By James Stalker
I.
THE institution of the family affords striking illustrations both of what may be called the element of necessity and of what may be called the element of liberty in human life.
There is in it a mysterious element of necessity. Everyone is born into a particular family, which has a history and character of its own, formed before he arrives. He has no choice in the matter; yet this connection affects all his subsequent life. He may be born where it is an honour to be born or, on the contrary, where it is a disgrace. He may be heir to inspiring memories and refined habits, or he may have to take up a hereditary burden of physical and moral disease. A man has no choice of his own father and mother, his brothers and sisters, his uncles and cousins; yet on these ties, which he can never unlock, may depend three-fourths of his happiness or misery.
The doorbell rings some night, and, going out, you see on the doorstep a man who is evidently a stranger from a strange land. You know nothing of him; he is quite outside the circle of your interest; he is ten thousand miles away from your spirit.
But, if he can say, " Don't you know me? I am your brother," how near he comes-ten thousand miles at one step! You and he are connected with an indissoluble bond; and this bond may either be a golden clasp which is an ornament or an iron clamp which burns and corrodes your very flesh. This is the element in the institution of the family.
Jesus could not touch humanity without being caught in this fetter of necessity. He entered its mysterious circle when He was born of a woman. He became a member of a family which had its own traditions and its own position in society; and He had brothers and sisters.
These circumstances were not without importance to Him. That His mother exercised an influence upon His growing mind cannot be doubted. We have not, indeed, the means of tracing in much detail how this influence acted, for few notices of His early years have come down to us; but it may be noted as one significant fact that Mary's hymn, the so-called Magnificat, in which, at her meeting with Elizabeth, she poured forth the sentiments of her heart, embodies thoughts which are echoed again and again in the preaching of Jesus. This production proves her to have been a woman not only of great grace, but of rare natural gifts, which had been nourished from God's Word, till she naturally spoke the very language of the prophets and the holy women of old. We may not ascribe too much to her and Joseph, but we can say that the holy childhood of Jesus was reared in a home of pious refinement, and that there were marks of this home on Him after He left it.
Besides this influence, He was born to a long pedigree; and this was not a matter of indifference to Him. He was of the seed of David; and the Gospel narrative takes pains to trace His descent in the royal line-a procedure which may be regarded as an echo of His own feeling. Noblesse oblige: there is a stimulus to noble action supplied by noble lineage; and Milton is not perhaps overstepping the bounds of legitimate inference when, in Paradise Regained, he represents the mind of the youthful Saviour as being stirred to noble ambition by the memories of His ancestors:
Victorious deeds Flamed in My heart,
heroic acts-one while
To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke;
Then to subdue and quell o'er all the earth
Brute violence and proud tyrannic power,
Till truth was freed and equity restored.
There can at least be no hesitation in believing that His royal descent pointed out His way to the work of the Messiah.
He had, however, also to feel the galling of the ring of necessity. He bore the reproach of mean descent; for, although His remoter ancestry was noble, His immediate relatives were poor; and, when He appeared on the stage of public life, sneering tongues asked, "Is not this the carpenter's son? " His life is the final rebuke to such shallow respect of persons, and will remain for ever to the despised and lowly-born a guide to show how, by worth of character and wealth of service to God and man, they may shut the mouths of gainsayers and win a place in the love and honour of the world.
The element of liberty, which belongs to human life, is exhibited no less conspicuously than the element of necessity in the family, and is equally mysterious. Of his own choice a man enters the married state and founds a family; and by this act of his will the circle is fashioned which in the next generation will be inclosing other human beings in the same bonds of relationship into which he has himself been born.
Of course the nature of the case prevented Jesus from being the founder of a family; and this has sometimes been pointed to as a defect in the example He has left us. We have not, it is said, His example to follow in the most sacred of all the relationships of life. Undeniably there seems to be a certain force in this objection. Yet it is a singular fact that the greatest of all precepts in regard to this relationship is taken directly from His example. The deepest and most sacred word ever uttered on the subject of marriage is this: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish."*
II.
Jesus honoured the institution of the family all through His life.
