II One does not look for a bird of paradise to be hatched in the nest of crossed sticks built by the rook, and these critics scarcely expected to see the brilliant Deliverer who had been the subject of prophecy for twenty centuries emerging from a cottage. The Hindus compare a pretender to a crow which has stuck a pomegranate flower into its tail. The murmurings in the synagogue, bandied from lip to lip as the assembly poured forth into the street, implied that Jesus had no hereditary genius or refinement, that He belonged to an average stock, and that He was attempting a task too big for His antecedents.^
2. He had begun to teach without having had the special training of a teacher. — It is much easier for a worldly soul to pay homage to the trained scholar, however superficial his insight, than to an artisan who claims to know the mind of God, and to find prophetic foreshadowings of his own work in the Old Testament Scriptures. But over-specialisation may sometimes involve intellectual or spiritual suicide, and God has to go outside the caste to find a fitting instrument of His will. Michael Angelo did not spring from a family of sculptors ; Shakespeare was not reared in a cloister of learning ; nor did John Bunyan illustrate the law of hereditary genius. Jesus Christ began the work which culminated in the Sacrifice of the Cross as a layman, and it was resented,
> T. Q. Selby.
ST. MARK 159
^ " Who would do the scullion work in the great house- hold of humanity if there were no slaves ? " This was the question that perplexed the great philosophers of antiquity. This was the question which Christ answered by making Himself the slave of mankind and classing Himself among the scullions.^
^ " Is not this the carpenter ? " Yes, thank God ! It was the carpenter, and something more. For you can be a carpenter, and something more. Lowliness of station is not exclusive of the highest gifts, nor incompatible with the highest culture, nor inimical to the highest usefulness. You may be carpenter and prophet, carpenter and poet, just as you can be house- drudge and angel.2
^ In the Louvre in Paris there is a famous painting by Murillo. It is entitled, "The Miracle of San Diego." A door opens and two noblemen and a priest enter a kitchen. They are amazed to find that all the kitchen maids are angels. One is handling a water pot, another a joint of meat, a third a basket of vegetables, a fourth is tending the fire. The thought of the artist is that it is in toil and drudgery we develop qualities which are celestial.^
The great Gods pass through the great Time-hall,
Stately and high; The little men climb the low clay wall
To gape and spy; "We wait for the Gods," the little men cry,
"But these are our brothers passing by."
The great Gods pass through the great Time-hall
With veiled grace; The little men crowd the low clay wall
To bow the face; " But still are our brothers passing by !
Why tarry the Gods?" the little men sigh.
The great Gods pass through the great Time-hail;
Who can may see. The little men nod by the low clay wall.
So tired they be ; "'Tis weary waiting "for Gods," they yawn,
"There's a world 0' men, but the Gods are gone."*
» C. W. Stubbs, 2 T. Halsey. » C. E. Jefferson.
* A. H. Begbie, The Rosebud Wall, 19.
i6o THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
3. But the chief cause of offence was the claim that He made for Himself. — This is the earliest offence given by the Gospel ; and it is deeply suggestive, because it is still the earliest offence taken by each individual soul. What is the ground of complaint here spoken of ? Briefly stated, it is the homeliness of Christianity. Men refused to recognise a thing which grew amid such mean surroundings. Had Jesus claimed anything else than a Divine message there would have been no objection to His mean surroundings. Had He claimed merely the inspiration of human genius no one would have seen any contradiction in the poverty of His environment. For all human conditions the Jew prescribed toil ; he desired that every man should learn a trade, should live as if he had to earn his bread. But when he came to speak of man's relation to God, that changed the spirit of his dream. To him the attitude of God was ever one of rest. His God lay in the secret place of His pavilion, with the curtains drawn, and the doors shut, and the windows deafened ! He could work only through His angels ; He must not soil His hands with inundane things. He who professed to be a Son of God must be a child of mystery. He must have nothing homely about Him. He must be all soul, no body ; all wings, no feet ; all poetry, no prose ; all heaven, no earth. And is not this also our first ideal of the Divine Life ? In our moments of religious awakening we deny that morality is evangelical. We are offended when a preacher cries, " Salvation is goodness, work is worship, integrity is the service of God ! " We say, " These are common things, homely things, things for the exchange and the market-place ; you will see them in Nazareth every day." ^