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THE MIND OF THE MASTER

BESIDE THE BONNIE BRIER BRUSH

By Ian Maclaren. lamo. Cloth.

11.

•,^..25

" There is a certain bloom of sensibility and feeling about
Ian Maclaren's work which, in its purity and fidelity to
truth in character, uplifts and inspires in a time when
spontaneity is so largely lacking in literature." — Outlook,

THE DAYS OF AULD LANG SYNE

By Ian Maclaren, i2mo. Cloth, $1.25

" There is, we think, a sense in which the new volume is
not merely an addition but a supplement to its predecessor.
In ' Besicie the Bonnie Brier Bush ' were passages, and
indeed whole stories, which were masterstrokes or master-
pieces of a fine poignant pathos, or a dry yet genial humor,
but the former preponderated, and gave tone and expression
to the book. It may be doubted whether the humorous
quality of that Scots canniness which stands out most con-
spicuously in a difficult regotiation has ever been rendered
with happier fineness of observation or intimacy of touch
than in the opening study, * A Triumph in Diplomacy.' " —
Daily Chronicle.

i6mo. Cloth, 50 cents.

THE UPPER ROOM

By Ian Maclaren.
net.

" They are eloquent sermons, all the more effective be-
cause they are strongly marked by the qualities of mind and
skill in writing which have gained their author his con-
spicuous successes in another department of literature."' —
Scotsman.

"The same insight, sympathy, and tenderness which
characterize this author, are felt in every pay« of this little
book." — Endeavor Herald,

TORONTO: FLSMING H. REVELL COMPANY

The Mind of the Master

''By John PVatson, D.D.

(Ian cMaclaren)

TORONTO:
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY.

46031

ujfaso^)^^

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada,

in the year iSg6, by iIodder & Stoughton,

at the Department of Agriculture.

TO MY PEOPLE

IK GRATEFUL RECOGNITION

OF THEIR

CHARITY, LOYALTY, AND

PATIENCE

CONTENTS

PAOB

I. JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH ,

III. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER

IV. AGELESS LIFE .

• €,•••

V. SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL ... 87

VI. THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS

• •

107

VII. FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

• •

131

VIII. THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 1 57

IX. DEVOTION TO A PERSON THE DYNAMIC

OF RELIGION.

• • • •

177

viii THE MIND OF THE MASTER

PAOE

X. JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE , . 201

XI. OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH . 225

XII. FATHERHOOD THE FINAL IDEA OF GOD 249

Xin. THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH

XIV. THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE

XV. THE KINGDOM OF GOD .

^ • • • •

273

29s

317

' i

■^'i

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER

When Jesus on one occasion strictly en-
joined His disciples that they should not
allow any of their number to usurp master-
ship over his brethren, and commanded them
to acknowledge Him as the alone Lord of
the conscience, it is evident that He had in
His mind the intolerable bondage of thought
mto which the religious people of His day had
fallen. His ov/n disheartening experience as
the chief of God's prophets lent: a keen edge
to His words, and are a complete illustration of
their meaning.

No teacher ever gave such pledges of
Divine authority as Jesus ; no people could
have been better prepared for His evangel
than the Jews. They had been set apart
as in a cloister that they might hear the
Divin*. voice, and a succession of prophets had

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

•

come from the presence of God to declare the
Divine will. A nation had been trained in the
hope of the Messiah to wait for the dayspring
from on high and the fulness of God's king-
dom. It might have been expected that this
well-tilled field would have been open soil for
Jesus' words, and one daies to believe that
there might have been an auspicious seedtime
had the Jews passed, say, from Isaiah to Jesus,
or had Jesus come while the glow of Daniel's
visions was still fresh.

Unfortunately between the last of the great
prophets and the advent of Jesus there came
in one of the secondary periods which follow
o.i an age of inspiration, when the intellectual
consciousness of a people, hitherto running full
and free, comes to a standstill and stagnates.
No teacher of the first order arose to continue
the stream of revelation, but in his place ap-
peared that lower order of mind to which the
letter is everything, on which the Spirit never
breathes. The scribes sat in the seat of the
prophets, and revelation was succeeded by ex-
position. Under the hand of rabbis without
insight or imagination the life departed from
Hebrew thought, and nothing was left but

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER 5

empty bloodless forms, as when a flower is
plucked and dried. Theological pedantry had
done its work in the days of Jesus, and had rC'
duced the sublime ethics of the Old Testamen'
to a wearisome absurdity. The beneficent law
of rest, so full of sympathy with struggling
people, was translated into a series of reg;ula-
tions of peddling detail and incredible childish-
ness. The clean heart of the prophets sank
into an endless washing of hands, and filial
piety was wantonly outraged that the temple
taxes might be swollen. Jewish faith had be-
come a painted show, a husk in which the ker-
nel had withered.

It is, on first thoughts, inexplicable that any
body of religious people — and one must admit
that the Jews were the most religious people
on the face of the earth — should have refused
the luminous and winsome teaching of Jesus,
and actually sent Him to the Cross for His
Evangel. When one thinks a little longer, and
puts himself in the place of the contemporaries
of Jesus, it comes home to him that they were
not really able to receive the truth, and that he
himself might, in the same circumstances,
have condemned Jesus as a blasphemer. For

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the irresistible attraction of Jesus, as it now
seems to us, was His reasonableness, and
that was shown by His appeal at every turn to
reality. * This is what I say, and you will see
that this is what ought to be,' was ever Jesus'
argument ; and to an honest mind, without bias
or preoccupation, such a plea was unanswer-
able. But if the mind had long lost touch
with truth at first hand, and was possessed by
traditions about truth, then Jesus could have
no access, and indeed might be only offensive.
Jesus and the Jews were ever at cross purposes
in this matter. He made His appeal past
tradition to truth, and they disallowed this ap-
peal and judged Him by tradition ; and by this
standard there can be no doubt He was a
heretic. '

Jesus' attitude to tradition was quite clear
and consistent. It is not to be supposed that
He denied the right or propriety of Jewish
scholars studying and theorizing about the Old
Testament Scriptures, for this were to cramp
the just exercise of human reason. He would
no doubt consider it a fitting tribute to revela-
tion that earnest and able men should reason
truth out into her farthest conclusions and les-

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER 7

sons for the guidance both of conscience and
intellect. As it happened, the work of a sterile
age did not yield much either of light or
strength to generations following. But that
was its misfortune, not its crime ; the rabbis so
far were within their rights and their duty.
Theology, either in the department of dogma
or ethics, requires no justification ; it only calls
for limitation. As soon as they proposed to
bind their results upon their fellow-men with
authority, the scribes passed beyond their prov-
ince and were guilty of treason against the free
commonwealth of God's children. As dicta-
tors of faith and manners, Jesus resisted them
without reserve or compromise, and forbade His
followers to follow in their steps. The spiritual
arrogance of the rabbis had been a blight on
Judaism, and Jesus desired that His new re-
ligion should retain a perennial freshness.
There was only one guarantee that Christianity
would not share the same fate, and that was
the continual return to Jesus.

When Jesus laid this injunction on His
Apostles, He surely anticipated the history of
His faith ; and circumstances have justified His
foresight. It is a necessity of the human mind

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

to theorize about truth ; it is a calamity to sub-
stitute theories for truth. One almost despairs
at times because we seem the victims of an
irresistible tendency to ignore the real, and to
be content with the artificial. No sooner has
some man of genius painted a picture or con-
ceived a poem, or even made a speech with
moral intention, than people set themselves to
invent amazing meanings and applications, and
raise such a dust of controversy that the orig-
inal effect is utterly lost. We are amused by
the societies which are the custodians of Rus-
kin and Browning, but none can be indifferent
to the manipulation of Jesus' words. If Jesus'
delicate poetry be reduced to prose, and the
fair, carved work of His parables be used for
the building of prisons, and His lovely portrait
of God be * restored ' with grotesque colour-
ing, and His lucid principles of life be twisted
into harassing regulations, then Jesus has been
much wronged, and the world has suffered irrep-
arable loss. This is the disaster Jesus dread-
ed, and no one will deny that it has, in some
degree at least, come to pass.

The footsteps of the holy Apostles had
not died away — concerning whose relation

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER 9

to Jesus something will be said — before the
Fathers arose, and became, with the lapse of
time, lords of the Christian conscience. Great
theologians of the Middle Ages gradually took
rank with the Fathers, while council after coun-
cil, from Nice to Trent, saddled their accumu-
lated dogmas on the Church. Chief Reform-
ers almost literally dictated creeds to nations,
and the pragmatical seventeenth century forged
a yoke of doctrines so minute, tedious, and un-
reasonable that it became too irksome even for
our more patient fathers. Every side of truth
and every rite of Jesus was turned into a test
by which honest-minded and simple-hearted
disciples of Jesus were tried, condemned, cast
out, burned. Unity was as much wanting as
charity, for Christians in the matter of creed
agreed in nothing except in ignoring the Gos-
pels and persecuting one another. Romans
rest on the councils down to the one that af-
firmed the infallibility of the pope ; an An-
glican goes back to the early councils and the
Fathers ; a Lutheran measures his faith by the
Confession of Augsburg ; and the Scottish
Church seems to suppose that Christianity was
only once thoroughly understood, when an as-

■J'

10 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

sembly of English divines met at Westminster.
Bodies of Christian folk have also ignored
Jesus' warning against Rabbinism, and have
surrendered their birthright by allowing them-
selves to be called by the names of men, and
so we have Socinians, Wesleyans, Cameronians,
Morisonians, and what not. One denomina-
tion is called, with surely some slight want of
humour, if not of reverence, * Lady Hunting-
don's Connection;' and so it is made evident
that a masterful woman can actually found a
Church and lay down a creed. It comes as a
shock on one to attend some heresy trial, and
hear the prosecution quoting a foreign divine
of almost miraculous woodenness and the de-
fendant taking refuge in a second-rate com-
mentator. If you were to ask, as is very natu-
ral, why neither will refer at once and finally
to the words of Jesus, who can hardly have
been silent on any point of importance, it would
be at once explained that such a reference is an
irrelevancy and a subterfuge ; and one must ad-
mit that it would be an attempt to get behind
the rabbis to Jesus. But does it matter much
what any rabbi says ? and is not the only vital
question, What saith the Master ?

JESU

o OUR SUPREME TEACHER ii

uld
an
ad-

ind
ich
Ital

There are certain rights which are legal ;
there are certain rights which are natural. No
law can take away the latter, nor can a man
divest himself of them by any form of engage-
ment ; and among the inherent rights of a Chris-
tian man is his appeal to Jesus as the one Judge
of truth. It has often lain dormant in the
Church ; it has at times been powerfully exer-
cised. Some one discovers that the water of
life is clearer and sweeter from the spring than
in a cistern, and shows the grass-grown path to
the spring. Perhaps there has been no long
period without some voice summoning Chris-
tians to break away from the tyranny of tradi-
tion and return to the liberty of Jesus. This
has been the work of all Reformers from Tau-
ler to Luther, from Luther to Wesley -to un-
earth the evangel of Jesus from the mass of
dogmas and rites which have overlaid it. Two
parties have been in recurring conflict — the
Traditionalists, who insist, ' This is what our
fathers have said, and what you must believe ;*
and the Evangelists, who declare, * This is what
Jesus has said, and this only will we believe.*
When Traditionalism has the upper hand, it
burns its opponents, as the Roman Church did

xa THE MIND OF THE MASTER

John Huss, or annoys them, as the Church of
England did Robertson of Brighton ; when Evan-
gelism is strong, it clears an open space where
men can breathe and see Jesus. Fy-and-by
each evangelical movement loses its free spirit,
and settles down into a new form of tradition-
alism. Brave hands clear away the covering
from the ancient temple of truth, and then the
generation following allow the sand-drift to
cover its columns once more. It is a long bat-
tle between a handful of faithful men and
the desert, and too often the desert has
won.

