In all this we perceive already, in part, the internal connection between the teaching of that day and the miracle of that evening. Both were quite novel: the teaching by Parables, and then the help in a Parable. Both were founded on the Old Testament: the teaching on its predictions, [2879] the miracle on its proclamations of the special Divine Manifestations in the sea; [2880] and both show that everything depended on the view taken of the Person of the Christ. Further teaching comes to us from the details of the narrative which follows. It has been asked, with which of the words recorded by the Synoptists the disciples had wakened the Lord: with those of entreaty to save them, [2881] or with those of impatience, perhaps uttered by Peter himself? [2882] But why may not both accounts represent what had passed? Similarly, it has been asked, which came first - the Lord's rebuke of the disciples, and after it that of the wind and sea, [2883] or the converse? [2884] But, may it not be that each recorded that first which had most impressed itself on his mind? - St. Matthew, who had been in the ship that night, the needful rebuke to the disciples; St. Mark and St. Luke, who had heard it from others, [2885] the help first, and then the rebuke?
Yet it is not easy to understand what the disciples had really expected, when they wakened the Christ with their Lord, save us - we perish!' Certainly, not that which actually happened, since not only wonder, but fear, came over them [2886] as they witnessed it. Probably theirs would be a vague, undefined belief in the unlimited possibility of all in connection with the Christ. A belief this, which seems to us quite natural as we think of the gradually emerging, but still partially cloud-capped height of His Divinity, of which, as yet, only the dim outlines were visible to them. A belief this, which also accounts for the co-existing, not of disbelief, nor even of unbelief, but of inability of apprehension, which, as we have seen, characterised the bearing of the Virgin-Mother. And it equally characterised that of the disciples up to the Resurrection-morning, bringing them to the empty tomb, and filling them with unbelieving wonder that the tomb was empty. Thus, we have come to that stage in the History of the Christ when, in opposition to the now formulated charge of His enemies as to His Person, neither His Teaching nor His Working could be fully understood, except so far as his Personality was understood - that He was of God and Very God. And so we are gradually reaching on towards the expediency and the need of the coming of the Holy Ghost to reveal that mystery of His Person. Similarly, the two great stages in the history of the Church's learning were: the first - to come to knowledge of what He was, by experience of what He did; the second - to come to experience of what He did and does, by knowledge of what He is. The former, which corresponds, in the Old Testament, to the patriarchal age, is that of the period when Jesus was on earth; the second, which answers to the history of Israel, is that of the period after His Ascension into Heaven and the Descent of the Holy Ghost.
When He was awakened' [2887] by the voice of His disciples, He rebuked the wind and the sea,' as Jehovah had of old [2888] - just as He had rebuked' the fever, [2889] and the paroxysm of the demonised. [2890] For, all are His creatures, even when lashed to frenzy of the hostile power.' And the sea He commanded as if it were a sentient being: Be silent! Be silenced!' And immediately the wind was bound, the panting waves throbbed into stillness, and a great calm of rest fell upon the Lake. For, when Christ sleepeth, there is storm; when He waketh, great peace. But over these men who had erst wakened Him with their cry, now crept wonderment, awe, and fear. No longer, as at His first wonder-working in Capernaum, was it: What is this?' [2891] but Who, then, is this?' [2892] And so the grand question, which the enmity of the Pharisees had raised, and which, in part, had been answered in the Parables of teaching, was still more fully and practically met in what, not only to the disciples, but to all time, was a Parable of help. And Jesus also did wonder, but at that which alone could call forth His wonder - the unreachingness of their faith: where was it? and how was it, they had no faith?