In His day there prevailed in Palestine a shameful dissolution of the domestic ties. Divorce was rife and so easily procured that every trifle was made an excuse for it; and by the system of Corban children were actually allowed to compound by a payment to the temple for the neglect of their own parents. Jesus denounce these abuses with unsparing indignation and sanctioned for all the Christian ages only that law of marriage which causes it to be entered on with forethought, ** and then, when the relationship has been formed, drains the deepest affections of the heart into its sacred channel.
His own love of children, and the divine words He spoke about them, if they cannot be said to have created the love of parents for their children, have at all events immensely deepened and refined it. The love of heathen mothers and fathers for their offspring is a rude and animal propensity in comparison with the love for children, which reigns in our Christian homes. He lifted childhood up, as He raised so many other weak and despised things, and set it in the midst.
If the patter of little feet on the stairs. And the sound of little voices in the house are music to us, and if the pressure of little fingers and the touches of little lips can make us thrill with gratitude and prayer, we owe this sunshine of life to Jesus Christ. By saying, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me," He converted the home into a church, and parents into His ministers; and it may be doubted whether He has no be this means won to Himself as many disciples in the course of the Christian ages as even by the institution of the Church itself. Perhaps the lessons of mothers speaking of Jesus, and the examples of Christian fathers, have done as much for the success of Christianity as the sermons of eloquent preachers or the worship of assembled congregations. Not once or twice, at all events, has the religion of Christ, when driven out of the Church, which had been turned by faithless ministers and worldly members into a synagogue of Satan, found an asylum in the home; and there have been few of the great teachers of Christendom who have no derived their deepest convictions from the impressions made by their earliest domestic environment.
Many of the miracles of Jesus seem to have been prompted by regard for the affections of the family. When He healed the Syro-Phoenician's daughter, or gave the daughter of Jairus back to her mother, or raised the widow's son at the gate of Nain, or brought Lazarus from the dead to keep the family circle at Bethany unbroken, can it be doubted that the Saviour experienced delight in ministering to the domestic affections? He showed how profound was His appreciation of the depth and intensity of these affections in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
But it was by His own conduct in the family that He exhibited most fully His respect for this institution. Though the details of His life in Mary's home are unknown to us, every indication shows Him to have been a perfect son.
There is no joy of parents comparable to that of seeing their child growing up in wisdom, modesty and nobility; and we are told that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man. If He knew already of the great career before Him, this did not lift Him above the obedience of a child; for, even when He was twelve years of age, we are told, He went down to Nazareth with His parents and was subject unto them. It is generally supposed that soon after this Joseph died, and on Jesus, as the eldest son, fell the care of supporting the family. This is uncertain; but the very close of His life is marked by an act which throws the strongest light back on the years of which no record has been preserved, for it reveals how deep and deathless was His affection for His mother.
Whilst hanging on the cross, He saw her and spoke to her. He was at the time in terrible agony, every nerve tingling with intolerable pain. He was at the point of death and anxious no doubt to turn away from all earthly things and deal with God alone; He was bearing the sin of the world, whose maddening load was crushing His heart; yet, amidst it all, He turned His attention to His mother and to her future, and made provision fur her by asking one of His disciples to take her to his home and be a son to her in His own stead. And the disciple He selected for this service was the most amiable of them all-not Peter the headlong or Thomas the melancholy, but John, who could talk with her more tenderly than any other about the one subject which absorbed them both, and who was perhaps abler than any of the rest, on account of the comfort of his worldly condition, to support Mary without allowing her to feel that she was a burden.
III.
Sacred as is the parent's right to the obedience of the child, there is a term to it. It is the office of the parent to train the child to independence.
