Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems

XXV

THE JOY OF CHRIST

The last chapters of St. John – in particular from the thirteenth to the seventeenth – are worthy, more than anything else in the sacred writings, of the designation which has been given them, The Heart of Jesus. They are the language of the most intimate love, to the most intimate friends, in view of the greatest and most inconceivable of human sorrows. For, though the disciples – poor, humble, simple men – were dazed, confused, and misty up to the very moment when they were entering upon the greatest sorrow of their life, the Master who was leading them saw it all with perfect clearness. He saw perfectly not only the unspeakable humiliation and anguish that were before himself, but the disappointment, the terror, the dismay, the utter darkness and despair that were just before these humble, simple friends who had invested all their love and hope in him.

When we think of this it will seem all the more strange, the more unworldly and divine to find that in these very chapters our Lord speaks more often, and with more emphasis, of Joy than in any other part of the New Testament. In the fifteenth he says, "These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." And again, in his prayer for them, he says, "And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves." He speaks of his joy as a treasure he longed to impart – as something which overflowed his own soul, and sought to equalize itself by flowing into the souls of his friends. He was not only full of joy, but he had fullness of joy to give away.

This joy of Christ in the approach of extremest earthly anguish and sorrow is one of the beautiful mysteries of our faith. It is a holy night-flower, opening only in darkness, and shedding in the very shadow of death light and perfume; or like the solemn splendor of the stars, to be seen only in the deepest darkness.

In the representations made of our Lord as a man of sorrows we are too apt to forget the solemn emphasis with which he asserts this fullness of joy. But let us look at his position on the mere human side. At the hour when he thus spoke he knew that, so far as the salvation of his nation was concerned, his life-work had been a failure. His own people had rejected him and had bargained with a member of his own family to betray him. He knew the exact details of the scourging, the scoffing, the taunts, the torture, the crucifixion; and to a sensitive soul the hour of approach to a great untried agony is often the hour of bitterest trial. It is when we foresee a great trouble in the dimness of to-morrow that our undisciplined hearts grow faint and fail us. But he who had long foreseen – who had counted in advance – every humiliation, every sorrow, and every pain, spoke at the same time of his joy as an overflowing fullness. He spoke of his peace as something which he had a divine power to give away. The world saw that night a new sight – a sufferer who had touched the extreme of all earthly loss and sorrow, who yet stood, like a God, offering to give Peace and Joy – even fullness of joy. For our Lord intensifies the idea. He wants his children not to have joy merely, but to be full of joy. This is the meaning of the words to "have my joy fulfilled in them."

We shall see in the affecting history of the next few hours of the life of Jesus that this heavenly joy was capable of a temporary obscuration. He was aware that a trial was coming from a direct collision with the Evil Spirit. "The Prince of this world cometh, but hath nothing in me."

Yet we cannot but feel that the mysterious agonies of Gethsemane, that wrung the blood-drops from his heart, were in part due to that conflict with cruel and malignant spirits. It is the greatest possible help to our poor sorrowful nature that these struggles, these strong cryings and bitter tears of our Lord, have been recorded, because it helps us to feel that he was not peaceful because he was passionless – that his joy and peace did not come from the serenity of a nature incapable of sorrow and struggles like ours. There are passages in the experience of such saints as Madame Guyon that seem like the unnatural exaltations of souls exceptionally indifferent to circumstances; nothing makes any difference to them; one thing is just as good as another. But in the experience of Jesus we see our own most shrinking human repellencies. We see that there were sufferings that he dreaded with his whole soul; sorrows which he felt to be beyond even his power of endurance; and so when he said, "Not my will, but Thy will," he said it with full vision of what he was accepting; and in that unshaken, that immovable oneness of will with the Father lay the secret of his joy and victory.

It is a great and solemn thing for us to think of this joy of Christ in sorrow. It is something that we can know only in and by sorrow. But sorrows are so many in this world of ours! Griefs, sickness, disappointment, want, death, so beset our footsteps that it is worth everything to us to think of that joy of Christ that is brightest as the hour grows darkest. It is a gift. It is not in us. We cannot get it by any human reasonings or the mere exercise of human will, but we can get it as a free gift from Jesus Christ.