The spirit of our day is so resentful of tra-
ditionalism as to be even impatient of theology,
which is foolish ; and to threaten faith, which
would be ruin. No one, however, need be
alarmed, for there is good reason to believe
that the end will be the toleration of a noble
science and the re-establishment of faith.
When workmen come with pickaxe and shovel,
it is either to destroy or to discover, and the
aim of present thought is discovery. Were
earnest men rebelling against ancient dogmas
because they were an integral part of Jesus'
teaching, this would be a very serious matter.

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER 13

the

lere

las

tus'

ter.

This would be nothing short of a deliberate
attack on Jesus. If they be only endeavouring
to correct the results of theological science by
the actual teaching of Jesus, then surely noth-
ing could be more hopeful. This must issue
in the revival of Christianity. There is no
question that for some time dogmatic theology
has been at a discount. They say that both
the Fathers and the Puritans are unsaleable,
and this is to be regretted. But there can be
little question that Biblical theology is at a
premium, and this is of far more importance.
Never have there been so many Lives of Jesus ;
never have His words been so anxiously studied.
This is as it ought to be, and every Protestant
may well lift up his head. For what did the
Reformers of the sixteenth century contend,
but the right of Christian men to build their
faith at first hand on the words of Holy Scrip-
ture ? We are living in a second Reformation,
and it were an immense blunder for us to go
back on the principle of all Reformations, and
insist directly or indirectly that Protestant
councils should come in between Christians
and Christ. * When I say the religion of Prot-
estants,' wrote Chillingworth, ' I do not un-

14 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

derstand the doctrines of Luther, or Calvin, or
Mclanchthon, nor the Confession of Augsburg
or Geneva, nor the Catechism of Heidelberg,
nor the Articles of the Church of England ;
no, nor the harmony of all Protestant Confes-
sions, but that wherein they all agree and
which they subscribe with a greater harmony
as the perfect rule of their faith and actions,
that is, the Bible.* Perhaps the ground princi-
ple of one Reformation was never more admir-
ably stated : the principle of our Reformation
is an advance along the same line. The re-
ligion of Protestants, or let us say Christians, is
not the Bible in all its parts, but first of all that
portion which is its soul, by which the teach-
ing of Prophets and Apostles must itself be
judged — the very words of Jesus.

As soon as any body of men band themselves
together for a common object — whether it be
making a railway or regenerating a world —
they must come to an understanding, and
promise loyalty. This is their covenant, which
no man need accept unless he please, but
which, after acceptance, he must keep. When
Jesus founded that unique society which He
called the Kingdom of God, and we prefer to

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER 15

call the Church, it was nccessaiy He should
lay down its basis, and this is what He did in
the Sermon on the Mount. For we ought not
to think of that sermon as a nr.ore detailed re-
port of one of His numerous addresses, which
often sprang from unexpected circumstances.
It was not a defence against the Pharisee, like
the 15th chapter of St. Luke, or an explanation
to the disciples, like the 13th of St. Matthew.
It was an elaborate and deliberate utterance,
made by arrangement, and to a select audience.
It was Christ's manifesto, and the constitution
of Christianity. When Jesus opened His
mouth, His new society was in the air. When
He ceased, every one knew its nature, and also
on what terms a man might belong to it. It
would be very difficult to say which is the
latest creed of Christianity — there is always
some new one in formation, but there can be
no question which is the oldest. Among all
the creeds of Christendom the only one which
has the authority of Christ Himself is the Ser-
mon on the Mount. When one reads the Creed
which was given by Jesus, and the Creeds
which have been made by Christians, he cannot
fail to detect an immense difference, and it does

mmmmmmmmmm

i6 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

!iil

I'i

not matter whether he selects the Nicene
Creed or the Westminster Confession. They
all have a family likeness to each other, and a
family unlikeness to the Sermon on the Mount.
They deal with different subjects, they move in
a different atmosphere. Were tnt A*-hanasian
Creed and the Beatitudes printed in parallel
columns, one would find it hard to believe that
both documents were virtually intended to
serve the same end, to be abasisof discipleship.
It is not that they vary in details, insist-
ing on different points of one consistent cove-
nant, but that they are constructed on different
principles. When one asks, * What is a Chris-
tian?* the Creeds and the Sermon not only do
not give the same answer, but models so
contradictory that from the successive speci-
fications he could create two types with-
out any apparent resemblance. We all must
know many persons who would pass as
good Christians by the Sermon, and be cast
out by the Creeds, and many to whom the
Creeds are a broad way and the Sermon is a very
strait gate. Since there is nothing we ought
to be more anxious about than being true
Christians, there is nothing we ought to think

«■

). : '

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER 17

out more carefully than this startling va-
riety.

What must strike every person about Jesus*
sermon is that it is not metaphysical but ethi-
cal. What He lays stress upon are such points
as these • the Fatherhood of God over the
liuman family ; His perpetual and beneficent
providence for all His children ; the excellence
of simple trust in God over the earthly care of
this world ; the obligation of God's children to
be like their Father in heaven ; the paramount
importance of true and holy motives ; the
worthlessness of a merely formal righteous-
ness ; the inestimable value of heart righteous-
ness ; forgiveness of sins dependent on our for-
giving our neighbour ; the fulfilling of the law,
and the play of the tender and passive virtues.
Upon the man who desired to be His disciple
and a member of God's Kingdom were laid
the conditions of a pure heart, of a forgiving
spirit, of a helpful hand, of a heavenly purpose,
of an unworldly mind. Christ did not ground
His Christianity in thinking, or in doing, but
first of all in being. It consisted in a certain
type of soul — a spiritual shape of the inner self.
Was a man satisfied with this type, and would

wmi

i8 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

IHi

he aim at it in hh own life? Would he put
his name to the Sermon on the Mount, and
place himself under Jesus' charge for its accom-
plishment ? Then .e was a Christian accord-
ing to the conditions laid down by Jesus in the
fresh daybreak of His religion.

When one turns to the Creeds, the situation
has changed, and he finds himself in another
world. They have nothing to do with char-
acter ; they do not afford an idea of char-
acter ; they do not ask pledges of character ;
they have no place in their construction for
character. From their first word to the last
they are physical or metaphysical, not ethical.
They dwell on the relation of the three Per-
sons in the Holy Trinity ; the Divine and
human natures in the Person of Jesus ; His
miraculous birth through the power of the
Holy Ghost ; the connpction between His
sacrifice and the Divine law ; the nature of the
penalty He paid, and its reference ♦:o His Atone-
ment ; the purposes of God regarding the salva-
tion of individuals, and the collision between
human Will and Divine ; the means by which
grace is conveyed to the soul ; the mystery
of the sacraments, and the intermediate state.

iii

I,:

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER 19

From time to time those problems have been
discussed, and the conclusions of the majority
formed into dogmas which have been made the
test of Christianity. If any person should de-
cline assent to one or all of those propositions,
as the case may be, — on the ground that he
does not understand them, for instance, — and
offers instead adherence to Jesus' Creed in the
Sermon on the Mount, it would be thought to
be beside the question ; just as if any one had
declined obedience to Jesus' commandments,
and offered instead acceptance of some theory
of His Person, the Master would have refused
His discipleship with grave emphasis.

It may, of course, be urged that Jesus said
riany things afterwards which must be added
to the Sermon on the Mount, to form the com-
plete basis of Christian discipleship, and that
great discourse is sometimes belittled as an ele-
mentary utterance, to which comparatively
slight importance should now be attached. Cer-
tainly Jesus did expound and amplify the prin-
ciples of His first deliverance, but there is no
evidence that He altered the constitution of His
Kingdom either by imposing fresh conditions
or omitting the old. Did He not teach on to

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20 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the Cross that we stood to God as children to
a Father, and must do His will: that for no sin
was there or could there be forgiveness till it
was abandoned ; that the state of the soul and
not the mere outside life was everything ; that
the sacrifice of self, and not self-aggrandisement
was His method of salvation ; that love was life ?
And when He said,— * Believe in Me ; carry My
Cross,* was He not calling men to fulfil His Gos-
pel? If one had come to Christ at Capernaum
or Jerusalem, and said, * Master, there is noth-
ing I so desire as to keep Thy sayings. Wilt
Thou have me, weak and ignorant although I
be, as Thy disciple ? ' can you imagine Christ
then, or now, or at any time interposing with
a series of doctnnal tests regarding either the
being of God or the history of man ? It is im-
possible because it would be incongruous. In-
deed if Christ did revise and improve the con-
ditions of discipleship, we should learn that
from the last address in the upper room. But
what was the obligation He then laid on the
disciples' conscience, as with His dying breath ?
* This is My commandment, that ye love one
another as I have loved you.* It is the Sermon
on the Mount in brief.

t^hi

JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER

No church since the early centuries has had
the courage to formulate an ethical creed, for
even those bodies of Christians which have no
written theological creeds, yet have implicit
afifirmations or denials of doctrine as their basis.
Imagine a body of Christians who should take
their stand on the sermon of Jesus, and con-
ceive their creed on His lines. Imagine how
it would read, *I believe in the Father-
hood of God ; I believe in the words of Jesus ;
I believe in the clean heart ; I believe in the
service of love ; I believe in the unworldly life ;
I believe in th^ Beatitudes ; I promise to trust
God and follow Christ, to forgive my enemies
and to seek after the righteousness of God.'
Could any form of words be more elevated,
more persuasive, more alluring? Do they not
thrill the heart and strengthen the conscience?
Liberty of thought is allowed ; liberty of sin-
ning is alone denied. Who would refuse to
sign this creed ? They would come from the^
east, and the west, and the north, and the south'
to its call, ad even they who would hesitate
to bind themselves to a crusade so arduous
would admire it, and long to be worthy. Does
one say this is too ideal, too unpractical, too

22 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

quixotic? That no church could stand and
work on such a basis ? For three too short years
the Church of Christ had none else, and it was
by holy living, and not by any metaphysical
subtleties, the Primitive Church lived, and
suffered, and conquered.

Iffi! I

U t!

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH

pis 9 (

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH

Certain ancient and mystical theologians
used to divide the history of revelation into
three dispensations. One lasted from Abraham
to John Baptist, thedispen':dtion of the Father;
another from Christ's Baptism to His Ascen-
sion, the dispensation of the Son , from Pente-
cost to Christ's Second Coming, the dispensa-
tion of the Holy Ghost. Beneath this fantastic
language lay an accurate idea of the develop-
ment of truth. First of all some one more re-
ceptive and imaginative than his fellows is
haunted by the conviction that God must
be One, and sets out in the great quest. He
dies and leaves the legacy of his faith to the
generation following. Some kindred spirit re-
ceives the torch and blows it into flame, and
so the knowledge of God grows till men make
Him the strength of their life. This is the age

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26 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

of discovery. At last a man appears on earth
who realises all that saints have longed for and
prophets have foretold, from Whose face God
looks, through Whose will God speaks, beyond
Whom no clearer revelation can be expected
or imagined. This is the age of possession.
Lastly comes the long aftertime when men
begin slowly to understand what they have
received, and make it their own. This is the
age of assimilation. Isaiah looked forward and
anticipated Christ, St. John saw Jesus and laid
his head on the Master's bo'^om. We hold
Jesus' words and life in our hands ; we are
learning what He intended and what He was.
We live, therefore, in a very true sense, in the
dispensation of His spirit.

