[ p. 113 ]
AND it is to Simon, who gave to Mark the memories from which he wrote his Gospel, that we owe our chief knowledge of Jesus’ inmost teaching. It was Simon who remembered “the mystery of the Kingdom of God.”
In this mystery Jesus instructed his chosen men. Perhaps they learned more from being with him than from his words. Yet we cannot distinguish between Jesus’ life and Jesus’ teaching: they were one. For the mystery of the Kingdom was the mystery of rebirth, and Jesus was reborn.
The apostles must learn the mystery before they could proclaim the coming of the Kingdom, for through the mystery men would learn how they might enter into it. John the Baptist had said, “Turn and be changed”; Jesus also said, “Turn and be changed.” But how were men to change? John had baptized men; Jesus did not. Here, as [ p. 114 ] always, he refused the sign. Signs were dangerous. Those who needed signs never knew the thing signified.
The secret of the Kingdom was the secret of the change in man by which he entered into it.
Jesus spoke it in parables. One day he came down from the mountain to the lake shore of Galilee and spoke from the boat. Simon rested on his oars to listen. He listened well, did Simon; he never forgot. The parables were all of the sowing and growing of seed. These were the essential parables ; he cared to remember no others. These contained the secret.
“A sower went out to sow,” Jesus said. “And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it. Some fell on the stony ground, where it had not much earth, and it sprang up immediately, because it had no depth of earth. And when the sun stood high it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away. Some fell among thistles, and the thistles sprang up and choked it, and it bore no fruit. Other seed fell on good soil, and it sprang up and increased and bore fruit, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
[ p. 115 ]
“The Kingdom of God,” he said again, "is as when a man casts seed upon the earth and sleeps by night and wakes by day; and the seed sprouts and grows tall but how he knows not. Of her own self the earth bears fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. When the fruit is ready, then he sends in the reaper, because the harvest is come. ”
Again he said :
“To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God? In what parable shall we put it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when it is sown in the earth is smaller than all the seeds of earth; but when it is sown, it springs up and grows greater than all other herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the air may roost in the shade of it.”
What did he mean? The people wondered, and the disciples mused. The Kingdom of God like a see—a mustard seed? Jesus watched the uncomprehending faces, and felt lonely at heart. Could he speak more plainly? If they would know more, let them follow him to the mountain. There, if he could, he would tell them more. But if they had no ears to hear the still small voice in [ p. 116 ] those words, they would hear nothing. If they could not see the gleam of a wonderful secret shining through those parables, surely their hearts were hardened.
They did not hear; they could not see. Only those who had come out with him from the mountain returned with him to it. When they asked him to explain the story of the Sower, he said, bitterly:
To you the mystery of the Kingdom of God is given. But to those others it is all in parables, that
Seeing they may see and yet not perceive,
And hearing they may hear, and not understand,
Lest they should turn and be forgiven”
They had but to come and learn ; they had but to respond to the voice of truth and follow. But they would not.
Yet even with those who had followed he was disappointed. To them had been given the secret of the Kingdom, yet they could not receive it.
“You do not understand this parable?” he said. "Then how can you understand the parables at all?
“The Sower sows the Word. The first, ‘those [ p. 117 ] sown on the path,’ where the word is sown, are they who, when they hear it, Satan straightway comes and takes the Word sown in them. So also those sown on the stony ground are those who, when they hear the Word, straightway receive it joyfully, but they have no root in themselves, children of the moment,—then tribulation or persecution comes because of the Word and they are straightway offended. Others are those sown among thistles. These hear the Word, but the cares of the world and the deceit of riches and all the desires for other things enter and choke the Word, and it bears no fruit. And those who are sown on the good soil are they that hear the Word and truly receive it, and bring forth fruit, thirty, sixty, a hundred fold.”
He had known all these kinds of men, too well. Now in the mountain only the good soil was before him. But was it really good? Could good soil really need such careful tending? "Of her own self the earth bears fruit 7 ’ Was the word so difficult? Were the parables so hard?
Is a lamp brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed? Is it not to be put on a lamp-stand?
“Nothing is hidden, except to be made plain; nothing concealed except to be revealed.”
