Digging Deeper for such a time as this: - from: Hastings, J. (Ed.). (1915). In The Greater Men and Women of the Bible: Mary–Simon. Edinburg: T&T Clark. ___________________________ ANDREW And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea: for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.—Mark 1:16, 17. WHEN Jesus emerged from His private life to enter upon the work of His public ministry, He was without followers or adherents of any sort. No existing ready-for-work society or church awaited Him or welcomed His coming. A certain group of Jews had been aroused by the preaching of John the Baptist into a fresh Messianic expectancy of a moral rather than a political sort. In this circle Jesus first appeared, and here was the only soil in any wise prepared for His teaching. He did not so much as succeed to the leadership of the rudimentary society brought together by John. Out of this society, however, He gathered His first disciples. Probably most of the disciples of John passed over to the company of Jesus finally, but only after the gradual dissolution of John’s society. One of the very first to pass from John to Jesus was Andrew. In the first three Gospels Andrew is only a name. We know nothing more about him than that he was the brother of Peter: but, as in the case of several of the obscure Apostles, St. John gives us some insight into the character and work of Andrew. We know that he was a fisherman, the brother of Simon Peter, the son of Jonas. We know that he was already one of John the Baptist’s disciples when Jesus began His work, and that he was one of the first two disciples of Jesus. He, along with John, heard the great words of the Baptist, “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”; and these two disciples, hearing him speak, followed Jesus. “Jesus turned, and beheld them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? And they said unto him, Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Master), where abidest thou? He saith unto them, Come, and ye shall see. They came therefore and saw where he abode; and they abode with him that day: it was about the tenth hour.” Andrew thenceforth ranked himself as a believer in Jesus of Nazareth; and on the very day of his own acceptance of Jesus, he brought his brother Simon Peter to the Master. Thereafter we hear of this Apostle on only four occasions. When the Galilæan ministry of Jesus was beginning, He called these men, whose faith He had already won, to be His constant followers; and He marked their call by the miraculous draught of fishes, which symbolized so well the task to which He was calling them and the power by which He would give them success. We are told that Andrew, as well as Peter, obeyed the summons, left all, and followed Jesus in order to be a “fisher of men.” When, again, the public ministry of Jesus was about half finished, He performed on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee that wonderful act of feeding, from a few loaves and fishes, five thousand men. St. John, whose clear memory often appears in such particulars as this, tells us that when the disciples were asked by Jesus how that vast multitude could be fed, Andrew replied, with a vague feeling, probably, that, absurd as the provision seemed, it might be a help, or at least a starting-point, for other supplies: “There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” Again, when the ministry of Jesus was nearing its close, certain Greeks wished to see the new Messiah, and applied to Philip. Philip consulted Andrew and together Andrew and Philip told Jesus. And, finally, when Christ gave on Mount Olivet to a few disciples that solemn prediction of the future,—of the fall of Jerusalem, and the troubles and persecutions which were impending, and of the end of the world itself,—we read not only that Peter and John and James were present,—those three whom so often Jesus took into special confidence,—but also that Andrew shared on this occasion the sad privilege of listening to the terrible prophecy. With these few items our knowledge of the Apostle Andrew ends. Let us consider him as Disciple, as Missionary, and as Brother. I THE DISCIPLE “Disciple” is the term consistently used in the four Gospels to mark the relationship existing between Christ and His followers. Jesus used it Himself in speaking of them, and they in speaking of each other. Neither did it pass out of use in the new days of Pentecostal power. It runs right through the Acts of the Apostles. It is interesting also to remember that it was on this wise that the angels thought and spoke of these men: the use of the word in the days of the Incarnation is linked to the use of the word in the Apostolic Age by the angelic message to the women, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter” (Mark 16:7). It is somewhat remarkable that the word is not to be found in the Epistles. This is to be accounted for by the fact that the Epistles were addressed to Christians in their corporate capacity as churches, and so spoke of