Whatever words be used to distinguish the
three periods, it seems at least clear that the
teaching of Jesus must have an especial value
and authority, and it is at least likely that the
other two periods will be subordinate. Jesus
delivered Himself on this important matter be-
fore He departed, and as once He claimed the
authority of Master when He said, * One is
Master, even Christ,' so He now claimed the
monopoly of truth by such a passage as this :

Tlin: DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 27

* Hovvbeit when He the spirit of truth is come,
He will guide you into all the truth ; for He
shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He
shall hear that shall He speak, and He will
show you things to come. He shall glorify me ;
for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it
unto you.' Again Jesus said, * The Comforter,
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will
send in my name, He shall teach you all things
and bring all things to your remembrance what-
soever I have said unto you.' And once more,
' Henceforth I call you not servants ; for the
servant knoweth not what his lord doeth : but
I have called you friends ; for all things that I
have heard of my Father I have made known
unto you.' This may be accepted as Jesus'
deliverance on the development of truth,
and the statement of His relation to His
Apostles.

One notices in the face of the words that
Jesus makes a most distinct and also a most
guarded claim as the prophet of God. He
does not assert that He has compassed the
length and breadth of human knowledge. Vast
domains were left untouched by Jesus, and
anyone who goes to our Master for instruction,

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88 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

say in science or philosophy, can only be disap-
pointed. His sphere was religion — the charac-
ter of God, the principles of the spiritual life,
the forgiveness of sins, the discipline of the
soul, the life to come. Those arc the themes
of Jesus, and on them He has said the last
word. He cleansed away the mists that hung
round the loftiest reaches of truth, and has
made plain the soul's way unto God. No one
can deny that Jesus has given to mankind what
deserves to be called the truth.

Nor does Jesus mean to say that He has in-
structed His disciples fully in the truth, for this
has been an impossibility. Within three years
He could not follow out to its conclusions the
revelation He made of God and man, nor apply
His laws to every side of human life. His ser-
vice was to lay down the infallible principles on
which we could think rightly on religion. They
can be all found in the gospels ; they lie to any
man's hand. Jesus gave the few axioms of
the spiritual science on which its whole reason-
ing can be surely built. He placed us in pos-
session of the mine, leaving the ages to mint
its contents and make the gold current coin.
Within the same discourse Jesus assures His

.iiT8>r.wa-a^

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 29

disciples that He had toM them everything He
knew, and also that there were many more
things that they were not yet able '<- receive
v/hich He would tell them afterwards.

When Jesus explained that He had kept
nothing back, and yet had much more to give,
He was not contradicting Himself, but only
distinguishing between the substance and the
development of truth. One might say with
pc;fect accuracy that a seed contains the plant,
stem, ears and full corn, and that when one
gives the seed he gives all. Yet this is not the
denial of the spring, and the summer, and the
autumn time. After the same fashion it may
be truly said that if any speaker should sow a
living idea in the mind of a receptive hearer,
and that idea were after. vards cast into various
forms and carried into great actions, both
words and deeds could be assigned to the orig-
inal giver. The germ has the potency, it has
also the very shape of all the coming life.
Whatever, therefore, is said by St. Paul or
St. John, by Augustine or Clement, so far as it
conforms to type, may be assigned to Jesus, so
that while He said little, if one goes by volume
of speech, and wrote nothing. He has been

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30 THE MIND OP THE MASTER

speaking in every after age where any disciple
has thought according to His mind. So it was
right to say that Jesu3 gave the Evangel with
His own lips, to say also that the Evangel has
been continued by Him through other lip^'
unto this present.

What has to be laid down in the strongest
terms and held in perpetual remembrance is
that Jesus gave in substance final truth, and
that no one, apostle or saint, could or did add
anything to the original deposit, however much
he might expound or enforce it. This is the
only position which secures a consistent and
authoritative standard by which later teaching
can be judged, and, apart from Jesus' own
words, it is established by two arguments.
One is probability or the fitness of things. Is
it likely that Jesus who came to declare the
Divine Will and reveal the Father would leave
any truth of the first magnitude to be told by
His servants? It is to be expected that proph-
ets should anticipate Jesus' gospel and that
apostles should apply it ; but it were amazing
if either should supplement Jesus. V/hen any
person imagines revelation in Holy Scripture
as a level plain wherein Abraham or ^St. Paul

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 31

stand as high as Jesus, he gives one pause ;
wher any person conceives of revelation as an
ascending scale, wherein the apostles stand
above Jesus, he astounds one. If it be not an
impiety, it is surely an extravagance.

Perhaps the argument from fact may be still
more conclusive, and can be very easily grasped.
It has happened that certain doctrines of theol-
ogy have aroused fierce repugnance, and have
been a grievous stumblingblock to faith.
Most people have accepted them against the
instincts of the heart and the light of reason,
because the alternative scorned to be the re-
fusal of Christianity. Many people have aban-
doned the religion of Jesus because they could
not accept even its blessing with monstrous
views of God annexed. Both classes would
have found vast relief if they had only ex-
amined the quarter from which the texts in
favour of those doctrines were drawn. Doc-
trines of reprobation may have some slight
support in passages, for instance, of the Old
Testament and Epistles, wrested for the most
part from the context and general spirit of Lhe
writer, but they have none in the discourses of
Jesus. They are ideas out of the line of Jesus*

11 ill

4 ,

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

thought, branches tied on to the vine, withering
and ready for the burning. One may accept it
as a rule that the doctrines which rest on 'he
gospels are reasonable, and are living, and that
the doctrines which have no support in die
gospels are less than reasonable and are dying,
which surely goes far to show that Jesus'
words are the truth

There was a day, to illustrate this point from
ethics, when good people defended slavery from
the Book, and were understood to make out a
strong case. Certainly they did find many
passages in their support, and made fine play
with St. Paul's Epistle to Philemon. No Chris-
tian man now believes that a word can be said
for slavery. No one now ^vould be moved by
a hundred texts in its .'avwUi-. Slavery has
been condemned both by * 'i' spirit and by
the teaching of Jesus. When He taught the
Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man
followed, and the end of slavery became a mat-
ter of time. It is growing clearer that many
doctrines of Christian men are not lasting, but
that every word of Jesus is eternal.

It has been urged that Jesus was unable to
give certain truths of the fi^'^t order to His die-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 3$

ciples, because they would have been before
the event and therefore unintelligible at the
time. Their statement had to be left to the
apostles, and without St. Paul we had not
possessed to-day a complete gospel. If there
be two truths of this kind, surely they are the
sacrifice of Jesus and the pr-Tisence of the Holy
Ghost. How could Jesus expound His death
before He died, and explain the indwelling of
His Spirit before He came ? As it was, how-
ever, Jesus did refer to His death, its purpose
and effect, in images so lucid ana convincing
that they admit of no improvement. After all
the reasoning of the Epistle to the Romans
one still turns to the incident of Zaccheus and
the utterance of Jesus with great and final sat-
isfaction. When Jesus declared that He had
come to lay down His life a ransom for many,
and that in order every one might; understand
in what sense He ransomed men from their sins,
took the salvation of Zaccheus as an illus-
tration, one understands the atonement. St.
Paul has touched excellently in various letters
on the work of the Holy Spirit, and his words
have fed many, but all the words that ever
came from that inspired man are not to be

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34 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

compared with the promise of the Comforter
given in the upper room.

When one affirms the subordination of the
Old Testament Scriptures to the Gospels it
sounds ii commonplace, and is indeed only a re-
minder of an obvious fact. The thought of
the Old Testament moves forward to the life
of Jesus. Its conduct is revised by the com-
mandments of Jesus ; its piety is crowned in
Jesus' last discourses. We read the 53rd chap-
ter of Isaiah in order that we may visit Calvary.
The Ten Words are only eclipsed by the Law
of Love. There is one passage dearer than
the 23rd Psalm, and that is the 14th chapter of
St. John's Gospel. The faith that would seek
its guidance from the Patriarchs rather than
from the Apostles, and quotes from its history
to qualify the Gospels, is elementary and unde-
veloped. The massacre of the Canaanites may
have been a little better in its purpose than
the morals of the day ; but it is an impossible
action for any Christian, and the idea of the
Messiah as the head of a righteous Jewish
state was a noble dream eight hundred years
before Christ, but something less than the
kingdom of God. One part of the Old Testa-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 35

ment is Christian in spirit and intention, — that
is justified and remains, receiving new life frcm
Jesus. One part is less than Christian — that is
abrogated and disappears — replaced by Jesus.

The relation of the Apostles to Jesus is a
question of much greater difificulty, and de-
mands very careful treatment. When any one
writes as if St. Paul were in the affair of teach-
ing not only the equal of Jesus, but His
superior — giving to the world more precious
truth than the Gospels, — he has surely somewhat
failed in reverence for the Master. When
some other writer feels himself able to correct
the Apostles with a light mind, as if they were
ordinary theologians, he may fairly be charged
with disrespect for the Master's chief servants.
It is exasperating to be offered a choice be-
tween accepting the Gospel of St. Luke, with
its three great parables of Jesus, and the 1st
Epistle to the Corinthians, with its ascetical
treatment of marriage, as of exactly the same
authority for faith and marriage, or reducing
St. Paul to the level of Tertullian or Calvin.
One is haunted with the idea, as he reads both
the Old and the New Testaments, that there
must be a centre from which this varied litera-

36 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

i? ■ "

ture can be judged, — a Master whom its writers
acknowledged — to whom they approximate.
As there have been centuries of the past when
art reached a lovely perfection — never again
approached — so there have also been centuries
when religion was touched by the Divine
Spirit. The fifth century before Christ was
such an one in Greece, when the Parthenon
was built : the eighth century before Christ was
such an one for religion in Judaea. If this was
true of Isaiah's period, what shall be said of the
century that was opened by Jesus Himself,
wherein St. Paul wrote, which St. John closed ?
It may be allowed to give the Holy Apostles a
place at the feet of Jesus, and at the same time
to place them above the saints of the genera-
tions that were to come. Paul was to Jesus a
slave, — he must ever be to us St. Paul.

When one studies the Epistles he arrives at
two conclusions, and they help to clear up the
situation. It is surely evident that betv/een
the Apostolic writings and those of the after
time, from the Fathers to present-day theo-
logians, there is a gulf fixed. Certain scholars
may question, without profanity, the inclu-
sion of the Book of Esther in Holy Scripture ;

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 37

certain others may deny, with less show of
reason, any useful function to the Book of
Ecclesiastes. Many value the Imitation next
to their Bible, and more might give this
place to the Pilgrims Progress. But no one
in his religious senses, however he may be
tempted to undervalue some minor books
in the canon, or honour above thei«* value
some books of the later time, would seri-
ously propose to add A Kempis and Bun-
yan to the Epistles. It would be an im-
possible action, equivalent to alternating Mr.
Holman Hunt and Mr. Long with Pcrugino
and Sarto. There is a difference between the
old masters and the modern which does not
need to be put into words, because it is felt by
people quite ignorant of art. This is not a
depreciation of the moderns : it is an apprecia-
tion of the Apostles.

In the same way it must surely strike any one
passing from the Gospels into the Epistles, and
comparing the words of Jesus with the writings
of St. Paul, that the Apostle is less than his
Master. Between the Thessalonian and the
Philippian Epistles there is of course an im-
mense advance in vision and charity, and

■papKHP

38 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

.-^ :a

throughout every letter there is a profound
spiritual genius. St. Paul's devotion to the
Person of Christ, his grasp of his Master's teach-
ing ;, his power in working it up into impressive
dogma, his skill in applying Jesus' principles to
the conduct of life, his unaffected love for man
are so evident, and so exacting, that one shrinks
from suggesting that the Apostle as a teacher is
less than the greatest. It seems air" '^st profan-
ity to criticise St. Paul, but one may not make
him equal to Jesus, without removing Jesus from
His judgment seat, and destroying the propor-
tion of Holy Scripture. If one may be pardoned
his presumption in hinting at any imperfections
in the Apostle of the Gentiles, is not his style at
times overwrought by feeling ? Are not some of
his illustrations forced ? Is not his doctrine often
rabbinical, rather than" Christian? Does not
one feel his treatment of certain subjects — say
marriage and asceticism — as somewhat wanting
in sweetness ? One only makes this rebate from
the Apostle's excellency in order to magnify the
divinity of Jesus' Evangel, which is never local,
never narrow, never unintelligible, which is ever
calm, convincing, human. .

