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BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE MASTER."
(printer)
LONDON: PRINTED BY J. MASTERS AND CO., ALBION BUILDINGS,
BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE, E.C.
earth, there lies a strange portentous shadow, unseen to the multitudes who throng its streets or to those who gaze on the Temple buildings from afar, but visible to One Who from all eternity has foreknown the meaning of that mysterious gloom and all that it portends.
It is the shadow of impending Doom; the doom not of death alone, but of
every concentrated agony which can be endured by a Victim in Whose awful
Being are united the human nature and the Godhead.
JESUS has drawn nigh unto Jerusalem. He stands
upon the mount of Olives. He looks towards the guilty city, of which it
shall be said, in that last Day when the heavens and the earth must flee
away before the Face of the Almighty Judge, that there the
LORD was crucified. He takes His way along the
path that leads to it, in meek and lowly guise; and while all the world
around Him is glad with joy and sunshine, He passes in beneath the shadow
that enshrouds it like a funeral pall--Jesus entered into
Jerusalem.
As it was in the springtide of that momentous year which is linked to
all cycles of time, before and since, by the power of an Undying Love, so
is it in these latter days, when for us tenanting
the earth in our generation, once more the winter has passed and gone, and the singing of birds is heard among the opening flowers; the gladness and beauty of early spring is around us again and all are rejoicing in the reviving nature, the tread of eager feet tells of the ceaseless search for pleasure or excitement, while mirthful voices echo through the air and the smile of the sunshine is reflected on hopeful faces; only amid the universal brightness there is now even as there was then, one spot shrouded in mournful darkness, for the eyes that will to behold it. Over the Jerusalem of Passiontide the shadow lies of His remembered Doom, and they who would in true commemoration watch with Him through all His hours of Agony, must turn from the smiling world and its joys, to enter with Him into the precincts of death and pain beneath that veil of ominous gloom.
Let us go that in spirit we may die with Him.
JESUS enters into Jerusalem and all the city is
moved, saying, "Who is this?" At the entrance of
Holy Week we answer, "He is our life,"--even as, on the
threshold of the world beyond the grave, we hope to say, "He is our
Life Eternal."
Within the limit of these seven days we may see concentrated, the whole
mystery of that Redemption of the human race, which stretches from
everlasting to everlasting in the changeless purpose of the Infinite
GOD. In the progress of
JESUS from the triumphant palm-strewn
way, to the Sepulchre sealed in darkness and silence beneath the great
stone, there is a close analogy with every stage of mortal existence, and
we shall find that the manner of His being from hour to hour, touches all
forms of possible discipline by which we may be moulded into His Likeness,
and drawn into union with the Living GOD.
For us, the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Sacrifice all proclaim the
same Truth, that the intense desire of happiness, the inappeasable craving
for an unknown good, which is coexistent with our very consciousness, can
have its satisfaction only in Him, Who is the manifest Love of
GOD, since it is but the inevitable search for
the one object of our being, the demand, uncomprehended by ourselves, of
our GOD-created spirits for that
LORD of Life Who has made us for Himself.
Once it was said unto JESUS,
"All men seek
Thee," and in these words was revealed the secret which lies at the heart of all humanity. It is JESUS Whom every living soul is seeking; it is the dumb unconscious supplication of their very nature, for Him Who is the Bliss, the Life, the Eternity, that alone can fill their deathless spirits, which speaks in all the restlessness, the futile struggling in disappointment and despair, that load this world with a thousand forms of anguish.
If we enter with Him now beneath the shadow of the Holy Week, we shall
learn in each one of its ever darkening hours, not only, how truly it is
for JESUS that unknowingly we seek from the
first moment of earthly existence to the last, but after what manner also,
the probation of every stage of mortal life is fashioned in union with that
Sacrifice of Suffering, whereby alone He has placed within our reach the
beatitude of His Eternal Love.
The very first accents of the Divine Voice, which we hear as we pass
with Him into the shrouded city of the Passion, proclaim this the central
Truth of our whole being.
"If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things
that belong unto thy peace,"--
and--Jesus wept!--Not only for Jerusalem, nor for all the myriads living on the earth that day, but for every individual soul who has ever entered on probation here, and to whom those words have been spoken in vain, so that they have reached the bourne of troubled tortured life without having realized that He, and He alone, is our Peace. He wept in that hour for the suffering He knew that each one through all succeeding ages should endure, whoever sought for happiness or rest apart from Him. Shall not the thought of those tears fall like heavenly dew upon the aching hearts, that vainly have beat so high for the delusive hopes of earth, telling us that although we have turned aside deceived, from Him our only good, yet can His Divine compassion reach us still, and He Who wept for us is ready even now to wipe away all our tears?
If thou hadst known--even thou--thy Peace.
Let us enter on the seven awful days, bearing those words within our
hearts as the solution of the problems of life for us and for all mankind.
To each separate human being there comes at some period of their lives, the
time of their visitation which is known only to their own souls
and to their GOD, but the recurrence of this Holy Week is also in its measure a time of visitation, of which the responsibility will surely rest upon us all for weal or for woe.
It is the dawn of the first Palm Sunday, and we see in it the type of
the morning of existence. Whether those springtide years are with us still,
or looking back we see them from the toilsome paths of later life, the
lesson taught us is the same. "Behold, thy King
cometh," and they say unto Him, "Hosanna in the
highest. Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the
Lord."
Their adoration for the moment is sincere, yet these are they who later
in the march of time shall cry out, "Crucify Him, crucify Him, we
have no king but Cæsar!" They deceived themselves, they
believed that they loved Him, that they desired to have Him for their only
but when to own Him meant peril and pain, they cast Him out to die, and
gave to the earthly monarch their allegiance and their truth.
Has it not been even so with ourselves? We were called by the name of
CHRIST in our early youth, and believed that we
were surely His in
loyalty and faith. We adored Him as our King, and offered Him the fragile flowers we plucked upon the sunlit paths wherein we were content to follow Him, but when the royal march with waving palms and songs exultant led into the Dolorous Way, when the shadow closed around Him, when the sunshine of joy and the flowers of life were all left far behind Him, when He entered into the temple of our spirits and demanded that He should reign there as our only King and GOD,--did we not shrink from the terrible sentence uttered at that very temple door, "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
Did we not love the fair expanse of years which seemed to stretch out
before us, bright with the golden promise of imagined joys, the royal gifts
which the Cæsar of this world could bestow, to whom our hearts went
out in secret homage, while outwardly we seemed to worship
CHRIST the LORD?
