Hope of the Gospel — The Yoke of Jesus - Part 1
_THE YOKE OF JESUS.
_ At that time Jesus answered and said,--according to Luke, In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said,--'I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.
'All things are delivered unto me of my father; and no man knoweth the son,'--according to Luke, 'who the son is,'--'but the father; neither knoweth any man the father,'--according to Luke, 'who the father is,'--'save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him.'
--_Matthew_ xi.
25--27; _Luke_ x. 21, 22. 'Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'
_Matthew_ xi.
28--30. The words of the Lord in the former two of these paragraphs, are represented, both by Matthew and by Luke, as spoken after the denunciation of the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum; only in Luke's narrative, the return of the seventy is mentioned between; and there the rejoicing of the Lord over the Father's revelation of himself to babes, appears to have reference to the seventy.
The fact that the return of the seventy is not mentioned elsewhere, leaves us free to suppose that the words were indeed spoken on that occasion.
The circumstances, however, as circumstances, are to us of little importance, not being necessary to the understanding of the words.
The Lord makes no complaint against the wise and prudent; he but recognizes that they are not those to whom his father reveals his best things; for which fact and the reasons of it, he thanks, or praises his father.
'I bless thy will: I see that thou art right: I am of one mind with thee:' something of each of these phases of meaning seems to belong to the Greek word.
'But why not reveal true things first to the wise?
Are they not the fittest to receive them?'
Yes, if these things and their wisdom lie in the same region--not otherwise.
No amount of knowledge or skill in physical science, will make a man the fitter to argue a metaphysical question; and the wisdom of this world, meaning by the term, the philosophy of prudence, self-protection, precaution, specially unfits a man for receiving what the Father has to reveal: in proportion to our care about our own well being, is our incapability of understanding and welcoming the care of the Father.
The wise and the prudent, with all their energy of thought, could never see the things of the Father sufficiently to recognize them as true.
Their sagacity labours in earthly things, and so fills their minds with their own questions and conclusions, that they cannot see the eternal foundations God has laid in man, or the consequent necessities of their own nature.
They are proud of finding out things, but the things they find out are all less than themselves.
Because, however, they have discovered them, they imagine such things the goal of the human intellect.
If they grant there may be things beyond those, they either count them beyond their reach, or declare themselves uninterested in them: for the wise and prudent, they do not exist.
They work only to gather by the senses, and deduce from what they have so gathered, the prudential, the probable, the expedient, the protective.
They never think of the essential, of what in itself must be.
They are cautious, wary, discreet, judicious, circumspect, provident, temporizing.
They have no enthusiasm, and are shy of all forms of it--a clever, hard, thin people, who take _things_ for the universe, and love of facts for love of truth.
They know nothing deeper in man than mere surface mental facts and their relations.
They do not perceive, or they turn away from any truth which the intellect cannot formulate.
Zeal for God will never eat them up: why should it?
he is not interesting to them: theology may be; to such men religion means theology.
How should the treasure of the Father be open to such?
In their hands his rubies would draw in their fire, and cease to glow.
The roses of paradise in their gardens would blow withered.
They never go beyond the porch of the temple; they are not sure whether there be any _adytum_, and they do not care to go in and see: why indeed should they?
it would but be to turn and come out again.
Even when they know their duty, they must take it to pieces, and consider the grounds of its claim before they will render it obedience.
All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness, have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of the children.
These wise and prudent, careful to make the words of his messengers rime with their conclusions, interpret the great heart of God, not by their own hearts, but by their miserable intellects; and, postponing the obedience which alone can give power to the understanding, press upon men's minds their wretched interpretations of the will of the Father, instead of the doing of that will upon their hearts.
They call their philosophy the truth of God, and say men must hold it, or stand outside.
They are the slaves of the letter in all its weakness and imperfection,--and will be until the spirit of the Word, the spirit of obedience shall set them free.
The babes must beware lest the wise and prudent come between them and the Father.
They must yield no claim to authority over their belief, made by man or community, by church any more than by synagogue.
That alone is for them to believe which the Lord reveals to their souls as true; that alone is it possible for them to believe with what he counts belief.
The divine object for which teacher or church exists, is the persuasion of the individual heart to come to Jesus, the spirit, to be taught what he alone can teach.
Terribly has his gospel suffered in the mouths of the wise and prudent: how would it be faring now, had its first messages been committed to persons of repute, instead of those simple fishermen?
It would be nowhere, or, if anywhere, unrecognizable.
From the first we should have had a system founded on a human interpretation of the divine gospel, instead of the gospel itself, which would have disappeared.
As it is, we have had one dull miserable human system after another usurping its place; but, thank God, the gospel remains!
The little child, heedless of his trailing cloud of glory, and looking about him aghast in an unknown world, may yet see and run to the arms open to the children.
How often has not some symbol employed in the New Testament been forced into the service of argument for one or another contemptible scheme of redemption, which were no redemption; while the truth for the sake of which the symbol was used, the thing meant to be conveyed by it, has lain unregarded beside the heap of rubbish!
Had the wise and prudent been the confidants of God, I repeat, the letter would at once have usurped the place of the spirit; the ministering slave would have been set over the household; a system of religion, with its rickety, malodorous plan of salvation, would not only have at once been put in the place of a living Christ, but would yet have held that place.
The great brother, the human God, the eternal Son, the living one, would have been as utterly hidden from the tearful eyes and aching hearts of the weary and heavy-laden, as if he had never come from the deeps of love to call the children home out of the shadows of a self-haunted universe.
But the Father revealed the Father's things to his babes; the babes loved, and began to do them, therewith began to understand them, and went on growing in the knowledge of them and in the power of communicating them; while to the wise and prudent, the deepest words of the most babe-like of them all, John Boanerges, even now appear but a finger-worn rosary of platitudes.
The babe understands the wise and prudent, but is understood only by the babe.
The Father, then, revealed his things to babes, because the babes were his own little ones, uncorrupted by the wisdom or the care of this world, and therefore able to receive them.
The others, though his children, had not begun to be like him, therefore could not receive them.
The Father's things could not have got anyhow into their minds without leaving all their value, all their spirit, outside the unchildlike place.
The babes are near enough whence they come, to understand a little how things go in the presence of their father in heaven, and thereby to interpret the words of the Son.
The child who has not yet 'walked above a mile or two from' his 'first love,' is not out of touch with the mind of his Father.
Quickly will he seal the old bond when the Son himself, the first of the babes, the one perfect babe of God, comes to lead the children out of the lovely 'shadows of eternity' into the land of the 'white celestial thought.'
As God is the one only real father, so is it only to God that any one can be a perfect child.
In his garden only can childhood blossom.
The leader of the great array of little ones, himself, in virtue of his firstborn childhood, the first recipient of the revelations of his father, having thus given thanks, and said why he gave thanks, breaks out afresh, renewing expression of delight that God had willed it thus: 'Even so, father, for so it seemed good in thy sight!'
I venture to translate, 'Yea, O Father, for thus came forth satisfaction before thee!'
and think he meant, 'Yea, Father, for thereat were all thy angels filled with satisfaction,' The babes were the prophets in heaven, and the angels were glad to find it was to be so upon the earth also; they rejoiced to see that what was bound in heaven, was bound on earth; that the same principle held in each.
Compare Matt, xviii.
10 and 14; also Luke xv.
10. 'See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you that their angels in heaven do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven....
Thus it is not the will before your father which is in heaven,'--_among the angels who stand before him_, I think he means,--'that one of these little ones should perish.'
'Even so, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.'