It is a grave question whether, indeed, St,

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 39

Paul claimed to be on the same level of author-
ity as Jesus, and can be settled, not by the
production of passages, but rather by reference
to the whole tone of his letters. Was he not
ever the reverent student and faithful expositor
of the mind of Jesus, declared to him by heaven
and by the inner light ? Was he not constantly
overcome by the impossibility of entering fully
into its fathomless depths ? Did he not at every
turn bring his converts face to face with Jesus
and leave them at His feet ? Could one imag-
ine St. Paul dc laring that he had added
to the teaching of Jesus, and that without
his Epistles the Gospels would have had little
value ? The question comes really to this :
Ought we to read St. Paul in the light of Jesus,
or Jesus in the light of St. Paul ? and it is
difficult to see how any one can hesitate in his
reply who believes either in the divinity of Jesus*
person or the divinity of His teaching.

When Jesus finally committed His divine
teaching into the hands of the eleven apostles
in the upper room, it is superfluous to inquire
whether they understood Him. With the pos-
sible exception of St. John, none of them had
more than a faint idea of Jesus* Evangel. What

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40 TIIIi: MIND OF Till!: MASTER

a pathetic spectacle it was — Jesus pouring forth
those eternal words that have opened heaven
to faith, and been the bread of the soul in
all ages, and those honest, dense children of
Judaism interrupting with their hopeless ques-
tions. Did Jesus suppose that they were enter-
ing into His mind or could expound His words ?
He was under no fond delusion. Why did He
place this priceless treasure in those uncon-
scious hands, and charge such men to be His
preachers ? Recause He was going to the Father,
and must leave His word in the hands of stew-
ards who were His faithful friends. Because,
notwithstanding their slowness of understand-
ing and various imperfections, the eleven were
the most spiritual and receptive men of His day
and race. Because, although they had then
only a very poor grasp of Jesus' Evangel, and
were immediately to forsake the Master, they
would yet enter into its heart and do greater
works with Jesus' words than He had been able
to do Himself.

It must be remembered that when Jesus had
said His last word on earth and ascended unto the
Father, it was not to cease from teaching any
more than from working. He was only to de-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 41

part in the flesh, having given the letter, that He
might return by the Holy Ghost to open up the
spirit. As a father He placed in the hands of His
children the sum of all His wisdom, not expect-
ing them to understand it at first, but charging
them to give themselves to study in the good
hope that they would enter into it. The Church
has been the child, and the long history of doc>
trine and morals has been the attempt to possess
Jesus' words, rvhile all the time He Himself wa:^
the Lord of every one that trusted in Him. Her
history as the disciple of Jesus has been a prog-
ress from the second century unto this present.
After the Apostolic days, still bright with the
after-glow of Jesus, there was her childhood,
simple, poetical, audacious — a time of allegories ;
her manhood, strenuous, reasonable, compre-
hensive — a time of doctrines ; then will come her
maturity, calm, charitable, certain. We have
not seen this last period yet, and must remind
ourselves at every turn that the Church has not
yet compassed the mind of the Master.

Her progress in the understanding of Jesus
has been most confused — sometimes disap-
pointing in its arrestments, sometimes amazing
in its rapidity. Prophets have suddenly arisen

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42 THE MIND OF TIIK MASTER

with a quite wonderful insight into Jesus*
meaning, and have made a permanent contribu-
tion to the knowledge of the Church. They
were doubtless wrong somewhere, but some-
where they were right, and their words remain
a footnote on the text of Jesus. Afterwards
came times when the intelligence of the Church
simply went to sleep, and no true strong word
was spoken to the world, or her brain grew de-
lirious, and the Church raved to the offence of
the world. T ^ have been times of paralysis
and times of inspiration, but through both the
Church has still been, on the whole, ad-
vancing and entering into truth. It may be
claimed that we have a more certain and
spiritual apprehension of Jesus than our
fathers had, for which we deserve no credit :
and it may be hoped that our children will
know more than we do — of which they may
not boast.

It must be frankly acknowledged that the
Church, as the teaching body of Christianity,
has often been wrong, and the list of ex-
ploded errors suggests various reflections.
Who would now believe such doctrines as rep-
robation of human souls by God, the denial of

TIIK DEVI'LOrMKNT OF TRUTH 43

the

lity,

ex-

ons.

*ft

the divine Fatherhood, and the identity of pun-
ishment with vengeance? But one must no*-
fon^et or undervalue the discoveries made by
Christian thought and piety. F'or instance,
the fourth century wrought out a theory of
Jesus' person which may be misused so that it
becomes a stumbUng-block to reason instead
of a help to faith, but which stands until this
day the most satisfactory key to a great mys-
tery, and the most complete proof of the unity
of the spiritual universe. The Reformers faced
the problem of the sinner and God, and lodged
in the minds of most thinking men that no
other Mediator had ever ex*s<-ed or was needed
save the Son of Man, and this spiritual fact
can be held apart from all theories of the atone-
ment which come and go with different ages.
The Church is now asking what Jesus expects
His disciples to do for their fellow-men, and no
one doubts that we are being led into the
Divine Will. The service of man has always
lain hid in Jesus' words, but now it has been
made manifest and is taking hold of us like a
revelation. There is no finality in this devel-
opment, although from time to time the Church
herself has tried to set a bound. Year by year

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44 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus' teaching yields new doctrines, new du-
ties, new motives, new hopes, as the soil turned
over and exposed to the sun fertilizes dormant
seeds and brings them to perfection.

This progress is a convincing evidence of the
indwelling Spirit of Jesus, whom the Master
promised to send into His disciples' hearts, and
whose guidance we unhesitatingly recognise in
the Acts of the Apostles. Many persons seem
to believe that the operations of Jesus' Spirit
closed with the apostolic period, and would not
hold that the modern Church is under the same
divine influence as the Church of Judaea. But
this surely is an untenable, and, if one go into
it, an unbelieving position. No doubt the
Council of Jerusalem, which had to decide
whether Christianity was to be a Jewish sect or
a world-wide religion, had a critical duty to dis-
charge, but not more serious than the Council
of Nice which affirmed Christ's deity ; and if
the former Council was justified in saying, * It
seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,' the
latter had as much right to use the same pref-
ace. If the Church at Antioch was moved by
the Holy Ghost to send forth Barnabas and
Paul on the first foreign mission, surely it was

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH 45

by the inspiration of the same Spirit that half
a dozen faithful men met in an Encrlish town
and sent Carey to India. Why should we
question that the Spirit of Jesus was in the
Council of Trent and the Westminster Assem-
bly? It was disappointing that Trent did not
give relief from the tyranny of the priesthood ;
yet it did reform the discipline of the Roman
Church : that Westminster ignored the evan-
gelisation of the world, yet it conceived a very
majestic idea of God. One does not forget the
blazing mistakes of Church Councils, from that
which ordered the celibacy of the clergy to the
one which declared the infallibility of the pope,
from the Swiss Synod which asserted the in-
spiration of the vowel points in Hebrew to the
Scottish Assembly which cast out as a heretic
M'Leod Campbell. This does not mean that
the Spirit of Jesus has forsaken His disciples ;
it only means that He is constantly hindered
by His instruments. It is not wonderful that
the Church has erred ; it is wonderful that, in
spite of many a blundering and weakening in-
fluence, she has so fully entered into the truth
of Jesus.

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THE SOVEREIGNTY OF
CHARACTER

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THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER

Christians with a sense of fitness are not
ambitious to claim originaHt]' for their Master,
and have forgotten themselves when they
ground Jesus' position on the brilliancy of His
thought. They shrink, as by an instinct, from
entering Jesus for competition with other
teachers, and have Him so enshrined in the soul
that to praise Him seems profanity. When a
biographer of Jesus, more distinguished per-
haps by his laborious detail than his insight
into truth, seriously recommends Jesus to the
notice of the world by certificates from Rous-
seau and Napoleon, or when some light-hearted
man of letters embroiders a needy paragraph
with a string of names where Jesus is wedged
in between Zoroaster and Goethe, the Christian
consciousness is aghast. This treatment is not
merely bad taste ; it is impossible by any canon

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so THE MIND OF THE MASTER

of thought ; it is as if one should compare the
sun with electric light, or the colour of Titian
with the bloom of the rose. We criticise every
other teacher ; we have an intuition of Jesus.
He is not a subject of study, He is a revelation
to the soul — that or nothing. One does not
dream of claiming intellectual pre-eminence for
Jesus ; one is ready, at this point, to make the
largest admissions. Why should we bring Him
into comparison with Socrates ? He does not
come within the same category, raising no subtle
problems, nor making fine swordplay with words.
It is open to debate, indeed, whether Jesus said
anything absolutely new, save when He taught
the individual to call God Father. Very likely,
with the exception of a few obiter dictay you
could piece out the Sermon on the Mount from
the Old Testament ; certainly Plato has a re-
markable anticipation of the Cross. Why should
we force the battle of parallel columns on the
pedantic minority who depreciate Jesus, and
put them to the labour of wearisome quotation
from the sacred books of the East ? Granted,
we cry at once, that this saying and the other
can be duplicated ; for even stout hearts are
now beginning to fail at a hint of S'akyamuni.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER 51

Wc abandon the plain before the heavy artillery
kimbers up, without any sense of loss. Origi-
nality is not an addition to knowledge ; it is
only a new arrangement of colour.

Originality in literature is called discovery in
science, and the lonely supremacy of Jesus
rests not on what He said, but on what He did.
Jesus is absolute Master in the sphere of re-
ligion, which is a science dealing not with in-
tellectual conceptions, but with spiritual facts.
His ideas are not words, they are laws ; they
are not thoughts, they are forces. He did not
suggest, He asserted what He had seen by direct
vision. He did not propose, He commanded as
one who knew there was no other way. One
of His chief discoveries was a new type of
character. His greatest achievement its creation.
It is now nineteen centuries since He lived on
earth, but to-day in every country of the west-
ern world there are men differing from their
neighbours, as Jesus did from His contempora-
ries. Jesus was a type by Himself, and they
are of the same type. One of course does not
mean that the type can be recognised in every
Christian, or that it can be seen complete in
any, but that if you take a sufficient number of

:t '

52 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus' disciples you will discover in their habits
of thinking and acting a certain trend of
character, which was not known before Jesus
came, and apart from His .Spirit could not now
exist, which also would die out in three genera-
tions were His Spirit withdrawn. He presented
to the world a solitary ideal, and in innumer-
able lives He has made it real.

When Jesus began to be a force in human
Wfe, there were four existent types on which
meu formed themselves and which are still in
evidence. One is the moral, and has the Jew
for its supreme illustration, with his faith in
the eternal, and his devotion to the law of
righteousness. The next is the intellectual,
and was seen to perfection in the Greek, whose
restless curiosity searched out the reason of
things, and whose aesthetic taste identified
beauty and divinity. The third is the political,
and stood enthroned at Rome, where a nation
was born in the purple and dictated order to the
world. And the last is the commercial, and
had its forerunner in the Phoenician, who was
the first to teach the power of enterprise and
the fascination of wealth. Any other man
born at the beginning of the first century

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER 53

could be dropped into his class, but Jesus
defied classification. As He moved among the
synagogues of Galilee, He was an endless per-
plexity. One could never anticipate Him. One
was in despair to explain Him. Whence is He ?
the people whispered with a vague sense of the
problem, for He marked the introduction of a
new form of life. He was not referable to
type : He was the beginning of a time.