Not only, perhaps, in youth, but even to this day may it not have been so
with us? If in this our hearts condemn us, then may we feel indeed that
Holy Week has brought to us the time of our visitation, for the
special warning of Palm Sunday bids us look to it, lest unknowingly we have deceived ourselves with a fair show of outward homage to the Crucified, while in our secret heart we adored the world-power who could gild for us the fleeting days of earthly life. Gnwqi seauton, know thyself, judge thyself this day, that the Sacred Victim Who would draw thee after Him now into the shadow of His Passion, judge thee not hereafter as a self-deceiver, in the piercing light of the Great White Throne.
This is the lesson of the first of the seven holy days, but each one is
marked by a special consolation for those who are true to their Redeemer,
no less than by a definite warning to all who may be false to Him in
heart,--and now from the rebuke we turn to the blessing.
How far soever we have sought to satisfy with the fair false joys of
earth that longing for happiness which is in truth but the thirst of our
souls for the living GOD, in such measure we
have most surely suffered as the sole result of our vain endeavours, and
shall suffer haply to the end; but for all the pain and bitter
disappointment we thus have gathered to ourselves, there is in this day of
Palms a gift of tender
healing, since He in these first hours of Holy Week takes on Himself an anguish similar in kind, differing only in its sinlessness, so that the comfort wherewith He and He alone can comfort us is given in perfect sympathy. Does not all seem to promise joy and brightness for Him that day when the eager voices cry, "Hosanna," and hail Him as their Beloved, their King for Whom no flowers can be too fair, no honour done too great? and yet He knew even then how their love would turn to hatred, their welcome to rejection; how they would nail unto the cruel Cross the Feet for which they made the way soft with their very garments, and flood His last hours with bitterness Whom they had called blessed in His coming. Therefore does He enter this day with full comprehension into the secret bitterness that fills our hearts when all that seemed most fair, most true, most dear, turns in our grasp to ashes, and the sympathy of JESUS, unlike the barren compassions of this world, has power to replace the pain which draws it forth with an undying joy; for He knows that we suffer only because we sought our happiness apart from our one essential Bliss, and even with tears He offers Himself to fill our
souls with rapture. "If thou hadst known, even thou, thy Peace."
Let us not pass, then, from the day of Palms without having taken into
our lives the warning to know ourselves, to prove whether we are His in
sincerity and truth and possess Him in unspeakable blessedness as our only
and eternal Peace.
And now the first day of the Holy Week is over, "Jesus
departed and hid Himself."
There can be no certainty where the LORD
spent that first night of His Passion, for while some old writers have
supposed that He went to Bethany, there are others, nearer to that awful
time, who believed that He resorted to no house of friends, but that each
night of the five which preceded the final sacrifice, was passed by Him
within that Garden of Gethsemane where He was at the last to receive from
His FATHER'S Hands the cup of
agony.¹
___________________¹ It is evident that Judas
knew where to find his Master when he came to deliver Him up to His
enemies, and this was believed in earlier times to give a strong proof that
all the nights of Holy Week were spent by the
LORD on the Mount of Olives.
Page 12
show with its bright green leaves, and rearing its stately head to heaven as if eager to catch the light and dew which fall from thence. Surely with such rich and fertile seeming it is ready to minister to Him with all its growth, with all its capabilities? He comes hungering to find fruit thereon,--but there is none.
He by Whom all things were made had breathed into it the breath of life,
which enabled it to bring forth all those waving branches with their weight
of leaves,--but beneath that outward appearance of homage to its
Creator all is hollow and barren. Not there shall His hunger for the
offerings of living love be stayed,--not there shall He see the
travail of His soul and be satisfied. This day in our ear sounds again the
mournful sentence, "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for
ever." Well may we shudder as we hear it, for it may be that
in the fair deceptive tree with its goodly show of specious beauty we see
the type of our own selves, in the golden prime of life when the careless
days of youth are past, and the world allures us with its most subtle charm
through the praise and goodwill of our fellow-men. Has not the
secret desire to win their admiration and their
love been the true motive power that has decked our lives with fairest deeds and robed us in an external garb of all that is most lovely and of good report? May not the very homage and devotion offered to our only LORD have been made sweet to us by the human approbation and applause it has won us in this lower world? Pleasant to the eye has our daily existence seemed perhaps, rich in acts of charity and religious fervour, but shall the LORD find beneath the fruits of the Spirit which He seeks?
Love--pure and unreserved for Himself alone.
Joy--sought and found in communion with Him only.
Peace--such as apart from Him can have no
existence.
Longsuffering--practised in likeness of Him Who
forgave His murderers.
Gentleness--learned from Him Who when He was reviled,
reviled not again.
Goodness--inspired by union with Him Who alone is
good.
Faith--by secret knowledge of Him in Whom unseen His
own believe.
Meekness--won at His Feet Who trod the lowest paths
for our poor sake.
Temperance--because in Him to do our
FATHER'S will is all we ask or seek.
Has He found these fruits of a vital union with Himself when He came to
us hungering for proofs of our sure eternal blessedness? or is it so with
us, despite our fair show in the flesh, that He may justly say even now,
"Behold, I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find
none .... cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?"
If our unreal service has hitherto provoked this dreadful sentence, yet
in the merciful permission to pass once more beneath the Shadow of this
Holy Week we hear the voice of Divine Compassion saying, "I
will let it alone this year also, and dig about it ... and if it bear
fruit, well,--if not, after that shall it be cut down."
