6. Once more was the Discourse interrupted, this time by a truly Jewish inc ident. A
woman in the crowd burst into exclamations about the blessedness of the Mother who
had borne and nurtured such a Son.43 The phraseology seems to have been not
uncommon, since it is equally applied by the Rabbis to Moses,44 and even to a great
Rabbi.45 More striking, perhaps, is another Rabbinic passage (previously quoted), in
which Israel is described as breaking forth into these words on beholding the Messiah:
'Blessed the hour in which Messiah was created; blessed the womb whence He issued;
blessed the generation that sees Him; blessed the eye that is worthy to behold Him.'46 47
45. Chag. 14 b.
43. St. Luke xi. 27.
44. Shem. R. 45.
46. Persiqta, ed. Buber, p. 149 a, last lines.
47. For the full quotation see Book II. ch. v. , and the reference to it in Appendix IX.
And yet such praise must have been peculiarly unwelcome to Christ, as being the
exaltation of only His Human Personal excellence, intellectual or moral. It quite looked
away from that which He would present: His Work and Mission as the Saviour. Hence it
was, although from the opposite direction, as great a misunderstanding as the Personal
depreciation of the Pharisees. Or, to use another illustration, this praise of the Christ
through His Virgin-Mother was as unacceptable and unsuitable as the depreciation of
the Christ, which really, though unconsciously, underlay the loving care of the Virgin-
Mother when she would have arrested Him in His Work,48 and which (perhaps for this
very reason) St. Matthew relates in the same connection.49 Accordingly, the answer in
both cases is substantially the same: to point away from His merely Human Personality
to His Work and Mission - in the one case: 'Whosoever shall do the Will of My Father
Which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother;' in the other: 'Yea
rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of Go d and keep it.'50
48. See Book III. ch. xxii.
49. St. Matt. xii. 46, 47.
50. In view of such teaching, it is indeed difficult to understand the cultus of the Virgin -
and even much of that tribute to the exclusively human in Christ which is so characteristic
of Romanism.
7. And now the Discourse draws to a close51 by a fresh application of what, in some
other form or connection, Christ had taught at the outset of His public Ministry in the
'Sermon on the Mount.'52 Rightly to understand its present connection, we must pass
over the various interruptions of Christ's Discourse, and join this as the conclusion to the
previous part, which contained the main subject. This was, that spiritual knowledge
presupposed spiritual kinship.53 Here, as becomes the close of a Discourse, the same
truth is practically applied in a more popular and plain, one might almost say realistic,
manner. As here put, it is, that spiritual receptive ness is ever the condition of spiritual
reception. What was the object of lighting a lamp? Surely, that it may give light. But if
so, no one would put it into a vault, nor under the bushel, but on the stand. Should we
then expect that God would light the spiritual lamp, if it be put in a dark vault? Or, to
take an illustration of it from the eye, which, as regards the body, serves the same
purpose as the lamp in a house. Does it not depend on the state of the eye whether or