them as members of such, and as the “saints,” or separated ones of God. The term “disciple” marks an individual relationship; and though it has largely fallen out of use, it is of the utmost value still in marking the relationship existing between Christ and each single soul, and suggesting our consequent position in all the varied circumstances of everyday living. ¶ Lads to be afterwards notable as Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Lord Dudley and Ward, who had as class-mates Henry Brougham, Francis Horner, Henry Cockburn, and Francis Jeffrey, were among the students then attending Edinburgh University. These men looked fondly back in their older years to those delightful days of plain living and high thinking in Edinburgh, where they studied under Playfair and Robison and Dalziel. But it was Dugald Stewart, the Professor of Moral Philosophy, whom they regarded as their master, as he set forth fine moral aims and ideals—especially when discussing the application of ethics to the principles of government and the conduct of citizens in political life. As Henry Cockburn listened in his boyhood to the persuasive eloquence, he felt his whole nature changed by his teacher: “his noble views unfolded in glorious sentences elevated me into a higher world.” Francis Horner was touched and moved to admiration; and it was the inculcating of high moral purpose on men and citizens which influenced young men who had a public career before them. As Sir James Mackintosh said, Dugald Stewart’s disciples were his best works. 1. Why did Jesus attach disciples to Him? The answer may be given that it was partly for His own sake and partly for theirs and for what they could do in the spread of the gospel. (1) What they could do for Him.—He was not, indeed, one who needed attendance and service; His personal wants were few, His life the simplest. But there were many things in which they would minister to Him and aid Him, sparing His strength, relieving His toil, and so helping on His work. In the ardour of His Divine zeal He was capable of forgetting the claims of the body, and they had sometimes to constrain Him, saying, “Master, eat.” If, after a day of labour and excitement, with heavy incessant demands upon Him, evening came and found Him spent and weary, He needed but to say, “Let us go over unto the other side,” and they did all the rest: they brought the boat to the nearest landing-place, and He stepped aboard and was their passenger. Some of them were skilful fishermen as well as faithful friends, and He might trust Himself to their hands. If the wind served they would run up the sail; if not, they rowed, taking turns with the oars; and it pleased them well if, wearied with His work, and soothed by the motion of the boat and the breeze upon the lake, He fell asleep, to wake only when the boat’s keel grated upon the shingle at the place where He would be. Nor was this the only kind of service they could render Him. From a very early period He had enemies, and feeling was often stirred to violence as He spoke. Again and again there were fierce fanatics in the crowds that thronged and pressed Him. Sometimes, it may be, a solitary teacher would not have been safe, where He, with His Twelve about Him, was left in peace. Christ Himself, we know, was absolutely fearless, and had an extraordinary power of quelling the rising storm in men’s hearts as well as upon the lake. Still, for the sake of His work—that He might finish it, and deliver all His message—it may be that it was well for Him that He sat surrounded by these staunch friends when He spoke the words which “half concealed and half revealed” His tremendous claims, or when He hurled His denunciations at scribes and Pharisees. But probably such service was not the best of the help they gave Him. Just to be with Him, to make an atmosphere of sympathy about Him, to constitute a spiritual home into which He could retreat from the strife of tongues, and rest and recover Himself—perhaps this was the chief of all the service by which they helped Him then. (2) What He could do for them.—What they might do for Him, however, does not explain the calling of the Twelve. For all the personal service they rendered Him, fewer would certainly have sufficed. It was much more for the sake of what He could do for them, and with a view to a great service of the future, that they were with Him. He was a Teacher: He traversed the land proclaiming to all men His gospel, and that Kingdom of which He was the King; these went with Him that they might hear all His truth. In place after place they listened while he taught. They heard the gospel in Galilee; they heard it, in different accents, in Samaria; they heard it in Judæa and in Jerusalem, and again the tone was new, for it was a many-sided gospel. They heard Him preach His Kingdom in various aspects: now it was a spiritual state, a community in which God’s will is done; now it was a power which goes out in effort to get that will done, an influence which had come into the world, mixing with