The authority and power over 'the demons,' attained by faith, was not to pass away with
the occasion that had called it forth. The Seventy were the representatives of the
Church in her work of preparing for the Advent of Christ. As already indicated, the sight
of Satan fallen from heaven is the continuous history of the Church. What the faith of
the Seventy had attained was now to be made permanent to the Church, whose
representatives they were. For, the words in which Christ now gave authority and power
to tread o n40 serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the Enemy, and the
promise that nothing should hurt them, could not have been addressed to the Seventy
for a Mission which had now come to an end, except in so far as they represented the
Church Universal. It is almost needless to add, that those 'serpents and scorpions' are
not to be literally but symbolically understood.41 42 Yet it is not this power or authority
which is to be the main joy either of the Church or the individual, but43 the fact that our
names are written in heaven.44 And so Christ brings us back to His great teaching about
the need of becoming children, and wherein lies the secret of true greatness in the
Kingdom.
40. The word over ('on,' A. V.) must be connected with 'power.'
41. Comp. Ps. xci. 13; St. Mark xvi. 18.
42. I presume, that in the same symbolical sense must be understood the Haggadah
about a great Rabbinic Saint, whom a serpent bit without harming him, and then
immediately died. The Rabbi brought it to his disciples with the words: It is not the
serpent that killeth, but sin (Ber. 33 a).
43. The word 'rather' in the A.V. is spurious.
44. The figure is one current in Scripture (comp. Exod. xxxii. 32: Is. iv. 3; Dan. xii. 1). But
the Rabbis took it in a grossly literal manner, and spoke of three books opened every
New Year's Day - those of the pious, the wicked, and the intermediate (Rosh haSh. 16 b).
It is beautifully in the spirit of all this, when we read that the joy of the disciples was met
by that of the Master, and that His teaching presently merged into a prayer of
thanksgiving. Throughout the occurrences since the Transfiguration, we have noticed
an increasing antithesis to the teaching of the Rabbis. But it almost reached its climax in
the thanksgiving, that the Father in heaven had hid these things from the wise and the
understanding, and revealed them unto babes. As we view it in the light of those times,
we know that 'the wise and understanding' - the Rabbi and the Scribe - could not, from
their standpoint, have perceived them; nay, that it is matter of never-ending thanks that,
not what they, but what 'the babes,' understood, was - as alone it could be - the subject
of the Heavenly Father's revelation. We even tremble to think how it would have fared
with 'the babes,' if 'the wise and understanding' had had part with them in the
knowledge revealed. And so it must ever be, not only the Law of the kingdom and the
fundamental principle of Divine Revelation, but matter for thanksgiving, that, not as 'wise
and understanding,' but only as 'babes' - as 'converted,' 'like children' - we can share in
that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation. And this truly is the Gospel, and the
Father's good pleasure.45