[ p. 118 ]
The parables were to make the secret clear, not to hide it Why should he speak riddles? It was their understandings, not his words, which were dark. He spoke sternly:
“Take heed what you hear. With the measure with which you measure it shall be measured to you again, and more added. For to him that has shall be given, and from him that has not shall be taken away even that which he has.”
Grim sentences they sound, and of supreme importance for Jesus’ meaning. They show that “with the measure with which you measure” has in its origin nothing to do with conduct, but only with understanding. The saying is so profound that it has meanings on many levels ; but its highest meaning is here. If a man has a spark of understanding, it shall be made a flame ; if the spark be lacking, he is condemned to darkness forever.
But what was to be understood? What was the secret? The secret of the Kingdom is the mysterious and unutterable change that works itself within the darkness of the soul of the man who can receive the word of the Kingdom.
The secret is the rebirth of the individual man. Suddenly the spark of the word drops into the
The Mysteries of the Kingdom [ p. 119 ] tinder of his being; it leaps to a flame, and from the incandescence steps forth a new man a son of God. As leaven in dough the potency of the word speeds through him, changing his substance, and the joy of receiving the word, the wonder of the first glimpse of the Kingdom, is beyond all telling.
“The Kingdom of God,” Jesus said, "is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and in his joy he goes away and sells his all and buys that field.
“Again it is like a merchant whose heart was set on lovely pearls. He found one single precious pearl, and went away and sold his all and bought it.”
Such was the wonder of the wonderful news; such was the secret, which none but Jesus had found, of the Kingdom of God.
It is, in very truth, a mystery—impossible to understand, simple to know. Of this mystery it is in the nature of things as true to-day as it was when Jesus spoke to his disciples in the mountain: “To him that hath, it shall be given.” Only the reborn man, or the man in whom rebirth has begun, can [ p. 120 ] comprehend Jesus’ teaching of the mystery of the Kingdom of God.'. But this much may be said.
In the mind and the speech of Jesus the Kingdom of God and the Word of the Kingdom of God were indistinguishable. The Kingdom of God was the family of the reborn sons of God; for a man to be reborn into the knowledge that he was the son of God was to be assured of membership of the Kingdom when it came. The beginning of this rebirth was to recognize the Word of the Kingdom when it was spoken and to receive it as a seed into the dark earth of the soul. If that were done, a swift and total change would come.
Therefore the Kingdom of God was at one and the same time both within men and without them ; both now and not yet There was to be the great change of the world in time, and the change in the souls of men. To assert one of these and exclude the other is to misapprehend the essence of Jesus message concerning the Kingdom. The great rebirth of the Universe could come only through the rebirth of the individual man. But this was not a slow and secular, but a swift and sudden process. Men had only to hear the Word ; it was such that, [ p. 121 ] if they heard it, it would change them by its own potency.
But what if his disciples did not understand the secret? How could they teach it then?
It was not wholly impossible. They could let their light so shine before men that they would see their good works. There were for Jesus two ways in which men might change and be reborn in the language of later years, the way of faith and the way of works. The true way for Jesus was the way of faith, by which a man was first reborn into the knowledge that he was the son of God, and then spontaneously did the acts of a son of God. But the true way was hard ; nor was the other way easy, but it was easier than that Men must do the acts of a son of God ; they must obey the will of God as Jesus declared it to them. Then if they loyally did the acts, a rebirth would begin.
For the acts were so extreme that for a man to perform them was completely to annihilate his personality. The old man died ; it was inevitable that a new man should come to birth. Thus a man might deliberately lose his life to save it. Yet that he should do this, faith also was necessary. He must believe that the acts commanded him were [ p. 122 ] indeed the acts of a son of God, in order that he might find himself the power to do them. But this faith was different from the faith of a son of God. Not faith in God, but faith in man was necessary. It was enough to believe in Jesus as a reborn man.
Jesus’ teaching on the mountain was therefore a twofold teaching of rebirth the rebirth that came from the direct operation of the Word, when through the illimitable depths of a hard saying was seen for a moment the nature of the Kingdom of God, and the vision of the eternal truth set in motion a change in man’s being; and the rebirth which would emerge out of a willing annihilation of the personality by doing acts which were extreme and impossible.
These acts which Jesus enjoined upon his disciples were the acts which were natural to Jesus, since his own rebirth. They were the acts of a man who had come to know himself the son of God.