human affairs, permeating them, leavening them, charging them with its own Divine redeeming qualities; and now again it was the prize of life, man’s chief good, his supreme treasure and reward. They heard all His teaching; they alone of all His hearers obtained a complete view of His truth. Some part of it indeed was reserved specially for them. When night fell, and the crowd of common hearers dispersed, they gathered round Him in some humble homo, and He taught them, and His thought grew ever more luminous and wonderful. As they journeyed from town to town, beguiling the tedium of the way, He taught them, and the bright flowers bloomed unnoticed by the wayside when; they passed, for they hung upon Him listening, and their hearts burned within them while He spoke. It was His will to entrust His truth to them, to make them the depositaries and stewards of it, that through them, by and by, it might be for all. Meanwhile they have to listen and learn, and store up in heart and mind His teachings; and in order that they may do so they must be with Him through all the days of His ministry. And there is something else, of chiefest moment, yet unnamed. They were learning His truth. His mighty works were teaching them, but He Himself was greater than His words or His works; and as they lived with Him day by day they came to know Him, and His spirit penetrated them. That spirit showed itself not only in His public teachings, but sometimes more beautifully and impressively still in simple unconscious acts in the region of the private life, and always in the tone and character of their intercourse. Slowly, but surely, the disciples acquired His habits of thought, His point of view, His instinctive feeling. To the end the difference rather than the resemblance may strike us; nevertheless at the end the men are changed, the disciples are like their Master. ¶ Christ is not merely a truth to be believed, but a way to be trodden, a life to be lived. We get to know Christ, as fellow-travellers, fellow-workers, fellow-soldiers get to know one another, by mingling their lives together. It is ever in what we know to be our best moods that we find ourselves most in sympathy with Christ; when we work more faithfully by the light of conscience. It is in what we know are our worst moods that the light of faith begins to grow dim: when we are disturbed, tempted, distracted, out of sympathy with our conscience. 2. Whom did He choose? Was it the wise and learned? They would have tormented the simplicity of His teaching with endless commentaries, and wrought it into intellectual schemes, so that the shepherd on the hill and the slave in the city could not have understood it. Too well we know what the wisdom of the world in the brains of the priesthood has made of the words of Christ. If the work of theologians had been done at the beginning of Christianity, we should have had no simple Christianity at all. Then did He choose the rich and those in high position? No, truly, that would not have been wise. For they would have weighted His goodness with the cares and deceitfulness of wealth, with the ambition and meanness of society. And what could rich men have done with a doctrine which bade them give away wealth, which told the business man to take no thought for the morrow, which said to the courtier, “There is only one King, and He is in heaven,” which told the man in society, “There is only one nobility, and the slave who carries your litter may have it as well as you”? Did He choose the religious leaders? How could He? They would dissolve His charity, His mercy, and His tolerance, in the acid of their theological hatreds. They would cast His religion into a fixed form which would destroy its variety and flexibility so that it could not enter into the characters of diverse nations and become the universal gospel; they would subject it to their own ecclesiastical interests, and it would cease to be the interest of mankind. Did He choose the politicians—those among the Jews who conspired against the Romans, or those who held to the Romans? Why should He? That would have made His gospel a gospel for the Jews only, and not for Greek and Roman and barbarian. To choose the politicians would have been to propagate His truth by political craft or by the sword. It was not the way of Christ to set up the Kingdom of God by the worship of the devil. None of these He made His messengers. He chose the unlearned and the poor and the outcast of the theologians, and the unintercsted in politics, and the men and women of whom society knew nothing; the fisherman and the publican, the Pharisee who left the priestly ranks, the rich who left their riches, the Israelite without guile, the cottager, the sinner and the harlot who were contrite, but chiefly—for with those in His favourite haunts He most companioned—the fishermen of the Lake of Galilee. ¶ All the world knows how in the fifth century a few fishermen driven from the mainland laid in reefs of mud and sand the foundation-stones of Venice. These heroic souls in deep desolation drove stakes and built their huts in the slime of the lagoon; then little by little a city of incomparable splendour rose out of the sea—a city of superb palaces, gorgeous temples, crowded marts, of museums, picture galleries, and libraries, of wonderful loveliness, power, and riches: the ideal shrine of poets and painters, of all worshippers of the perfect and Divine. So another handful of fishermen in great travail laid in the mud and misery of the old world the foundation-stones of the Church of Christ, the City of God, the spiritual Venice. It was built on the sea, established on the floods; it has been edified through ages of strife and conflict. 