reach Him. Per omnia fides ad Christum penetrat. The power that brings man help is, of course, in every case ultimately the power of God, and therefore in a true sense God is always the object of faith; but the point here is that God's power to help is present in Jesus; it is mediated through Him and through Him alone, and hence He also becomes, as no other can be, the object of faith. This is the one attitude to Him which the New Testament discovers, and quite apart from this or that word in which He revealed His own expectation or demand, it is inconceivable that this attitude should have been mistaken. It was evoked by Jesus as the reality of what He was and did impressed itself on those who were in contact with Him. The Jesus to whom the New Testament bears witness evokes the same attitude still. But if it needed more explicit justification, that justification would be found in the many striking words of Jesus about faith. He says to suppliants for help, 'Believe ye that I am able to do this?' He says to the woman who was healed by touching the hem of His garment, 'Thy faith hath saved thee.' He says to Jairus, when news is brought that his daughter is dead, 'Be not afraid, only believe.' The faith that He claims in this last instance is the utmost reach of faith which can be demanded from man. The great enemy of faith is death. We can keep hold of God, and hope for His help, as long as there is life; but death seems to end all. Yet even in the presence of death Jesus says, Fear not, only have faith. The words have no relevance at all unless they mean that the saving help of God which is present in Jesus is stronger even than death, so that he who believes in Him can defy the last enemy. A recent commentator on Mark 1 says that the only thing in this narrative which speaks to us with living and personal power is the faith of Jesus 1 1 J. Weiss, Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, i. 118; also p. 46. His confidence that the Father would go with Him to the ruler's house and enable Him to meet whatever emergency there was; but surely the demand of Jesus that in the very presence of death Jairus should not renounce hope, but believe that the power of God to be exercised through Him would be equal to any extremity of need, is quite as remarkable. What Jesus requires is not that Jairus should directly exhibit the same faith in God as He Himself did- a faith at which the commentator referred to can only hold up his hands in blank bewilderment —but that in His company, and relying on what God would do through Him, he should not despair. The help of God for the man was to be mediated through Jesus, and through Jesus also the faith of the man in God was to be mediated. There is no other relation of God's help to man, or of man's faith in God, known either to the gospels or the epistles in the New Testament; and we repeat, it is inconceivable that at this vital point the convictions and experiences evoked by Jesus should have been at variance with the mind of Jesus Himself. THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE CHILDREN OF THE BRIDECHAMBER One of the passages in Mark which would formerly have been pointed to without hesitation as indicating the peculiar self-consciousness of Jesus is that in which He answers a question about fasting. 'Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said to them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast while the Bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the Bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in that day' (Mark 218-20). Originally, only the last verse of this was questioned. Jesus, it was said, did not at this early period anticipate His own death, and He certainly did not begin to speak of it to His disciples till much later. Further, the mention of His death is irrelevant: all that it is necessary to say is, 'Can the children of the bridechamber fast as long as the Bridegroom is with them? My disciples and I are a wedding party, and therefore fasting is out of place.' But a more penetrating application of this same kind of criticism carries us further. The inventive evangelist who added verse 20 from his own resources has been severely lectured for perverting the parabolic saying in verse 19 into allegory, and then continuing the allegory mechanically in verse 20, on the line of the history of Jesus and His Church. But there is something to be said for him, nevertheless. What is the tertium comparationis which would make it possible for Jesus to compare His disciples to guests at a wedding, for whom fasting would be out of place? It neither is nor can be anything else than the conception of Jesus Himself as the Bridegroom. But this is an allegorical conception. To suppose that Jesus spoke of Himself as a Bridegroom, or as the Bridegroom, is to suppose that He had recourse to allegory-a supposition which is nothing short of distressing to many honourable men. Hence we are rather to suppose that the whole passage is due to the productive activity of the Church. Jesus really had no part in it. The transaction which it perpetuates was not one which took place between John and Jesus, but between the disciples of the two Masters. It has no meaning for the time to which it is said to belong, but only for the future. After Jesus died, His 1 The Death of Christ, p. 23 f. 2 Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci, p. 20: 'Es schimmert also schon in 2 19 der allegorische Sinn durch (auch in dem Ausdruck so lange der Bräutigam bei ihnen ist statt während der Hochzeit), und man darf 2 20 nicht davon abschneiden.' disciples departed from His practice. They took over from John's disciples not only baptism but prayer (Luke II 1) and fasting. Jesus is here represented as giving them permission for the fasting, though a permission that only comes into effect after His death.' All this, we have no hesitation in saying, is as dull as it is gratuitous. No one denies that there were in the lifetime of Jesus followers of John and Pharisees as well as disciples of Jesus Himself. They represented different types of religion, in spirit and observance, and the differences between them were both reflected on by Jesus independently, and discussed by their adherents. There is a notable word of Jesus about fasting in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6 16 ff.); in Matt. II 2-19, and in the parallel passages in Luke, Jesus expressly compares Himself and John as religious leaders, and points the difference between them in the very sense of this passage; and He frequently came into collision with the representatives of Pharisaism on ritual observances of an analogous character (v. Mark 7 1 ff., Matt. 151 ff.). It is simply a mistake, therefore, to say with Wellhausen that the subject has no significance for the time at which it is introduced, but only for the future: the subject is one of a class which was undoubtedly discussed by Jesus oftener than once or twice. But if we recognise this, it will not be without influence on our interpretation and appreciation of the passage as a whole. If Jesus is the Speaker, His words must be something else than the legitimation of the practice of the early Church as to fasting, in contrast with the practice of the disciples in His lifetime. Nothing is less credible in the lips of Jesus than such artificial and prosaic legalism. But the words cease to be legal and prosaic, they become personal and inspired, poetic and moving, above the common measure All this is borrowed from Wellhausen as above. even of the words of Jesus, provided we admit the possibility that Jesus could speak of Himself as the Bridegroom. And why should it be impossible? It is the same thought which meets us again in the parable—with allegoric traits in it no doubt, but why not?-of the king who makes a marriage for his son (Matt. 222). It has echoes in Eph. 5 25 ff. and in Rev. 19, 21. It has antecedents in the Old Testament conception of God's relation to Israel. Certainly it is an extraordinary thing that Jesus should have conceived in this way His relation to the new people of God which was gathering round Him, but everything in Jesus is extraordinary. After the incident and the self-revelation of verses 1 to 12, we do not expect platitude or commonplace here; and the sense which Wellhausen extracts is poorer than platitude or commonplace. With the Bridegroom among them, the disciples can fairly be compared to a marriage party in which fasting would be incongruous; and what can be truer to nature than that the Bridegroom, even while he defends their joyousness, should become sensible, in the very disposition of those who question it, of that suspicion and malignity toward Himself which would one day end in murder, and turn the joy of the bridal party into a sorrow in which fasting would be sadly spontaneous? The unity, the inner truth and the poetic charm of the whole utterance are indisputable, unless we deny that Jesus could think of Himself as the Bridegroom; and for such a denial there is no ground except that it implies a consciousness on Jesus' part of Himself and of His place in God's work which men are resolved, on grounds with which historical criticism has nothing to do, not to recognise. As it stands, the revelation which it makes of Jesus is in harmony with everything which has hitherto been presented to us in the record, and we need have no hesitation in replying on it as true. |