. A man who preaches to thousands with enthusiasm may be a mere orator, but the man who seeks opportunities of speaking closely on the welfare of their souls to individuals must have a real fire from heaven burning in his heart.

104. Often His audience consisted of the circle of His disciples. His preaching divided His hearers. He has Himself, in such parables as the Sower, the Tares and the Wheat and the Wedding Feast, described with unequalled vividness its effects on different classes. Some it utterly repelled; others heard it with wonder, without being touched in the heart; others were affected for a time, but soon returned to their old interests. It is terrible to think how few there were, even when the Son of God was preaching, who heard unto salvation. Those who did so, gradually formed round Him a body of disciples. They followed Him about, hearing all His discourses, and often He spoke to them alone. Such were the five hundred to whom He appeared in Galilee after His resurrection. Some of them were women, such as Mary Magdalene, Susanna, and Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, who, being wealthy, gladly supplied His few simple wants. To these disciples He gave a more thorough instruction than to the crowd. He explained to them in private whatever was obscure in His public teaching. More than once He made the strange statement, that He spake in parables to the multitudes in order that, though hearing, they might not understand. This could only mean, that those who had no real interest in the truth were sent away with the mere beautiful shell, but that the obscurity was intended to provoke to further inquiry, as a veil half-drawn over a beautiful face intensifies the desire to see it; and to those who had a spiritual craving for more He gladly communicated the hidden secret. These, when the nation as a whole declared itself unworthy of being the medium of the Messiah's world-wide influence, became the nucleus of that spiritual society, elevated above all local limitations and distinctions of rank and nationality, in which the spirit and doctrine of Christ were to be spread and perpetuated in the world.

Chapter 5 Part A
Chapter 5 Part C

This text is from James Stalker's Life of Christ. New York, London, Edinburgh, etc.: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1909. Transcribed by David Ash. Used by permission of David Ash, 2 March 2005. David Ash, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, has placed several worthwhile texts online. View his list here. Images are from the CHI archives.