THE TRADITIONAL SAYINGS OF CHRIST.
THE traditional sayings of Christ—sayings, we mean, outside the Canon of the New Testament to whose authenticity some credence is given by the learned—are very few. The late Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott, at the end of his "Intro- duction to the Study of the Gospels" published a list of as many as appeared to him to contain "true and original traits of the Lord's teaching, and as such to be invested with the greatest interest." Several other striking sentences were found some years ago on a single sheet of papyrus on the site of what was once the town of Oxyrrhynchus, in Egypt. These also, ou r readers may remember, attracted the attention of many scholars. Both sets of phrases are disjointed, some only partly decipherable, others, to our mind, incomprehensible. Others again seem to us to bear in a striking mannerupon one of the great religions ques- tions of to-day,--i.e., the attitude of Christ towards the indi- vidual conscience, and by inference, His attitude towards those 'Who find themselves unable to come to a conclusion as to the things which pertain to religious peace. The doubt of the twentieth century and the unbelief of the first are such very different things that to compare them is nearly impossible. There are not more than two or three instances in the Gospel of religious men who were apparently by their own honest minds, apart from any indifference, any sense of scorn, or any preference for the darkness which covers evil deeds, compelled to admit that they did not believe. St. Thomas was one; the man who gave a voice to all religious-minded doubters from then till now, who "cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe ; help thou mine un- belief," was another. Probably St. James may have been a third. He is generally considered to have counted among the " brethren " who did not believe, and to have been converted after the Resurrection by our Lord Himself. It is a significant fact that in his Epistle —supposing, as many scholars suppose, that be wrote the letter which bears his name—he puts faith in .a less important light than any other writer of the New Testament. Towards all these men Christ's attitude is benignant. To James He grants a revelation. The " un- belief " of the father who prayed for his son is " helped " by his son's restoration to health. Thomas receives a proof, and, as we read the narrative, no rebuke whatever for his mistaken opinion. "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed" is a statement of a self-evident fact which must surely be acquiesced in by sceptic and Christian alike. It only comes to this : How happy are those people who without asking for evidence are able to believe in the resur- rection of the dead.' If any other suggestion is contained in the words, it seems to us to be a suggestion of sympathy for a man who has been unable to accept the consolation of faith.
But to turn from the Gospels to the traditional sayings. The first upon Dr. Westcott's list unreservedly states that conscience, and not doctrine, is the final test by which every man must stand or fall. The saying as it is presented to us is set in a fragment of narrative :—" On the same day having seen one working on the Sabbath, He said to him, '0 man, if indeed thou knowest what thou doest thou art blessed ; but if thou knowest not thou art cursed, and art a transgressor of the law." The man at work• was refusing to conform to the authority of what was considered in his day revealed religion. The Disciples who saw him were probably shocked at what seemed to them his act of profanation; but whether he was blameworthy or innocent was, according to our Lord, a matter which depended entirely upon his convictions. Regard for the Sabbath involved faith. It is no part of instinctive morality to stop work on a par- ticular day of the week. The question was one of revela- tion, not of intuition. This saying of Christ's, if it is His—we must refer our readers to Dr. Westeott's book for the evidence— is somewhat more comprehensive than any sentence of the kind which has come down to us in the New Testament, but it is not out of keeping with the words recorded by St. Luke : "He that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall
be beaten with few stripes." Again, the true intent of this verse has, perhaps, some light thrown upon it by Ithmans xiv. 5-6, where a similar thought is apparently meant to be conveyed. "One man esteemeth one day above another : another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it." In fact, what makes the man a sinner in such cases as that under consideration is not the act but the violation of the conscience.
Christ's blessings pronounced upon spiritual hunger and thirst, His exhortations to ask and to knock, His words to the lawyer who desired to be assured of eternal life and was told to continue in his present course of well-doing and he should live,—all point towards sympathy with the spiritually dissatisfied ; and once more tradition confirms the attitude of our Lord in the Gospels. "Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in the flesh was I seen of them. I found all men drunken, and no man found I athirst among them. My soul grieveth over the sons of men because they are blind in their hearts." These possible words of Christ would seem to declare a state of un- certainty to be more hopeful than one of thoughtlessness. The orthodox faith of the Pharisees of His day had been turned by ceremonial and indifference into a dead self-satis- faction, out of which the scourge of doubt had no longer power to revive them. Perhaps the same suggestion is con- tained in another of these sayings—one which bas a haunting fascination, but of whose meaning we feel by no means sure- " They that wonder shall reign, and they that reign shall rest." Other words but partially decipherable—found in the Egyptian papyrus—seem to assert that the spirit of Christ is often near to those who imagine themselves to be alone, and is poured out through many channels, not necessarily religious.
"Jesus saith where there are and there is one alone I am with him. Raise the stone, and thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I."
It must be remembered that though the Apostles died in faith, they by no means lived their whole lives in it. The friends whom Christ chose and whom He called the salt of the earth withstood Him, misunderstood Him, denied, doubted, and deserted Him. But it may be asked,— Why, from the point of view you have been setting forth, is it then better to believe than to doubt P That question, which looks at first sight so reasonable, is in reality absurd. As well ask why is it better to feel safe than to feel apprehensive, to feel of some importance than to feel of unutterable insignificance, to believe ourselves part of a divine order of things than to believe we aria grains of dust in a whirlwind of chance, to expect to go through death to a fuller life than through our last agony to "the shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss, the utter nothingness from which we came." Religious assurance is a tremendous strength, which those who go without, if indeed they are to blame, surely expiate their fault by their loss here. Perhaps it was to them that the last traditional words we shall quote were addressed. "They who wish to see me and to lay hold on my Kingdom must receive me by affliction and suffering." The donbters of whom we are speaking are not, of course, those who desire to convict their neighbours of an ill-considered faith. Theological argu- ment is not an ignoble pastime, in that it exercises two minds upon the most important of all questions, but it has not much to do with religion. We speak of the men who desire not intellectual victory but intellectual defeat; who want to find spiritual truth, not to chop polemical logic ; whose greatest dread is that they should hear in their hearts at the last the terrible sentence, "Thou heat judged rightly " ; and whose greatest hope is to be put in the end to intellectual cOnfusion by the stern words which brought new life to the doubters upon the Emmaus road :—" 0 fools, and slow of heart to believe."
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