3. Two things alone were necessary to discipleship. (1) Loyalty.—The bond of union was to be nothing less than a personal attachment. It was not to be the interest which a thinker feels in his thought or a reformer in his principles, but the devotion of a disciple for his Master. Jesus of Nazareth, not the Messiah of Jewish expectation, or the Christ of later dogma, still less the floating ideal of ages of Christian sentiment, but the historical Person whose life is recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, exercised authority and commanded obedience. He made loyalty to Him the sovereign principle of discipleship. The soul of all religion, and especially of the Christian religion, is loyalty to a great personality who images to the imagination and reverence of the race that still greater personality, otherwise unrevealed, and without a name. It is allegiance to truth and goodness, not as these are formulated in abstract propositions and maxims, but as they are incarnated in a noble life. And so it may be said that Christianity has not begun for the individual or the community until both have given to its Founder a confidence and personal attachment they would be ashamed to limit, and equally ashamed not to confess before all the world. Nothing can take the place of this high-born fealty. It is the very life of the Christian faith, the inspiration to service and sacrifice without which men will never be induced to bear loss and suffering, grief and reproach, with resignation and heroism. (2) Teachableness.—The loyalty of discipleship must precede understanding, and not understanding discipleship. No one would pretend, of course, that the closest companionship with our Lord in this life will completely solve the problems which human existence presents. In part it does actually solve them; for the rest, it enables us, as nothing else can do, to acquiesce in their being, for the time, insoluble. The Christian alone can rest content to see now “through a glass darkly,” because he alone can hope to see hereafter “face to face.” Yet even here the revelation given to those who persist in discipleship is wonderfully full. To them, in a very real sense, it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to others in parables. Intellectually, these others may he much superior to many of the disciples. They may take a real interest in religious questions. They may have studied the historical and moral evidence for Christianity with scrupulous care. They may have the language of theology in familiar use. And yet all this amounts to so many parables for them; the spiritual words they utter are but counters in a game of logic, they do not stand for glowing realities which penetrate every moment of life. And so these people are still dissatisfied. When this or that difficulty is fully explained, then, they declare, they will be only too glad to be disciples. Alas, they still regard understanding as the antecedent condition instead of the ultimate result of discipleship! Only to those who have sojourned at the Master’s side is it given to know the mysteries. Andrew’s lesson began the very first day he spoke to Jesus. “I should like,” says Dr. J. D. Jones, “to have had some record of what took place in our Lord’s humble lodging that night. When I think of our Saviour’s wonderful conversation with Nicodemus, and His equally wonderful conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, I feel I would give worlds to have had a report of the conversation that took place between Jesus and these seeking souls that night. It would be a never-to-be-forgotten conversation, I know; and just as Paul used to look back to the great light on the way to Damascus as the supreme experience of his life, so Andrew and John used to date everything back to this their first conversation with Jesus. I do not know what He said; but as they listened to Him, their hearts—like that of John Wesley in the Moravian meeting-house—were strangely warmed, and before they left that night they had found their Messiah.” ¶ More than two hundred years ago there was a young probationer in the Church of Scotland named Thomas Boston. He was about to preach before the parish of Simprin. In contemplation of the eventful visit he sat down to meditate and pray. “Reading in secret, my heart was touched with Matthew 4:19: ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ My soul cried out for the accomplishing of that to me, and I was very desirous to know how I might follow Christ so as to be a fisher of men, and for my own instruction in that point I addressed myself to the consideration of it in that manner.” Out of that honest and serious consideration there came that quaint and spiritually profound and suggestive book, A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing. All through Thomas Boston’s book one feels the fervent intensity of a spirit eager to know the mind of God in the great matter of fishing for souls. Without that passion our inquiry is worthless. “The all-important matter in fishing is to have the desire to learn.” Of all the honours man may wear, Of all his titles proudly stored, No lowly palm this name shall bear, “The first to follow Christ the Lord.” Such name thou hast, who didst incline, Fired with the great Forerunner’s joy, Homeward to track the steps divine, And watch the Saviour’s best employ. II THE MISSIONARY The day after Andrew’s conversion was the day on which he became a soul-winner. The new-found life in Christ always longs to impart itself. The wonderful things which Christ whispers to a man in secret burn within him until he can tell them to other ears. When the pilgrim in Bunyan’s story had been relieved of his burden, as he knelt before the Cross, his joy was so great that he wanted to tell it to the trees and stars and water-brooks and birds; to breathe it out to everything and every one. ¶ “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,” sings one Psalmist; and the redeemed, I will add, simply cannot help saying so. “I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart, I have declared thy righteousness and thy salvation,” sings another Psalmist. Yes, when a man has experienced the salvation of God the word is like a fire in his bones, and he must declare it. ¶ I received a letter from a very sagacious Scotch friend (belonging, as I suppose most Scotch people do, to the class of persons who call themselves “religious”), containing this marvellous enunciation of moral principle, to be acted upon in difficult circumstances, “Mind your own business.” It is a serviceable principle enough for men of the world, but a surprising one in the mouth of a person who professes to be a Bible obeyer. For, as far as I remember the tone of that obsolete book, “our own” is precisely the last business which it ever tells us to mind. It tells us often to mind God’s business, often to mind other people’s business; our own, in any eager or earnest way, not at all. “What thy hand findeth to do.” Yes; but in God’s fields, not ours. One can imagine the wiser fishermen of the Galilean lake objecting to Peter and Andrew that they were not minding their business. 1. What was the power that made Andrew a missionary? It was the intensity of spirit that Christ stirred in His followers. He had the prophet’s power of kindling passion, of awaking youth in those who loved Him. When He spoke, men rose from the dead! And of course they did great things. All their powers put forth leaves and blossoms and flowers. These who saw and heard men who had come under the influence of Christ wondered, as one who has seen a wood in winter wonders when he sees the same wood in spring. They took notice of them, it is said, that they had been with Jesus. The mocking crowd thought it was new wine, but it was the new wine of a new life. It made men a new creation in Christ Jesus. And that is our work. Are we doing it with all our heart? Is it our first thought? Does it possess our soul with passion? Is it our greatest and divinest joy to save and rescue men for God to a life of love, purity, sacrifice, progress, and immortality? My work! I say. How can that be? I am not an apostle, not a preacher, not authorized; and I have my own work in the world to do. Not a preacher? If we know God and love Him, how can we help telling men about Him; how can we help saving men whom we see lost, suffering, and sinful? Not authorized? The Apostles were not set apart as a special class, nor do their so-called descendants form one. Ministers are set apart, not to be a class, but as representatives of that which all men should be. They are specially called to be fishers of men in order that they may teach all who hear them to be fishers of men. We know that is true when we think about it, when we begin to care for doing the thing itself. The moment a man asks himself what he can do in this way, he finds the work ready to his hand, close beside him. The moment we have the heart to do it, do we mean to say that we can help doing it? Not save, help, console, uplift, teach the sinful, the weak, the pained, the broken-hearted, the ignorant; not rush into this work with joy? We cannot help being fishers of men, and we ask no authority for that Divine toil. It is human work, and it makes us men to do it. It is Divine work, and it makes us one with God to do it. ¶ “Oh, for a church of Andrews!” I do not know that many