Blessed indeed is the renewed gift of these days of our visitation, for is
there one amongst us who has not at some time of insidious temptation loved
the praise of men, more than the acceptance of a true service by Him Whose
unprofitable servants we, at the best, must ever be? Yet a sterner warning
against human respect and unreality is given now as we follow Him within
the gates of the
temple to which He passes on, the consecrated House of GOD. There we behold Him the meek and patient LORD, suddenly manifesting Himself awful and severe in His righteous indignation, as He casts out all earthly treasures from the sacred place which the Eternal FATHER had chosen as the habitation of His Spirit. Surely heinous indeed must have been the sin which provoked the wrath of the Lamb. He Who under cruelest persecution does not strive or cry, Who as a sheep before her shearers is dumb in presence of His murderers, yet now with relentless sternness denounces those who have made that house of prayer a den of thieves. It is our Judge Who speaks. He looks now into our spirit, the temple of the HOLY GHOST which we should have held for Him, immaculate, His dwelling-place undefiled, unshared, whence the pure offering should have risen up continually of a faithful service--an entire surrender of the whole being unto Him our only LORD and Love. What if like that temple of old He sees in the sanctuary of our souls but a den of thieves, of earthly desires and hopes which have stolen away from Him our best affections?--what ambitions and vanities, what love of the world and
of self,--what secret sins and unchastened longings may have robbed Him of all the true devotion of our hearts! If it be so, shall we not beseech Him this day to cast out from the temple of our spirit all things, be they what they may, which mar the exclusive supremacy of His reign within us? Dear and precious may be to us the treasures which we have suffered to invade His chosen shrine,--so dear that for their continuance in our possession, rather than for a closer union with Himself, may have ever arisen the petitions that gave it the semblance of a house of prayer, and bitter may be to us the anguish of their rending away from our clinging hold. Yet even with the sharpest scourge of pain let us call on Him to drive them from us. Then shall the special consolation of this second day be ours,--for it is to the soul that flings away all its earthly idols to give itself to Him alone that He utters the blessed words, "I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you." JESUS Whom we and all men for ever seek unconsciously, will come to us and make His abode within the cleansed sanctuary of our spirit, to be our Life and Love, our everlasting joy.
Upon that very day when He thus manifested His claim to the unreserved
allegiance of the human race He knew that His enemies were taking counsel
to kill Him,--and as it was then so is it now. While those who do
desire, however feebly, to follow Him in life and death are beseeching Him
beneath the shadow of His Passion to make their spirits meet for His abode,
outside in the garish sunlight of the world men are conspiring to kill Him
in the souls of His people, and to brand with the infamy of falsehood His
faith and Name. Surely of them as of us that Divine One thought in His
undying pity, when the evening being now come He departed without the city
to the solitude where through all these prophetic nights, He gazed into the
depths of that anguish of sacrifice which could alone redeem the
world's iniquity.
Dark lies the shadow then upon the bare
dis-
torted branches of the withered tree, type of the judgment to come, and thence He passes on to utter His final warnings within the sacred walls where never again shall His Divine Voice be heard in human accents.
Even as the LORD was visibly present then
within His chosen temple, so is He present now within His Church on earth,
and as then He spoke, so does He speak to us now in the commemoration of
this sacred week.--With the eight Beatitudes His ministry on earth
began,--by those heavenly words of blessing breathed as it were from
the very heart of the love of GOD, He ushered
in the teaching of the gospel of peace; but now with the shadow round Him
of that voluntary Death, in which so many for whom it was consummated would
fail to see their only life, He closes His public testimony, by pronouncing
the eight awful woes on all self-seeking and hypocrisy.
Woe unto us if by an example of worldliness or an unworthy
use of the gift of influence, we hinder the efforts of those who are aiming
at a height we would not have them reach, because we have not sought
ourselves to attain unto it.
Woe unto us if we have sought the accomplishment of our own
desires at the expense of others and have loved ourselves more even than
GOD'S own poor, while unto their
FATHER and ours we cease not to turn in unfelt
prayers.
Woe unto us if we seek to proselytize to our narrow views,
those who hold the Truth in ways distasteful to our vanity or our party
spirit,--if we will not have them live severely while we dwell in
luxury, or turn from a world that is dear unto ourselves, or seek to serve
their GOD save at our bidding and in our
measure, because we would have them careless and frivolous even as we
are.
Woe unto us if we exalt external forms of religion above
the secret heart-service of Him Whose indwelling Presence in our
souls, alone gives them value or reality.
Woe unto us if we have made our Christianity to consist in
trifling observances, and clung with vehemence and angry defiance to
matters of detail, while we neglect utterly the true worship of
GOD in mercy, judgment, and faith.
Woe unto us if while we use all Sacramental ordinances for
the cleansing of our souls in the sight of
GOD and man, we yet fail to purge them
inwardly of the evil thoughts and passions that defile them in secret.
Woe unto us if we appear to be white and fair in all the
beauty of holiness, while by a subtle hypocrisy, scarce known to ourselves,
we are concealing many a hidden sin that lies corrupting within us.
Woe unto us if while we adorn the House of
GOD and show all reverence to the memory of His
departed saints, we yet persecute those of His living people who differ
from us, or despise and neglect them because they are humble and of low
estate.
Thus it was that throughout the whole of that last day of the
LORD'S ministry on earth, the burden of
His teaching was ever against that hidden deep-rooted
self-love which fatally destroys the Love of GOD within us, however specious an appearance of it
we may wear even in our own eyes.
When the eight Woes had been pronounced, falling dread and solemn on the
air as the strokes of a funeral bell sounding the knell of criminals
approaching to their doom, then did the LORD
begin to speak to His people in parables. Each one while it foreshadowed
His
own swift coming death for our redemption, told also how we and many in the generations yet to come would crucify Him anew, by giving to the world and to our chosen idols the love and fealty He bought to be His own at the cost of His priceless Sacrifice. "This is the Heir, come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be ours."
We long to enjoy the sweets of life rather than to labour in His
vineyard through heat and cold, in pain and thirst and hunger,--and it
may be that we have acted as though we had said, "Let us kill Him in
our hearts, that the inheritance of this fair world and all its joys may
yet be ours."
"Then said He to His servants, The marriage is
ready." We have seen how He has spread a table for us in the
wilderness of this world, with the Eucharistic Feast whereby we are bound
to Him in the power of that resurrection life which shall merge into
eternal union, when we drink with Him of the new chalice at the marriage
supper of the Lamb; but have we come to the foretaste, at His earthly
altar, of the hour when He shall raise us up from the dead, without having
probed the secret depths of our
spirits, only perhaps to find them yet so filled with human hopes and desires that there is no room for Him to take up His abode within us in sacramental fulness?
