1. When Nathanael asked in surprise, “Whence knowest thou me?” Christ answered, “Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee”; not the words only, but the voice and the tones of love, carried their message to Nathanael's soul. The meaning is clear to him. The message carries the authentication and claim of love. His prayers and desires are known and understood. He had thought of himself as alone, struggling in prayer and surrounded by perplexity, living in an age when God seemed far off, and when there was no open vision for the sons of men. But, lo! there has been One near at hand who has known and understood. Like Jacob, he had deemed that he was an exile from the revelation of God and the ministry of His love; but, lo! like Jacob, too, he awakes, and finds that the Divine light is near. The spot where he had prayed was none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven.
Obviously, Nathanael was moved to the very heart, and to the surrender of his heart; and even we, who are but bystanders, can hardly look on unmoved. In Nathanael's example we find our duty; and in the wisdom and grace of Him who spake to Nathanael we find, or may find, a sufficient motive for the discharge of that duty. We, like the son of Tolmai, are bound to surrender ourselves to the Son of God, the King of men. And what will move us to this surrender if the gracious wisdom of Christ will not? From many of the stories related in the Gospels, notably from the story of St. Peter's call, we learn that, as He looked on men, Christ could read the innermost secret of their being, and forecast their future destiny; that, as He turned His glance on this man and that, their whole future shot out in long perspective before His eye, brightening ever toward the eternal day, or sinking toward the darkness. And now we learn that He who could forecast the future of men could also recall the past; that on every countenance on which He looked He could trace and interpret every line inscribed by experience, deciphering every enigma, solving every problem figured thereon by Time. Our present character, our past experience, our future destiny, all are naked and open to Him. Before Him the hidden things of darkness are as the secrecies of light. We cannot hide ourselves from Him under any tree in the garden, however dense its shade. He looks on us, and, lo! He knows us altogether, even to the purpose, passion, desire we most scrupulously conceal. Such wisdom would be dreadful to us, were it not in the service of a love most tender and Divine.
One of three letters, written at the beginning of 1886 to Miss Edith Rix, to whom he had dedicated “A Tangled Tale,” is interesting as showing the deeper side of his character:-
“The Moral Science student you describe must be a beautiful character, and if, as you say, she lives a noble life, then, even though she does not, as yet, see any God, for whose sake she can do things, I don't think you need be unhappy about her. ‘When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee,' is often supposed to mean that Nathanael had been praying, praying no doubt ignorantly and imperfectly, but yet using the light he had: and it seems to have been accepted as faith in the Messiah. More and more it seems to me (I hope you won't be very much shocked at me as an ultra ‘Broad' Churchman) that what a person is is of more importance in God's sight than merely what propositions he affirms or denies. You, at any rate, can do more good among those new friends of yours by showing them what a Christian is than by telling them what a Christian believes.”1 [Note: The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, 250.]
2. With this we are brought to the confession itself, and we must note that Nathanael's two declarations concerning Jesus form a poetic parallelism which is a marked anticlimax, unless the title “the Son of God” is taken as essentially equivalent to, and not as of signally higher dignity than, the other title, “King of Israel.” If this anticlimax is to be avoided, we do wrong to read into this confession any of the more metaphysical content which has come to predominate in the Christian use of the term “the Son of God,” notwithstanding the fact that that transcendental significance is quite at home in the circle of ideas which we meet in the Fourth Gospel.
That the expression “King of Israel” is a simple Jewish Messianic designation seems to be proved by the title mockingly affixed to the cross of Jesus, by the taunt of the multitudes who stood by, “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, now come down,” and by the other current title “Son of David.” Mention only is needed of the Messianic picture of the theocratic king in the Second Psalm; of the prayer of the devout Jew in the first century b.c., “Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their King, the son of David”; and of the fact that in the Targums the Messiah is always called King Messiah.
