The Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Friendships of Jesus, by J. R. Miller

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Title: Personal Friendships of Jesus

Author: J. R. Miller

Release Date: November 28, 2008 [EBook #27349]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERSONAL FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS ***

Produced by Al Haines

Personal Friendships

of Jesus

BY

J. R. MILLER, D. D.

AUTHOR OF "SILENT TIMES," "MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE," "THINGS TO LIVE FOR," "BLESSING OF CHEERFULNESS," ETC.

  One friend in that path shall be,
    To secure my steps from wrong;
  One to count night day for me,
    Patient through the watches long,
  Serving most with none to see.
                            BROWNING.

New York

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1897,

BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.

EIGHTH THOUSAND

PREFACE.

George MacDonald said in an address, "The longer I live, the more I am assured that the business of life is to understand the Lord Christ." If this be true, whatever sheds even a little light on the character or life of Christ is worth while.

Nothing reveals a man's heart better than his friendships. The kind of friend he is, tells the kind of man he is. The personal friendships of Jesus reveal many tender and beautiful things in his character. They show us also what is possible for us in divine friendship; for the heart of Jesus is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.

These chapters are only suggestive, not exhaustive. If they make the way into close personal friendship with Jesus any plainer for those who hunger for such blessed intimacy, that will be reward enough.

J. R. M.

PHILADELPHIA.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS II. JESUS AND HIS MOTHER III. JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER IV. JESUS' CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP V. JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS VI. JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE VII. JESUS AND PETER VIII. JESUS AND THOMAS IX. JESUS' UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS X. JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS XI. JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS XII. JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS XIII. JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS XIV. JESUS' FRIENDSHIPS AFTER HE AROSE XV. JESUS AS A FRIEND

  All I could never be,
  All men ignored in me,
  This I was worth to God.
              BROWNING.

        But lead me, Man divine,
  Where'er Thou will'st, only that I may find
  At the long journey's end Thy image there,
  And grow more like to it. For art not Thou
  The human shadow of the infinite Love
  That made and fills the endless universe?
  The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown,
  Eternal Good that rules the summer flower
  And all the worlds that people starry space.
              RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS.

CHAPTER I.

THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS.

  O God, O kinsman loved, but not enough,
    O man with eyes majestic after death,
  Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough,
    Whose lips drawn human breath;

  By that one likeness which is ours and thine,
    By that one nature which doth hold us kin,
  By that high heaven where sinless thou dost shine,
    To draw us sinners in;

  By thy last silence in the judgment hall,
    By long foreknowledge of the deadly tree,
  By darkness, by the wormwood and the gall,
    I pray thee visit me.
                           JEAN INGELOW.

There is a natural tendency to think of Jesus as different from other men in the human element of his personality. Our adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the experiences of his youth and young manhood as altogether unlike those of any other boy or young man in the village where he grew up. This same feeling leads us to think of his temptation as so different from what temptation is to other men as to be really no temptation at all.

So we are apt to think of all the human life of Jesus as being in some way lifted up out of the rank of ordinary experiences. We do not conceive of him as having the same struggles that we have in meeting trial, in enduring injury and wrong, in learning obedience, patience, meekness, submission, trust, and cheerfulness. We conceive of his friendships as somehow different from other men's. We feel that in some mysterious way his human life was supported and sustained by the deity that dwelt in him, and that he was exempt from all ordinary limiting conditions of humanity.

There is no doubt that with many people this feeling of reverence has been in the way of the truest understanding of Jesus, and ofttimes those who have clung most devoutly to a belief in his deity have missed much of the comfort which comes from a proper comprehension of his humanity.

Yet the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels furnishes no ground for any confusion on the subject of his human life. It represents him as subject to all ordinary human conditions excepting sin. He began life as every infant begins, in feebleness and ignorance; and there is no hint of any precocious development. He learned as every child must learn. The lessons were not gotten easily or without diligent study. He played as other boys did, and with them. The more we think of the youth of Jesus as in no marked way unlike that of those among whom he lived, the truer will our thought of him be.

Millais the great artist, when he was a young man, painted an unusual picture of Jesus. He represented him as a little boy in the home at Nazareth. He has cut his finger on some carpenter's tool, and comes to his mother to have it bound up. The picture is really one of the truest of all the many pictures of Jesus, because it depicts just such a scene as ofttimes may have been witnessed in his youth. Evidently there was nothing in his life in Nazareth that drew the attention of his companions and neighbors to him in any striking way. We know that he wrought no miracles until after he had entered upon his public ministry. We can think of him as living a life of unselfishness and