DISCOURSE XXVII.

THE PASSION.

[Lizcoln's Inn, 11th Sunday after Trinity (Morning), August 3, 1856.]

ST. JOHN XIX. 37.

And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they have pierced.

In our services for the earlier days of Passion Week we read carefully and at length the narratives of the first three Evangelists. The narrative of St. John is reserved for Good Friday.

There is great wisdom, I think, as well as courage in this course. The diversities in these narratives, instead of being concealed from us, are forced upon our notice; we are taught that we shall gain insight into the whole purpose of the writers of the Gospels, of God Himself, by considering them. We are taught, at the same time, that it is here we are to look for the unity of the Gospels; that all the lines in them have been tending to this point; that we must learn what they signify at the Cross itself. The special honour which is given to St. John may have been suggested by the name of 'beloved disciple.' But it has, I think, a higher justification. St. John's Gospel takes us into the very heart of the Good Friday mystery. The passages in his narrative of the Passion, which do not occur

in the other Gospels, throw back a light upon them, while they explain the special end for which he wrote. But they do much more. They show us why the death of Christ has been, and must be, the centre of the Gospel concerning Him; why all His discourses, nay, even that prayer I was trying to speak of last Sunday, would be worthless and unmeaning without it. How we should tremble to overlay the record of it with our words! How careful the Evangelists are that we should not be hindered from seeing the facts, and the Person, even by listening to their words! I shall attempt little more this morning than to seize those points of the narrative contained in the 18th and 19th chapters of St. John, which are different from the narratives in St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. But, that we may feel the force of these differences, it is necessary to say a word respecting their essential agreement.

This agreement is negative as well as positive. In contemplating the passion of our Lord, one class of devout persons have encouraged a sentimental habit of mind. They have dwelt upon the seven wounds, upon the crown of thorns, upon the circumstances either of mental or bodily anguish which seem to separate this Divine death from every other. A second class has meditated less upon the suffering and upon the Person of the Sufferer; much more upon the effects which the suffering would produce either upon men or upon God I do not condemn these courses; none can tell what good for life or for death may have been extracted from either. I only say, that the method in the four Gospels is equally different from both; and seeing that those who have chosen the one or the other acknowledge the authority of Scripture as paramount and divine, I cannot offend them if I add that the Gospel method is

simpler, deeper, and more reverent than theirs, and that probably any blessing which they have divided between them will be ultimately possessed in fulness by those who follow it.

In trying to discover what this method is, the reader is likely to be struck with the importance which all the Evangelists attach to the arraignment of Christ before Caiaphas and before Pontius Pilate. Perhaps, if they were honest with themselves, they would confess that they have been surprised at finding so much said upon this part of the subject, so little comparatively of the crucifixion itself. But the more we reflect, the more clearly we shall perceive that in this, which seems to them the legal portion of the history, the ground is laid for that part of it which is most transcendent and divine, and also which is nearest to the sympathies of all human beings. The charge before the Sanhedrim was, that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God; the charge before the Roman governor was, that Jesus claimed to be a king. To set Him forth in that double character, as the Witness of the Father whom Jewish rulers were denying, as the true human King whose power the absolute emperor was counterfeiting and usurping, this was the business of the Evangelists in their records of all Christ's discourses and acts. And it was this which gave the significance to His death.

It was the divine death and the human death, the death which mani

fested the mind and will of the Father; it was the death in which all men were to see their own. In this respect St. John does not in the least differ from his predecessors. It was certainly not less his purpose than theirs to exhibit the Son of God and the Son of Man. What was spoken against Jesus, and what He spoke before Caiaphas and

before Pilate, could not therefore be passed over or dwelt upon with less emphasis in the fourth Gospel than in the other three. It must be dwelt on with more emphasis. He can tell us nothing of Calvary till he has made us understand Who was brought there, and why He was brought.

And as in this main characteristic of the other Evange lists St. John resembles them, so also he follows them in all the chief incidents which they record. The night scene when He is apprehended by Judas and the band of officers from the chief priests; St. Peter's attempt to defend Him by cutting off the ear of Malchus; St. Peter's denial; the cry of the multitude for Barabbas; the purple robe and the crown of thorns; Pilate's efforts to release Him; the inscription on the cross; and the burial in the tomb of Joseph; are told as carefully in St. John as if no previous narratives of them had been known in the Church.

Yet under each of these heads points are brought out by St. John to which there is nothing corresponding in the earlier Evangelists, and which one feels instinctively would have been out of place in them. The first is this in the story of the apprehension: Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon Him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, which betrayed Him, stood with them. As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground. Then asked He them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way: that the saying might be fulfilled, which He spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.'

The last quotation is taken from the prayer which St. John alone has given us. But I think the words, 'I am,' which made the officers stagger as they drew near with their torches in the dark night to the Nazarene prophet, have also their interpretation in previous words which belong exclusively to this Gospel. We are told in the 8th chapter that the Jews in the Temple took up stones to cast at Jesus, because He appeared to them to be claiming the words spoken in the bush as if they were spoken of Him. Was there not a recollection of those words as He stood before them now? Did not the clear light of righteousness and truth in His face carry them home to the conscience of the officers, and make them feel for a moment that One was using them who had a right to use them, One to whom they owed homage?

The struggle was soon over; they had been sent to do a work, and they went through it. Then came that other sentence, 'Let these go their way,' which fulfilled, St. John says, the words,' Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.' What! we say to ourselves, Were not those words spoken for all time? Did not they refer to a deliverance from ultimate perdition? Could they be accomplished in the deliverance of the eleven Apostles from the immediate peril of being apprehended with their Lord? I answer, the more we become acquainted with the letter and with the spirit of St. John's narrative, the more we understand that ne regards every act done by our Lord, to effect ever so temporary a redemption, for ever so small a body, or so insignificant an individual, as a sign of what He is, of the work in which He is always engaged, of the blessing which He has wrought out and designs for the universe. If we do not like to take this as a sign that the words of that prayer