If in the hour of his deepest humiliation and suffering he had joy and peace to give away, how much more now, when he is exalted at the right hand of God, to give gifts unto men! Poor sorrowful, suffering, struggling souls, Christ longs to comfort you. "I will give to him that is athirst the water of life freely." "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

XXVI

GETHSEMANE

There are times in life when human beings are called to sorrows that seem so hopeless, so cruel, that they take from the spirit all power of endurance. There are agonies that overwhelm, that crush, – their only language seems to be a groan of prostrate anguish. There are distresses against which the heart cries out, "It is too much. I cannot, cannot bear it. God have mercy on me!"

It was for people who suffer thus, for those who are capable of such depths and who are called to go through them, that the great Apostle and High Priest of our profession passed through that baptism of agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Apostle says, "It became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons and daughters unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering." And it was at this hour and time that he was to pass through such depths that no child of his could ever go deeper. Alone, and without the possibility of human sympathy, he was to test those uttermost distresses possible to the most exceptional natures. Jesus suffered all that he could endure and live. The record is given with great particularity by three Evangelists, and is full of mysterious suggestion. Up to this period all the discourses of our Lord, in distinct view of his final sufferings, had been full of calmness and courage. He had consoled his little flock, and bid them not be troubled, speaking cheerfully of a joy that should repay the brief anguish of separation. He not only was wholly at peace in his own soul, but felt that he had peace in abundance to give away. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

Yet he went forth from speaking these very words, and this is the account of the scene that followed, collated from the three Evangelists: —

"Then cometh Jesus with them unto the place that is called Gethsemane, and said to his disciples, Sit ye here while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy (in extreme anguish). And he said unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here and watch with me, and pray that ye enter not into temptation. And he went forward a little, and fell on his face and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto his disciples and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What! could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, and said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt. O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again; for their eyes were heavy, neither wist they what to answer him. And he left them and went away the third time, and prayed, saying the same words. And, being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood, falling down to the ground, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him.

"And when he rose up from prayer and was come to his disciples, he findeth them sleeping for sorrow, and saith unto them, Sleep on now – rest."

There seems here evidence that the anguish, whatever it was, had passed, and that Jesus had returned to his habitual peace. He looks with pity on the poor tired followers whose sympathy had failed him just when he most needed it, and says, "Poor souls, let them sleep for a little and rest."

After an interval he rouses them. "It is enough – the hour is come; the Son of man is betrayed into the hand of sinners. Rise up; let us go: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me."

The supposition that it was the final agony of the cross which Jesus prayed to be delivered from is inconsistent with his whole life and character. He had kept that end in view from the beginning of his life. He said, in view of it, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" He rebuked Peter in the sharpest terms for suggesting that he should avoid those predicted sufferings. Going up to Jerusalem to die, he walked before the rest, as if impelled by a sacred ardor to fulfill his mission. Furthermore, in the Epistle to the Hebrews we are taught thus: the writer says, speaking of the Saviour, "Who in the days of his flesh offered up prayers with strong crying and tears to him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared." Whatever relief it was that our Lord supplicated with such earnestness, it was given; and he went forth from the dreadful anguish in renewed and perfect peace.

We may not measure the depths of that anguish or its causes. Our Lord gives some intimation of one feature in it by saying, as he prepared to go forth to it, "The Prince of this World cometh, and hath nothing in me;" and in warning his disciples, "Pray that ye enter not into temptation." The expression employed by St. Mark to describe the anguish is indicative of a sudden rush – of an amazement, as if a new possibility of suffering, overwhelming and terrible, had been disclosed to him, such a sorrow as it seemed must destroy life – "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death."

Let these words remain in all their depths, in all their mystery, as standing for that infinite possibility of pain which the one divine Man was to taste for every man. There have been facts in human experience analogous. We are told that the night before his execution, Jerome of Prague, in his lonely prison, condemned and held accursed by the proud Scribes and Pharisees, the Christian Sanhedrim of his times, fainted and groaned and prayed as Jesus in Gethsemane. Martin Luther has left on record a wonderful prayer, written the night before the Diet of Worms, when he, a poor, simple monk, was called before the great Diet of the Empire to answer for his faith. Such strong crying and tears – such throbbing words – that seem literally like drops of blood falling down to the ground, attest that Luther was passing through Gethsemane. Alone, with all the visible power of the Church and the world against him, his position was like that of Jesus. A crisis was coming when he was to witness for truth, and he felt that only God was for him, and he appeals to him: "Hast thou not chosen me to do this work? I ask thee, O God, O thou my God, where art thou? Art thou dead? No, thou canst not die; thou art only hiding thyself."