Jesus did not repeat the role of Moses. He
did not forbid His disciples to steal or tell lies ;
it would have been a waste of His power to
teach the alphabet of morals. He takes morality
for granted, and carves what Moses has hewn.
His gre£it discourse moves not in the sphere of
duty but in the atmosphere of love. ' It hath
been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour. . . .
I say unto you, Love your enemies.' His dis-
ciples' righteousness must * exceed the righteous-
ness of the Scribes and Pharisees.' They must
not only do as much as, but * more than others.'
The legal measure is morality, and the overflow
Christianity. Jesus stands above Judaism, and
He is an alien to Hellenism. Writers without
any sense of proportion have tried to graft
Greek culture on St. Paul because he was born

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THE MIND OF THE MASTER

at Tarsus, and quoted once or twice from Greek
poets ; but no one has suggested that Jesus owed
anything to letters. He wrote no book ; He
formed no system ; His words were jets of truth,
and chose their own forms. The Empire was
not within the consciousness of Jesus: His only
point of contLict with Rome was the Cross.
When His following wished to make Him a
King, He shuddered and fled as from an insult.
As for wealth, it seemed so dangerous that He
laid poverty as a condition on His disciples,
and Himself knew not where to lay His head.
You cannot trace Jesus : you cannot analyse
Jesus. His intense spirituality of soul, His
simplicity of thought, His continual self-abnega-
tion, and His unaffected humility descended on
a worn-out, hopeless world, like dew upon the
dry grass.

The Sermon on the Mount has been until late-
ly very much shelved by theologians, but it re-
mains the manifesto of Jesus' religion, and carries
in spirit His own irresistible charm — the fresh-
ness of new revelation. * Blessed,' said Jesus,
opening His mouth with intention, and no one
could have guessed what would follow. The
world had its own idea of blessedness. Blessed is

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARAC ER 55

the man who is always right. Blessed is the man
who is satisfied with himself. Blessed is the man
who is strong. Blessed is the man who rules.
Blessed is the man who is rich. Blessed
is the man who ir- popular. Blessed is the man
who enjoys life. These are the beatitudes of
sight and this present world. It comes with a
shock and opens a new realm of thought, that
not one of these men entered Jesus' mind when
Mo treated of blessedness. * Blessed,' said Jesus,
' is the man who thinks lowly of himself ; who
has passed through great trials ; who gives , 1 and
endures ; who longs for perfection ; who carries
a tender heart ; who has a passion for holiness ;
who sweetens human life ; who dares to be true
to conscience.' What a conception of character !
Blessed are the humble, the penitents, the
victims, the mystics, the philanthropists, the
saints, the mediators, the confessors. For
the first time a halo rests on gentleness,
patience, kindness, and sanctity, and the eight
men of the beatitudes divide the kingdom of God.
Jesus afterwards focussed the new type of
character in a lovely illustration which is not al-
ways appreciated at its full value, because we
deny it perspective. Every reader of the Gospels

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S6 TIIK MIND OF THE MASTER

has marked the sympathy of Jesus with children.
How He watched their games ! How angry He
was witli His disciples for belittling them ! How
He used to warn men, whatever they did, never
to hurt a little child ! How grateful were chil-
dren's praises when all others had turned against
Him ! One is apt to admire the beautiful senti-
ment, and to forget that children were more to
Jesus than helpless, gentle creatures to be loved
and protected. They were His chief parable of
the kingdom of heaven. As a type of charac-
ter the kingdom was like unto a little child, and
the greatest in the kingdom would be the most
child-like. According to Jesus, a well-condition-
ed child illustrates better than anything else on
earth the distinctive features of Christian charac-
ter. Because he does not assert nor aggrandise
himself. Because he has no memory for injuries,
and no room in his heart for a grudge. Because
he has no previous opinions, and is not ashamed
to "onfcss his ignorance. Because he can imag-
ine, and has the key of another world, entering
in through the ivory gate and living amid the
things unseen and eternal. The new society of
Jesus was a magnificent imagination, and he
who entered it must lay aside the world stand-

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER 57

ards and ideals of character, and become as a
little child.

Jesus was an absolute and unreserved be-
liever in character, and was never weary of in-
sisting that a man's soul was more than hir.
environment, and that he must be judged not
by what he held and had, but by what he was
and did. Nothing could be easier than to say,
* Lord, Lord,' but that did not count. Jesus*
demand was to do the * will of My Father
which is in heaven/ and all of this kind made
one family. He only has founded a kingdom
on the basis of character; He only has dared
to believe that character will be omnipotent.
No weapon in Jesus' view would be so win-
some, so irresistible, as the beatitudes in action.
His disciples were to use no kind of force,
neither tradition, nor miracles, nor the sword,
nor money. They were to live as He lived,
and influence would conquer the world. Jesus
elected twelve men — one was a failure — and
trained them till they thought with Him, and
saw with Him. St. John did not imitate Jesus,
he assimilated Jesus. Each disciple became a
centre himself, and so the kingdom grows by
multiplying and widening circles of influence.

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

The aggression of Jesus is the propagation of
character. ' Ye are the salt of the earth,' * Ye
are the Hght of the world.' The victory of
Jesus is to be the victory of character. * In
the regeneration (Utopia) when the Son of
Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye
also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel.'

When Jesus grounds His religion on char-
acter He gives a radiant proof of His sanity
and wins at once the suffrages of reasonable
men. There is nothing on which we differ so
hopelessly as creed, nothing on which we agree
so utterly as character. Impanel twelve men
of clean conscience and average intelligence
and ask them to try some person by his opin-
ions, and they may as well be discharged at
once. They will not agree till the Greek
Kalends. Ask them to take the standard of
conduct, and they will bring in a verdict in five
minutes. They have agreed in anticipation.
Just as he approximates to the beatitudes they
will pronounce the man good ; just as he di-
verges will they declare him less than good.
Were any one to insinuate a reference to his
opinions, it would be instantly dismissed as an

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER 59

irrelevance, and worst-, an immorality, an
attempt to confuse the issue c of justice.
According to the consistent t n!...Mig of Jesus
a Christian is one of the same likc:iess as Him-
self, and nothing will more certainly debauch
the religious sense than any shxTting of labels,
so that one who keeps Jesus* commandments
is denied His name, and one in whom there is
no resemblance to Jesus receives it on grounds
of correct opinion. One cannot imagine our
Master requiring the world to accept a disciple
on the ground of the man's declaration of
faith ; He would offer to the world the test of
the man's life. When one puts in his faith as
evidence he is giving a cheque on a bank be-
yond reach ; when he puts in his character he
pays in gold. The reasonableness of Jes. s
carries everything before it. * Do men gather
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? Even so
every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but
a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.'
* Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.*
With His appieciation of character Jesus
affords us a ground of certitude which can be
found nowhere else in religion. This is where
Christian ethics have an enormous advantage

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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over Christian theology. One generation may
build up a doctrine with the most conscien-
tious labour, but it has no guarantee that the
next — equally earnest and intelligent — may not
reverse it, laying the emphasis on other texts,
or influenced by some other spirit. There can
be no finality in theology : this is one of its
glories. Therefore it must ever be an uncer-
tain ground of judgment : this is one of its dis-
abilities. One century a Christian is burned
because he does not believe in the Mass, and in
the next another is executed because he does.
It were patent injustice to bind up salvation
with a fluctuating science ; condemnation
might then hinge on the date of a man's birth,
not the attitude of his soul. There are only
two departments in which the human mind can
arrive at certainty : one is pure mathcmatic ,
and the other is pure ethics. The whole must
be greater than its part, not only in this world
but in every other where the same rational
order prevails, and there can be no place with-
in the moral order where the man of the beati-
tudes will not be judged perfect. At no time
and in no circumstances can he be condemned
or depreciated. Yesterday, to-day and for ever

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER 6i

he is the bright excellency of manhood.
Again, without effort and without argument,
Jesus carries conviction to reason and con-
science. ' Whosoever heareth these sayings of
Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a
wise man, which built his house upon a rock.'
It would, however, be a shallow inference
that the premium Jesus set on character meant
a discount on faith, or that Jesus has originated
that exasperating contrast between creed and
life. If Jesus, magnifying character, said in
one discourse, * Be ye therefore perfect even as
your Father which is in heaven is perfect,* He
made it plain in another how character is
formed: * Except ye cat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in
you.' He insisted on being, and als^ on be-
lieving, and in His mind they fell into order.
Faith in Him was the process, and character
was the product, and Jesus with His supreme
reasonableness taught that the finished product
and not the varying process should be the ma-
terial of judgment. It is vain to expatiate on
the ingenuity of the machinery if the sample of
corn be badly milled ; and if it be well done
the criticism on the machinery may be spared.

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62 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

If any one is so fortunate as to hold in his heart
and in its fuhiess the Catholic faith concerning
Jesus, his richly developed character will be
the unanswerable vindication of his creed. If
one, less fortunate, should miss that full vision
of Jesus, which is the inheritance of the saints,
then it will be unnecessary to criticise his creed,
since a frost-bitten an(3 poverty-stricken charac-
ter will be its swift condemnation. * He that
abideth in Me and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit * is Jesus' reconciliation of
creed and character.

One cannot yield to the force of Jesus' teach-
ing on character without facing its last applica-
tion and asking, Will the final Assize be held
on faith or character? As a matter of fact, the
best public mind under all religions has judged
by character, and has done so with a keen sense
of justice and a conviction of paramount author-
ity. When the individual has to form an estimate
of his neighbour in critical circumstances he ig-
nores his opinions and weighs his virtues. No
one, for instance, would leave his wife and chil-
dren to the care of a trustee because he hap-
pened to be a Trinitarian, but only because his
friend was a true man before God. It is a

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER 63

working principle of life that judgment goes by
character, and if in the end it should go by
faith it might be in keeping with some higher
justice we know not here ; but it would cover
our moral sense with confusion and add an-
other to the unintentional wrongs men have
endured, in this world, at their fellows' hands.
It were useless to argue about a matter of
which we know nothing and where speculation
is vain. We must simply accept the words of
Jesus, and it is an unspeakable relief to find
our Master crowning His teaching on character
with the scene of the Last Judgment. The
prophecy of conscience will not be put to
shame, nor the continuity of this life be broken.
When the parabolic form is reduced and the
accidental details laid aside, it remains that the
Book of Judgment is the Sermon on the Mount,
and that each soul is tried by its likeness to the
Judge Himself. Jesus has prepared the world
for a startling surprise, but it will not be the
contradiction of our present moral experience :
it will be the revelation of our present hidden
character.

<F^

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I in

AGELESS LIFE

Jesus reigns supreme among teachers not only
by the perfection of His character but also by
the grandeur of His subject. A prophet has
many things to say to his generation ; one only
is his message. Jesus treated every idea of the
first order in the sphere of Religion ; His
burden was Life. He did not set Himself to
teach men how to organise the state, nor how
to analyse their minds, nor how to discharge
elementary duties, nor how to form a science
of Theology. This was not because Jesus
despised these departments, it was because He
proposed to dominate them. He would not
localise Himself in one because He would in-
spire all. Behind the state is the individual,
behind the individual is the soul, and the one
question of the soul is life. The soul is the
organ, and life the function ; and although

68 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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exact scholars may be horrified, the translators
of our Bible had hold of the facts of the case
when they used a certain word generously, ren-
dering it in one verse 'life' and in the next
* soul.' Ethical life implies the soul, and a
dead soul is a contradiction in terms. The
chief necessity of man is life, and when Jesus
opened its spring He fertilised human nature
to its farthest border. He was not a Politician,
but the Democracy is His creation; Ho was
not a Philosopher, but He has given us the
modern metaphysic ; He was not a Moralist,
but He has inspired the coming ethic ; He was
not a Theologian, but the creeds are built out
of His teaching. He revived the body of
humanity by the regeneration of the individual.
Before Jesus, life was a wistful longing: it was
also a hopeless mystery. With the thinkers of
one nation it was a speculation, as in the
Phcedo ; with the saints of another it was a
vision, as in the sixteenth Psalm. Jesus
brought life to light and declared the doctrine
of immortality. History acknowledges Him
as the first and last authority on the biology of
the soul, and experience has proved Him to be
the only medium of life. Life was the gift

AGELESS LIFE

Jesus carried in His hand ; as He said, in His
iTuij.niificeiit way, ' I am come that they mi^ht
have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly.'

