IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I ^ lis lllilio 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 M 6" — ► V] <^ /2 '<^A e: C/a % Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 #.^ CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHIVI/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques \ \ ■<> Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming, are checked below. D D D D D D Coloured covers/ Couverture de couleur I I Covers damaged/ Couverture endommagee Covers restored and/or laminated/ Couverture restaur^e et/ou pelliculde □ Cover title missing/ Le titre de couverture manque □ Coloured maps/ Cartes g6ographiques en coulour Bin Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/ ere de couleur (i.e. autre y ? "—Mark \l ^. IV/rY subject this morning is Jesus and His iVl mother. This, I need hardly remind you, is a subject concerning which one branch of the Christian Church — the Roman CathoHc has had a great deal to say. And, as so often happens in these matters, exaggeration on the one hand has led to neglect on the other; and so it has come to pass that we Protestants, for the most part, give the subject the go-by altogether. It is no part of my present purpose to discuss the various dogmas which, under the fostering hand of Rome, have grown up around this subject —the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, the Perpetual Virginity, the Miraculous Assumption. This only I will say, that not only (so at least it seems to me) are they without one vestige of scriptural authority, but they are even more, excluded, as though by anticipation, by the whole u mm 20 T/ie Mother of Jesus it ili character and tenor of every one of the few brief references which the Gospels make to the mother of our Lord. And anyone who has observed, however superficially, religious life on the Conti- nent, and has marked the countless shrines and images and pictures which appeal to the love and the imagination of the devout worshipper of the Virgin, cannot but feel how far in this 'respect, at least, Roman Christianity has strayed from the simplicity of the New Testament records. Nevertheless, Romish exaggeration ought not to mean Protestant neglect. Of course, we do believe that Jesus was the son of Mary ; alike through the " Shorter Catechism " and the " Apostles' Creed " we declare our faith in Him as " born of the Virgin Mary." And yet, so fearful are we of anything that savours of Mariolatry, that though we habitually think and speak of Jesus as " Son of God," we almost as habitually refrain from thinking or speaking of Him as " son of Mary " ; and so we miss the truth, the strength, the comfort which God meant should come to us through this name no less than through that other and greater name, " Son of God." A curious illustration of the unwillingness of multitudes of Protestants to give to Christ this perfectly scriptural title is furnished by Dean Milman's well-known hymn beginning, "When our heads are bowed with woe." As printed in our own Hymn Book the last line of each verse reads, "Jesu, Son of David, hear." What Mil- 'm "m The Mother of Jesns 21 man really wrote was, " Gracious Son of Mary, hear." And if anyone is interested enough to turn to Julian's grcciX. Dictionary of Hyiunolog)^ he will find that there are extant at least ten different versions of that last line, every one of which owes its exist- ence to the anxiety of the hymn-doctors to get rid of the obnoxious phrase, " son of Mary." For my part, I am utterly at a loss to understand this strange solicitude. If the New Testament calls Jesus " son of Mary," why should we hesitate ? Moreover, see what our refusal robs us of. There are moments when I love to think of Christ as my King: on His head are many crowns; in His hand is the sceptre of the universe ; He is King of kings and Lord of lords, and I worship Him throned for ever amid the glory of His Father and of the holy angels. But there are times again — times " when the spirit shrinks with fear " — when I would rather think of Him as "born of a woman," " bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh." " Thou hast bowed the dying head, Thou the blood of Hfe hast shed. Thou hast filled a mortal bier ; " therefore, " When our heads are bowed with woe, * When our bitter tears o'erflow, When we mourn the lost, the dear," what more fitting, what more beautiful than that we should pray, " Jesu, Son of Mary, hear I " 22 The Mother of Jesus " Thou au the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father" — I will sing it to the music of all the trumpets of God. liut I will sing this also — " When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man, Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb " " Is not this the son of Mary?" Let us think, then fore, for a icw moments of Mary the mother and Jesus the son. We will look first at the mother's love for her son, and then at the son's love for His mother. ' \\ The Mother's love for her son. — The references in the four Gospels, as I have said, are compara- tively few, and when we piece them all together they do not amount to much. But their meaning is clear, clear at least to love's eyes, for love is always quick to catch love's meaning. " She brought forth her first-born son." I wonder, does any mother feel quite the same about