In many private histories there are Gethsemanes. There are visitations of sudden, overpowering, ghastly troubles, – troubles that transcend all ordinary human sympathy, such as the helpless human soul has to wrestle with alone. And it was because in this blind struggle of life such crushing experiences are to be meted out to the children of men that Infinite Love provided us with a divine Friend who had been through the deepest of them all, and come out victorious.

In the sudden wrenches which come by the entrance of death into our family circles, there is often an inexplicable depth of misery that words cannot tell. No outer words can tell what a trial is to the soul. Only Jesus, who, as the Head of the human race, united in himself every capability of human suffering, and proved them all, in order that he might help us, only he has an arm strong enough and a voice tender enough to reach us. The stupor of the disciples in the agony of Jesus is a sort of parable or symbol of the inevitable loneliness of the deepest kind of sorrow. There are friends, loving, honest, true, but they cannot watch with us through such hours. It is like the hour of death – nobody can go with us. But he who knows what it is so to suffer; he who has felt the horror, the amazement, the heart-sick dread – who has fallen on his face overcome, and prayed with cryings and tears and the bloody sweat of agony – he can understand us and can help us. He can send an angel from heaven to comfort us when every human comforter is "sleeping for sorrow." It was Gethsemane which gave Jesus the power to bring many sons and daughters unto glory.

And it may comfort us under such trials to hope that as he thus gained an experience and a tenderness which made him mighty to comfort and to save, so we, in our humbler measure, may become comforters to others. When the experience is long past, when the wounds of the heart are healed, then we may find it good to have drank of Christ's cup, and gone down in that baptism with him. We may find ourselves with hearts tenderer to feel, and stronger to sustain others; even as the Apostle says, he "comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."

XXVII

THE LAST WORDS OF JESUS

A peculiar sacredness always attaches to the words of the dying. In that lonely pass between the here and the hereafter the meanest soul becomes in a manner a seer, and a mysterious interest invests it. But the last utterances of great and noble spirits, of minds of vast feeling and depth, are of still deeper significance. The last utterances of great men would form a pathetic collection and a food for deep ponderings. It is no wonder, then, that the traditions of the Christian Church have attached a special value to the last words of Jesus on the cross.

The last words of Socrates, reported by Plato, have had an undying interest. These words were spoken in the bosom of sympathizing friends and in the enjoyment of physical quiet and composure. Death was at hand; but it was a death painless and easy, and undisturbing to the flow of thought or emotion.

The death of Jesus, on the contrary, was death with every aggravation and horror which could make it fearful. There was everything to torture the senses and to obscure the soul. It was a whirl of vulgar obloquy and abuse, confusing to the spirit, and following upon protracted exhaustion from sleeplessness and suffering of various kinds for long hours.

In the case of most human beings we might wish to hide our eyes from the sight of such an agony; we might refuse to listen to what must be the falterings and the weaknesses of a noble spirit overwhelmed and borne down beyond the power of human endurance. But no such danger attends the listening to the last words on Calvary. They have been collected into a rosary embodying the highest Christian experience possible to humanity, the most signal victory of love over pain and of good over evil that the world's history presents.

During Passion Week in Rome no services are more impressive than those of the seven "last words," with the hymns, prayers, and exhortations accompanying them. To us the mere quotation of them, unattended by sermon or hymn or prayer, is a litany of awful power. Have we ever pondered these as they were spoken in their order in the words of the simple Gospel narrative?