An instinct is any part of our spiritual capital
which has not been contributed by education or
revelation, and our two chief instincts are God
and immortality. The hope of the future life has
always nestled in the heart of the race, and found
wings upon occasion. When savages bury his
weapons and utensils with the dead man in order
that he may start with a full equipment, they
believe that he is somewhere ; and when the
Athenians went out to Eleusis twice a year, in
March as the life of the year springs, and in
September as it fades, and held a solemn func-
tion, it was not only that they might live happily,
but, as Cicero puts it, * might die with a fairer
hope.' The Eleusinian mysteries must have been
a great support to the pious of the day, and
served the purpose of a conference for the deep-
ening of spiritual life. This instinct dies down to
the root in the winter of Agnosticism, but it never
loses its vitality. Clever people point out that
no one can demonstrate immortality, — which
goes without saying ; and hi^^h-minded people

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70 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

condfT/n the desire for continued individuality
as a subtle form of selfishness, — which is very
superior. There may be an insignificant minority
who would be content that their life should be
flung back like a cupful of water into the stream
from which it was taken. But to the race the
destruction of this hope would be irreparable,
since it is laden with a wealth of compensation
and reparation. Mourners are content because
those * loved long since ' are only ' lost awhile.*
St. Stephen, cut off in his youth, does net com-
plain, because he sees Jesus standing at God's
right hand. The scholar gathers his apparatus
for unending work.

' What's time ? Leave Now for dogs and apes
Man has Forever.'

Arthur, betrayed and beaten, does not despair :

' My God, Thou hast forgotten me in my death :*
' Nay, God my Christ, I pass, but shall not die.*

This sublime instinct Jesus found and did not
belittle. He confirmed it with His sanction and
built on it His doctrine of Ageless Life.

It was not Jesus' function to add to our na-
ture; it was His to glorify it, and in His hands
the instinct cf immortality was raised to its high-

il! ill

AGELESS LIFE

rh-

est power. Jesus began with a tacit distinction
between existence and life which gives a char-
acteristic h"ft and splendour to His words. Ex-
istence is physical, and is dependent on the
energy that works in matter. Life is spiritual,
and is dependent on the energy that works in
mind. One comes upon a person that has not
one point of contact with the thought-world : he
eats, digests, moves, — we say he exists. One
comes on another full of ideas, plans, dreams,
ambitions, — we say he is alive. It is the ap-
proximate statement of a fact in human history.
When the former dies we are not astonished, be-
cause it had never struck us that he was alive.
When the latter dies we are shocked, the disap-
pearance of that radiant man is a catastrophe.
Jesus recognised similar conditions in the spirit-
ual world — existence, which meant an inert and
unconscious soul, and life, which meant a soul
recepti'e and active. Mere existence He called
death, and used to startle men into thinking with
paradoxes : ' Let the dead bury their dead ;'
' Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is com-
ing and now is when the dead shall hear the voice
of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.*
Whether Jesus believed in the continued exist-

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

ence of this lowest grade in the human kingdom
can hardly be disputed when in this parable we
read that a soul eaten up by selfishness like
Dives, and a soul purified by trial like Lazarus,
both reappeared in another world. Jesus as-
sumed existence for all, but existence on this low
plane of death was not worth His consideration.
Jesus was not an authority on existence ; His
field was life. He did not labour the barren
theory of conscious immortality apart from the
condition of the soul : but He transforms immor-
talit}/- into Life by charging immortality with an
ethical content and making it to consist in tlie
knowledge of God : * This is Life Eternal, that
they might know Thee the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.*

When Jesus invested Life with its new mean-
ing He glorified the idea, but He was embarrass-
ed with the word. Words were polarized before
Jesus adopted them, and they were apt to
retain their acquired properties in His Kingdom.
Nothing could have done full justice to the
ideas of Jesus save a new language, and, as that
was impossible, Jesus and His disciples were
often at cross purposes. With Him Life was
sornething eternal and absolute ; with them,

AGELESS LIFE

something limited and temporary. Life sug-
gested nothing to them at first, except the vitali-
ty of the body ; death, nothing except its disso-
lution. Jesus, on His part, never used Life and
P ^th in a physical sense with emphasis, unless
"' ' n He spoke of laying down His own Life,
and no one knows what was hidden in that mys-
tery. * I have power to lay it down, and I have
power to teike it again.' He reserved the words
for their highest use, and ignored the popular
reading. ' Our friend Lazarus,' He said, with
careful choice o^ tenns, * sleepeth ; but I go,
that I may awake him out of sleep.' Lazarus,
the brother of Mary, and the friend of Jesus,
could not be dead. It was a moral impossi-
bility. The Jews who saw Jesus at Lazarus'
tomb and played the informer to the Pharisees
were dead. It was a moral necessity. When
the misunderstanding was hopeless Jesus had to
condescend. ' Lazarus,' if I must speak in your
tongue, ' is dead.' Physical death Jesus refused
to recognise ; it was an incident in the history of
Life. Death was a calamity of the soul, and a
living soul was invulnerable. * I am the Resur-
rection and the Life : he that believeth in Me,
though he were dead, yet s^ihall he live : and

74 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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whosoever liv^eth, and bclieveth in Me, shall
never die.' It was a brave struggle for reality,
and liberated the first disciples from the bond-
age of the physical ; but the atmosphere is too
rare for His modern disciples, who, for the most
part, speak exactly as if they were Pagans in the
Street of Tombs at Athens, instead of Christians
who had sat at Jesus' feet.

Jesus had to contend with a more inexcus-
able misuse which binds up the life of a man,
not with his body, but with his material envi-
ronment. According to this squalid definition,
Life is made up of circumstances ; if they are
pleasant, the man has an easy life ; if they are
adverse, he has a hard life. Life is stated in
terms of food and raiment, and goods and
houses. Against this degradation of life Jesus
lifted up His voice in a protest which admits of
no answer. He was never weary of reminding
His disciples that such things could not con-
stitute Life, and were, indeed, so unworthy as
to be beneath care. * A man's life consisteth
not in the abundance of the things which he pos-
sesseth.' * Take no thought for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet
for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not

i!!r

AGELESS LIFE

the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment ?* ' Lr.bour not for the meat which
perisheth, but for that meat which endureth
unto everlasting Hfc, which the Son of Man
shall give unto you.' Certainly this indiffer-
ence to circumstances was not due to any want
of sympathy with the labouring and heavy
laden — witness His parables, or to the favoured
experiences of His own life — witness His pov-
erty. But Jesus was anxious to lift Life above
the tyranny of circumstances and convince His
followers that one could live like God Himself,
although he had a whole world arrayed against
him and left nothing behind him except a
peasant's garment. And Jesus was jealous
lest they should confound the rough scaffolding
of circumstances, within which the building
was slowly rising, with the Temple of Life it-
self.

Jesus has bequeathed to the world a mono-
graph on life (St. John vi.), and its basal idea is
Unity. Spiritual Life is not a series of isolated
springs, but an ocean laving every shore. It is
one and has its source in God, as Truth and
Righteousness and Love are one and stand in
God. When one thinks of Life in man as one

76 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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thing, and Life in God as another, he has lost
the key to the science of Life. Nothing de-
serves the name of Life in us that cannot be
affirmed of God. Life in the soul is the tide
of the Divine ocean flowing as it has opportu-
nity through the narrow channels of human
nature. Everything else is only a colourable
imitation of Life, and a mode of existence.
Life is in its origin Heavenly, and cometh
dow; One must be * born from above' if he
is to enter into Life. Jesus casts His contrast
between physical and spiritual Life into a
felicitous figure. * Your fathers did eat manna
in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the
bread which cometh down from Heaven, that a
man may eat thereof, and not die.' Life is
first in God who is in Heaven, inaccessible, and
next in Jesus who is incarnate, and finally in
any man who is in fellowship with Jesus. ' As
the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by
the Father ; so he that eatcth Me, even he
shall live by Me.' This is Jesus' theory of
Life.

The secon^^ id^.3. which underlies this dis-
course is Co'iiT' unity, jesus and His disciples
share the sen c life. He is the 'Bread of

AGELESS LIFE

and
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iples
of

Life,' and they * eat.' Jesus with this startling
image flashes a description of Life and answers
the question, ever in the background of one's
mind, 'What is Life?' It is fellowship with
the Spirit of Jesus, something that cannot be
estimated by the beating of the pulse, or the
inventory of a man's possessions, that must be
tested by conscience and the intangible scales
of the Kingdom of Heaven. It will lie in a
certain mind, in a certain ruling motive, in a
certain trend of character, in a certain obedi-
ence of will, in a certain passion for goodness,
the same as that of Jesus. Or, as Jesus put it
in a passage misunderstood too often by Jews
and Gentiles, yet simple enough when read ac-
cording to the mode of Jesus' thinking: 'Whoso
eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath
eternal life.* This is Jesus' practice of Life.

The third idea which inspires the deliverance
of Jesus is Eternity. Again and again, with
heartening reiteration, Jesus pronounces Life
* everlasting,' and Jesus' expression is evidently
shaped by a contrast. It is His appreciation of
Life ; it is His depreciation of its travesty.
There is, He means, what may by concession
be called life, which consists in health, and riches,

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and ease, and pleasure. This is life centred,
and imprisoned, and satisfied in this present
age. Its environment is local and temporary,
and when it is shattered this life must perish,
because it has no roots elsewhere. With its
age it vanishes. He that findeth this life shall
lose it. Life, as Jesus understood it, consisting
of Love and Sacrifice, does not belong to any
age because it is the inhabitant of all. Its
roots are struck into the unchanging and eter-
nal. It has already a spiritual environment,
and when this present state of things is re-
moved Life will rise to its full height and find
itself at home. This is Life which cannot be
lost. Life to-day, i^ would have been life when
the Pyramids were new, it will be Life when
the earth is an ice-cold ball. Life is contem-
poraneous with all the centuries, it anticipates
and closes them. * Time is a parenthesis in
eternity,' says a fine old classic. When an
earth-born man is baptized into the Spirit of
Jesus th^ brackets are removed and he begins
to live in the ageless state. * He that believeth
on Me hath ageless Life.' This is Jesus'
prophecy of life.

Life with Jesus was a condition of the soul

III .

AGELESS LIFE

disentangled from any physical mode of exist-
ence, and with this profound conception before
His mind, He did not need the classical argu-
ments for immortality. One would be sur-
prised if Jesus proved the future life from the
analogies of nature or the law of continuity.
One would be as much surprised if He described
its circumstances even in the sublime poetry of
St. John or followed the soul in its experiences
as in the Book of the Dead. For one moment
we do wonder why Jesus, who, alone of all men
in this world, had been within the veil, did not
describe at l^nj/th the details of the unseen
state ; in the next we understand such an
apocalypse would have been alien to Jesus.
Life before His eyes was not divided into sec-
tions, each depending for its character on local
colouring. Life here and there — everywhere —
in its essence and intention, must be the samu
— conformity to the Divine Will — an inward
peace and joy. As a man lived here in this
age, he would live in all the ages ; carrying
Heaven within Him rather than going into
Heaven. The Life of the soul could not be
affected by the death of the body. Jesus
would have considered the question, * Shall I

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80 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

live after death ? ' beside the mark. He would
have asked, * Have you life now?' for Life is
ageless.

If one should insist on proof that Life is age-
less, then Jesus was content to offer Himself.
Life hinges on this word of Jesus, * Because I
live, ye shall live also.' Suppose Jesus was the
victim of a fond delusion when He ignored the
death ot the body and preached the ageless
life of the soul and insisted on the unseen, then
He is dead.

