"T am the way, the truth, and the life."—John XIV. 6.
These words are an answer to a question. Their fitness for the needs of each one in this congregation this evening is in direct relation with their fitness to answer the particular question asked by the apostle Thomas on the night in which our Lord was betrayed. Had the answer been less suited to the honest enquiry of a perplexed disciple, it would have been less suited to us. Each "word,'' each sentence, of our Lord, like each work of God combines something which is individual and unique with something typical and universal. The human face is an illustration of this: not only the four hundred millions of Chinese faces, nor only the 14 hundred millions of the world of to-day, but all the unnumbered millions of the past has each been an individual face, but each has been all that we mean by a face.
Let us look more closely at the unique features of the text that we may the better know its universal meaning, and so seize, each for himself, the individual message which the Lord has for us this evening. oe When the traitor had gone out and the Lord was left alone with those whom He loved unto the end and who also were to love Him their life's end, He recommenced His broken discourse with the words "Now is the Son of Mao glorified." No longer troubled in His own spirit, His desire was that they should not let their heart he troubled. He told them quite plainly that He was straightway going away. They like the Jews, could not for a while follow Him. Therefore, He gave them a new commandment. It was ab this point that the first interruption to the discourse happened. Simon Peter. as if the new commandment were irrelevant ignores it and goes back to the words about our Lord's leaving him. Where was He going? "Thou const not follow me now." "Why? And although Peter had been so long a time with Jesus, be had not yet learnt, as he did a few hours lacer that Jesus knew his heart better than Peter did himself. How could Petcr's heart but be trou. bled when he heard the incredible sentence "Thou shalt deny Me thrice"? Bidding not Peter only but all the disciples not to be troubled but to believe and to link Himself in that belief with God, Jesus goes on to speak of the whole universe of things visible and invisible as His Father's louse," a house in which there. were many "abiding places." In one of these, Lord Himself had been abiding jail these days of His flesh, an j"abiding place' which included Bethlehem and Egypt, Nazareth and Capernaum, Caesarea Philippi and certain parts beyond the Jordan and Bethany and the upper chamber, Gethsemane and Calvary For Himself Ee does not speak of any other ''abiding place.' But He tells His disciples Re was about "to prepare a place" for them Hitherto where they had been, He had been: the limitations of their "place" had limited Him. Like theirs, His "way" had been one of three dimensions, His life one with a@ past, a present and a_brief "little while" of a future. But in the "place" He was going to prepare, they were to be with Him. His circumstances were to mould their. Then the Lord, looking back and remembering how for "a long time" they had "continued" with Him in Eis temptation felt sure they must have known whither He wag going and the way Ie was taking.
It is at this point that Thomas interrupts, interrupts with a correction and a question "Lord, w know not whither Thou geest; how know we the way?"
Four short sentences are all we tear from Thomas: "Let us also go that we may die with Him." Lord, we know not whither The geest; how know we the way?" "Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my bony into His side, I will not trust" ie., this that you tell me you ave seen. "My Lord and My God." It would not be easy to find in all literature such a lifelike likeness sketched in four sentences. The over-emphasis on the third sentence with a neglect of the fourth and also of the other sentence has led to a view of Thomas which is a mere caricature of the disciple as his fellow disciple has portrayed him. Taking all four sentences into consideration we can see a man, possibly of the scholar type but more probably of the open air type, seeing very clearly inside his range but never venturing outside it, hardly conscious there is an outside: conservative to the core, spending his time in anything rather than in either telling or hearing some new thing; a man who will readily die with one whom he loves, but as readily correct Him though he calls Him Lord and Master. Quite open to conviction, providing only the force brought i> bear on him is convincing but the ' challenging the force right up to the point of conviction. But how well worth convincing! Once convinced he becomes a leader amongst leaders, outrunning Peter and perchance even that other disciple, and so the very first to stand on the topmost crag of the Int. Everest of belief with the cry "My Lord and my God."
"Characteristically Chinese" is what some of us say when we meet now-a-days the children of Thomas, heirs of his temperament, men who at first put aside our reasonings with an "I will not believe," but who sooner or later.have the eyes of their understanding opened and because of something which they ought to have been able to do without have believed.
Amongst the great leaders of the Church, John Wesley is the nearest to Thomas. Probably Wesley preached more frequently in the open air than any ahter preacher who has left us a record of his preachings. But when his colleagues first began the practice he himself was shocked, and when ho followed their example he records his feelings in his immortal "Journal" in the words "I submitted to be more vile. One of the most distinguishing features of Methodism has been its use of lay preachers; yet few pages of the "Journal" indicate any such serious ruffling of that placid spirit as is shown when Wesley first heard that Thomas Maxfield was guilty of the ecclesiastical crime of preaching when he had not been ordained to-do so. Wesley hurried to London to put an end such irregularity. His wise old mother, who had never given him wrong advice, bade him first hear and only then condemn if necessary. That evening Jesus said unto John Wesley "Because thou hast heard, thou hast believed.""
One wonders how the Lord would have told us the great truth that He Himself is the way, the truth and the life, if Thomas had not asked the question. One cannot imagine our not being told. The words of our Lord are undoubt tedly the only perfect answer to the question, but on the surface they appear rather to be an answer to some very different question. If Thomas had asked "Who is the way?? the answer would be what we call quite straightforward. What Thomas did ask was "How know we the way?"
Like most questions on matters other than the superficial things of daily intercourse, this question of the apostle's contains assumptions which are not correct; not correct, although the questioner himself was quite unconscious of any error. A really truthful answer to any such question must get behind the error and correct it. This our Lord's answer did do.
The last clause of the sentence makes it quite clear that the way itself is a way "to the Father:" "No one cometh unto the Father
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.