Personal Friendships of Jesus - J. R. Miller (beach books txt) 📗

it certainly is true of human lives. We cannot merely grow into strength, beauty, nobleness, and power of helpfulness, without discipline, pain, and cost. It is written even of Jesus himself that he was made perfect through suffering. There was no sin in him; but his perfectness as a sympathizing Friend, as a helpful Saviour, came through struggle, trial, pain, and sorrow. Not one of the apostles reached his royal strength as a man, as a helper of men, as a representative of Jesus, without enduring loss and suffering. No man who ever rises to a place of real worth and usefulness in the world walks on a rose-strewn path. We never can be made fit for anything beautiful and worthy without cost of pain and tears. Always it is true that—

  "Things that hurt and things that mar
    Shape the man for perfect praise;
  Shock and strain and ruin are
    Friendlier than the smiling days."

How about ourselves? Life is made very real to our thought when we remember that in all the experiences of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, success and failure, health and sickness, quiet or struggle, God is making men of us. Then he watches us to see if we fail. Here is a man who is passing through sore trial. For many months his wife has been a great sufferer. All the while he has been carrying a heavy burden,—a financial burden, a burden of sympathy; for every moment's pain that his wife has suffered has been like a sword in his own heart,—burdens of care, with broken nights and weary days. We may be sure of God's tender interest in the wife who suffers in the sick-room; but his eye is even more intently fixed upon him who is bearing the burden of sympathy and care. He is watching to see if the man will stand the test, and grow sweeter and stronger. Everything hard or painful in a Christian's life is another opportunity for him to get a new victory, and become a little more a man.

It is remarkable how little we know about the apostles. A few of them are fairly prominent. Peter and James and John we know quite well, as their names are made familiar in the inspired story. Matthew we know by the Gospel he wrote. Thomas we remember by his doubts. Another Judas, not Iscariot, probably left us a little letter. Of the rest we know almost nothing but their names. Indeed, few Bible readers can give even the names of all the Twelve.

No doubt one reason why no more is told us about the apostles is that the Bible magnifies only one name. It is not a book of biographies, but the book of the Lord Jesus Christ. Each apostle had a sacred friendship all his own with his Master, a friendship with which no other could intermeddle. We can imagine the quiet talks, the long walks with the deep communings, the openings of heart, the confessions of weakness and failure, the many prayers together. We may be very sure that through those three wonderful years there ran twelve stories of holy friendship, with their blessed revealings of the Master's heart to the heart of each man. But not a word of all this is written in the New Testament. It was too sacred to be recorded for any eye of earth to read.

We may be sure, too, that each man of the Twelve did a noble work after the Ascension, but no pen wrote the narratives for preservation. There are traditions, but there is in them little that is certainly history. The Acts is not the acts of the apostles. The book tells a little about John, a little more about Peter, most about Paul, and of the others gives nothing but a list of their names in the first chapter.

Yet we need not trouble ourselves about this. It is the same with the good and the useful in every age. A few names are preserved, but the great multitude are forgotten. Earth keeps scant record of its benefactors. But there is a place where every smallest kindness done in the name of Christ is recorded and remembered.

Long, long ages ago a beautiful fern grew in a deep vale, nodding in the breeze. One day it fell, complaining as it sank away that no one would remember its grace and beauty. The other day a geologist went out with his hammer in the interest of his science. He struck a rock; and there in the seam lay the form of a fern—every leaf, every fibre, the most delicate traceries of the leaves. It was the fern which ages since grew and dropped into the indistinguishable mass of vegetation. It perished; but its memorial was preserved, and to-day is made manifest.

So it is with the stories of the obscure apostles, and of all beautiful lives which have wrought for God and for man and have vanished from earth. Nothing is lost, nothing is forgotten. The memorials are in other lives, and some day every touch and trace and influence and impression will be revealed. In the book of The Revelation we are told that in the foundations of the heavenly city are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The New Testament does not tell the story of their worthy lives, but it is cut deep in the eternal rock, where all eyes shall see it forever.

On the lives of these chosen friends Jesus impressed his own image. His blessed divine-human friendship transformed them into men who went to the ends of the world for him, carrying his name. It was a new and strange influence on the earth—this holy friendship of Jesus Christ started in the hearts and lives of the apostles. At once it began to make this old world new. Those who believed received the same wonderful friendship into their own hearts. They loved each other in a way men had never loved before. Christians lived together as one family.