"And when they came to the place that is called Calvary, there they crucified him and the malefactors, the one on his right hand and the other on his left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." This is the first word. Against physical violence and pain there is in us all a reaction of the animal nature which expresses itself often in the form of irritation. Thus, in strong, undisciplined natures, the first shock of physical torture brings out a curse, and it is only after an interval that reason and conscience gain the ascendency and make the needed allowance. In these strange words of Jesus we feel that there is the sharp shock of a new sense of pain, but it wrings from him only prayer. This divine sweetness of love was unvanquished; the habit of tenderness and consideration for the faults of others furnished an instant plea. The poor brutal Roman soldiers – they know not what they do! The foolish multitude who three days before shouted "Hosanna," and now shout "Crucify" – they know not what they do! How strange to the Roman soldiers must those words have sounded, if they understood them! "What manner of man is this?" It is not surprising that tradition numbers these poor soldiers among the earliest converts to Jesus.

The second utterance was on this wise: —

"And the people that stood beholding, and the rulers also with them, derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God. And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar; and one of the malefactors railed on him, saying, If thou be the Son of God, save thyself and us. But the other answering, rebuked him, saying, Dost thou not fear God, seeing that thou art in the same condemnation? – and we, indeed, justly, for we receive the reward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

Still unvanquished by pain, he is even with his last breath pronouncing words of grace and consolation for the guilty and repentant! He is mighty to save even in his humiliation!

The third utterance is recorded by St. John as follows: —

"Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother standing, and the disciple whom he loved, he said to his mother, Woman, behold thy son, and to the disciple, Son, behold thy mother."

Thus far, every utterance of Jesus has been one of thoughtful consideration for others, of prayer for his enemies, of grace and pardon to the poor wretch by his side, and of tenderness to his mother and disciple. But in tasting death for every man our Lord was to pass through a deeper experience; he was to know the sufferings of the darkened brain, which, clogged and impeded by the obstructed circulation, no longer afforded a clear medium for divine communion. He was to suffer the eclipse which the animal nature in its dying state can interpose between the soul and God. Three hours we are told had passed, when there was darkness over all the land, like that that was slowly gathering over the head of the suffering Lord. "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani, which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Those words, from the Psalm of David, come now as the familiar language expressive of that dreadful experience to which the whole world looks as its ransom: —

"After that, Jesus said, I thirst. And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar and put it on a reed and gave him to drink. And when he had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished, and he bowed his head."

What we read of his last utterance is that "he cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost." This last loud utterance was in the words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

It is the interpretation that the church has given to these last words that they betokened a sudden flame of joyful perception, such as sometimes lights up the brain at the dying moment, after it has been darkened by the paralysis of death. As he said, "It is finished," light, and joy, and hope, flushed his soul, and with this loud cry of victory and joy, it departed like a ray of heavenly light to the bosom of the Father.

Such were the seven "last utterances" of Jesus – and when can we hope to attain to what they teach? When shall we be so grounded in Love that no tumult or jar of outward forces, no insults, no physical weariness, exhaustion, or shock of physical pain, shall have power to absorb us in selfishness, or make us forgetful of others? When shall pity and prayer be the only spontaneous movement of our hearts when most hurt and injured – pierced in the tenderest nerve? When shall thoughtfulness for others, and divine pity for degraded natures, be the immovable habit of our souls? How little of self and its sufferings in these last words; how much of pity and love – the pity and love of a God!

Could we but learn life's lessons by them, then will come at last to us the final hour, when, our trial being completed, we shall say "It is finished," and pass like him to the bosom of the Father.

XXVIII

THE DARKEST HOUR

What is the darkest hour to us when our friends die? Not the dying hour; for then love has some last act, some last word to receive, some comfort to give, some service to render, that diverts from the bitterness of pain. Not even when the eyes are closed forever, and the face is fixed in marble stillness; for still we gather at the side of the cold clay and feel as if there were something left us of our love. But when we have carried our dear ones to the grave, and seen the doors of the sepulchre shut between them and us, and come back to the house where they are no more – where they never more may be —then is indeed the darkest hour.

There is a very touching picture by Delaroche entitled "The Return from the Cross," in which the mother of Jesus, leaning on the arm of the beloved John, is seen just entering a lowly dwelling. A few faithful friends, men and women, are with them; they have seen him die – seen him laid in the sepulchre and a great stone rolled against the door; and now they are come to their desolate home to think it all over, and to weep.