"Then shall the kingdom of Heaven be likened into ten
virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the
Bridegroom."
We have ostensibly been going forth to meet Him from that first hour
when His name was given us in the baptismal waters, and through all the
years that we have lived since then, we have borne our lamps with their
flickering uncertain light before the world's eyes, but how shall it
be with us when the midnight cry is heard of His dear coming? Did not the
LORD say centuries before He came to us on
earth, that He would only accept the offering of "oil for the
light and for sweet incense," which is given willingly
with the heart? and if ours has been but a scanty grudging
supply, surely the oil will fail and the Light fade out in our lamp before
the brightness of His unveiled Presence.
"A certain nobleman .... called his ten servants, and
delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I
come."
So too of the gifts which He entrusted to us
each one according to our several ability, that we should use them for the increase of His kingdom upon earth, and the winning of many helpless souls to enter with us into His eternal joy. What if we have held aloof from His erring wanderers, the ignorant, the poor, the sinful, wrapt in our own pride and selfishness,--preserving His gifts intact, but all unfruitful, so that when the hour comes to render them back we can but come before Him alone with empty hands and say, "There Thou hast that is Thine."
Finally, the teaching of that sad day culminates in the most awful words
that ever sounded from the Divine lips on earth,--the words truly in
which are summed up all promise of undying joy, all warning of unutterable
pain: the beatitudes of His first utterances contending again with
the woes of His last, in the ineffable summons, "Come, ye
blessed," and the dreadful sentence, "Depart, ye
cursed."
"When Jesus had finished all these sayings, He went out of
the temple." And well may we believe that the only faint gleam
of light which relieved the dark shadow of that day for Him, was in the
crystal purity of that clear shining
love which enabled the poor widow to offer to her GOD not of her slender substance only, but all that she had, "even all her living."
If the warning of this day against self-seeking in its most
subtle forms cuts deep into our very heart, striking at the root of our
most hidden desires, yet is there a consolation waiting on our acceptance
of that searching pain, which transcends in its unspeakable sweetness, far
as the heavens above the earth, the worst agony we can endure,--for
when the soul is emptied of self, then, and then alone, will
CHRIST come to abide within it in fulness of
possession, and the bitter pangs of renunciation give place to rapturous
peace, when we hear stealing on our consciousness the words that seem to
echo from the very Throne of GOD,
"Lo, I am with you always."
Weak, erring, sinful as we are, we yet are striving to follow the LORD in the mournful path of His Passion. We have
loved Him, we do love Him feebly, imperfectly, no doubt, yet still in such
measure that it seems to us impossible we can need any warning against the
hideous crime which makes this day more accursed than any other that has
ever been branded by the enmity of man to GOD.
Yet He Who said of His very torturers, when with loud sounding strokes they
drove the cruel nails into His Hands and Feet, "they know not
what they do," could well foresee far reaching to the
end of time the manifold unfaithfulness whereby He yet should be daily, hourly betrayed in hidden acts by those who believe themselves to be indeed His own.
Most sorrowful of all the Passion days surely was this to Him, bitterer,
sadder even than the terrible death day, for into the consummation of the
Cross there entered the blessed foreknowledge of the salvation which it
purchased for all that would receive it of the erring human race, but there
is not so much as a thought of comfort to relieve the blackness of
treachery which stamps with infamy the pitiless day of the betrayal. Well
might it be said of it, "Let that day be darkness; let not God
regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it."
Calmly, gently, the LORD had announced its
coming to His disciples without a word of reproach, or of the bitter
anguish it would bring to Him Whose very Being was perfect love. He had
closed His public teaching upon earth with the one word
"Watch," the solemn emphatic word that
reverberates through all the vanished centuries on every living soul with
its concentrated warning. Then without comment He divulged the secret act
of Judas.
"And it came to pass when Jesus had finished all these
sayings, He said unto His disciples, Ye know that after two days is the
feast of the Passover, and the Son of Man is betrayed,--and at night
He went out and abode in the mount that is called the mount of
Olives."
"He abode in the mount." No other record is
given of the period which elapsed between His last farewell to the glorious
temple, so soon like the Sacred Body of which it was the type, to be
delivered into the hands of ruthless men, and that divine hour when He was
to celebrate the Holy Mysteries for the first time in the upper room. It
seems plain, therefore, that throughout the veiled day of His betrayal,
when no sign of His Presence on earth is given to us in His Holy Word, He
abode in the mount, bearing on His Heart before the Just Eternal
GOD the multitudes that should betray Him. Not
for Judas only did the Son of Man agonize beneath the Shadow of His Passion
during the long hours when He knew that the archtraitor was taking counsel
with His enemies against the Anointed of the
LORD, goaded on by the unseen accuser of the
brethren, although to Him Who loves each individual soul as if none other
existed in the universe, the hideous treachery of that one false follower must in truth have pierced His divine heart with an intolerable pain.
"It is not an open enemy that hath done Me this dishonour,
for these I could have borne it, but it was even thou My companion, Mine
own familiar friend."
Borne by the sighing wind to the murmuring trees around Him, He must in
His omniscience have heard the voice that had so often spoken to Him in
words of love and reverence now whispering to His foes, "What
will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?"
He had willed so fully to assume our human nature, that He might be able
to share in every sinless pang which we can feel, and thus the cruel
defection of a trusted friend must have brought such a bitterness of pain
as some amongst us may have known perhaps only too well, while far beyond
our comprehension must have been the awful suffering wrought on the
SON of GOD by His
foreknowledge of the traitor's doom. All this, we dare not
doubt,--this anguish in its twofold form, was multiplied that day in
the fathomless spirit of the LORD of
all, by every thought, and word, and deed of unfaithfulness whereby He knew He should ever be betrayed in the ages yet to come.
As we watch by Him there beneath the ever-deepening shadow, does
not our awakened conscience sting us with keenest pang as it reveals to us
the many occasions when by a subtle scarce conscious treachery we may have
ourselves betrayed Him? The thirty pieces of silver which tempted the
traitor to his hateful crime have appeared to us in guise of all these fair
allurements of the world which cannot be enjoyed consistently with
unreserved devotion to the Crucified LORD.