ministers would want a church of Peters; it would be too quarrelsome. I am quite willing for Thomas to go to the City Temple and Simon Zelotes to Whitefield’s. Let me have a church of Andrews—of simple, loving men, content to bring people to Jesus. Men like Andrew are so valuable because everybody can be a man like Andrew. Not a greatly gifted man, but a greatly faithful man; not a man who would dispute with Peter as to who should be primate, or with John and James as to who shall sit on the left hand of Christ and who on the right, but a man who simply and humbly and lovingly does the work that lies nearest to him. He surely is of those last in the world’s estimate who are first in the Kingdom of God. 2. Andrew began his missionary activity in his own home. This is what the Gospel says: “He findeth first his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messiah. He brought him unto Jesus.” Young men and young women are ambitious to engage in missionary work or to enter the ministry. They are all on fire with the romance of missions; they want to go to those vast mysterious regions where multitudes sit in darkness, or to prove their preaching gifts before great audiences at home; and, meanwhile, they almost despise the humbler evangelical work which is waiting at their own doors. But the first proof that they are fit for the larger call is found in their willingness to answer the smaller and immediate call. Every zealous Christian should begin at home. He wants to make his light shine as a witness there among his own kinsfolk. For these are, and must be, more to us than others—children, brethren, parents, husband, and wife. No one, whether young or old, can rejoice in the light and love of God without anxiety and intense desire to make every member of the home circle partner with him in these things. It is always painful to think that they are separated from us by a barrier of unbelief; that they who have so many dear things in common with us have no communion with us in the best and dearest thing of all. And every Christian who thinks seriously of this finds it such a trouble to him that he cannot help bearing some sort of witness for Christ in the home. Never does he kneel in prayer without supplicating for the near and dear ones. He longs to have them persuaded. Oh yes, and he will endeavour, God helping him, to make his whole life in the home a speaking witness for Christ—a gospel that utters itself either in words or without words, a gospel that shows itself in sympathy, forbearance, kindly actions, gentleness, cheerfulness, unselfishness. You remember what Jesus said to the man out of whom He had cast a legion of devils, and who, in his gratitude, wished to remain at Jesus’ side: “Go home,” said Jesus, “go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee.” He was to become a missionary, and his first sphere of service was to be his own home. That is exactly what Andrew did without being ordered—he became a missionary to his own home. The first member of a family who is brave enough to show his religion where all around in the household is indifference and worldliness; the first little boy in the school dormitory who—like Arthur in the story of Tom Brown’s Schooldays—dares to kneel down and say his prayers by his bedside, as he had knelt in his nursery at home; the first soldier in the barracks who has the courage to rebuke the profanity and impurity which prevail around him; the first pitman who raises his voice against the gambling and the intemperance of his companions—these, and such as these, are the true heroes of God, of whom Andrew was the forerunner. ¶ The Rev. J. W. Dickson, of St. Helens, who was one of Dr. Paton’s students at Nottingham Institute, in his notes of the Principal’s obiter dicta, quotes him as saying: “There is no place so difficult to begin work for Jesus as the home. Said a servantgirl of her master, a Wesleyan minister: ‘Many conversions at chapel, but never a word for poor Polly; I do wish I could find Jesus.’ We [ministers] think of congregations, of young men, of the outsider; but we need to think of home and of ourselves,” 3. But Andrew’s labours were not confined to his own home. We read in the Gospels that he was the means of introducing to Jesus those Greeks who were so anxious to see Him. Nothing stirred our Lord’s soul as did the coming of those Greeks. They were the first-fruits of the Gentiles, and in vision Christ saw the Kingdom stretching from shore to shore and from the river unto the ends of the earth. And it was Andrew who brought them. We find in this incident a repetition of the characteristic which Andrew had showed at the first. He is the man who quietly and by personal efforts brings men to Jesus. Some of the disciples would have hesitated to introduce foreigners to Christ. They would, perhaps, have rejected the notion that the Messiah was sent to the Gentiles, or at least would have feared the possible effect on the populace of throwing Christ into association with outsiders. Philip was undecided what to do