ART. IV. THE CROSS AND THE CROWN, AN EXPOSITORY ESSAY FOUNDED ON LUKE XXIV. 25, 26.

It was on the afternoon of that day on which Jesus rose from the dead, that two of the little company of the bereaved disciples were journeying from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a village some six or seven miles off. As they travelled and discoursed the while in sorrow of heart, of what had befallen their beloved Master, they were joined by one who at the first appeared to them a stranger, but whom, after a while, they recognised as Jesus Himself. Entering into conversation with them, and drawing from them the nature and subjects of their mournful discourse, this unknown one (as He yet was), authoritatively reproached them for want of apprehension,* and with slow-heartedness, in that they hesitated to receive the complete testimony of the prophet, and justified that charge in certain words given in Luke xxiv., wherein, under the emphatic form of a question, He pointedly declared, as the true and perfect testimony to which He had appealed, that" the Christ" was, in necessary fulfilment of the predictions that went before concerning Him, first to suffer, and afterwards to enter into His glory.

Now, the very sharpness of the rebuke here administered sufficiently shows that the error reproved was one of no little importance. Our Lord was meek and gentle of heart, and never used the language of cutting reproach save where it was really needed. This will be readily admitted; and believing Gentiles of the present day will, with equal readiness grant that the disciples in question well merited the stinging reproof they received. It may not, however, be allowed-very many, there can be no doubt, would demur to the charge-that with a certain change in the mere emphasis of the sentence, the vast majority of believers in these latter days are distinctly and pointedly reprehended. To prove that this is so indeed is the object of this little treatise, and God the Spirit accompanying and guiding me, I shall, I think, have no difficulty in making out and establishing my case. May it tend to the profit and edification of souls.

Referring then to the statement just made, and with a view of justifying and explaining it, I would call attention to a certain analogous contrast between the believing Jews of our Lord's day, and believing Gentiles of the present time. In the respect intended, I might, no doubt, contrast the Jews as a body with the Gentile church at large; but I make the limited comparison

*He stigmatised them as ȧvónro, from a (non), and vóew, to understand— to receive into the heart-to apprehend.

stated, inasmuch as my course of remarks will especially concern such of us Gentiles of these latter days as are, in regard to the strict essentials of salvation, believers; while the particular persons of our Lord's time, whom our particular subject brings before us, were that Lord's true and undoubted followers, even though they did come short in one particular point.

To enable us then clearly to perceive, and duly to appreciate the contrast to which I refer, let us endeavour to grasp the precise meaning and the full force of the Lord's reproof of Cleopas and his fellow-disciple. We have already made brief allusions to the recorded facts of the narrative as given by St Luke; we have seen how the two travellers to Emmaus conversed about, and commented upon, the recent execution of Him who, as they had hoped, would prove to be the long looked for Redeemer of Israel. "As they talked together," and interchanged opinions respecting the facts and import of the case, they were of sad and dejected countenance, as men whose confident expectations had received a serious check, and been suddenly and hopelessly overthrown. They were, moreover, evidently distracted through perplexity by the report that had just before reached them of the Lord's resurrection, as coupled with the strange fact of its being the third day since He had been crucified, a state of things which, instead of quieting their fears and removing their doubts (as its minute coincidence with the Lord's own express prediction of His resurrection given but a short time before He suffered, might well have done), seems rather to have but unsettled their minds, which most probably had accepted their Lord's sayings as mere figures of speech, to be fulfilled in a spiritual and symbolical way.

Under such circumstances then it was that the Lord gave utterance to that strong rebuke which we are considering, and which, to the end that its full force and bearing may be the better apprehended, I would venture thus to paraphrase and amplify. It was then as if the Lord had said to these disciples, "O ye of feeble apprehension! O slow-hearted in understanding the Scriptures! How is it that ye come short in believing acceptance of the whole and complete testimony of the Holy Spirit as given by the Prophets? You trusted (say ye) that Jesus of Nazareth would have proved to be the promised Messiah who should redeem Israel, and restore to them the kingdom they had forfeited and lost. And ye did well, for so will He yet do; but to the end that the prophecies which went before concerning Him should receive their due and complete fulfilment, was it not necessary that He should first suffer before entering into possession of His glory? To the end that all things concerning

Him should be fully accomplished, ought not the order of those things to be, first the Cross, and then the Crown?"

Here then is, I think, a fair and scripturally authorised amplification of our Lord's words under notice, and such as comprises within it His full meaning, in the stern rebuke wherewith He chid the two disciples for their faithless despondency. They had wholly ignored the express and repeated teachings of these recorded Scriptures, as also the constant and uniform warnings of the Lord Himself, whilst He had tabernacled among them, to the effect that at His first coming the Messiah was to be stricken and afflicted, yea, to die in vicarious atonement for man's transgression and disobedience. They had overlooked all this, and in common with the general body of the Lord's followers, yea, and with the twelve themselves, they seized upon the predictions and the fragments of predictions which foretold the glories of the second advent, and taken for granted that they were thus, and in their day, to be fulfilled and brought about. Like the mother of James and John, when asking for her two sons (doubtless at their own prompting), that they should sit, the one on the Lord's right hand, and the other on his left, in his kingdom of glory; they too had supposed that that kingdom would immediately appear. So firmly had they fixed it in their minds that the time was come for the restoration of Israel (continuing even to cleave to the notion up to the very moment of their Lord's ascension into heaven), that their eyes were fast closed to the fearful consequences of Israel's rejection of their Messiah,-consequences which would sadly show themselves in lengthened ages of suffering and of woe.