Whenever our own pleasure or the claims of our earthly affections have
stood between us and our Redeemer, we have betrayed Him, but these are
forms of treachery which are easily detected; there are others of a far
more specious nature whereby we may too surely have done so more
completely.
In these days when pride of intellect, of scientific progress, and of
freedom have all alike arrayed themselves against the
LORD and His written Word, are we not often
tempted to shrink from drawing down contempt upon
ourselves by upholding openly the old faiths which so called enlightenment has trampled under foot? It is easy to say to ourselves that we are too weak to argue with stronger minds, that it is better to be silent even when our Master is traduced, than to give feeble and uncertain support to His holy truth; but let us examine our souls in sight of Him Whose mournful eyes in these sad hours looked down the vista of the future to its uttermost limit, and noted every shade of unfaithfulness which should mar the union of His people with Himself, and we shall surely detect that not humility but human respect held us back from speaking boldly in the name of CHRIST whenever His Faith has in any way been assailed in our presence. May we not also find too probably that we have tacitly connived at forms of error whether in doctrine or practice, under the spurious guise of a charity that seeks to veil the faults of others? Then, indeed, do we betray the Son of Man with a kiss, as also when we use our influence as one of His professed followers for any selfish purpose of our own.
In other and in simpler ways it may be that we betray Him daily. We are
vowed to His
unflinching service by His Sacraments and our own will, and wheresoever we have failed in perseverance or in sternest duty, we may in our measure have betrayed Him every hour. Truly the dread that in these and many other ways we may be self-deceiving traitors to our beloved LORD, causes the shadow of this day to lie with a dense and heavy gloom upon our spirits. Yet is the consolation which the Divine One offers to us all, if only we faint and fail not, through this our little day of earthly life, more dear, more entrancing in its promises than human thought can ever compass, since far beyond the confines of the grave that once enclosed Him, far above the mighty stone which the angels rolled away from His deserted tomb, from out the Beatific Vision of the Resurrection Life, the Voice of Him Who was dead and is alive sounds like the fall of living waters in the glorious words, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
"Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them
to the end."
What pain, what grief or earthly trial could outlive these words, if
indeed we had in no way forfeited our claim to hold them in everlasting
possession as our inalienable inheritance? But fair and gracious as is the Light, which Love would fain have shed on this fifth Passion day, it is obscured and well nigh blotted out by the deep appalling shadow that steals up from the dark garden of the Agony, and teaches us that this manifestation of Infinite Love could only be given to us through the ministry of infinite pain.
"The Master saith, My time is at hand."
The earlier hours of this day, the last on which He should see the sun
go down in His earthly life, are veiled in the same mystery as that which
shrouded Him throughout the day of His betrayal from all human knowledge;
doubtless because they were spent in secret communion with the
FATHER; but, "when the even was
come He entered into the large upper room with His disciples,"
and thither let us follow Him beneath the shadow of the most blessed, and
yet most awful night that ever fell upon the world of His creation.
Of all that took place between the entrance of the
LORD into the guest-chamber, and His
departure from Gethsemane, as the willing captive of the foes who had been
stricken to the
ground by the Majesty of His Presence, it were too presumptuous even to touch in this the faintest, feeblest expression of the thoughts that must be with us on this momentous night. We dare only to fall down with silent adoration before the unsearchable riches of the Divine Eucharist, by which, from that hour every living soul that wills to be redeemed of CHRIST, may be linked to Him in everlasting union. Is it not enough to show us all, what the Sacrament of His Body and Blood must be to our salvation, that He who never so much as breathed a wish for Himself, should now with almost passionate force proclaim, how with desire had He desired to eat this Passover before He suffered, that through the Divine Feast into which it was merged, the destroying angel, in the last dread day might see His Blood sprinkled on the souls of His people, and pass them by when he goes forth to slay His enemies before Him.
So too, we leave untouched that wondrous sacramental act, whereby our
Master showed that He, to Whom has been given power over all flesh, that He
might give them eternal life, can yet only enable us to have part in Him by
washing us in His own Blood; not once alone in
the washing of regeneration, but daily, hourly, so that the dust of this corrupting world which clings to our feet as we tread its tortuous ways, may be ever and ever cleansed away. In like manner inspired by His Divine example, He bids us prove that we have truly part in Him, by serving Him humbly and thankfully in the persons of His poorer brethren on earth. While we thus shrink however from dwelling on the great acts of this solemn night, there are some of the sacred words spoken then, when He delivered to the world that which may be called the Gospel of the Agony, that are to us in this rebellious age, so especially the words of Eternal life, that they seem to stand out from all surrounding gloom as though written in letters of light, and to them we gladly turn. The first of those Divine utterances which echo with undying power from that upper room upon our listening spirits, is that which stamps this day with the dazzling yet terrible effulgence of His Love and its claim to our obedience in the Church His Body.
"A new commandment give I unto you--that ye love one
another as I have loved you."
As He has loved us! we are to love one
another as He has loved us! we with our self-seeking desires, our idolatrous hearts, our violent passions, our strong antipathies, we are to love as He loved,--the Incarnate GOD, Who in ceaseless suffering laid down not only His life for His friends, but also, all the glory that He had with the Eternal FATHER before the worlds were.
How awful a command! high as the Heavens in its exalted
comprehensiveness, yet not impossible even for us when joined in
Sacramental union with Him our LORD, for before
He uttered that commandment He instituted the Sacred mysteries, whereby we
can so be sharers in His own Divine nature as to make it possible for us to
obey it.
He proclaims the unearthly mandate which gives its name to the fifth
Passion day, He creates the Sacrament of essential union with Himself
whereby alone it may be kept, and then, as if in His unutterable mercy to
lure us to its fulfilment by the most powerful motive, which could sway the
souls of His people, He says unto us,
"If ye love Me keep My commandments,"--and
this last above all, the last before He suffered.
So far then as we have not loved one another,
even as He has loved us, we have proved that we have not loved Him, the dying LORD about to offer Himself in torments inconceivable, a Sacrifice for us! The obligation laid upon us therefore by the very nature of this day, is the deliberate searching scrutiny of our hearts and lives, to drag out of their inmost depths, every evidence of the extent to which we have failed to love our brethren as CHRIST has loved us. What a terrible light will that probing of conscience fling upon our own share, in causing the mysterious agony, which bowed the LORD of Heaven to the very earth that night, beneath the weight of all the world's iniquity! Have we ever so much as given Him any real proof that we love Him, by the perfect keeping of this new, this last commandment? if no other sin of ours were laid upon Him, save those which we have heaped together by its nonfulfilment, we have no need to wonder at the great drops of Blood wrung from Him by His untold anguish.