till he had consulted Andrew. But the latter seems to have better understood his Master. He felt that Jesus would be glad to help and save any; and it was just in the line of his habits to be thus the medium of leading inquiring minds to the Saviour of them all. ¶ St. Andrew is styled by the Greeks Protoclet, or first-called: and by the Venerable Bede, Introductor to Christ, a name aptly assigned to that large-hearted Saint who at the outset of his ministry brought St. Peter to the Messiah, and at subsequent periods introduced to his Lord’s notice not only certain Greek suppliants, but even a lad who had five loaves and two small fishes. After the apostolic dispersion from Jerusalem, St. Andrew, preaching the Crucified from place to place, travelled, according to tradition, into Russia, and as far as the frontiers of Poland. At Patrae in Achaia, having kept the faith and exasperated the Proconsul by a harvest of souls, he finished his course. On an Xshaped cross, constructed as is alleged of olive-wood, and to him the pledge of assured peace; to his yearning soul less the olivetwig of the pilgrim dove than the very ark of rest; on such a cross after ignominious scourging he made his last bed, and from such a bed he awoke to that rest which remaineth to the people of God. The outburst of his joy on beholding his cross has been handed down to us: “Hail, precious cross, consecrated by my Lord’s Body, jewelled by His Limbs. I come to thee exultant, embrace thou me with welcome. O good cross, beautified by my Lord’s beauty, I have ardently loved thee, long have I panted seeking thee. Now found, now made ready to my yearnings, embrace thou me, separate me from mankind, uplift me to my Muster, that He who redeemed me on thee may receive me by thee.” III THE BROTHER 1. There are many very useful people in the world who are not appreciated because they are overshadowed by someone especially conspicuous. They are dwarfed by comparison with a giant. They are forgotten because the attention of men is fixed on the greater one near them. They are like tall trees and huge rocks on a mountain side: tall and huge though they be, they look small by contrast with the great peak itself. Such people may be really useful, worthy of study and imitation; their lives may be terrible tragedies; the pathos of their existence may be unutterable, or the value of their work may be actually more than that of another who towers over them; but by reason of the other’s nearness they are passed by without notice. We are often quite arbitrary in the selection of our models and heroes. We confine our admiration to a few whom, indeed, it is scarcely possible to imitate, while scores of others present excellences which are not less worthy of praise, and which may be more nearly within our reach. They are cast into the shade, however, by the more conspicuous object near which it is their fortune to be. So was it with Andrew. He was Simon Peter’s brother. He was more distinguished, therefore, by his connexion with Simon than by what lie was or did. No figure stands out more prominently in the annals of the Early Church than that of Peter. How often his name is mentioned in the Gospels! How much we hear of him in the earlier part of the Book of Acts! What a great number of precious practical lessons has he been the means of our learning! What a mighty character was his—that Luther of the Apostolic Age—towering, as Luther did, above all but a few of his fellow-Christians! But the very fact that to distinguish Andrew more clearly it was easiest to call him Simon Peter’s brother has tended to obscure the merit of the less renowned disciple. He is presented to us in the gospel history in the shadow of his brother’s giant shape. This puts him at a disadvantage. Not that Christian historians have been wrong in their estimate of the two—Peter was the greater; but that Christ, by choosing Andrew also to the apostleship, recognized his worth, where history has scarcely done so. He is a fair type, we doubt not, of multitudes of useful people whose worth is unrecognized because men either see or are looking for someone of very extraordinary characteristics. 2. Thus Andrew occupied an uncertain and most difficult position. If we look at the lists of the Apostles given to us in the Gospels, we find Andrew’s name always mentioned in the first group, along with those of Peter and James and John. And yet, when we come to examine the gospel history, we discover that he was certainly not on an equality with the great three. He was not admitted into the intimacy of Christ; he was not made a witness of the great experiences of Christ as were they. Andrew was left behind when Jesus took Peter and James and John to witness His first struggle with the power of death in Jairus’ house. Andrew was left behind when Jesus took Peter and James and John to behold His transfiguration glory on the Holy Mount. Andrew was left behind when Jesus took Peter and James and John to share His sorrow in the garden. Of all places in the Apostolate, this