It is not otherwise with the other term in this parallelism To the Jewish mind the title “the Son of God” served to designate one among men exalted to high dignity, either as God's chosen (so collectively Israel), or as God's representative (so the theocratic king, the Messiah). The collective use is not peculiar to the Old Testament; it appears as well in the Psalms of Solomon. For the specific reference of the title to the Messiah it would seem to be conclusive to refer to the question of the high priest at the trial of Jesus, “Art thou the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?” (Mar_14:61; Mat_26:63 has “the Son of God”); while the Book of Enoch (105:2) and the Fourth Book of Ezra (4 ezra 7:28, 29; 13:32, 52; 14:9) furnish extra-canonical confirmation from late pre-Christian and early post-Christian Jewish literature. The language of this confession of Nathanael appears thus to be simply and purely Messianic, in the sense in which this hope was held in the early decades of the first century a.d., and the incident depicts a devout Jew, who finds one who can read his inmost thoughts, which have been turned with longing towards the promised hope, and who is therefore moved to join with others in hailing the new Master as the expected King of Israel.
It is a great step when any soul can thus leave all its presumptions and difficulties behind and step into the presence of one whom it can recognize as the fulfilment of its dreams and the satisfaction of its desires. We may speak of the value of independence, and its value is great and its cultivation is needful for the maturing of the human spirit; but in its search for independence the soul is truly seeking also for that on which it can rest without the sacrifice of that which is greater than mere comfort, its moral and spiritual integrity. The great problem is how to find rest which can satisfy the spirit while maintaining its own inward uprightness. All the moral forces, all the better nature, as we say, must be reconciled, or peace and rest is impossible. But whoever comes with power to reconcile these and to bestow the gift of love is acknowledged as rightful lord of the soul. The spirit bows at once in homage to its king. Thus Nathanael gave his allegiance to our Lord. His spirit had found its Divine satisfaction, its teacher, its king. So complete was the victory expressed in his declaration of homage-“Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art King of Israel.”
Only Owen's closing volumes on the Spirit and the Person of Christ do justice to this principle [the majesty and mystery of Jesus]; this awe and wonder which he felt before the glory of Jesus; this instinct for the magnificence and unspeakable worth of salvation as the one reality that endures amid the shows amid shadows of the world. “Young man,” said Owen once to a religious inquirer, “in what manner do you think to go to God?” “Through the mediator, sir.” “That is easily said,” replied the Puritan, “but I assure you it is another thing to go to God through the mediator than many who make use of the expression are aware of. I myself preached Christ some years, when I had but very little, if any, experimental acquaintance with access to God through Christ.” The personal revelation of this truth in his own experience perhaps made him all the more eager and competent to enforce it in his writings, and many a passage attests the strength of his conviction on this point of Christianity. “O blessed Jesus,” he ejaculates at one point, “how much better were it not to be than to be without thee-never to be born than not to die in thee!” And again: “The most superstitious love to Christ-that is, love acted in ways tainted with superstition-is better than none at all.” “If Christ be not God, farewell to Christianity-as to the mystery, the glory, the truth, the efficacy of it! Let a refined heathenism be established in its room.”1 [Note: J. Moffatt, The Golden Book of John Owen, 89.]
When, o'er the primrose path, with childish feet
We wander forth new wonderments to spell,
And, tired at length, to loving arms retreat
To hear some loving voice old tales retell:
We know Thee, Lord, as our Emmanuel,
Who, lying in a manger cold and bare,
Brought Christmas music on the midnight air.
When fiercely throbs the pulse, and youthful fire
Burns through the heart and kindles all the brain
When overflows the cup of our desire
With beauty and romance, and all in vain
We strive the fulness of our joy to drain:
Thou art our Poet and our Lord of Love,
Who clothed the flowers and lit the stars above.
When, at life's noon, the sultry clouds of care
Darken the footsteps of our pilgrim way,
And when, with failing heart, perforce we bear
The heat and burden of the summer's day:
Thou, Man of Sorrows, knowest our dismay,
And, treading 'neath the heavens' burning arch,
Thou art our Comrade in the toilsome march.
And when at length the sun sinks slowly west,
And lengthening shadows steal across the sky;
When dim grey eyes yearn patiently for rest,
And weary hearts for vanished faces sigh:
Then Thou, the Lord of Hope, art very nigh,
Thou, the great Conqueror in the ageless strife-
The Lord of Resurrection and of Life.1 [Note: Gilbert Thomas, The Wayside Altar, 7.]
