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Strength Blessing Weakness.
“And it came to pass, as he went into the house
of one of the Pharasees to eat bread on the Sab
bath day ,that they watched him. And, behold, there
was a certain man before him which had the dropsy.
And Jesus answering, spake unto the lawyers and
Pharisees, saying, ‘ls it lawful to heal on the Sab
bath day?’ And they held their peace. And he took
him, and healed him, and let him go. And answered
them, saying, ‘Which of you shall have an ass or
an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway
pull him out on the Sabbath day?’ And they could
not answer him again to these things. And he put
forth a parable to those which were bidden, when
he marked how they chose out of the chief rooms;
saying unto them, ‘When thou art bidden of any
man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room
lest a more honorable man than thou be bidden of
him, and he that bade thee shall come and say
to thee, ‘Give this man place; and thou begin with
shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art
bidden go and sit down in the lowest room; that
when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto
thee, “Friend, go up higher;’ ‘then shalt thou have
worship in the presence of them that sit at meat
with thee. For whosover abaseth himself shall be
exalted.’ ” Luke 14: 1-11.
The lesson that Jesus desires to teach at this
feast is one concerning the obligation strength owes
to weakness.
To accomplish this he does two things. First, he
heals the man of the dropsy, and second, he submits
the parable of the “Highest Room” at the Feast.
I know commentators have disassociated the heal
ing of the man with the dropsy and the parable of
the man at the feast, holding that the healing of the
man with the dropsy was incidental, and has no spe
cial bearing upon the other truth taught. This is
not true. The whole incident from beginning to end
is keyed to the one idea of strength blessing weak
ness.
The Pharisee’s Feast.
Let us see the feast: Again Jesus is present at
a feast in the house of a Pharisee. This time his
host is one of the chief of the Pharasees. What the
real purpose of the feast is, we do not know. We
know, however, that it is given on the Sabbath day.
This may surprise us at first thought, for the Phar
isees were pretendedly very rigid in their obser
vance of this day. As a matter of fact, however, we
know that it was a frequent occurrence for them
to turn the Sabbath into a day of feasting.
I am sorry to say that many good people to-day
follow their example. We all know good people
who use this holy day to give big dinners. Some
use it as a day of visiting their relatives. Country
people come to town, or town people go to the
country. Men are not as careful as they ought to
be about this matter. Sometimes good men thought
lessly cause their wives to miss church to prepare
big dinners for them and their friends on the Sab
bath day.
I believe it is wrong—l know it. It is wrong to
the housekeeper, wrong to the servant, and bad
teaching for the children. We will see it some day,
but it may be too late to remedy the evil. Parents
cannot be too careful to stamp the sacredness of
the Sabbath upon their children.
LT e n G. Broughton-
Jesus Was There.
Jesus was present at the feast. He was there
by invitation of the Pharisee in whose house the
feast was given. There was evidently some purpose
in his being invited, for there was no intimacy be
tween the Pharisees and Jesus. His presence could
only serve to mar the pleasure of the guests. My
judgment is, his invitation was a part of a well
thought scheme to entrap him. The Pharisees were
ever at such plots. The whole bent of their lives
was to entrap Jesus.
But Jesus was there from choice. No mere trap
of the Pharisees could have caught him. He knew
all things. Nor would he have gone for a mere so
cial function. His plans were too important to be
interrupted by simply social invitations. He could
not fritter away his time with big dinners and idle
“chat a chat.”
The whole underlying purpose of Jesus was to
use the occasion to teach a lesson of compassion. He
knew the cold legalism of the Pharisees; he knew
how they needed sympathy, mercy and grace to bap
tize their forms and ceremonies.
The task then ahead of Jesus was to use whatever
came up at the feast to teach
The Lesson of Compassion.
Let us see how he does it: First, he does it by
healing the man with the dropsy. How came this
man to be at the feast, we do not know. I think
he was invited, or he would not have been there.
I do not think the invitation was because they de
sired his presence, but that they might use him
to help carry out their plan of entrapping Jesus.
Notice the first verse of the story: “And it came
to pass, as he went into the house of one of the
chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day,
that they watched him.”
They knew that this poor man with the dropsy
was there. They watched to see what Jesus would
do for him. It was just such watching as we see
to-day.