that Andrew held was the most calculated to test the qualities of a man’s soul. Andrew was “betwixt and between.” He was above the second, and not quite in the first rank. And of all places to test a man’s character, that was the place. It would have been an intolerable place for James and John. With their keen and absorbing desire to be first they would have turned sick with envy had they occupied Andrew’s position. But it is to Andrew’s everlasting credit and honour that, in this most trying and terrible place, he preserved the sweetness and serenity of his temper. He did not mope or murmur when Peter and James and John were taken and he was left. No trace of jealousy found a lodging in his large and generous heart. He was content to be passed over; he was content to fill a subordinate place. He was not as gifted as Peter or James or John. But he had that rare ornament, the brightest gem in the whole chaplet of Christian graees—he had the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. And in that great day when judgment will go by character and not by gifts, when first shall be last and last first, it may be that this man Andrew, this self-forgetful, self-effacing Andrew, will be found among the chiefest in the Kingdom of God. ¶ The longer I live, the more I learn to dread and hate that ugly, universal and well-nigh ineradicable sin of envy. “Love envieth not,” says Paul. Applying that test, how many of us can lay claim to the possession of Christian love? ¶ Lord, I read at the transfiguration that Peter, James, and John were admitted to behold Christ; but Andrew was excluded. So again at the reviving of the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, these three were let in, and Andrew shut out. Lastly, in the agony the aforesaid three were called to be witnesses thereof, and still Andrew left behind. Yet he was Peter’s brother, and a good man, and an apostle; why did not Christ take the two pair of brothers? was it not pity to part them? But methinks I seem more offended thereat than Andrew himself was, whom I find to express no discontent, being pleased to be accounted a loyal subject for the general, though he was no favourite in these particulars. Give me to be pleased in myself, and thankful to Thee, for what I am, though I be not equal to others in personal perfections. For such peculiar privileges are courtesies from Thee when given, and no injuries to us when denied. 3. Andrew appears a faithful, useful man, doing good work in a quiet way, even in advance of Peter in practical suggestions and, perhaps, in the understanding of Christ’s mission; not fitted, indeed, to fill his brother’s place, not the man to stand up at Pentecost and preach to thousands, but the man to add by constant, personal, practical work to the power of the common cause. Every Simon Peter needs an Andrew, every preacher needs the practical workers to unite with him, just as every general needs subordinate officers. If Andrew be undervalued because of his brother’s brilliance and publicity, he will not be when we remember how little the latter could have done, humanly speaking, without the aid of the former. Beyond doubt the Master’s choice was good. Simon Peter’s brother was as useful in his way and as truly an Apostle as Simon Peter himself. ¶ There are some men who will only work if they are put into prominent positions; they will not join the army unless they can be made officers. James and John had a good deal of that spirit; they wanted to be first in the Kingdom. They and Peter and the rest were always wrangling which should be greatest. But Andrew never took part in those angry debates; he had no craving for prominence. Andrew anticipated Christina Rossetti, and said to his Lord— Give me the lowest place; not that I dare Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died That I might live and share Thy glory by Thy side. Give me the lowest place: or if for me That lowest place too high, make one more low Where I may sit and see my God and love Thee so. ¶ Mark Guy Pearse is an expert fisher, and rarely does a year pass without his paying a visit to the rivers of Northumberland. And he has more than once laid down what he considers to be the three essential rules for all successful fishing, and concerning which he says, “It is no good trying if you don‘t mind them. The first rule is this: keep yourself out of sight; and secondly, keep yourself further out of sight; and thirdly, keep yourself further out of sight!” Mr. Pearse’s counsel is confirmed by every fisher. A notable angler, writing recently in one of our daily papers, summed up all his advice in what he proclaims a golden maxim: “Let the trout see the angler, and the angler will catch no trout.” Now this is a first essential in the art of man-fishing: the suppression and eclipse of the preacher. - via Logos 5 #devotionalforsuchatimeasthis #christjesus #vineofchristministries #theword #studyscripture #god #biblestudy #bible #jesus #faith
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 19:45:59 +0000