Ever since the day of Pentecost this wonderful friendship of Jesus has been spreading wherever the gospel has gone. It has given to the world its Christian homes with their tender affections; it has built hospitals and asylums, and established charitable institutions of all kinds in every place where its story has been told. From the cross of Jesus a wave of tenderness, like the warmth of summer, has rolled over all lands. The friendship of Jesus, left in the hearts of his apostles, as his legacy to the world, has wrought marvellously; and its ministry and influence will extend until everything unlovely shall cease from earth, and the love of God shall pervade all life.

CHAPTER VI. JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE.

  My Lord, my Love! in pleasant pain
    How often have I said,
  "Blessed that John who on thy breast
    Laid down his head."
  It was that contact all divine
    Transformed him from above,
  And made him amongst men the man
    To show forth holy love.
                           CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

Love is regenerating the world. It is the love of God that is working this mighty transformation. The world was cold and loveless before Christ came. Of course there always was love in the race,—father-love, mother-love, filial love, love for country. There have always been human friendships which were constant, tender, and true, whose stories shine in bright lustre among the records of life. Natural affection there has always been, but Christian love was not in the world till Christ came.

The incarnation was the breaking into this world of the love of God. For three and thirty years Jesus walked among men, pouring out love in every word, in every act, in all his works, and in every influence of his life. Then on the cross his heart broke, spilling its love upon the earth. As Mary's ointment filled all the house where it was emptied out, so the love of God poured out in Christ's life and death is filling all the world.

Jesus put his love into human hearts that it might be carried everywhere. Instantly there was a wondrous change. The story of the Church after the day of Pentecost shows a spirit among the disciples of Christ which the world had never seen before. They had all things common. The strong helped the weak. They formed a fellowship which was almost heavenly. From that time to the present the leaven of love has been working. It has slowly wrought itself into every department of life,—into art, literature, music, laws, education, morals. Every hospital, orphanage, asylum, and reformatory in the world has been inspired by the love of Christ. Christian civilization is a product of this same divine affection working through the nations.

Perhaps no other of the Master's disciples has done so much in the interpreting and the diffusing of the love of Christ in the world as the beloved disciple has done. Peter was the mightiest force at the beginning in the founding of the Church. Then came Paul with his tremendous missionary energy, carrying Christianity to the ends of the earth. Each of these apostles was greatest in his own way and place. But John has done more than either of these to bless the world with love. His influence is everywhere. He is likest Jesus of all the disciples. His influence is slowly spreading among men. We see it in the enlarging spirit of love among Christians, in the increase of philanthropy, in the growing sentiment that war must cease among Christian nations, all disputes to be settled by arbitration, and in the feeling of universal brotherhood which is softening all true men's hearts toward each other.

It cannot but be intensely interesting to trace the story of the friendship of Jesus and John, for it was in this hallowed friendship that John learned all that he gave the world in his life and words. We are able to fix its beginning—when Jesus and John met for the first time. One day John the Baptist was standing by the Jordan with two of his disciples. One of these was Andrew; and the other we know was John—we know it because in John's own Gospel, where the incident is recorded, no name is given. The two young men had not yet seen Jesus; but the Baptist knew him, and pointed him out as he passed by, saying, "Behold the Lamb of God!"

The two young men went after Jesus, no doubt eager to speak with him. Hearing their footsteps behind him, he turned, and asked them what they sought. They asked, "Rabbi, where abidest thou?" He said, "Come, and ye shall see." They gladly accepted the invitation, went with him to his lodgings, and remained until the close of the day. We have no account of what took place during those happy hours. It would be interesting to know what Jesus said to his visitors, but not a word of the conversation has been preserved. We may be sure, however, that the visit made a deep impression on John.

Most days in our lives are unmarked by any special event. There are thousands of them that seem just alike, with their common routine. Once or twice, however, in the lifetime of almost every person, there is a day which is made forever memorable by some event or occurrence,—the first meeting with one who fills a large place in one's after years, a compact of sacred friendship, a revealing of some new truth, a decision which brought rich blessing, or some other experience which set the day forever apart among all days.

John lived to be a very old man; but to his latest years he must have remembered the day when he first met Jesus, and began with him the friendship which brought him such blessing. We may be sure that as at their first meeting the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul, so at this first meeting the soul of John was knit with the soul of Jesus in a holy friendship which brought unspeakable good to his life. There was that in Jesus which at once touched all that was best in John, and called out the sweetest music of his soul.

  "Thou shall