Truly the warning of this day against uncharitableness in all the
manifold meanings of the term, is sharper than a two-edged sword
when it pierces into our self-deceiving hearts,
and opens up to us the depths of our failure to love the brethren and in them the Elder Brother of the family of man.
Yet this the saddest evening that ever cast its shadow on all time,
brings to us through the words spoken by the dying
SAVIOUR, consolations more priceless in their
value to our fainting struggling souls than any that can come to us on
brightest festivals.
We are groping here amid the unsolved problems of this bewildering
world, met at every turn by the inexplicable mystery of evil, by the
permitted suffering of the innocent and helpless, by the inscrutable
conditions of our own being, while all around us, sound the mocking voices
of this age of so called progress, telling us that our faith is false, our
hopes are vain, that CHRIST is not risen from
the dead, and we are of all men most miserable: and surely the whole
mental torture of this chaos of doubt and difficulty was foreseen by Him,
when, having proclaimed His Deity by bidding us believe in Him even as we
believe in GOD, and told us that He was about
to prepare a place where we, in unchanged identity, should live for ever in
deathless realms, He turned and gave to all future generations the
calm assurance, "If it were not so I would have told you."
He, the living Truth, would not have deceived us. He would not have left
us one moment in a false hope, Who gave Himself to save us from despair. If
He were not GOD, Incarnate for our sakes, He
would have told us. If there were no life beyond the grave, no future of
immortality, no place for any of the human race in the eternal Mansions of
His FATHER, He would have told us. He did not
endure an earthly existence of toil and humiliation, and a voluntary death
of torture, to mock with baseless fables, those for whom He died. If for us
there awaited only annihilation in the dust of mortal corruption He would
have told us. In His infinite compassion and tenderness He bids us not
doubt Him, though all the world conspire to blot out His Name from the
universe of His creation, for He would have told us if He had not Himself
been that Eternal Life which He promised to us in the face of His Own
Death.
"Because I live, ye shall live also."
Then--then when that everlasting day has dawned, we shall know that He
is in the FATHER, and we in Him. This strong
consolation wherein we may
take refuge, is not however the only one afforded to us on that evening. As if still looking forward to the blasts of atheism and false philosophy that should in future ages sweep over this insensate world, the LORD gave us a promise of internal evidence which no outward argument or proof can so much as touch in any sense, for He declares to all who strive to keep His commandments, that He will manifest Himself to them.
"He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is
that loveth Me, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to
him."
They shall see and know Him in their inmost consciousness in such a
wondrous certainty of present intercourse, that the negations of science or
agnosticism must fall powerless on the spirit wherein He dwells, like the
mad waves beating in vain round an impregnable rock.
Thus it is, that the secret of the LORD is
with them that fear Him, and that with no vain boast they can affirm to
sceptics and cavillers, that they know Him in Whom they have
believed, and thus too is the ineffable promise of that evening of the
agony fulfilled--
"Ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I
in you."
Nor is this all; it would seem as if in these last hours when
JESUS still submitted to the conditions of our
mortal nature, He had gauged all the sources of pain or fear which might
assail us when we too should face the mystery of death. Even when a sure
knowledge of the LORD leaves us no power to
doubt that there is an eternal life beyond it, we cannot escape a haunting
dread of the unknown conditions of that mysterious future state. The spirit
quails before the thought of plunging alone into an unseen immensity, like
a fluttering leaf flung out upon the mighty blast, and whirled away through
darkness none know whither; and was it not to meet those very terrors that
the Dying Voice of the Divine One spoke those words of unutterable
blessedness and peace, when He declared, He would come to receive us to
Himself--
"That where I am, there ye may be also?"
He willed not to reveal to us in any degree the nature of our being in
that further life, but enough--enough beyond all power of language, to
express its depths of consolation, is the certainty bequeathed to us in His
hour of agony, that howsoever, wheresoever we are, we shall be with
Him. It is His Will, what room can there
ever be again for doubt or trembling in face of death?
"Father, I will that those whom Thou has given Me, be with
Me where I am."
These were among the words spoken by the
LORD, when having lifted up His Eyes to Heaven,
He entered into that last communion with the Eternal
FATHER, of which the awful sanctity seems
profaned by any approach in human language, therefore we dare not touch any
further on what has been vouchsafed to our knowledge of that supreme hour;
only let us say, "May GOD be praised for
ever," that He has allowed the record of these unearthly utterances
to remain with us, for the Divinity of the Godhead is so stamped upon them,
that they alone have had power to smite with irresistible conviction, souls
that else had remained for ever lost in lowest depths of unbelief. Yet
although we may not speak of that wondrous Intercession, let us remember,
whatever be our trials, our temptations, our struggles, our failures, our
almost despair, that He prayed then for us, for us poor fainting sinners
that should believe on Him through His written Evangel.
And now the rayless shadow of that last
Pas-
sion evening so deepens around the Sacred Victim, that we seem unable to dwell any longer on these heavenly consolations, for Judas has gone out to do that which he had to do quickly and--"it was night!" words of terrible significance!
It was night indeed, profound, unfathomable for the traitor and for all
who to the end of time depart in any sense from the Light of the world; and
it was night for Him, the Lamb of GOD, Whom all
creation shall behold hereafter as the sole Light of Eternity, when
"He went forth over the brook Cedron, where was a garden into
the which He entered."
Gethsemane! how can we venture to rest the eyes of mental vision on that
mysterious scene when in superhuman agony the
LORD of all wrestled with Eternal Justice for
the redemption of the human race?
"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto
death." Not the hosts of heaven who watched in silence there
around their King, thus made a spectacle to angels and to men, nor any who
have ever lived, could sound the depths of suffering expressed in these
gentle, pathetic words, for on that Innocent Head the Almighty Hand
has bound the sins of all humanity, and laid Him prostrate beneath their weight on the dust of this defiled earth, while the Divine Heart breaks under the awful sense of the FATHER'S wrath for all the transgressions of the guilty race whom He, the only Sinless, represented there.