any child as she docs about her first-born ? And Jesus was the first-born child of Mary, And then, the strange and sacred mystery of that motherhood ! As far as words can tell it, it is told in those exquisite narratives of the birth and infancy which Luke has preserved for us in the opening chapters of his Gospel. And I some- times think that Biblical scholarship never made The Mot her of Jesus n a happier or a more likely conjecture than when it suggested that these narratives were taken down by the evangeh'st straight from the lips of Mary herself. Certain it is there are in them delicate little touches that reveal unmistakably the hand of a inother : " And all that heard it wondered at the things which were spoken unto them by the shepherds " — ay, wondered to-day, and to-morrow had forgotten ; " but Mary kept all these saj'iiigs, pondering titeui in her heart." So again after the incident in the Temple we read, "And His mother kept all these sayings in her heart." From this time onward it is only stray glimpses that we get of the Son and the mother together ; she is with Him at the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee ; she goes down with Him to Capernaum ; once while He is speaking to the multitude word is brought to Him that His mother and His brethren are on the edge of the crowd seeking to speak with him ; we see her last with the disciples in the upper room at Jerusalem waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit. But the most beauti- ful record of all is that which John has preserved for us : " And there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother." There are few things in all the Bible that go to my heart quite like that. While the multitudes were with Him, Mary was content to stand aside and to watch ; but now that they have left Him or turned against Him she is by His side ; it is her turn now. " Lord, with Thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death ; I 24 The Mother of Jesus s % will lay down my life for Thy sake." It was not Mary who said that ; mothers never talk after that fashion ; but when the boastful disciple had denied Ilim and fled, "there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother." What a pitiless storm beat about that poor lone woman ! What thoughts crowded in upon her poor tired brain! lUit yesterday He lay a child upon her bosom, and now He is dying — dying before her eyes, yet beyond her reach, dying like a vile and guilty criminal, pinned there to that rough cross of wood like some loathsome vermin. Then she remembered the great words of the angel : " He shall be great, and .shall be called the Soji of the Most High ; and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; and of His kingdom there shall be no end." How often she had said them over to her- self when, in the quiet home at Nazareth, year after year had slipped by, till the child had grown from childhood to boyhood, from boyhood to youth, from youth to early manhood, and still there was no sign — until sometimes her heart had failed her ! Then she would bethink her of Simeon's strange prophecy as he took the little child into his old arms : " Yea, and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul." Many a time had she turned the words over as she lay awake at night ; what could it mean, this sword that was to pierce her own soul ? Then one day the call M The Mother of Jesus 25 came, and Jesus went forth. " It is coming now," she said, " that promised greatness " ; and as day by day she heard how His fame spread and the multitudes thronged Him, and nameless women blessed her that bare I lim, the sw»'id was forgotten ; once more hope beat high within her. " Surel)' now, at last," she said, "the promised kingdom is nigh at hand." Then with such awful swiftness all had changed ; praise had turned to scorn, and love to hatred ; cunning — black, treacherous, horrible — had plotted and had triumphed ; and the end of all that promised brightness, of the angel's word, and of her own high hopes, was here ! — in death, cruel death, death upon a cross I And )-ct, was He not hers still ? It seemed, indeed, as if the earth had opened at her feet and swallowed the hopes of a lifetime. Yet, was He not hers? Had He not moved in her side ? Had she not borne Him? Had she not loved Him? Had she not called riim "son"? Had He not called her "mother"? Yes, let come what might come, He was hers ; she must be near Him to the last. " There stood by the cross of Jesus His mother." In all the world is there anything to compare with the constancy, the hopefulness, the patience, the long-suffering of a mother's love ? I had got thus far with my sermon preparation when I took down, perhaps for the hundreth time, Mr. Barrie's immortal book A Windozu in Thrums. Of all our modern writers, perhaps, he best understands and can interpret the love and pathos you may mm 26 77/1' Mother of Jesus \ \ \ I I find iiiulcr tlic humblest roof. This is how poor Jess mourns for her hoy Joey dead this twenty years : " (luid is no word for what Jamie has been to inc, but he wasna born till after Joey died. When we got Jamie, Ilendr}' took to whistlin' a^ain at tlic loom, an' Jamie juist filled Joey's place to him. A)', but naebody could fill Joey's place to me. It's different to a man. A bairn's no the same to him, but a fell