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CHAPTER

All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to God. BROWNING.

But lead me, Man divine, Where'er Thou will'st, only that I may find At the long journey's end Thy image there, And grow more like to it. For art not Thou The human shadow of the infinite Love That made and fills the endless universe? The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown, Eternal Good that rules the summer flower And all the worlds that people starry space. RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS.

THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS.

O God, O kinsman loved, but not enough, O man with eyes majestic after death, Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough, Whose lips drawn human breath;

There is a natural tendency to think of Jesus as different from other men in the human element of his personality. Our adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the experiences of his youth and young manhood as altogether unlike those of any other boy or young man in the village where he grew up. This same feeling leads us to think of his temptation as so different from what temptation is to other men as to be really no temptation at all.

So we are apt to think of all the human life of Jesus as being in some way lifted up out of the rank of ordinary experiences. We do not conceive of him as having the same struggles that we have in meeting trial, in enduring injury and wrong, in learning obedience, patience, meekness, submission, trust, and cheerfulness. We conceive of his friendships as somehow different from other men's. We feel that in some mysterious way his human life was supported and sustained by the deity that dwelt in him, and that he was exempt from all ordinary limiting conditions of humanity.

There is no doubt that with many people this feeling of reverence has been in the way of the truest understanding of Jesus, and ofttimes those who have clung most devoutly to a belief in his deity have missed much of the comfort which comes from a proper comprehension of his humanity.

Yet the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels furnishes no ground for any confusion on the subject of his human life. It represents him as subject to all ordinary human conditions excepting sin. He began life as every infant begins, in feebleness and ignorance; and there is no hint of any precocious development. He learned as every child must learn. The lessons were not gotten easily or without diligent study. He played as other boys did, and with them. The more we think of the youth of Jesus as in no marked way unlike that of those among whom he lived, the truer will our thought of him be.

Millais the great artist, when he was a young man, painted an unusual picture of Jesus. He represented him as a little boy in the home at Nazareth. He has cut his finger on some carpenter's tool, and comes to his mother to have it bound up. The picture is really one of the truest of all the many pictures of Jesus, because it depicts just such a scene as ofttimes may have been witnessed in his youth. Evidently there was nothing in his life in Nazareth that drew the attention of his companions and neighbors to him in any striking way. We know that he wrought no miracles until after he had entered upon his public ministry. We can think of him as living a life of unselfishness and kindness. There was never any sin or fault in him; he always kept the law of God perfectly. But his perfection was not something startling. There was no halo about his head, no transfiguration, that awed men. We are told that he grew in favor with men as well as with God. His religion made his life beautiful and winning, but always so simple and natural that it drew no unusual attention to itself. It was richly and ideally human.

So it was unto the end. Through the years of his public ministry, when his words and works burned with divine revealing, he continued to live an altogether natural human life. He ate and drank; he grew weary and faint; he was tempted in all points like as we are, and suffered, being tempted. He learned obedience by the things that he endured. He hungered and thirsted, never ministering with his divine power to any of his own needs. "In all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren."

In nothing else is this truth more clearly shown than in the humanheartedness which was so striking a feature of the life of Jesus among men. When we think of him as the Son of God, the question arises, Did he really care for personal friendships with men and women of the human family? In the home from which he came he had dwelt from all eternity in the bosom of the Father, and had enjoyed the companionship of the highest angels. What could he find in this world of imperfect, sinful beings to meet the cravings of his heart for fellowship? Whom could he find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of his friendship, or capable of being in any real sense his personal friend? What satisfaction could his heart find in this world's deepest and holiest love? What light can a dim candle give to the sun? Does the great ocean need the little dewdrop that hides in the bosom of the rose? What blessing or inspiration of love can any poor, marred, stained life give to the soul of the Christ?

Yet the Gospels abound with evidences that Jesus did crave human love, that he found sweet comfort in the friendships which he made, and that much of his keenest suffering was caused by failures in the love of those who ought to have been true to him as his friends. He craved affection, and even among the weak and faulty men and women about him made many very sacred attachments from which he drew strength and comfort.