"Thy rebuke hath broken My Heart."
It is not for us to dwell in open words on a theme so sacred, thankful
only may we be if we are permitted in this Holy Week to lie under the
Shadow of dark Gethsemane in mute abasement, and make that dread vigil a
stern preparation for the hour of our own death, since then for the first
time were heard the accents of that sad reproach, which must re-echo
again on the soul of every one departing from an existence which has not
been truly given to GOD.
"Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" This
little hour of life! how shall we bear it fainting in dissolution, if
through all our years of strength and power we have left Him unheeded in
His anguish for our sins, and taken our pleasure in self-willed ease
or cold indifference?
"Sleep on now," the sleep of death, till we see
Him coming with clouds to judge the world.
It was night, night black with a darkness that may be felt, for the traitor has come and given to the Master, Who was about to die for him, the kiss, which represents all the evil that ever has been done in the name of CHRIST, all human passions indulged under a profession of religion, all unreal, hollow service simulating the perfect way of life.
"Friend, wherefore art thou come?"
The Divine LORD called Judas still by that
dear title, hoping, perhaps, for the traitor's own sake to rouse some
lingering spark of affection in his heart; but we know how Judas delivered
Him to His murderers, and bade them hold Him fast.
"Ye are My friends," He had said to His
disciples with yet deeper, tenderer meaning: His friends, His own
whom He had loved and did love even to the end, and now in His hour of
utmost peril, of agony, of certain swift-coming death--
"They all forsook Him and fled."
In the entire desolation of that moment there fell upon Him Who has
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, a bitterness of misery into which
we with our clinging affections can enter
with special comprehension, and which in our measure we may ourselves have known in stern reality.
If in our life's journey we have experienced the cruel piercing of
our hand by the support on which we leant in fondest confidence, if change
and forgetfulness have passed on the love or the friendship that was
dearest to us on earth, if our hearts have been wrung by faithlessness
where most we trusted, by desertion where we would have clung most
strongly, if now we are alone and desolate who could once have said with
joy to those we cherished most, "Ye are my friends,"--then
let us rejoice, for in no other way could we have won so fully the sympathy
of Him Who more than any that ever walked this earth has loved, and more
than any other that ever lived has been forsaken,--"and it
was night."
To us who dare still in the Shadow of the Passion to follow
CHRIST as He is taken from prison and from
judgment, there seems no interval between this day and that which saw the
dust of sad Gethsemane wet with the anguish-dew which sin in its
utmost penalty wrung from the only One Who never yielded to its power, for
each hour of that dreadful night is marked with its own special pain, and
could we be content to rest in oblivion of it all, when for us it was
endured? even if slumber overtake us through the weakness of the flesh, it
is a night when we may say with truth, "I sleep, but my heart
waketh," for it cannot be that any one of its mournful watches
should find us forgetting Him, Who doubtless in these commemorative hours,
looks on us so often faithless, as once He looked on Peter and melted his
very soul in anguish of repentance.
Slowly at length that memorable dawn appears, but how can we bear to
contemplate the cruel hour that follows when "by His stripes we
are healed," when we "beheld Him, stricken,
smitten of God and afflicted, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for
our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace is upon
Him?"
Dearly purchased peace! last legacy of our one Friend. To that peace may
we cling though all the world should seek to rend it from us. May that
peace be ours when the fair scenes of earth shall flash away for ever from
our dying eyes, and through the far reaches of the deathless realms, may we
pass on to Him Who is Himself our very and eternal Peace.
Not yet this day, however, must we lift up our heads in that dear hope,
though our Redemption is drawing nigh, for still in the intense
commemoration of the Holy Week the LORD is
being led as a Lamb to the slaughter that He might pour out His soul unto
death as an offering for sin, and so make intercession for the
transgressors.
We may indeed dwell in thought with adoring gratitude on the many forms
of suffering which bowed that Kingly Head beneath the crown of thorns,
while He yielded Himself through the long bitter hours to the malice of the
torturers, but we may not analyze the terrible details. Too often has the
Sacrifice, whose unfathomable depths no human soul can comprehend, been
profaned by well-meant efforts to bring it
within the limits of poor earthly language, but the reverence of utter silence alone befits us when treading now in His wearied, fainting steps in the last stage of His remembered Passion, we pass onward with Him whither He goes bearing His Cross.
"Weep not for Me, weep for yourselves."
To us and to all the human race till time shall be no longer was that
injunction given, for JESUS knew that the guilt
of those who inflicted on Him the utmost pangs of physical suffering, was
light indeed to that incurred by all who through their own unholiness
should crucify Him to themselves afresh, and put Him to an open shame. His
murderers did it ignorantly in unbelief, but how often in the full blaze of
the Gospel light, and especially in these latter days, men have denied the
LORD that bought them, while even those who
call themselves by His name reject Him secretly for some idol that enslaves
their fancy, saying, "Not this Man, but
Barabbas."
Well for us if this day we can so weep for ourselves in our regretted
past, that in future we may never have cause to weep for Him, crucified
anew by our own cruel hands.
"I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto
Me."
The hour has come marked out in its indestructible significance from the
eternity wherein it was foredoomed, and in which it shall for ever be
remembered; and we are drawn, as He said, to that uplifted Sacrifice, the
pledge and embodiment of love undying, never more surely to abandon Him Who
in that tremendous hour offered Himself up through the eternal Spirit
without spot to GOD. The blackness of night has
fallen upon Him and us, who waiting on Him in spiritual realization, have
reached this central hour in all the history of the universe. Even nature
veils her face in her high noontide from the sight of
GOD by man deserted, and a Man by
GOD forsaken in His last extremity.
"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me?"
That terrible cry, laden with the inconceivable misery, which must have
been ours through ceaseless cycles of existence if the Incarnate
SON had never lived on earth and died to bring
us back to the Bosom of the FATHER, teaches us
in so far as even thus we can comprehend it, what would have been the
eternal desolation of
our deathless souls in final exile from their GOD.
So long as the ages of this world's probation still endure, the
echo of that mysterious cry will ascend to the throne of Immaculate
Justice, till the last redeemed spirit has been won from the desert where
GOD is not, to behold Him in His glory, and to
enter into the joy of his LORD.