bit o' me was buried in my laddie's grave." Years went by and Mendry and Leeby were laid ''i the burying- ground, and Jamie, who should i.avc been her stay, was a prodigal in the great city, no one knew where ; but Jess still sat at her window and watched the brae. " If he ever comes back, the sacket," said one of the neighbours angrily one day, " we'll show hiin the door ^^Q.y quick." "Jess just looked, and all the women knew how she would take Jamie to her arms." " l''iction," do )'ou say ? Yes, and it is history too. There is a h}-mn we sometimes sing, " There is a gate that stands ajar," that I should be inclined to find fault with — for God's gate does not stand "ajar" simply, but wide open — were it not that once I heard that round that simple hymn was twined the story of a mother's love. A girl had strayed from home ; -"very night after she was missing the door was lei . on the latch. " She may come home to-night," said her mother, " and mother's door must not be shut." I talked once with a little bent old woman in one of our Edinburgh stairs. Tlie Mother of Jesus 27 I had never even suspected the little tragedy that lay beneath the quiet surface of her life, but that day, somehow or other, it all came out. She, too, had her Jamie : long years ago he went away, no one knew whither ; she had heard nothing of him since. And sometimes, she told mc, as she sat alone in her room, and heard a sudden stei) on the stairs, her heart would give a leap : " Perhaps it is he — he's coming home agai?> ! " What Mary's love did for Jesus, how much lie owed to it, no one can say. Perhaps t' c debt was greater than we think. Joseph's probable early death would throw mother and child the "more into each other's society. The subject is not free from difficulty ; but if Jesus " learned obedience by the things which he suffered," if He '' grew in wisdom and in favour with God and man," may not a mother's love bending down over Him in those unfolding years have helped to bring tliat fair life to its perfect flower and fruit ? Of this, at least, we may be sure — and again 1 speak not unforgetful of the necessary limitations which the subject imposes — sons like Jesus will be possible only so long as we have mothers like Mary. And therefore it is that I for one, though I am no pessimist, view with eyes full of alarm some of the tendencies in our life to-day. I am not a political economist, nor the son of a political economist, but this I say unhesitatingly, that any system that makes of home only a place to eat and to sleep in, that forces the mother to the mill 28 The Mother of Jesus i \\ or the factory that the Httle ones may have bread to eat, stands self-condemned. The nation that barters the wealth of its motherhood for silver and gold is letting out its own life-blood. Leave us men, and women who are not mothers, to make moniy; we need our mothers to make men. I say I am no political economist, but this is what one of the ablest of our living political economists, Professor Marshall, has told us : " The most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings ; and of that capital the most precious part is the result of the care and influence of the mother." Can anything, too, be more saddening than the freedom with which all sorts and conditions of men, and women (and I am sorry that a number of Socialist leaders are amongst them), are advocating theories of marriage which, if they were once adopted, would not only empty the great words " Mother " and " Home " of all their mean- ing, but — I say it deliberately — would lead society by a short, straight path to the sty ? You may find substitutes for some things ; you can find no substitute for a good mother. In Professor Drummond's fascinating volume, TJie Ascent of Man, there is a chapter entitled " The Evolution of a Mother." Look at the scale of animal life, he says ; at the one end you have the Protozoa, the lowest forms of life ; at the other end Mammalia — Mothers. " There the series stops. Nature has never made anything since." " Ask iJu The Mother of Jesus 29 the zoologist," he says, " what, judging from science alone, Nature aspired to from the first, he could but answer Mammalia — Mothers." Amid all the rubbish of the old Jewish Talmud there is one sentence which ought to be picked out and written in letters of gold : " God could not be everywhere ; so He made mothers." Oh ! you n. others, you mothers, let one mother's son speak this word to you. I am not of those who fear to give you what are called " woman's rights," I do not fear — nay, I look confidently forward to — the day when woman shall stand by man's side in all things — in all worthy things, at least — his acknowledged equal ; and yet I do sometimes fear lest in grasping at the less you lose the greater. Enter, if you will, the kingdoms of knowledge and power, so unjustly shut against you in the past ; but do not, I pray you, forget that there is one kingdom wherein if you do not rule as queens, no man may ever rule as king ; there is one sceptre which if you let fall, our hands are powerless to grasp — the sceptre that Mary held, the kingdom wherein Mary ruled, the sceptre and the kingdom of a holy, loving, almighty motherhood. II Now, let us turn for one moment to the other side of the subject — the son's love for the mother. And if the Gospels