As the schoolmaster's aim ought to be to train his pupils to a stage where they are able to face the work of life without any more help from him so parents have to recognise that there is a point at which their commands must cease and their children be allowed to choose and act for themselves. Love will not cease; respect ought not to cease; but authority has to cease. Where exactly this point occurs in a child's life it is difficult to define. It may not be the same in every case. But in all cases it is a momentous crisis. Woe to the child who grasps at this freedom too soon! This is often the ruin of the young; and among the features of the life of our own time there are none perhaps more ominous than the widespread disposition among the young to slip the bridle of authority prematurely and acknowledge no law except their own will. But parents also sometimes make the mistake of attempting to exert their authority too long. A father may try to keep his son under his roof when it would be better for him to marry and have a house of his own; or a mother may interfere in the household affairs of her married daughter, who would be a better wife if left to her own resources.***
Mary, the mother of Jesus, erred in this respect. She attempted again and again to interfere unduly with His work, even after His public ministry had commenced. It was her pride in Him that made her do so at the marriage in Cana of Galilee; it was anxiety about His health on other occasions. She was not the only one who ventured to control His action in an undue way. But, if anything could arouse the indignation of Jesus, it was such interference. It made Him once turn on Peter with "Get thee behind Me, Satan; " and on more than one occasion it lent an appearance of harshness even to His behaviour to His mother. The very intensity of His love to His friends and relatives made their wishes and appeals sore temptations to Him, for He would have liked to please them had He been able. But, if He had yielded, He would have been turning away from the task to which He was pledged; and therefore He had to rouse Himself even to indignation to resist temptation.
On no other occasion had His conduct so much appearance of unfilial harshness as when His mother and brethren came one day in the midst of His work desiring to speak with Him, and He retorted on the person who told Him, " But who is My mother, and who are My brethren? " and, looking round on the disciples seated in front of Him, added, " Behold, My mother and My brethren! for whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother." It cannot be denied that these words have a harsh sound. ****
But they are probably to be read with what goes immediately before them in the Gospel of St. Mark, where we are told that His friends made an attempt to lay hold of Him, saying, " He is beside Himself." So absorbed was Jesus at this period in His work that He neglected even to eat; so rapt was He in the holy passion of saving men that to His relatives it appeared that He had gone mad; and they conceived it to be their duty to lay hands on Him and put Him in restraint. If Mary took part in this impious procedure, it is no wonder that there should have fallen on her a heavy rebuke. At all events she evidently came to Him thinking that He must at once leave everything and speak to her. But He had to teach her that there are even higher claims than those of domestic affection: in doing God's work He could recognise no authority but God's.
There is a sphere into which even parental authority may not seek admittance-the sphere of conscience. Jesus not only kept this sacred for Himself, but called upon those who followed Him to do so too. He foresaw how in the progress of time this would often sever family ties; and to one who cherished so high a respect for the home it must have been a prospect full of pain: " Think not," He said, " that I am come to send peace on earth, but a. sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." This must have been to Him a terrible prospect; but He did not shrink from it; to Him there were claims higher than even those of home: " He that loveth father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me."
This sword still cuts. In heathen countries where Christianity is being introduced, especially in countries, like India, where the domestic system is extensively developed, the chief difficulty in the way of confessing Christ is the pain of breaking family connections, and often it is nothing less than an agony. Even in Christian lands the opposition of worldly parents to the religious decision of their children is sometimes very strong, and occasions extreme perplexity to those who have to bear this cross. It is always a delicate case, requiring the utmost Christian wisdom and patience; but, when the issues are clear to mind and conscience, there can be no doubt which alternative is the will of Christ: we must obey God rather than man. ***** How happy are they who are in precisely the opposite case: who know that their full decision for Christ and frank confession of Him would fill their homes with joy unspeakable!
IV.
In every home, it is said, there is a skeleton in the cupboard; that is to say, however great may be its prosperity and however perfect the appearance of harmony it presents to the world, there is always, inside, some friction or fear or secret, which darkens the sunshine.
This proverb may be no truer than many other wide generalisations, which need to be qualified by the acknowledgment of innumerable exceptions. Yet there is no denying that home has its pains as well as its pleasures, and the very closeness of the connection of the members of a family with one another gives to any who may be so disposed the chance of wounding the rest. Under the cloak of relationship torture may be applied with impunity, which those who inflict it would not dare to apply to an outsider.
Jesus suffered from this: He had His peculiar domestic grief. It was that His brethren did not believe on Him. They could not believe that He who had grown up with them as one of themselves was infinitely greater than they. They looked with envy on His waxing fame. Whenever they intervene in His life, it is in a way to annoy.