Such then is the nature and the bearing of the Lord's reproof as immediately addressed to Cleopas and his fellow-disciple. I have intimated, however, that others as well as they are concerned with it. I have made mention of a certain analogy as subsisting between the Lord's early followers, of whom we have in so far spoken, and His believing people of our own latter days. Now, I am in my own mind firmly persuaded that, a slight change of the words as used by our Lord, or rather (leaving the words as they stand) with a very trifling alteration of their emphasis and application, they directly concern ourselves, and rebukingly charge us (or too many of us) with that dullness of apprehension, and that slowness of heart, which are exhibited by all who reject the whole and complete testimony of the Prophets in regard to the precise nature and the full development of the atoning and restoring work of Jesus.

Now, so far as the words under consideration concerned the two disciples to whom they were immediately spoken, and other

followers of the Lord of their day and time, we have already seen that while they whom the Lord here addressed had rightly gathered from the Scriptures that a state of glory awaited the Messiah, they were yet chargeable with, and the words under notice charged upon them, the grievous error of overlooking the equally clear and distinct testimony of those same Scriptures, to the effect that before entering into possession of that glory, the Christ should suffer such things as were spoken of Him by the Prophets. In respect, however, to the bearing of the passage upon ourselves, differently circumstanced as we are when contrasted with the disciples of our Lord's own day, without altering one whit its wording, it reproves us in that, while rightfully believing that Christ hath suffered according to the Scriptures, we fail in that we accept not the uniform and express testimony of those holy men of old who, as moved by the Holy Ghost, have predicted the glory that should follow. To us the emphasis of the Lord's words is to this purport and effect: "Ought not Christ, having suffered, afterwards to enter into possession of His glory?"

And let it not here be objected that I make too much of a very plain expression,-an expression which simply intends that which all true Christians receive, namely, the return of the Lord to that state of glory which He had enjoyed with the Father, before He entered upon His voluntary humiliation. Here, as in all matters of Scriptural interpretation, our simple aim should be to discriminate the precise bearing and point of the subject-matter before us. Let us then, dispassionately and free from all bias, so apply ourselves. Now, I at once and most fully admit that as in the passage at present before us, the suffering and the entrance into glory are precedent and successional, so in certain other places the suffering and preliminary step to the return to heaven's glory (I mean the rising from the dead), are in the like relation referred to. And more still than this, in apparent substantiation of the objection, I am endeavouring fairly to consider and satisfactorily to dispose of. There are, I am well aware, places of the New Testament where we have the very original word as here employed, used most distinctly of the entering of our Lord into heaven at the time of his ascension. One passage I shall quote which is strikingly in point. In Heb. ix. 24, it is thus written, "For Christ is not entered into the holy place made with hands . . but" ("is entered," the precise expression of the passage under notice) "into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.' Here, in a particular sense and for a particular purpose, Christ is declared to have "now" entered into heaven, and therefore (it * Such, for instance, as verse 46 of this very chapter, and Acts xvii. 3.

is assumed), to such entrance, the Lord's meaning in the similar expression of the passage in St Luke is limited, and the prediction tied down. But, in interpreting any particular passage of God's Word (just as in the case of any other book), its precise bearing and point as regards context must be duly considered and carefully attended to; for otherwise we should in all probability fail in appreciating its full and intended meaning. While then I would admit all that can be fairly gathered in respect to our present question from such Scriptures as those to which I have adverted, I must contend that very much more is contained in the Lord's words now before us, than the mere assertion of His return to heaven's glory as immediately after His sufferings to ensue. This is, there can be no doubt, here intimated; but there was contained therein a further and deeper meaning (deeper, I mean, as regards us, for it was, I believe, patent enough to the person primarily addressed), and this I think I shall be able satisfactorily to establish from the very nature of the case.

Now, we have already noticed the fact that, in reviewing and discoursing of the transactions of the days just past, the two disciples felt sad and heavily depressed in mind and spirits; and we have also noticed how, that when questioned upon the subject, they sufficiently exhibited their real feelings, and betrayed the nature and extent of the disappointment under which they laboured: "We trusted," said they, "that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel; " or as I think the original words literally imply, "we had hoped (or expected) that He was then about to deliver Israel;" that He was on the very point of doing so (as the word here used is rendered in John iv. 47); we had expected, that is, that He of whom we speak, purposed at this time present to deliver Israel, setting her free from the thraldom of her earthly oppressors, and restoring to her the kingdom. Such, there can be no doubt, was the line of thought and working of feeling in the minds of the two disciples, as given expression to in their uttered words. And if so, He who knoweth what is in man, when replying to the words spoken by the lip, would, as of course, take into account the inward thoughts and prepossessions that prompted them.

As believers in the true divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, as conscious that He is the very God who searcheth the reins and the heart, we cannot but know, and will not surely scruple to admit, that this was the case. When then these two disciples of whom we treat, so manifested their ruling hope of the immediate redemption and temporal deliverance of their nation by Jesus of Nazareth, whom they rightly assumed to be the pro