have little to tell us of Mary's if; ;o T/ie Mother of Jesus love for Jesus, still less do they tell us of His love for her. At the beginning of His life, after the incident in the Temple, we read that He went down to Nazareth with His parents, and was subject unto them ; at the end of His life, as He hung dying on the cross, He tenderly committed His mother to the care of the beloved disciple. And this is almost all we know ; but if we knew everything we could not be more certain than we are that all was fair and beautiful and good. It is true that another and an alien note seems sometimes to be struck. Why from the cross did He say, " Woman, behold thy son." Why docs He not call her " mother " ? Why, when she intervenes at the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee, does He repel her with what sound like words harsh and stern ? Why, when they tell Him that His mother and His brethren are without seeking Him, docs He speak as though any might stand as near to Him as even Mary herself? May it not be to remind us — what the New Testament ' ever anywhere allows us to forget — that though Jesus was son of Mary, He was not a son as other sons are ? I cannot pursue the subject further now, but if you will think of it, I believe you will find that even in those words of Scripture that men quote oftenest to prove our Lord's humanity there is most inextricably interwoven the surest proof of His divinity. But, setting this for a moment aside, is it possible to doubt that Christ's thoughtful care for The Mother of Jestis 31 His mother in dying was but the coming to the surface of a love and tenderness that were always there ? The death of Socrates and the death of Jesus have often been compared. But when Xan- tippe, in her last interview with her husband, before he drank the fatal cup, gives way to her grief, Socrates bids his friends put her away, and then turns to continue calmly his discussion of the philosophy of pleasure and pain. What a contrast with that last scene around the cross ! And to all who have eyes to see, what can be more plain than the tender, sacred regard in which Jesus ever held the filial relationship ? To the rich young ruler asking, " What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? " He does not repeat all the Ten Commandments, but He does not omit the fifth. No sterner words ever fell from His lips than those in which He condemned the rabbinical conjuring that permitted a man to evade his filial obligations. When He would say how near they stand to Him who do the will of His Father in heaven, this is how He puts it : " The same is My brother and sister and mother." When Luke wrote the story of the raising of the widow's son at Nain, was there not something in the accent, the look, the gesture of Jesus that touched the pen of that evangelist, till it overflowed with words so charged with emotion that even now the voice falters as it reads them : " The only son of his mother, and she was a widow " — did Jesus re- member His own widowed mother, I wonder? ■ n 'ff I'f 1' ■' ■ j flf 1 i i % n I =' i^'f 32 T/ie Mother of Jesus And when He bids farewell to His disciples, He says, " I will not leave you — conifoytless" says the Authorised Version, but that was not what Jesus said : look in the margin of the Revised Version — " I will not leave you orphans''' ; that is Christ's word. To Him there was no state so utterly bereft as orphanhood. And now remember that He who said these things, the son of Mary, will one day be the Judge of ail the sons of men. What then, think you, will He say to them who ' * 1 against this, one of God's best gifts to i.i'M-i 'Other's love? Will He recognise them as "... I knew a younp- man once, educated at one of our great Univers.ties. clev ■ ^nd brilliant to a degree, but eaten up with cyi!tc;:;i:i And I knew that young man's mother ; it was to her that he owed his educational advantages. She was not clever as the world counts cleverness ; but no sweeter, saintlier soul ever breathed. Her face was a perpetual benediction ; it shone as though, to use a little child's phrase, there were " a light inside." And I have heard that young university sprig, who was not worthy to unloose his mother's shoe-latchet, talk down to her, and patronize her with a but half-disguised contempt, until I could have struck the man ! Did you ever read this : " The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it " ? But, I tell you, I would meet that or any doom The Mother of Jesus rather than stand at the last great da)- with a sin hke that upon my head unforgivcn in the presence of the son of Mary. On the other hand, can he be wholly without the root of the matter in hiin who does worthily respond to a mother's love ? h'ew men of our day, perhaps, have given so much needless pain to many Christian people, or have uttered so many wild and whirling words with such a demure reck- lessness, as the late Mr. Matthew Arnold. lUit when I read his recently published Letters, so brimming with tenderness towards his widowed mother, I almost forgave him everything. To some people Thomas Carlyle is little better than an ill-natured cur, snarling and snapping at the heels of every passer-by. But let every young man read Carlyle's letters to his mother ; perhaps there is nothing quite like them in our lit raturc. Jean Carlyle