How great a grief this must have been to Jesus will be best understood by those who have suffered the like themselves. There have been many of God's saints who have had to stand and testify alone in ungodly and worldly homes. Many in such circumstances are suffering an agony of daily petty martyrdom which may be harder to bear than public persecution, for which widespread sympathy is easily aroused. But they know at least that they have the sympathy of Him who alluded so pathetically to His own experience in the words: " A prophet is not without honour save in his own country and in his own house."
How He met His brethren's unbelief-whether He reasoned and remonstrated with them or was silent and trusted to the testimony of His life- we cannot tell. But we may be certain that He prayed for them without ceasing; and happily we know what the issue was.
His brethren, it would appear, continued unbelieving up to the time of His death. But immediately thereafter, in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, we find them assembled as believers with His apostles in Jerusalem. (Act_1:14) This is an extraordinary circumstance; for at this very time His cause was, if we may so speak, at the lowest ebb. Events seemed to have demonstrated that His pretensions to the Messiahship had been false; vet those who had disbelieved in Him at the height of His fame were found among the believers in Him when apparently His cause had gone to pieces. How is this to be accounted for?
The explanation lies, I believe, in a passage of First Corinthians, where, in enumerating the appearances of our Lord to different persons after His resurrection, St. Paul mentions that He appeared to James. (1Co_15:7) This was apparently the Lord's brother; and if so, is there not something wonderfully striking in the fact that one of the first acts of the risen Saviour was to bring to His unbelieving brother the evidence which would conquer his unbelief? James, it may be presumed, would communicate what he had experienced to the other members of Mary's family. The result was of the happiest description; and two of the brothers, James and Jude, lived to be the penmen of books of Holy Scripture.
I venture to think that the presence of these brethren of Jesus among the believers in Him at such a crisis is even yet one of the strongest proofs of the reality of the resurrection; but in the meantime we will rather think of it as a signal proof of the unwearied persistence with which He sought their salvation, and as an example to ourselves to pray on, hope on, work on for those of our own flesh and blood who may yet be outside the fold of Christ.
* Eph 5:25 ft ** "He who attacks marriage, he who by word or deed sets himself to undermine this foundation of all moral society, he must settle the matter with me; and, if I don't bring him to reason, then I have nothing to do with him. Marriage is the beginning and the summit of all civilisation. It makes the savage mild; and the most highly cultivated man has no better means of demonstrating his mildness. Marriage must be indissoluble; for it brings so much general happiness, that any individual case of unhappiness that may be connected with it cannot come into account.... Are we not really married to our conscience, of which we might often be willing to rid ourselves because it often annoys us more than any man or woman can possibly annoy one another?" --- BLACKIE, "The Wisdom of Goethe"
*** "A Child's duty is to obey its parents. It is never said anywhere in the Bible, and never was yet said in any good or wise book, that a man's or a woman's, is. When, precisely a child becomes a man or a woman, it can no more be said, than when it should first stand on its legs. But a time assuredly comes when it should. In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states the children always want to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children. It may be -and happy the house in which it is so-that the father's at least equal intellect, and older experience, may remain to the end of his life a law to his children, not of force, but of perfect guidance, with perfect love. Rarely it is so; not often possible. It is as natural for the old to be prejudiced as for the young to be presumptuous; and in the change of centuries, each generation has something to judge of for itself."-RUSKIN, Mornings in Florence, vol. iii, p. 72.
**** The very fact, however, that Jesus compared the relation between Himself and those who do the will of God to the connection between Himself and His mother and brethren implies that the latter held a high and sacred place in His mind.
***** There is a very important caution hinted at in the words of Martensen on this subject (Christian Ethics, vol. ii.): " Whatever doubtful and difficult circumstances may hereby arise, and however mistakenly those members of a family may act, who are awake to Christian truth, but whose Christianity is often made an unseemly display of, and whose whole behaviour is one fret and ferment, still the fact itself, that ordinary and worldly family life is disturbed by the Gospel, is one quite in order, and in conformity with the divine economy."