We must distinguish between Christ's love for all men and his friendship for particular individuals. He was in the world to reveal the Father, and all the divine compassion for sinners was in his heart. It was this mighty love that brought him to earth on the mission of redemption. It was this that impelled and constrained him in all his seeking of the lost. He had come to be the Saviour of all who would believe and follow him. Therefore he was interested in every merest fragment or shred of life. No human soul was so debased that he did not love it.

But besides this universal divine love revealed in the heart of Jesus, he had his personal human friendships. A philanthropist may give his whole life to the good of his fellow-men, to their uplifting, their advancement, their education; to the liberation of the enslaved; to work among and in behalf of the poor, the sick, or the fallen. All suffering humanity has its interest for him, and makes appeal to his compassion. Yet amid the world of those whom he thus loves and wishes to help, this man will have his personal friends; and through the story of his life will run the golden threads of sweet companionships and friendships whose benedictions and inspirations will be secrets of strength, cheer, and help to him in all his toil in behalf of others.

Jesus gave all his rich and blessed life to the service of love. Power was ever going out from him to heal, to comfort, to cheer, to save. He was continually emptying out from the full fountain of his own heart cupfuls of rich life to reinvigorate other lives in their faintness and exhaustion. One of the sources of his own renewing and replenishing was in the friendships he had among men and women. What friends are to us in our human hunger and need, the friends of Jesus were to him. He craved companionship, and was sorely hurt when men shut their doors in his face.

There are few more pathetic words in the New Testament than that short sentence which tells of his rejection, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Another pathetic word is that which describes the neglect of those who ought to have been ever eager to show him hospitality: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Even the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven had warmer welcome in this world than he in whose heart was the most gentle love that earth ever knew.

Another word which reveals the deep hunger of the heart of Jesus for friendship and companionship was spoken in view of the hour when even his own apostles would leave him: "Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone." The experience of the garden of Gethsemane also shows in a wonderful way the Lord's craving for sympathy. In his great sorrow he wished to have his best friends near him, that he might lean on them, and draw from their love a little strength for his hour of bitter need. It was an added element in the sorrow of that night that he failed to get the help from human sympathy which he yearned for and expected. When he came back each time after his supplication, he found his apostles sleeping.

These are some of the glimpses which we get in the Gospel story of the longing heart of Jesus. He loved deeply, and sought to be loved. He was disappointed when he failed to find affection. He welcomed love wherever it came to him,--the love of the poor, the gratitude of those whom he had helped, the trusting affection of little children. We can never know how much the friendship of the beloved disciple was to Jesus. What a shelter and comfort the Bethany home was to him, and how his strength was renewed by its sweet fellowship! How even the smallest kindnesses were a solace to his heart! How he was comforted by the affection and the ministries of the women-friends who followed him!

In the chapters of this book which follow, the attempt is made to tell the story of some of the friendships of Jesus, gathering up the threads from the Gospel pages. Sometimes the material is abundant, as in the case of Peter and John; sometimes we have only a glimpse or two in the record, albeit enough to reveal a warm and tender friendship, as in the case of the Bethany sisters, and of Andrew, and of Joseph. It may do us good to study these friendship stories. It will at least show us the humanheartedness of Jesus, and his method in blessing and saving the world. The central fact in every true Christian life is a personal friendship with Jesus. Men were called to follow him, to leave all and cleave to him, to believe on him, to trust him, to love him, to obey him; and the result was the transformation of their lives into his own beauty. That which alone makes one a Christian is being a friend of Jesus. Friendship transforms--all human friendship transforms. We become like those with whom we live in close, intimate relations. Life flows into life, heart and heart are knit together, spirits blend, and the two friends become one.

We have but little to give to Christ; yet it is a comfort to know that our friendship really is precious to him, and adds to his joy, poor and meagre though its best may be--but he has infinite blessings to give to us. "I call you friends." No other gift he gives to us can equal in value the love and friendship of his heart. When Cyrus gave Artabazus, one of his courtiers, a gold cup, he gave Chrysanthus, his favorite, only a kiss. And Artabazus said to Cyrus, "The cup you gave me was not so good gold as the kiss you gave Chrysanthus." No good man's money is ever worth so much as his love. Certainly the greatest honor of this earth, greater than rank or station or wealth, is the friendship of Jesus Christ. And this honor is within the reach of every one. "Henceforth I call you not servants ... I have called you friends." "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you."