was only a humble peasant w^oman in Annandale ; but her son gave of his best when he wrote to her ; and for the wondrous love he bare her shall not much be forgiven him at the last by the son of Mary ? Have my words stirred long-sleeping memories ? Have I touched without knowing it some secret spring, and set wide open a door that has not moved for years upon its rusty hinges ? While I have been speaking have other voices been speak- ing — voices out of the dim past, words of the sainted dead? Is it so? Some little scene like this swims up from the days long gone by : A D 34 The Mother of Jesus ! darkened room, with hushed voices, and feet that tread softly, a white face on the pillow, and then the words broken and slow, " It is growing dark — I am going home — meet me where I go." And then another voice, half-choked with sobs, " I will, by God's help, I will." That other voice is yours, changed though it be that even you yourself scarce know it. Tell me, what have you done with that " sweet, olden promise " ? I am treading, I know, on ground that is holy ; I am touching a string that I have never dared to touch before ; but, if it vibrates, if there are voices out of the past like these that can speak to you, oh ! listen to them ; they will plead as no poor words of mine can plead ; hear, and follow, and obey. " God of our fathers I lie tlic God Of their succeeding race." : : , lat en irk nd 'ill, irs, 5elf Dne ng. ga re ; the itcn . of THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF JESUS ■pww I , I • I ;i w^^ mm )l III THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF JESUS '/s >io/ this . . . the hrolhcr of James, and Joscs, awt Judas, and Stinon? and are not His sisters here with //J- .^"— Mark vi, j. T HAVE spoken in a previous sermon of the J- mother of Jesus. To-day I want us to take another glance into that little home at Nazareth. Of the head of the household himself there is little to be told. Joseph disappears from the- narrative very early ; and the probability is that lie died many years before Jesus entered on the work of His public ministry. But Joseph and Mary and Jesus were not the only members of the family. There were at least seven children : five boys— Jesus and the four whose names are men- tioned in the text— and (at least) two girls though of these neither the exact number nor the names are told, so that the little home would be very crowded, and very noisy sometimes; and you mothers, at least, will not need to be told that 38 The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus with so many mouths to feed, and so many things to think about, Mary must have found her hands very full. It is of these other members of the family that we arc to think to-day : my subject is, The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus. In the first place, are there not some of us to whom it never occurred before that Jesus had brothers and sisters just as we have? Indeed, everything that is human in the life of Jesus is to some of us more or less unreal. We accept the statements of theology concerning His humanity, but with a certain mental reserve. Even when one of the sacred writers himself tells us *' He was tempted in all points like as we are," we doubt whether he meant quite all he said ; and to some of us, it is to be feared, the temptation in the wilderness is little more than a scenic display. We cannot think of Jesus as boy and man, as son and brother, entering like others into ordinary human relationships. We must needs picture Him with a halo of unearthly light about His head, and, as Professor Rendel Harris has recently pointed out, even a writer like Dean Farrar cannot speak of the " boy " Jesus without printing the word with a capital B, as if to suggest that He was never like other children. The truth is, many of us are Apollinarians without knowing it. It is not difficult to understand the reason of z The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus 39 all this. Ciiiist was more than a man, and \vc arc jealous — rightly jealous — of I lis divinity, for vvc know how much hangs upon it. 1 share that jealousy to the full, and I will be bold to say that no one who has heard me preach half-a-dozen consecutive sermons will charge me with lack of fidelity here. But let us make no mistake ; we do not strengthen by one jot the proof of Christ's divinity by doubting the truth of llis humanity. I know the difficulty of a full and balanced state- ment of the whole truth. Our only safe course is to follow the New Testament, and to declare unflinchingly alike the Manhood and the Godhead of Jesus, refusing to exalt cither at the expense of the other. When therefore we think, as we arc doing just now, of the humanity of Jesus, we must take care not to go one step farther than the Gospels lead us ; but we ought also to be careful to go as far ; and when they describe to us, eg, the childhood of Jesus, do not let us, by little and needless devices of our own, throw " an air of undue mystery about what is perfectly natural " (I quote the words of Mr. Rendcl Harris again), and so hinder ourselves from entering into fellow- ship with Christ's early years. It is probably a mistake of this kind which is, in the main, responsible for the different opinions which still exist as to the exact relationship of Jesus to