TI There is an Eastern legend about Christ so profound of meaning, so full of instruction, that we are half tempted to think that it must be true in fact as it is in feeling. On the high road, under the blistering sunlight, lay a poor, miserable dog that had died of starvation. Clouds of flies had begun to settle on the carcase, and the lazy, aimless wayfarers gathered round to look at it, scaring away for a moment the obscene vultures that hovered near; and all of them, one after another, expressed their idle disgust and their pitiless loathing of it. But at last they fell silent, for the Master approached, and for a moment He stood and cast His eye on that horrible object, on that dead creature which God had made, and there was silence, and at last He said, " Its teeth are as white as pearls," and so He passed on. He who cared for the lilies and for the lions cared also for the little sparrows, and had His word of pity even for that dead dog. I think that he who could have invented such a legend must have seen very deeply into the heart of Christ.1
^| The late General Gordon, in one of his published letters, describes the remorse he long felt for a trivial act of cruelty into which he inadvertently fell. A lizard was climbing up the side of his house in the sunshine and he thoughtlessly flicked it with his cane and so cut short its life. He had often shed blood upon the battlefield without the slightest hesitation, and felt never a qualm of conscience afterwards. But this act troubled him more than the carnage in which he had taken his part as a soldier.
1 Dean Farrar.
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lie was haunted by the feeling that he had destroyed a life that was more meagre in capacity than his own, and much shorter in its span. In the regret to which he confessed there was a genuine ethical discernment, for every virtuous nature feels itself under special obligation to the weak. God thinks mercifully of us because, in comparison with His own rich, manifold, exhaustless and immortal blessedness, our lives are chequered, circumscribed, crippled, and poverty-stricken. We are mortal, blooms trembling to their fall, fading dreams, fabrics of exposed nerve, phantasms of alternating smiles and tears. We do not expiate our sins by that which we suffer, and God has no indulgent laxity for wilful, unwept, reiterated transgression ; but our frailties woo the marvellous compassions of His Fatherhood. Perhaps if He had not made us out of the dust we could not have stood so near the sacred centre of His pitying love.1
(2) The whole need not a physician. Are there any men, then, who are whole ? Jesus did not directly deny it. The publicans and sinners were sick people — sick in soul, sick in honour, sick in conscience. The Pharisees were whole in comparison with them. They had remained true to their nationality, they lived correctly according to the law of their fathers, they were held in honour by their nation as the guardians and teachers of the law. If they were of different minds amongst themselves on religious and moral questions, still they had and knew the law, and were well versed in expounding it. They had had great teachers, whose decisions were accounted by them as a gospel. They would also gladly have recognized a new Master, who in their own way, only more clearly and more intelligently than their former masters, would comment on the Word of God and teach the true wisdom of life. But they had no need of a Teacher who said, " I am a Physician," because they did not feel ill.
^j In the great company of those who have been baptized in the name of Christ, we find many people like the Pharisees, who are unable to accept Jesus and to desire a closer relationship to Him, just because Jesus is a Physician and they feel well. The Gospel is a medicine : to one it tastes bitter, to another nause- ously sweet. Who cares to take medicine when he feels perfectly well ? A draught of fresh water from a natural or an artificial well, or a glass of wine at a joyful feast, tastes better and does more good to a man who is whole.
1 T. G. Selby, The God of tJie Frail, 5.
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How are we to reply to this? Are we to prove to such people that they are sick, and that our whole nation is sick, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot ? Are we to force ourselves upon them, and show that their imaginary health does not exist, and that they are sadly in need of the Physician ? That would not be like unto the Master. Jesus did not say to the Pharisees, " Come unto Me," He said, " Go your way." Neither did He say, " Come and learn to know Me better," but, " Go and learn what is written in your Bible : ' I will have mercy and not sacrifice.' " If ye were compassionate, ye would not look down so contemptuously on degraded and inferior people, and so askance at those who take an interest in them ; ye would not find the distance so great between them and yourselves, but would acknowledge them as your equals in all the essentials which make up the misery and the dignity of man. Go and learn better what ye yourselves acknowledge as the chief command of your God, the law of love. Then prove yourselves, and thus learn to know your- selves. Perhaps the day will come when ye will find yourselves destitute of love, and therefore destitute of all true life, when ye will feel sick in the innermost centre of your being. Eemember then that there is a Physician who heals all diseases. Jesus still speaks thus to those who are whole, and who turn their backs upon Him; and He can scarcely speak in any other way to many of those who confess Him.1