The stories of the friendships of Jesus when he was on the earth need cause no one to sigh, "I wish that I had lived in those days, when Jesus lived among men, that I might have been his friend too, feeling the warmth of his love, my life enriched by contact with his, and my spirit quickened by his love and grace!" The friendships of Jesus, whose stories we read in the New Testament, are only patterns of friendships into which we may enter, if we are ready to accept what he offers, and to consecrate our life to faithfulness and love.

The friendship of Jesus includes all other blessings for time and for eternity. "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's." His friendship sanctifies all pure human bonds--no friendship is complete which is not woven of a threefold cord. If Christ is our friend, all life is made rich and beautiful to us. The past, with all of sacred loss it holds, lives before us in him. The future is a garden-spot in which all life's sweet hopes, that seem to have perished on the earth, will be found growing for us.

"Fields of the past to thee shall be no more The burialground of friendships once in bloom, But the seed-plots of a harvest on before, And prophecies of life with larger room For things that are behind.

Live thou in Christ, and thy dead past shall be Alive forever with eternal day; And planted on his bosom thou shall see The flowers revived that withered on the way Amid the things behind."

JESUS AND HIS MOTHER.

The first friend a child has in this world is its mother. It comes here an utter stranger, knowing no one; but it finds love waiting for it. Instantly the little stranger has a friend, a bosom to nestle in, an arm to encircle it, a hand to minister to its helplessness. Love is born with the child. The mother presses it to her breast, and at once her heart's tendrils twine about it.

It is a good while before the child becomes conscious of the wondrous love that is bending over it, yet all the time the love is growing in depth and tenderness. In a thousand ways, by a thousand delicate arts, the mother seeks to waken in her child a response to her own yearning love. At length the first gleams of answering affection appear--the child has begun to love. From that hour the holy friendship grows. The two lives become knit in one.

When God would give the world a great man, a man of rare spirit and transcendent power, a man with a lofty mission, he first prepares a woman to be his mother. Whenever in history we come upon such a man, we instinctively begin to ask about the character of her on whose bosom he nestled in infancy, and at whose knee he learned his life's first lessons. We are sure of finding here the secret of the man's greatness. When the time drew nigh for the incarnation of the Son of God, we may be sure that into the soul of the woman who should be his mother, who should impart her own life to him, who should teach him his first lessons, and prepare him for his holy mission, God put the loveliest and the best qualities that ever were lodged in any woman's life. We need not accept the teaching that exalts the mother of Jesus to a place beside or above her divine Son. We need have no sympathy whatever with the dogma that ascribes worship to the Virgin Mary, and teaches that the Son on his throne must be approached by mortals through his more merciful, more gentle-hearted mother. But we need not let these errors concerning Mary obscure the real blessedness of her character. We remember the angel's greeting, "Blessed art thou among women." Hers surely was the highest honor ever conferred upon any woman.

"Say of me as the Heavenly said, 'Thou art The blessedest of women!'--blessedest, Not holiest, not noblest,--no high name, Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame, When I sit meek in heaven!"

We know how other men, men of genius, rarely ever have failed to give to their mothers the honor of whatever of greatness or worth they had attained. But somehow we shrink from saying that Jesus was influenced by his mother as other good men have been; that he got from her much of the beauty and the power of his life. We are apt to fancy that his mother was not to him what mothers ordinarily are to their children; that he did not need mothering as other children do; that by reason of the Deity indwelling, his character unfolded from within, without the aid of home teaching and training, and the other educational influences which do so much in shaping the character of children in common homes.

But there is no Scriptural ground for this feeling. The humanity of Jesus was just like our humanity. He came into the world just as feeble and as untaught as any other child that ever was born. No mother was ever more to her infant than Mary was to Jesus. She taught him all his first lessons. She gave him his first thoughts about God, and from her lips he learned the first lispings of prayer. Jewish mothers cared very tenderly for their children. They taught them with unwearying patience the words of God. One of the rabbis said, "God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers." This saying shows how sacred was the Jewish thought of the mother's work for her child.