those who are here called His " brothers " and " sisters." The most natural inference un- doubtedly is that they were the children of Joseph r ^ p Mh 40 Th.: Brothers and Sisters oj Jesus and Mary, born subsequent to the birth of Jesus. But o\vin<^ to the strength of the feeling — in my judgment a wholly mistaken feeling — that It was somehow derogatory alike to the honour of Jesus and of Mary to suppose that she was the mother of other children besides Him, two other interpre- tations have been able to take the field and command very considerable support. On the one hand it has been held that the so-called " brethren " of our Lord were in reality His cousins, the children of Mar}', a sister of the Virgin, and the wife of Cleophas. On the other hand, they are said to be the children of Joseph by a former marriage. I The difficulties in the way of the first of these suggested interpretations arc insuperable : it supposes two sisters each bearing the name of Mary ; it gives no explanation of the fact that our Lord's brethren are always named in conjunction with Mary the mother of Jesus, and never, as we should expect, if this interpretation be the right one, with Mary the wife of Cleophas ; and it still further leaves unexplained the fact that though there is in the Greek language a word for " cousin " which lay ready to their hand, the New Testament writers never once make use of it in this con- nection. As for the other interpretation, it un- doubtedly raises fewer difficulties, and is supported by the weighty name of Bishop Lightfoot. But even his learned arguments leave me unconvinced. The natural interpretation is that which I have ^' The ]h-othci's and Sisters oj Jesus 4 1 already given ; nowhere do the sacred writers seek to guard their readers against it, and it is difficult to see what other language they could have used if that had been the meaning which they had actually desired to convey. For ni}' part, I cannot get rid of the idea that had it been any other than Christ concerning whose relationship the language of the Gospels had been used, these rival theories would never have been heard of ; that it is Christ docs not make them necessary. When shall we learn that to make the human ties of Jesus as unreal and as unlike our own as possible is to render ITim no true and worthy homage? ii Assuming then, without further discussion, that the natural interpretation of the text is the right one, let us gather together what we know of the brothers and sisters of Jesus, and of His relation to them. Unfortunately the records are extremely scanty ; Jesus was more than thirty )-ears of age, and the work of I lis ministry had already begun before we even learn of their existence. Of their life together during those thirty silent years at Nazareth we can only dimly conjectuic from what we arc told after the silence is broken. One fact, however, stands out with sad pre-eminence, "His brethren did not believe on Him." Not one of them belonged to the apostolic group. As Dr. Stalker says, they never intervene in His life / 42 The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus except to annoy. So far were they from under- standing the passion which consumed Him, that on one occasion " they went out to lay hold on Him, for they said, He is beside himself" Once, impressed, perhaps, by His marvellous works and His influence with the people, they urged him to go up to Jerusalem, and there publicly declare Himself to the world. Some people can never see greatness until it is recognized greatness, greatness duly ticketed and authenticated. At a great picture sale, when thousands of pounds change hands, it is not pictures only, but great names that are bought and sold. And it may be the brothers of Jesus felt that if only the wise ones in the great city put their seal upon Him and His mission, it would be safe and prudent for them to declare themselves on His side. Was not this one of the secret griefs of the Man of Sorrows ? He came unto them that were in a special sense " His own," and they received Him not. It pained Him when " many of His d'sciples went back and walked no more with Him " ; it pained Him more when Judas, one of the twelve, betrayed Him ; but most of all, I think, it hurt Him when "even His brethren did not believe on Him." When He uttered the sad prophecy, " A man's foes shall be they of his own household," was He speaking out of the fulness of His own pained heart ? Some of us know the difficulty of being loyal to our conscience and our faith amongst ungodly associates in the shop and ',- The BrotJiers and Sisters of Jesus 43 p the workroom ; but only they who have felt the far worse pain that want of sympathy at home can inflict, are able fully to enter into the feelings of Him who was thus cruelly wounded in the house of His friends. But the change came at last, and after Christ's ascension into heaven we find the brethren together with the disciples awaiting in the upper room at Jerusalem the descent of the Holy Spirit. Exactly how the change was wrought we are not told ; but perhaps there is a hint of what took place in one of Paul's letters : writing of the appearances of Christ after His resurrection, he says ( I Cor. xv. 6, 7), " Then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once ; . . . then He appeared to James." What one would