1. It is a quiet Syrian scene of sunlight falling upon the landscape, and of soft and grateful shadows cast by the broad-leaved trees. The spot is on the western side of the Lake of Tiberias, and not far from the city of Capernaum. It is, in fact, in the village of Bethsaida, where dwelt, in the Saviour's youth, Andrew and Peter, fishermen of Galilee. The village lay on the shore of the little inland sea on which they plied their occupation as fishermen. The name itself means “fishing-town,” and we know that it must have been the frequent resort of our Lord Himself. Alas that, like so many of what would be to us holy places, this tiny fishing-town has disappeared! Its site is guessed at, but cannot be precisely fixed. All that people now living in the district know about it is its New Testament name. Andrew and Peter were certainly fishermen; Philip and Nathanael were probably so-these four, with John, making the five disciples hitherto secured by Jesus. It is too soon to depict their individual characters, although Simon has already received that name which has given rise to endless debate amongst rival ecclesiastical leaders, and the Saviour emphatically calls him Simon the Stone, or Simon the Rock, and declares the rock-foundation of His Church in giving him the name of Peter.
Going forth on the day after Peter's designation, Jesus finds Philip, and calls him. Philip at once responds. These simplenatured fishermen, like all the truly faithful of their nation, were at this time full of an indescribable expectancy. They were looking and waiting for the appearing of the long-promised Messiah, the Great Comer who should deliver Israel, and whose most signal and convincing proof of Divine authority would be His power to “reveal all things.” We may understand, therefore, how ingenuous and pious Jews who looked for the immediate “redemption of Israel” would glow with spiritual warmth as they came under the influence of Jesus of Nazareth; and we cannot be surprised at the readiness which they exhibited to obey Him. There is also great naturalness in what Philip does. Once called and captured, as only profound conviction can capture a soul, what so probable as that he should desire to tell the new and startling fact to those nearest to him? Deep emotion is demonstrative. The man possessed with a really Divine emotion will display it.
Dr. Paton felt that the Christian Endeavour movement would never realize its potentialities until it yoked itself to definite service and acted the Christian life as well as talked about it. In the course of an address to the Council at Portsmouth on 6th February, 1908, he said:
“The emotions are in themselves a source of pleasure, but they also incite to action and become a motive power. There is, however, a moral law according to which alone they can be healthily cultivated. Bishop Butler has enunciated this law. If emotions as passive impressions are freely indulged, they become gradually weaker and ebb away: or they may be continually stimulated; but in that case they always need a stronger stimulus, and this terrible result follows-that they become inoperant, and lose their power to incite to appropriate action. On the other hand, if these emotions, according to their healthful law, lead to action, the acts which they induce are more readily done by repetition. They then form habits, and habits form character, and character forms destiny. Now this great law, which applies to the training of our youth in the adolescent age, bears specially and with profound significance upon the Christian life. Emotions awakened in the Christian life are full of delight and blessing, but if they are indulged selfishly, without leading, as they are intended, to healthful and appropriate action, they will either ebb away, as has been seen so sadly in the great Welsh Revival, or they may be repeatedly stimulated until they become morbid and inoperant, having no effect upon conduct and character. Our Lord gave to His disciples the rapture of the Mount of Transfiguration, but only for a short time. They had soon to follow Him to the bottom of the Mount, where the poor epileptic child sought for healing, and thence to follow Him, bearing their cross-in training for service.”1 [Note: J. Lewis Paton, John Brown Paton, 425.]
2. Philip knows of one who will gladly hear what he has to tell. It is Nathanael, his quiet, thoughtful, modest friend, who is probably stretched, as may have been his habit, in meditative mood, beneath the shade of a fig-tree. And there indeed he is, pondering the crisis of his nation's history, as the incidents of the time float up in rumours more or less correct from the great centre of activity-Jerusalem. To him, as to every God-fearing soul, there is one subject of supreme anxiety, one question above all others to be solved-“When will Israel be redeemed by Messiah?” The restoration of Israel to its proud place among the nations; the resurrection of the Royal House of David from obscurity to greatness and pre-eminence; above all, the supremacy of the faith of Israel, wait for the appearing of the Great Comer.
Absorbed in deep thought, as we may imagine Nathanael to have been, his friend Philip suddenly breaks in upon him with the astounding announcement-“We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael's reply was a natural one, the reply of a sincere believer in Old Testament prophecy-“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Something of contempt, perhaps, for a not very reputable little city, mingled with his astonishment that Nazareth, of which nothing had been predicted, should be named in connexion with the Hope of Israel. Philip has but one answer. He is in no mood to talk about Nazareth or to discuss its demerits. He is concerned only about a Person, who has strangely impressed him with His Messianic character and claims, and a sight of that Person will be the best reply to Nathanael's scepticism. “Come and see,” exclaims Philip, and the dreamer in the shadow rises and follows his friend.
3. Notice two striking things: Nathanael's doubt (“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”), and Philip's answer (“Come and see”).
