(446) CHAPTER 12

From Job.

Of Christ walking on the Sea. 

[Passage quoted, Job ix. 7.]

(b) THESE words also can only apply to our Lord and Saviour, as the Creator of the Universe, God's Word. For He is the only One ever said to have walked on the sea, which He did when Incarnate, having taken the body and form of man, when He—

"22. constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. 23. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come he was there alone. 24. But the ship was now in the midst of the (c) sea. ... 26. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; - 177 - and they cried out for fear. 27. But straightway he spake unto them saying, Be of good cheer: It is I; be not afraid."

Now it would not appear to agree with orthodox theology to understand the oracle as referring to God Most High and the Father of the Universe. For what reverence or propriety is there in talking of the God of the Universe walking on the sea? How could He be thought to walk on the sea Who includes all things, and fills heaven and earth, and says, "The heaven is my throne and the earth my footstool?" And "I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?" But our Lord and Saviour "emptied himself and took the form of a slave, and being found in fashion as a man," offering a proof to His disciples of His Divine Power which eluded the multitude, is described as having walked on the waves of the sea, and to have rebuked the storm and the winds, when they who saw Him were astonished and said, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? "And this was a symbol of something greater, that other spiritual sea, in which a dragon is said to have been made to be mocked by the angels of God, on which also our Lord and Saviour walked and is said to have crushed the head of the dragon (447) therein and of the other subject dragons, according to the words, "Thou hast bruised the heads of the dragons in the water, and thou hast bruised the heads of the dragon": clearly of another spiritual sea of which He says again in the Psalms, "I went into the depths of the sea." And recounting to Job the things concerning himself:

" Hast thou gone to the spring of the sea, and hast thou walked in the steps of the depth? The gates of (b) death did they open to thee in fear, and did the porters of Hades fear when they saw thee?"

Thus when He walked on the sea in our human life, and rebuked the winds and the waves, He performed a natural symbolism of something unspeakable.