have given to have been present at that interview between the risen Lord and His brother after the flesh ! May it not have been to it that James owed his faith in Jesus as Lord, and through him the Oliver brethren theirs ? And may not James have had that appearing to himself alone in mind when in after years he wrote : " My brethren, if any among you do err from the truth; and one convert him ; let him know, that he which con- vertcth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins " ? The rest is soon told. Of the brethren of our Lord two are never heard of again ; of the others one lived to hold a most important position in mem ^u. / I 44 T//C Brothers and Sisters of Jesus the Church at Jerusalem, and both were writers of brief epistles preserved for us in the New Testament. One point in connection with these letters is worthy of note : neither James nor Jude ever speaks of himself as " the brother of Christ." The opening verse of the Epistle of James runs thus : "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," etc. ; of the Epistle of Jude thus : " Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James," etc. ; and in the fourth verse of the same epistle the writer makes it his chief charge against certain men who had crept into the Church privily, that they were " denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." Now, consider what this means. These three, Jesus and James and Jude, had been brought up and for years had lived together in the same home. There was a time when James and Jude did not believe in Jesus as in any wise differing from themselves. Something happened, and they came to believe in Him. From that day He was to them another being. That they were related to Him after the flesh was as nothing in comparison with what they now knew Him to he. He was to them no longer the man of Nazareth simply, but the Lord of Glory ; they served God in serving Him ; to deny Him was the greatest of all sins. What do we make of this ? How shall we explain it ? I do not shrink from putting the old alternative for the hundreth time. Give up your faith in the Bible altogether, use it to light your The Brothers and Sisters of Jestts 45 fires with, if you will ; but to deny the Godiiead of Christ and at the same time to go on believing in the truthfulness or sanity of the men who wrote it, is of all mental impossibilities the maddest. Ill Turn again for a moment to the home at Nazareth that we may see Jesus among His brothers and sisters. One is tempted to regret that so little of that home-life is known to us. But from what we do know of Christ, His teach- ing concerning marriage, His love for children, His regard for the filial relationship, we may be confident that as brother He would not be found wanting. The subject suggests one aspect of what may be termed " domestic morality," concerning which the pulpit has usually little to say, and on which even the New Testament is curiously silent. St. Paul speaks more than once wise words of counsel to husbands and wives, to parents and children, to masters and servants, but nowhere does he address himself directly to brothers and sisters. Nevertheless the subject is one of considerable importance at the present time, when there is a tendency to rebel against obligations once accepted without demur, and to call in question the value of institutions which we have hitherto regarded as part, I will not say of the established, but of the mmmmmtHm 46 yVie Brothers and Sisters of Jesus hi t 1 1 'i divine order. Particularly is this true of the institution of the family. The subject of marriage, which, I need hardly say, is the key of the whole Cjuestion, is just now being discussed by men and women alike in a fashion that may well make the boldest amongst us wince. But that is a matter which lies outside the scope of this address, and I have nothing further to say concerning it just now. But it is not to be wondered at that those who would make of marriage " an arrangement terminable at the will of either party " — I quote the words of two living writers — should go farther and pour contempt upon the idea that any par- ticular obligation is involved in the fact of a common parentage. Teaching of this sort strikes a blow at all that is most sacred in life. Con- sanguinity implies not only a physical but also an ethical relationship. To ignore it, to treat the bond of brotherhood and sisterhood as if it were a gossamer thread which any man is at liberty to snap whenever it pleases him, is to take a step- — in my judgment a long step — towards reducing society to a mere collection of brutes. I do not wish to set up any impossible ideal. Hanpily there are many, like Charles and Mary Lamb, like William and Dorothy Wordsworth, whose choicest friendships have been formed within the family circle, but more often our best and closest friends are found outside that circle. *' More than my brothers are to me," said Tenny- son of his friend, and so perhaps say most of us 1% The Brothn's and Sisters of Jesus 47 of ours. But — you remember Savonarola's ^rcat words to Romola, flccinf^ from Florence and from duty — ''Man cannot choose his duties" Morality, that " stern lawgiver," knows nothing of a con- venient sliding scale which adjusts our obligations according to the pleasure which the fulfilment of them