(1) If we would appreciate Nathanael's doubt, we must remember that all the Galilæans were held in contempt by the Pharisees of Jerusalem, and that not altogether without cause. The province of Galilee was, practically, much farther from Jerusalem than the Highlands of Scotland are from London, although not half or quarter so many miles lay between the two. And, to reach the metropolis, the Galilæans bad either to traverse the alien district of Samaria or to risk a somewhat perilous journey across the highlands and valleys on the other side of the Jordan. Hence many of them habitually absented themselves from the annual services and feasts of the Temple. To these every Jew was bound, by the law of Moses, to go up thrice every year. Those who failed to “present themselves before the Lord” were held by the punctilious Pharisees and scribes to be little better than heathen.
The Galilæans, moreover, engaged in commerce with their Gentile neighbours, and especially with the wealthy merchants of Tyre and Sidon. Their commercial intercourse with heathen races had abated the edge and strictness of their ceremonialism, and, still worse, had also chilled the fervour of their piety. And here was another reason for holding them in contempt. Even the prophets described the Galilæans as a “people that sat in darkness “; and the Pharisees, instead of carrying them “a great light,” were much more disposed to consign them to “Gehenna.”
But besides the general prejudice against Galilæans which for these and other reasons possessed the minds of the Jews, there may have been and probably were special reasons for their contempt of Nazareth. This prejudice lingered long. To speak of the Christians as Nazarenes was to hold them up to contempt. The Talmudists call the Lord “Hannozeri,” or “Ben Nezar.” The Arabs call the Christians “En-Nusara” to this day.
From its very position, Nazareth-the precious memories of which are entwined with our holiest thoughts, and whose name has become a household word to the ends of the earth-seems to covet obscurity and seclusion. Unlike Bethlehem and the cities of Judah and Benjamin, perched on the hill-tops; unlike Shechem, whose gushing fountains and perennial streams have invited the earliest settlements of man, the site of Nazareth (on the edge of a shallow basin in the low hills of Galilee) offers no natural advantages. Among the many smaller ridges which crowd round the platform, from which rises the mountain chain of Lebanon, several here are clustered, forming a wide natural amphitheatre, the crest of which rises round the basin of Nazareth, as though to guard it from intrusion: “enclosed by mountains as the flower is by its leaves.” The town clings to the hillside, on a steep slope to the north-west of this hollow, unknown and unnamed in the Old Testament,-a place that had no history till He came who has hallowed and immortalized it.1 [Note: H. B. Tristram, Bible Places, 291.]
(2) Philip met Nathanael's doubt very wisely. He did not argue with him. He simply answered, “Come and see.” Very likely he recognized in Nathanael a mood with which he himself was familiar: for Philip also seems by nature to have been “slow of heart to believe.” He had had his doubts, his prejudices, his fears; and probably he and his neighbour, Nathanael, had often sat under the fig-tree at Cana, talking sadly, and a little sceptically, over the affairs of the Jewish Church and State. Only in the light of one Presence had his prejudices vanished; only by the sound of one Voice had his doubts been charmed to rest. If he could bring Nathanael to that Presence, and within the sound of that Voice, he had no fear of the result.
Philip's “Come and see,” which is all the reply he vouchsafes to the objection of his friend, is manifestly an echo of Christ's “Come and see” of the day preceding (Joh_1:39). That immediate personal intercourse which had proved so effectual in the case of Andrew and another shall not prove less effectual in the case of Nathanael. It was a wise answer then, and is often a wise answer now. The highest heavenly things are in their nature incapable of being uttered in words, and “Come and see, come and make proof of them,” is sometimes the only true reply to difficulties about them, an indication of the only effectual way by which those difficulties shall be removed. There are truths in the heavenly world which, like the sun in the natural world, can be seen only by their own light; which in no other way will be seen at all.
Among the cases of conversion recorded by Mr. Robertson, when working in the Pilrig district of Edinburgh, is one of a young girl who was induced by her companion to “come and see” for herself:-
Whilst the Saturday morning meetings were in progress, one girl, Jeannie, was on her way to the meeting, when she met a companion, Lizzie --, whom she invited to come with her. “Gae wa' wi' yer meetin's; gaun tae a meetin' on a Saturday morning! No, I'm gaun tae nane o' yer meetin's,” was the response, and she then commenced to call her names-hypocrite, Methodist, and such like.
Jeannie went quietly on to the meeting, not answering a word. On the following Saturday morning, on her way to the meeting, she saw the same girl coming down the lane. There was no escape and she wondered what she should do. Having lifted up her heart to the Lord, praying to be helped, Jeannie went straight up to her friend and greeted her with these words, “Oh, Lizzie, will ye no come tae the meetin' this mornin'?”
Lizzie burst into tears and said, “Yes, Jeannie, I'll gang tae the meetin'. Oh, Jeannie, if ye only kent what a week I've had. I laughed at ye, and ca'ed ye names, when ye wanted me tae gang tae the meetin' last Saturday mornin', and ye never said a word. Oh, I've been sae wicked. I wanted tae meet ye and I hoped ye wad ask me. I'll gang tae the meetin'.”
They were both present that morning, but I knew nothing of the proceeding till Lizzie and another girl came to my lodgings in great distress of soul. They both wished to give their hearts to Jesus. The last accounts we have heard about Jeannie are from America, where she is working in the Salvation Army.1 [Note: William Robertson of Carrubber's Close Mission, 39.]
