^ It is an ancient and abiding thought that the visible world is the shadow of the invisible, and everything which it contains has its eternal counterpart. This thought runs all through the Holy Scriptures. It finds its highest expression in the teaching of our Blessed Lord. In His eyes earth was a symbol of Heaven, He pointed to human fatherhood and said : See there an image of the Fatherhood of God. " If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him ? " And each familiar thing — the lamp, the net, the seed, the flowers, the birds, the wandering sheep — served Him as a parable.
For, nowise else, Taught He the people; since a light is set Safest in lanterns; and the things of earth Are copies of the things in Heaven, more close, More clear, more intricately linked, More subtly than men guess. Mysterious, — Finger on lip, — whispering to wistful ears, — Nature doth shadow Spirit.^
^ From Mentone, where he spent the first winter of his illness, Dr. Robertson wrote to his congregation at home : —
" By the time this may be read to you, your Spring Communion will be over. Again, from the hands of the officiating elders, or rather, as I trust, from Christ's own pierced hand, you will have
1 D. Smith, The Feast of the Covenant, 177.
ST. LUKE XXII. 19 447
received the symbols of His sacrifice, and said, as you received Himself afresh into your hearts, * This we do in remembrance of Thee.' Again, the Great High Priest, King of Eighteousness, and therefore also King of Peace, has brought down the bread and wine from the altar of His atonement to feed you, returning, weary from the battle, but I trust victorious over the evil ; and in the strength of that meat may you go onward, conquering the evil, and battling for the right, and good and true, so as at last to have an entrance administered to you abundantly into the Kingdom, as part of the victorious 'Sacramental host of God's Elect.' " 1
^ A. Guthrie, Robertson of Irvine, 287.
Sifted as Wheat,
ST. LUKE — 29
Literature.
Arnold (T.), Sermons, in. 114.
Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.) 207.
Broade (G. E.), The Sixfold Trial of our Lord, 53.
Bruce (A. B.), The Training of the Twelve, 476.
Burrows (H. W.), Parochial Sermons, 91.
Cuyler (T. L.), Stirring the Eagle's Nest, 143.
Eyton (R.), The True Life, 281.
Farrar (F. W.), Ephphatha, 45.
Gunsaulus (F. W.), Paths to Power, 210.
Howatt (J. R.), Jesus the Poet, 253.
Hughes (H. P.), Ethical Christianity, 131.
Hyde (T. D.), S&rmon Pictures, ii. 266.
Jerdan (C), For the Lambs of the Flock, 74.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Saints' Days, 296.
Laird (J.), Memorials, 209.
Lilley (A. L.), Nature and Supernature, 167.
Mabie (H. C), Method in Soul- Winning, 11.
Macgregor (G. H. C), The All-sufficient Saviour, 32.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Luke xiii.-xxiv., 240.
Murray (W. H. H.), in The American Pulpit, iii. 305.
Nicholson (M.), Redeeming the Time, 268.
Parker (J.), The Cavendish Pulpit, 17.
Shepherd (Ambrose), The Gospel and Social Questions, 147.
Vaughan (C. J.), Counsels to Young Students, 65.
Welldon (J. E. C.), The School of Faith, 107.
Westcott (B. F.), Village Sermons, 92.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxviii. 172 (W. Hubbard) ; Ixxviii. 31 T
(L. H. Burrows). Church of England Pulpit, xxxi. 185 (W. McEndoo). Churchman's Pulpit : Holy "Week, vi. 438 (A. Brooks). Contemporary Pulpit, v. 270 (H. M. Butler). Good Words, 1871, p. 722 (J. S. Howson). Homiletic Review^ New Ser., xxxix. 341 (W. S. Jerome).
Sifted as Wheat.
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat : but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not : and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren. — Luke xxii. 31, 32.
1. Our Lord has just been speaking words of large and cordial praise of the steadfastness with which His friends had continued with Him in His temptations, and it is the very contrast between that continuance and the pre^dsion of the cowardly desertion of the Apostle that occasioned the abrupt transition to this solemn appeal to him, which indicates how^ the forecast pained Christ's heart. He does not let the foresight of Peter's desertion chill His praise of Peter's past faithfulness as one of the Twelve. He does not let the remembrance of Peter's faithfulness modify His rebuke for Peter's intended and future desertion. He speaks to him, with significant and emphatic reiteration of the old name of Simon that suggests weakness, unsanctified and unhelped : " Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat."
2. The imagery of the passage is borrowed from the Old Testament. There was a day, says the author of the Book of Job, when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. Like them, he has his petition. He has cast a malignant eye, in his going to and fro in the earth, upon the prosperity and the integrity of one righteous man. He is well assured that the two things are one. The integrity is bound up in the prosperity. God has made a hedge about him, so that no evil comes nigh his dwelling. Let his prosperity be touched, and the integrity will go with it. He desires to have him. And God says, Behold, he is in thine hand. Such is the figure. He is to be tried. He is to be tempted. Satan begs him of God, that he may sift him as wheat.