The world has ever had its eyes turned upon Je
sus. If he had failed to bless this poor man with the
dropsy the Pharisees would have had a good case
against him. But they surely did not know Jesus.
His heart of compassion was too big to pass such
an object by without attention. Most of us, I am
afraid, would not have been caught by such a plot.
Most of us would not have taken time to have given
the man a thought.
Neglect to attend to the unfortunate is the one
weak point in the church today. We know that the
world is still watching Jesus. It is not watching
him so much now in his life on the earth, for it
has found it to be blameless; it is watching him in
the lives of his representatives among men.
There is a poor, unfortunate man, broken in
heart and wrecked in life, standing at the door of
the church. He may have come of his own accord,
or he may have been sent there by the world. He
is there, however, and must be dealt with. What
message of sympathy and love has the church to
offer that man? He may not need material aid, or
he may. What answer is the church of to-day to
make to such a man? It is a weighty question, and
let us be careful how we answer it, for in answering
it we are speaking for our Lord, and not for our
selves.
The Institutional Church.
This is the argument for the institutional church.
Christ wants to dominate everything that touches
the good of humanity. It makes no difference what
it is, if humanity’s good is at stake in any way,
Jesus wants to come in. The church is his repre
sentative. On leaving his disciples he said, “As
the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”
The church to represent Christ must not be con
tent with simply preaching the Gospel of salvation
from hell—that is a big thing; it is the biggest
The Golden Age for March 22, 1906.
thing in the world—but it is not all that Jesus
would have the church do.
Neither is the church to be content with the
work of training for this object alone. Salvation
cannot be limited. It is a word that is boundless.
It means everything. It saves from hell; it saves
to h,eaven; it saves in every way humanity needs
saving.
To preach salvation in its fullest and broadest
sense means to preach a Gospel that remedies every
evil that touches humanity.
Oh, how derelict the church has been in this par
ticular ! How narrow and circumscribed her work!
The other day a child working in a cotton mill
got its radial artery cut and bled to death. There
was a missionary engaged in Christian settlement
work in that mill district. She was well-versed in
the Scriptures so far as the usual preparation goes.
She was present when the accident occurred. There
was no doctor in the community, and the child had
to die. The slightest training would have enabled
that missionary to have stopped the flow of blood
and saved the echild’s life. It is almost a crime that
she had not been taught, in connection with her
other missionary training, something about what
to do in such emergencies.
The world is watching us, watching the church,
to see whether or not the religion is sentiment or
service. The world is watching us to see how we
treat our fellow-man.
They watched to see what Jesus would do at the
feast. It was a good time to watch him for never
a more selfish crowd got together. The highest seat,
the seat of greatest honor, was what every one
was determined to get, while the lowest seat no
body would have.
Jesus saw this selfish scramble and rebuked them
by saying, “When thou art bidden of any man
to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room;
lest a more honorable man than thou be bidden
of him.”
What is the real lesson in this teaching? It is
not simply a lecture on good manners ,though such
a lecture would not have been out of place. The real
lesson is the same as in the healing of the man with
the dropsy. It is the obligation strength owes to
weakness. The man first at the feast had an ad
vantage, but it is not Christian to take it.
We may say this is high teaching, too high for
us to come up to, but it is no higher than
The Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule is: “As ye would that men
should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”
This is our profession; it is a part of our creed.
The world is watching to see if it is profession only.
Never mind what excuses men make, the demand
is, that we shall live this creed or change it. If we
change it, we reflect upon the Master who gave it.
Jesus gave this Golden Rule and demands that
his followers shall live up to it. The question for
each of us is, are we doing it? Are we even trying
to do it? Are we making enough effort in this di
rection to even impress the world?
I know men say that it is impossible in this day
of competition to live up to such high teaching.
Then, if this is true, the followers of Jesus must
get out of the competition business.
But is it true that the Golden Rule is impracti
caple for this day? Looking at it from a sane, ra
tional standpoint, it presupposes fairness and jus
tice to start with. It does not mean that a man
who has property shall necessarily sell everything
he has, and give it to the man who has none. It
takes for granted that the man who has no means
would not want the man who has to do it, unless
there was reason for it. It takes for granted that
the man who has no position would not want the
man who has a good place to do that for him, for
each is to put himself in the place of the other and
hold himself in readiness to do what the other