The reverent darkness still broods over the shuddering earth, and we in
spirit cast ourselves beneath the pierced Feet to fix our whole heart, and
mind, and strength on Him Who hangs there bearing our sins in His own body
on the tree. Yet not only in heart-wrung gratitude and love must we
lie there, while through the portentous gloom His dying Voice is heard to
breathe the ineffable words which tell how He prays for His executioners,
how He thirsts for our salvation, how He sanctifies all pure human
affections by His care for His holy mother. We too have a sacrifice to
offer, a crucifixion to accomplish. Those three hours of His last
sufferings, "Who took away the hand-writing that was
against us, and nailed it to His Cross," must be the
concentration of that daily dying unto sin to which we were bound when
we put on CHRIST in the waters of baptism. We have been face to face with all that is evil in ourselves through the weeks of Lenten preparation for this hour, and now upon the Cross of our Redeemer we are called to crucify utterly and for ever the whole body of sin in whatsoever form it separates us from the sinless LORD; all cherished idols, all earthly hopes and dreams that hold us back from GOD, our very being, in truth, must be there transfixed in resolute self-surrender, till every thought, and word, and feeling is brought into captivity to the obedience of CHRIST.
The complete and final crucifixion of our will nailed to the will of
GOD with the pierced Hands and Feet of
JESUS, is the special claim made upon the soul
by this the last Passion day, and it is the most terrible of all the
warnings of the Holy Week. There can be no painless crucifixion. It may be
that our very hearts must break in yielding up that which has been too
absorbing or too dear. Yet even then when we are stretched as it were with
CHRIST upon the rack of pain there is for us a
consolation of most heavenly sweetness, if with all our longing souls we
too can say, "Lord, remember me
when Thou comest to Thy kingdom," for then may we, even we, hope to be with Him one day in Paradise.
"Consummatum
est,"--it is finished! finished the
suffering and grief of
JESUS, finished the sacrifice to omnipotent
Justice, finished the world's salvation.
The portentous darkness is slowly lifted from the earth, and the pallid
twilight shows the Divine One silent and still in death.
JESUS is taken down from that now powerless
Cross of pain and laid within His quiet grave, and already the peace which
He bequeathed to us a His dying gift falls on our fainting souls, a peace
pure and passionless, such as those alone can know whose natural self,
slain by their own deliberate purpose, lies dead and buried in the
Redeemer's tomb.
"This day shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise."
It almost seems to us on this day of heavenly rest, typical of the
intermediate state, as if the words spoken to the penitent malefactor and
fraught to him indeed with eternal blessedness, might yet in a limited
sense be true of all who have sought to follow their beloved Master closely
through the stages of His sacred Passion. For now dead with Him to all
earthly desire, seeking JESUS alone in time and
in eternity, we seem to rise from beneath His Cross
where we too have offered up ourselves, and follow Him in spirit along the trackless way to the restful abodes of Hades. Turning from all human sights and sounds, we yield ourselves to the mysterious perception of the unseen state, which seems to be the peculiar grace accorded to those who keep this day in union with their departed LORD.
A supernatural stillness appears to be all around us with a cool soft
air, such as breathes amid summer heat from some dark cavern deep among the
rocks, while our whole spiritual intelligence thrills with intense
realization of the Presence of our Incarnate
GOD in the home of the faithful dead. We seem
in some strange sense conscious that He is there, pervading the whole dim
quiet atmosphere; His Hands extended even as on the Cross in universal
benediction, while at His Feet are resting calm and still the vast
multitudes of our brethren gone before, drawn by His coming through the
solemn shades to gather at that one Centre of all hope and joy. There amid
the unnumbered throngs we seem to gain a veiled glimpse of beloved faces,
vanished long since in mournful days from our longing eyes, and now,
seeking for us no more,
intent on Him alone for Whom they wait, their Resurrection and their Life.
With Him, with them, and all who have departed in His faith and fear, we
may indeed abide this one calm day in Paradise, but since not yet for us
the tyranny of life is overpast, it may not all be spent in peaceful
contemplation of the rest that remains for the people of
GOD.
We have yet a task to finish upon earth, we have to labour that we may
indeed enter into that rest, lest in our bitter struggle with the enemies
of GOD within us and without, we should after
all come short of it. There is laid on us yet the stern necessity of
becoming, in life, that which in death we would desire to be, for it seems
plain that no new regeneration takes place within the undying soul when the
mortal body is given to the dust; that which it has been in tendencies and
desire upon earth, it still must be, when it goes out into the unknown
realm where its eternal destiny shall be accomplished.
The lessons of the Holy Week which have taught us how to live, are now
gathered up and concentrated in the teaching of this sacred Eve which
instructs us how to die, not in words, but by the stupendous facts
commemorated in it, which
convey to us the certainty of those divine Truths that have taken the sting from death, and robbed the grave of its victory. That grave need have no terrors for us now, since the Incarnate Love Himself has slept within its narrow walls, that He might render all the conditions of our nature pure and harmless in death as well as in life; and this mysterious day should be the seal set on our immutable purpose, so to live in Him and with Him here, that we may pass through the grave and gate of death to be with Him for ever. The end of our years on earth may seem to us yet far off, and till it come, the troubled anxious interval is like that night of toil and sorrow, spent by the disciples on the stormy Tiberian sea, before the glorious dawn which brought them at last the blissful sight of their own Risen LORD.
We too are out upon the restless waves on life's dark sea,
struggling with the baffling winds of error, and temptation, and toiling to
reach the land of everlasting joy, and ever as we hurry onwards, the world
grows drearier, and our spirits fainter, in their loneliness and
gloom,--the scenes of youth and riper years recede into the distance,
and the voices we have loved, die away
from us to be heard no more, the lights of earth go out one by one, and the whelming waters rise higher and higher, as we drift we know not whither, helpless and alone.
The night--the dark unknown night whose mystery no living eye has
ever pierced, is closing round us, yet we need not shrink or fear, for all
will be well eternally, if only it can be said of each one of us, that when
the morn was come--
"JESUS STOOD UPON THE
SHORE."
J. MASTERS and Co., Printers. Albion Buildings, Bartholomew Close.