Every true mother feels a sense of awe in her soul when she bends over her own infant child; but in the case of Mary we may be sure that the awe was unusual, because of the mystery of the child's birth. In the annunciation the angel had said to her, "That which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God." Then the night of her child's birth there was a wondrous vision of angels, and the shepherds who beheld it hastened into the town; and as they looked upon the baby in the manger, they told the wondering mother what they had seen and heard. We are told that Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. While she could not understand what all this meant, she knew at least that hers was no common child; that in some wonderful sense he was the Son of God.

This consciousness must have given to her motherhood an unusual thoughtfulness and seriousness. How close to God she must have lived! How deep and tender her love must have been! How pure and clean her heart must have been kept! How sweet and patient she must have been as she moved about at her tasks, in order that no harsh or bitter thought or feeling might ever cast a shadow upon the holy life which had been intrusted to her for training and moulding.

Only a few times is the veil lifted to give us a glimpse of mother and child. On the fortieth day he was taken to the temple, and given to God. Then it was that another reminder of the glory of this child was given to the mother. An old man, Simeon, took the infant in his arms, and spoke of him as God's salvation. As he gave the parents his parting blessing he lifted the veil, and showed them a glimmering of the future. "This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against." Then to the mother he said solemnly, "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." This was a foretelling of the sorrow which should come to the heart of Mary, and which came again and again, until at last she saw her son on a cross. The shadow of the cross rested on Mary's soul all the years. Every time she rocked her baby to sleep, and laid him down softly, covering his face with kisses, there would come into her heart a pang as she remembered Simeon's words. Perhaps, too, words from the old prophets would come into her mind,--"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows;" "He was bruised for our iniquities,"--and the tears would come welling into her eyes. Every time she saw her child at play, full of gladness, all unconscious of any sorrow awaiting him, a nameless fear would steal over her as she remembered the ominous words which had fallen upon her ear, and which she could not forget.

Only once in the thirty years do we have a glimpse of mother and child. It was when Jesus went to his first Passover. When the time came for returning home the child tarried behind. After a painful search the mother found him in one of the porches of the temple, sitting with the rabbis, an eager learner. There is a tone of reproach in her words, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." She was sorely perplexed. All the years before this her son had implicitly obeyed her. He had never resisted her will, never withdrawn from her guidance. Now he had done something without asking her about it--as it were, had taken his life into his own hand. It was a critical point in the friendship of this mother and her child. It is a critical moment in the friendship of any mother and her child when the child begins to think and act for himself, to do things without the mother's guidance.

The answer of Jesus is instructive: "I must be about my Father's business." There was another besides his mother to whom he owed allegiance. He was the Son of God as well as the son of Mary. Parents should remember this always in dealing with their children,--their children are more God's than theirs.

It is interesting to notice what follows that remarkable experience of mother and child in the temple. Jesus returned with his mother to the lowly Nazareth home, and was subject to her. In recognizing his relation to God as his heavenly Father, he did not become any less the child of his earthly mother. He loved his mother no less because he loved God more. Obedience to the Father in heaven did not lead him to reject the rule of earthly parenthood. He went back to the quiet home, and for eighteen years longer found his Father's business in the common round of lowly tasks which made up the daily life of such a home.

It would be intensely interesting to read the story of mother and son during those years, but it has not been written for us. They must have been years of wondrous beauty. Few things in this world are more beautiful than such friendships as one sometimes sees between mother and son. The boy is more the lover than the child. The two enter into the closest companionship. A sacred and inviolable intimacy is formed between them. The boy opens all his heart to his mother, telling her everything; and she, happy woman, knows how to be a boy's mother and to keep a mother's place without ever startling or checking the shy confidences, or causing him to desire to hide anything from her. The boy whispers his inmost thoughts to his mother, and listens to her wise and gentle counsels with loving eagerness and childish faith--

"Her face his holy skies; The air he breathes his mother's breath, His stars his mother's eyes."

Not always are mother and boy such friends. Some mothers do not think it worth while to give the time and thought necessary to enter into a boy's life in such confidential way. But we may be sure that between the mother of Jesus and her son the most tender and intimate friendship existed. He opened his soul to her; and she gave him not a mother's love only, but also a mother's wise counsel and strong, inspiring sympathy.