yields us. Slacken one of the bonds that bind home together, and you slacken all ; and the end of that who can tell ? Remember what we owe to home ; it is the sanctuary that shelters us in our tenderest years from the world's biting winds ; it is the school wherein we learn what no other of life's man)^ schools can teach. Destroy it, and what will you put in its stead ? The class-room ? the club-room ? Ah ! it is easy to find fault with things as they are ; yet it is to home that we owe the highest of what we are and have ; therefore let us count well the cost before we lend our strength to theirs who are seeking its destruction. We who are brothers and sisters, are we doing what we can to make home all that it ought to be ? do we diligently cultivate what some one has happily called the "art of living together"? " Is he a Christian ? " asked some one of Whitefield concerning another. " I do not know," was the answer ; '' I have never seen him at home." Is ours a religion that will stand that test ? Rather, are there not some of us who act upon the tacit assumption that family relationship absolves us from all necessity of being kindly and considerate ir jj-^.i. J- V I 'l I 48 7//e Brothers and Sisters of fesus and thoughtful at home ? I have known some married couples whose stock of little kindly attentions to one another was so scanty one felt that it must have been used up during the days of courtship. Young men and women, do not treat your home as if it were only a restaurant or a hotel — a place to sleep and take your meals in. Do not keep all your mirth and sunshine for other people's homes, and be dull and gloomy in your own. If you have a " best," save it for your own fireside. You may build a house with bricks, but not a home ; home is built of hearts. Six people may live together under the same roof and call themselves a family, yet there may be no true family life. Home is a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, whose builder and maker is love. May every one of us be a wise master-builder, after the pattern of Him who for thirty years lived as son and brother in the house of Mary ! IV \\ i Yes, we think ; and if it had been ours to live, like James and Joses and the rest of them, in the same house with //////, how easy it would have been to be good ! How often do we find our- selves singing with the children — " I think, when I read that sweet story of old, When Jesus was here amongst men ... I should like to have been with Him then." The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus 49 Well, there is another side even to that. There is such a thing as the disadvantage of advantages. The penalty of living close to the mountain is sometimes that one never sees the mountain at all. Perhaps the brethren of our Lord would have been nearer to Him if they had been farther from Him. Not until He had gone from them did they come near to Him. J^ut what I want us to see is that all may enter that " Holy Family." When " one said unto Him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand with- out, seeking to speak to thee, He answered and said unto him that told Him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren ? And He stretched forth His hand tov/ards His disciples, and said. Behold, my mother and my brethren ! For whoso- ever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother." He that doctJi the zvill of my Father in heaven — he is the man who stands nearest to Christ. Others might call James " the Lord's brother " ; he called himself the " servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ." The new relationship was deeper, more sacred even than the old. And that same fellowship, with all of divine blessedness that goes with it, is open to us to- day. Let us come to God, let us lay our hands in His, let us say to Him, " Lo, I come to do thy will," and even of us Jesus will say, " Behold, My brother, and sister, and mother." I I I E •J WHAT THINK YE OF GOD? ii f \i i IV WHAT THINK YE OF GOD? " And Jacob swarc by the Fear of his father IsaacJ"— GiiNKSis xxxi. 5J. " What yc pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven.^' ~ Luke xi. 2. THE fear of his father Isaac" — what does that mean ? The word " fear " should be printed with a capital F, and you will find it is printed so in the Revised Version. " The Fear " —that is the name which Isaac gave to his God. You remember the incident: Jacob and Laban had entered into a covenant, and each of them confirmed the covenant with an oath. Laban, we are told, sware " by the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor," that is, he sware by Jehovah, and by the idol whom their common ancestor wor- shipped as God. But Jacob — and it is this I wish to emphasize — sware by " the Fear of his laiiier Isaac," that is, Jacob sware by Him whom Isa^c worshipped as " the Fear." All these Old Tc .ament patriarchs and saints had their own i\ 54 W/ia^ think ye of iiod'r 9 name for the God whom they served ; to one He was " the Rock," to another " the Shield," to another " the Shepherd " ; but to Isaac He was " the l^^ear," " the Dreadful One," or " the Terror." That was Isaac's name for God. What think ye of God ? How do we name Him ? What is He to us ? " Nothinc^ is easier," says John Henry Newman somewhere, " than to use the name of God and to mean noLhin