' And on His grave with shining eyes
The Syriafi stars look down.*

Suppose He knew, when lie declared Life
the supreme fact of human experience, and
death the escape of the butterfly from the
chrysalis and the world a passing show, then
Jesus is alive evermore. How can one be cer-
tain that Jesus is with God? It is a question
of the last importance. There are four lines of
proof. The first is to lead reliable evidence
that Jesus rose from Joseph's tomb — this is for
a lawyer. The second is historical — the ex-
istence of the Christian Church — this is for a
icholar. The third is mystical — the experience

AGELESS LIFE

of Christians — this is for a saint. The fourth
is ethical — the nature of Jesus' Hfe — this is for
every one. The last is the most akin to the
mind of Jesus, who was accustomed to insist on
the self-evidencing power of His life. He is
alive because I le could not die. * I am the
Resurrection and the Life.'

It is impossible to appreciate a picture with
your face at the canvas ; but even His blind
generation were arrested by Jesus. There was a
note in His words that caught their ear, the echo
of Divine authority ; there was an air about
Him, the maimer of a larger world. No man
could convince Him of sin, none confound Him.
He was v^er beyond criticism. He ever com
pelled admiration in honest mell. 'Thou art
the Clirist,' said a Jew'sh peasant with instinctive
conviction, ' the Son of the Living God.' Cen-
turies have only confirmed this spontaneous
tribute to Jesus' life. No one has yet discovered
the word Jesus ought not to have said, none sug-
gested the better word He might have said. No
action of His has shocked our mora) sense ; none
has fallen short of the ideal. He is full of sur-
prises, but they are all the surprises of per-
fection. You are never amazed, one day

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by His greatness, the next by His littleness.
You are ever amazed that He is incompara-
bly better than you could have expected.
He is tender without being weak, strong with-
out being coarse, lowly without being servile.
He has conviction without intolerance, enthusi-
asm without fanaticism, holiness without Phari
saism, passion without prejudice. This Man
alone never made a false step, never struck a
jarring note. His life alone moved on those
high levels where local limitations are tran-
scended and the absolute Law of Moral Beauty
prevails. It was life at its highest. Jesus was
the supreme Artist in Life, and had a right to
say, ' I am the Life.'

Was this Life something that could be
quenched by death or that death could touch ?
Granted that they scourged and crucified Jesus'
body, that it died and was buried. Could Jesus
who gave the Sermon on the Mount and the
discourse of the upper room, who satisfied St.
John and loosed St. Mary Magdalene from her
sin, and who remains the unapproachable ideal
of perfection, be annihilated by a few nails and
the thrust of a Roman spear ? If the lowest
form of energy, however it may be transformed

AGELESS LIFE

or di [graded, be still conserved in some shape
and place, can any one believe that the Author
of Life in this world was extinguished on a
Roman cross ? The certainty of Jesus' Resur-
rection does not rest in the last issue on His
isolated appearances during the f<'ty days ; it
rests on His Life for thirty-three years. His
Life was beyond the reach of death ; it was
Ageless Life.

Jesus' Life impressed His generation as un-
paralleled and inexplicable, a Life with inscru-
table motives and incalculable principles. What
was its explanation according to any known
standard? Jesus wis accustomed frankly to
admit that it had none ; that it was an enigma
from the earthly standpoint. But He pleaded
that it was supreme and reasonable from the
Heavenly standpoint. It was foreign here ; it
was natural elsewhere. He did the works He
had seen His Father do, He said the words He
had received of His Father, He fulfilled the
will of His Father. There was a sphere where
His Life was the rule, where His dialect was
the language of the country and His was the
habit of living. His unlikeness to this world
implies His likeness to another world. One

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evening you find among the reeds of your lake
an unknown bird, whose broad breast and pow-
erful pinions are not meant for this inland
scene. It is resting midway between two
oceans, and b) tc-moirow will have gone.
Does not that bird prove the ocean it left, does
it not prove the ocean whither it has flown ?
* Jesus, knowing . . . that He was come from
God and went to God,' is the Revelation arid
Confirmation of Ageless Life.

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Sin is tlie ghost which haunts Literature, a
shadow on human Hfe, which no one admits he
has seen, and which an hour afterwards asserts
itself. Define sin with anything Hke accuracy,
and it will be denied ; be silent as if you had not
heard of sin, and it will be confessed. Literature
oscillates between extremes, and affords an in-
structive contradiction. As the record of human
experience it must chronicle sin ; as the solace of
the individual, it makes a brave effort to ignore
sin. You hear the moan of this calamity through
all the work of Sophocles, but Aristophanes
persuades you that this is the gayest of worlds,
and both voices were heard iri the same theatre
beneath the shadow of enthroned Wisdom.
Juvenal's mordant satire lays bare the ulcerous
Roman life, but Catullus flings a wreath of roses
over it, and they were both poets of the classical

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

ii\ ^'

age. A French novelist, with an unholy mastery
of his craft, steeps us in the horrors of a decadent
society. A French critic, with the airiest grace,
exclaims: *Sin, I have abolished it.* Our own
poet of unbelief has dared to write, revealing the
thoughts of many hearts : —

* Alas, Lord ! surely Thou art great and fair,
But, lo ! her wonderfully woven hair ;
And Thou didst heal us with Thy piteous kiss ;
But see now Lord, her mouth is lovelier.'

Yet he also allows the secret to ooze out —

'The brief, bitter bliss one has for a great sin.'

Literature has confessedthis mysterious presence
twice over, in the hopeless sadness of the austere
school which acknowledges it, in the nervous
anxiety of the lighter school which scoffs at it.
Philosophy has been, for the most part, dis-
tinguished by its strenuous treatment of the
moral problem, but has been visibly hampered by
circumstances, being in the position of a court
which cannot go into the whole case. Sin may
be only a defect, then philosophy can cope with
the position ; but it is at least possible that sin
may be a collision with the will of God, then
philosophy can afford no help. Spiritual affairs

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SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL

are beyond its jurisdiction ; they belong to the
department of Religion. Within the range of
philosophy the Race has not gone astray — it has
simply not arrived : humanity is not diseased —
it is only poorly developed. This deliverance is
not the fault, it is the misfortune of morals ; but
it must always seem shallow and unworthy to
serious minds. It creates the demand for Re-
ligion. If your chest be narrow, you go to a
gymnast ; if it be diseased, you go to a physician.
It is easy to add three inches to the chest cavity ;
it is less easy to kill the bacilli in the lungs.
There can indeed be no real competition between
Philosophy and Religion, for the former cannot
go beyond hygiene, and the latter must begin
at least with therapeutics.

'The cardinal question is that of sin,* says
Amiel, with his fine ethical insight ; and if it be
an essential condition in every religion that it
deal with sin, then, excluding Judaism as a pro-
visional and prophetic faith, there are only two
religions. One is Christianity, and the other
is Buddhism, and the disciples of Jesus need not
fear a comparison. When Jesus and the founder
of Buddhism address themselves to the problem
of evil, the ' Light of Asia ' is simply a foil to our

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90 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Mastc*. Buddha identified evil with the material
influences of the body, as if a disembodied spirit
could not be proud and envious ; Jesus traced
evil to the will, and ignored the body. Buddha
proposes to train the soul by a life of meditation,
as if inaction could be the nursery of character;
Jesus insists on action, the most unremitting and
intense. Finally, the great Eastern sage held out
the hope of escape from individual existence, as
if that were the last reward for the tried soul ;
our Master promised perfection in the kingdom
of heaven. Both systems recognise the supreme
need of the Race, which is a favourable omen :
they differ in the means of its relief. Buddhism
amounts to the destruction of the disease, and
the extinction of the patient. Christianity
compasses the destruction of the disease, and the
salvation of the soul. Tried by the severest test
of a Religion, Jesus alone out of all masters
remains: He saves * His people from their sins.'
If Jesus had never said one word, yet had He
done more than all writers on sin, for His life was
its everlasting exposure. As the undriven snow
puts to shame the whitest garment, so was Jesus
a new standard of holiness to His society, and as
the lightning plays round the steel rod, so did

SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL

the diffused wickedness of His time concentrate
on His head. Pharisees in a heat of pseudo-
morality became self-conscious, and slunk from
His presence, Who could not look at them, and
an honest man of vast self-conceit beheld in a
sudden flash the moral glory of Jesus, and be-
sought Him to depart. Twice Jesus was carried
beyond Himself by anger — once when St. Peter
tempted Him to selfishness, and He identified
the amazed apostle with Satan ; once when the
hyprocisy of the Pharisees came to a head, and
His indignation burst forth in the invective of
history. He shudders visibly in the Gospels
before the loathsome leprosy of sin, while His
compassions lighten on the sinner, and in the
same Gospels we see the hatred of the world
culminate in the Cross, because Jesus did the
works of God. The personality of Jesus called
the principle of evil into full action, and sin was
an open secret before His eyes.

The conventional history of sin has three
chapters — origin, nature, treatment. It is char-
acteristic of Jesus that He has only two: He
omits genesis and proceeds to diagnosis. It is
for an instant a disappointment, and in the
next a relief: it remains forever 9. lesson,

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Among all the problems upon which the human
intellect has tried its teeth, the origin of evil is
the most useless and hopeless, the most fasci-
nating and maddening. Eastern religions have
played the fool with it, Christian theology has
laboured it without conspicuous success. Sci-
ence has recently been dallying with it. It is a
kind of whirlpool which sucks in the most sub-
tle intellects, and reduces them to confusion.
Jesus did not once approach the subject : He
alone had the courage to leave it in shadow.
As a consequence He has offered another pledge
of His reasonableness, and removed a stum-
bling-block from the doctrine of sin. Jesus'
silence did not arise from indifference to the
law of heredity, for He traced the blind hostility
of the Pharisees to the bigotry of their fathers,
and saw in the sin of His crucifixion the legiti-
mate outcome of ages of fanaticism. But He
foresaw how the moral sense might be perverted
by wild applications of the law, as when His dis-
ciples asked, ' Who did sin, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind ? ' Jesus would,
no doubt, know the Rabbinical theory of
Adam, although He escaped St. Paul's doubtful
advantage, and had not been educated in the

S'-^J AN ACT OF SELF-WILL 93

schools; but one feels by an instinct that
Jesus' missing discourse on the * Federal Rela-
tionship * would not fit in well between the
Sermon on the Mount and the Farewell of the
Last Supper. Jesus must have been taught
the story of the Fall, and in after years He en-
dorsed its teaching. He clothed that lovely
idyll with a modern dress, and sent it out as
the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is always
a startling transition from the theologians to
Jesus, and it gives one pause that the supreme
Teacher of religion did not deliver Himself on
original sin. But it is a fact, and Jesus had
His reasons.

For one thing, any insistence on heredity
would have depreciated responsibility, and
Jesus held every man to his own sin. Science
and theology have joined hands in magnifying
heredity and lowering individuality, till a man
comes to be little more than the resultant of
certain forces, a projectile shot forth from the
past, and describing a calculated course. Jesus
made a brave stand for each man as the pos-
sessor of will-power, and master of his life. He
sadly admitted that a human will might be
weakened by evil habits of thought ? He de-

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dared gladly that the Divine Grace reinforced
the halting will : but, with every qualification,
decision still rested in the last issue with the
man. 'If Thou wilt, Thou canst make mc
clean,' as if his cure hinged on the Divine Will.
Of course, I am willing, said Jesus, and referred
the man back to his inalienable human rights.
Jesus never diverged into metaphysics, even to
reconcile the freedom of the human will Vv'itli
the sovereignty of the Divine. His function
was not academic debate, it was the solution of
an actual situation. Logically, men might be
puppets ; consciously, they were self-determi-
nating, and Jesus said with emphasis, * Wilt
thou ? '

Jesus had another interest in isolating the
individual and declining to comprehend him in
the race — He compelled his attention. Noth-
ing could have afforded the Pharisees more
satisfaction than a discussion on sin. Nothing
was more uncomfortable than an examination
into their particular sins. A million needle
points pressed together make a smooth sub-
stance, but one is intolerable. Jesus touched
the conscience as with a needle prick, for which
He received homage from honest men, and

SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL

the cross from the dishonest. Before and since
Jesus* day people have been invited to hold an
inquest on the sin of Adam, and have dis-
charged this function with keen intellectual in-
terest. It was Jesus who made sin of even
date, and invited every hearer to see the trag-
edy of Eden in his own experience.