It is almost certain that sorrow entered the Nazareth home soon after the visit to Jerusalem. Joseph is not mentioned again; and it is supposed that he died, leaving Mary a widow. On Jesus, as the eldest son, the care of the mother now rested. Knowing the deep love of his heart and his wondrous gentleness, it is easy for us to understand with what unselfish devotion he cared for his mother after she was widowed. He had learned the carpenter's trade; and day after day, early and late, he wrought with his hands to provide for her wants. Very sacred must have been the friendship of mother and son in those days. Her gentleness, quietness, hopefulness, humility, and prayerfulness, must have wrought themselves into the very tissue of his character as he moved through the days in such closeness. Unto the end he carried in his soul the benedictions of his mother's life.

The thirty silent years of preparation closed, and Jesus went out to begin his public ministry. The first glimpse we have of the mother is at the wedding at Cana. Jesus was there too. The wine failed, and Mary went to Jesus about the matter. "They have no wine," she said. Evidently she was expecting some manifesting of supernatural power. All the years since his birth she had been carrying in her heart a great wonder of expectation. Now he had been baptized, and had entered upon his work as the Messiah. Had not the time come for miracle-working?

The answer of Jesus startles us: "Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come." The words seem to have in them a tone of reproof, or of repulse, unlike the words of so gentle and loving a son. But really there is in his reply nothing inconsistent with all that we have learned to think of the gentleness and lovingness of the heart of Jesus. In substance he said only that he must wait for his Father's word before doing any miracle, and that the time for this had not yet come. Evidently his mother understood him. She was not hurt by his words, nor did she regard them as a refusal to help in the emergency. Her words to the servants show this: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." She had learned her lesson of sweet humility. She knew now that God had the highest claim on her son's obedience, and she quietly waited for the divine voice. The holy friendship was not marred.

There is another long period in which no mention is made of Mary. Probably she lived a secluded life. But one day at Capernaum, in the midst of his popularity, when Jesus was preaching to a great crowd, she and his brothers appeared on the outside of the throng, and sent a request that they might speak with him. It seems almost certain that the mother's errand was to try to get him away from his exhausting work; he was imperilling his health and his safety. Jesus refused to be interrupted. But it was really only an assertion that nothing must come between him and his duty. The Father's business always comes first. Human ties are second to the bond which binds us to God. No dishonor was done by Jesus to his mother in refusing to be drawn away by her loving interest from his work. The holiest human friendship must never keep us from doing the will of God. Other mothers in their love for their children have made the same mistake that the mother of Jesus made,--have tried to withhold or withdraw their children from service which seemed too hard or too costly. The voice of tenderest love must be quenched when it would keep us from doing God's will.

The next mention of the mother of Jesus is in the story of the cross. Ah, holy mother-love, constant and faithful to the end! At length Simeon's prophecy is fulfilled,--a sword is piercing the mother's soul also. "Jesus was crucified on the cross; Mary was crucified at the foot of the cross."

Note only one feature of the scene,--the mother-love there is in it. The story of clinging mother-love is a wonderful one. A mother never forsakes her child. Mary is not the only mother who has followed a son to a cross. Here we have the culmination of this mother's friendship for her son. She is watching beside his cross. O friendship constant, faithful, undying, and true!

But what of the friendship of the dying son for his mother? In his own anguish does he notice her? Yes; one of the seven words spoken while he hung on the cross told of changeless love in his heart for her. Mary was a woman of more than fifty, "with years before her too many for remembering, too few for forgetting." The world would be desolate for her when her son was gone. So he made provision for her in the shelter of a love in which he knew she would be safe. As he saw her led away by the beloved disciple to his own home, part of the pain of dying was gone from his own heart. His mother would have tender care.

The story of this blessed friendship should sweeten forever in Christian homes the relation of mother and child. It should make every mother a better woman and a better mother. It should make every child a truer, holier child. Every home should have its sacred friendships between parents and children. Thus something of heaven will be brought down to our dull earth; for, as Mrs. Browning says,--

In the pure loves of child and mother Two human loves make one divine.

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