If one be still disappointed with the marked
silence of Jesus on the genesis of sin, let him
find his compensation in Jesus' final analysis of
sin. Cur Master was not accustomed to lay
down a definit'.Oi: and make it a catchword, or
to propose a subject and expound it to exhaus-
tion. He does not equip us with a theory to
be associated with His name. His method
was worthy of Himself, who alone could say,
* Verily, verily,' and was becoming to spiritual
truth, which is above theories. It was not the
brilliant play of artificial light on a selected ob-
ject ; it was the rising of the sun on the whole
sum of things, a gradual, silent, irresistible illumi-
nation before which one saw the wreaths of mist
lift, and the recesses of the valleys laid open.
While Jesus is teaching by allusions to sin, by
revelations of the state of holiness, by the clin-
ical treatment of sinners, by incidental glimpses

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THE MIND OF THE MASTER

of His own experience in temptation, a com-
plete and full-rounded idea of sin grows before
the mind. His disciples hold it, for the most
part, in unconsciousness ; as soon as they iden-
tify it, Jesus' idea is verified.

Two teachers had attempted the diagnosis of
sin before Jesus, and Jesus included their con-
clusions. Moses had wrought into the warp
and woof of Jewish conscience the conviction
that sin was a crime against the Eternal, and
the Psalmists had invested this view with sin-
gular pathos. It matteied not what wrong a
man did ; it was in the last Issue the heart of
God he touched. And God only could loose
him from the intolerable burden of guilt. Sin
was not only the transgression of a law written on
the conscience, it was a personal offence against
the Divine love. Jewish penitence therefore
was very tender and humble. * Against Thee,
Thee only have I sinned.* Jesus, in his Mono-
graph on sin, incorporates this discovery when
He makes the prodigal say, * Father, I have
sinned against heaven and in Thy sight,' when
He teaches to pray, ' Forgive us our tres-
passes as we forgive them that trespass against
us.' Jesus took for granted that sin was a crime.

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SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL

Plato made the next contribution to the
r':ience of sin. He approached the subject
from the intellectual side, and laid it down,
with great force, that if we knew more we
should sin less ; and if we knew all we should
not sin at all. This view has been discredited
by the reduction of knowledge to culture,
when it is at once contradicted by history, for
the Renaissance, say in Italy, was a period of
m'^nstrous iniquity. Read vision for knowl-
edge, and this view verifies itself, for if our
human soul saw with clear eye the loathsome
shape of moral deformity and the fair propor-
tions of moral beauty it would not be possible
to sin. Jesus lends His sanction to Plato when
the prodigal comes to himself, and, his delirium
over, compares the far country, in its shame
and poverty, with his father's home whore the
servants have enough and to spare. When
Jesus insists '' Repent,' He makes the same
plea, for repentance is awaking to fact. It is a
change of mind. Jesuia also believed that sin
was a mistake.

Where Jesus went beyond every other teach-
er was not in the diagnosis of sin : it was in its
analysis. He was not the first lo discover its

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98 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

symptoms or forms, but He alone has gone to the
bottom of things and detected the principle of
sin. Wherein does sin consist ? is the question to
' 'hich one must come in the end. Jesus has
answered it by tracing down the varied fibrous
growth of sins to its one root, and so, while
there are many authorities on sins, there is only
one on Sin. As when one sings, according to
a recent beautiful experiment, on a mass of
confused colours, and they arrange themselves
into mystical forms of flower or shell, so Jesus
breathes on life and the phantasmagoria of sin
changes into one plant, with root, and branch-
es, and leaves, and fruit, ail organised and con-
sistent. Tried by final tests, and reduced to its
essential elements, sin. is th^ preference of self
to God, and the assertion of the human will
against the will of God. With Jesus, from first
to last, sin is selfishness.

It is the achievement of modern science to
discover the unity of the physical world. It is
one of the contributions of Jesus to reveal the
unity of the spiritual world. Before His eyes
it was not a scene of chance or confusion, but
an orderly system standing in the * will of God.'
This was Jesus' formula for the law of the soul.

SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL

which is the principle of thought — for the law
of Hfe, which is the principle of conduct. If
any one did the * will of God,' he was in har-
mony with the spiritual universe ; if he did his
* own will ' he was out of joint. Consciously
and unconsciously each intelligent being made
a choice at every turn, either fulfilling or out-
raging the higher law of his nature, either
entering into or refusing fellowship with God.
Sin is not merely a mistake or a misfit ; it is a
deliberate mischoice. It is moral chaos.

Jesus' absolute consistency in His idea of sin
appears both in the standard of holiness to which
He ever appealed and in His fierce resistance
of certain temptations. * Which of you con-
vinceth Me of sin? ' demanded Jesus in one of
His sharpest passages with the Pharisees, and
it was a bolder challenge than we are apt to
imagine. Had Jesus not been able to refer to
some law above the opinions and customs of
any age, a law beyond the tampering of men, — •
and yet repeated within every man's soul, — He
had been cast in that bold appeal. He had
violated a local and national order at every
turn, and incurred misunderstanding and cen-
sure. Had he responded to a higher order

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loo THE MIND OF THE MASTER

which is over all, and which a Pharisee, as much
as Himself, was bound to obey? If it could be
shown that He was guided by private ends,
and that His life was an organized selfishness,
then He must be condemned, and the Amen of
every honest man would seal the sentence. But
if His life was singular because it was not selfish
and did not conform to this world, then He
must be acquitted. Jesus was jealous on this
point, and evidently watched Himself closely,
from His repeated assertions of obedience to
the Divine will. ' Neither came I of Myself,
but He sent Me.' * I seek not Mine own
glory.' * My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent Me.' * I can of Myself do nothing; as I
hear, I judge ; and My judgment is just, because
I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the
Father which hath sent Me.*

Jesus' passionate devotion to the Divine will
and His crucifixion of self-will in its most refined
forms can be clearly read in the fire of His
temptations. From the wilderness to the garden
Jesus seems to have been assailed by one trial
expressly suited to His noble ends and unstained
soul. He was not tempted to do His own work
or to refuse the work of God ; such temptations

SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL

loi

could never have once touched the Servant of
God. But it was suggested to Jesus that He
might fulfil His calling as the Messiah with far
surer and quicker success if He did not die on
the cross. Be an imperial Messiah, was in sub-
stance the temptation which arose before Jesus
at the beginning of His public life, and which
He described in such vivid imagery to His
disciples. He resisted it, because this kind of
Messiah was not the will of God. He accepted
the cross because it was the will of God. There
are signs that Jesus at one period had a Messi-
anic idea which did not embrace the Cross.
We detect the inward strain ere Jesus' victory
over self-will was complete. He set His face
'stedfastly' to go to Jerusalem. He resented
the suggestion of St. Peter with a sudden fierce-
ness. He was troubled in prospect of the cross.
He was oppressed for a time in the upper room.
Beneath the olive trees of the garden He had
His last encounter with evil, and only when
He said, * Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine
be done ' was the sinlessness of Jesus estab-
lished.

Jesus cast His whole doctrine of sin into the
Drcma of the Prodigal Son, and commands our

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to?. THE MIND OF THE MASTER

adherence by its absolute fidelity to life. The
parable moves between the two poles of ideal
and real human life — home, where the sons of
God live in moral harmony with their Father,
which is liberty, — and exile, where they live in
riotous disobedience, which is licence. He fixes
on His representative sinner, and traces his
career with great care and various subtle
touches. His father does not compel him to
stay at home : — he has free will. The son
claims his portion : — he has individuality. He
flings himself out of his father's house : — he
makes a mischoice. He plays the fool in the
far country : — this is the fulfilling of his bent.
He is sent out to feed swine : — this is the
punishment of sin. He awakes to a bitter
contrast : — this is repentance. He returns to
obedience : — this is salvation. Salvation is the
restoration of spiritual order — the close of a
bitter experience. It is the return of the race
from its * Wander Year.'

Jesus rooted all sin in selfishness, but He
distinguished two classes of sinners and their
punishment. There was the Pharisee, who re-
sisted God because he was wilfully blind and
filled with pride. There wj^s the Publican, who

SIN AN ACT OF SELF-WILL 103

forsook God because he was led astray by
wandering desires and evil habits. Sin, in each
case, wrought its own punishment. For the
Pharisee it was paralysis, so that he could not
enter the kingdom ; for the Publican it was
suffering, so that he must cut off the right arm
and pluck out the right eye to obtain the king-
dom. Heaven, according to Jesus, was to be
with God in our Father's house ; hell was to
be away from God, in the far country. Each
man carried his heaven in his heart — * the king-
dom is within you ' ; or his hell in a gnawing
remorse and heat of lust, * where their worm
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,*

It is reasonable to expect that Jesus' idea of
salvation will correspond with His idea of sin,
as lock and key, or disease and medicine, and
one is not disappointed. According to Jesus,
the selfish man was lost ; the unselfish was
saved, and so He was ever impressing on His
disciples that they must not strive, but serve.
He Himself had come to serve, and He declared
that His sacrifice of Himself would be the re-
demption of the world. This is Jesus' explana-
tion of the virtue of His death. It was an act
of utter devotion to the will of God, and a

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104 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

power of emancipation in the hearts of His
disciples. As they entered into His Spirit t)cy
would be loosened from bondage and escape
into liberty. They would be no longer the
slaves of sin, for the Son had made them free.
Jesus proposed to ransom the race, not by pay-
ing a price to the devil or to God, but by
loosening the grip of sin on the heart and rein-
forcing the will. The service of His life and the
sacrifice of His death would infuse a new spirit
into humanity, and be its regeneration, * The
Son of Man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom
for many.' Within this one pregnant sentence
Jesus states His doctrine of sin and salvation,
and it offers three pledges of reality. It reduces
the different forms of sin to a unity by tracing
them all to self-will. It shows the ethical con-
nection between the sin of man and the death
of Jesus. And it can be verified in the ex-
perience of the saint, which is the story of a
long struggle before his will becomes * the Will
of God.'

lis
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ith

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THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS

It has been said, with a superb negh'gencc of
Judaism, that Jesus discovered the individual ;
it would be nearer the truth to affirm that Jesus
cultivated the individual. Hebrew religion had
endowed each man with the right to say " I," by
inspiring every man with the faith to say God,
and Jesus raised individuality to its highest
power by a regulated process of sanctification.
Nothing is more characteristic of Jesus' method
than His indifference to the many— His devo-
tion to the single soul. His attitude to the
public, and His attitude to a private person
were a contrast and a contradiction. If His work
was likely to cause a sensation, Jesus charged
His disciples to let no man know it: if the
people got wind of Him, He fled to solitary
places : if they found Him, as soon as might be,
He escaped. But He used to take you..g men

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home with IHm, who wished to ask questions:
He would spend all night with a perplexed
scholar: He gave an afternoon to a Samaritan
woman. He denied Himself to the multitude:
He lay in wait for the individual. This was not
because He undervalued a thousand, it was
because He could not work on the thousand
scale : it was not because He over-valued the
individual, it was because His method was
arranged for the scale of one. Jesus never suc-
ceeded in public save once, when He was cru.
cified : He never failed in private save once, with
Pontius Pilate. His method was not sensation:
it was influence. He did not rely on impulses:
He believed in discipline. He never numbered
converts because He knew what was in man :
He sifted them as one winnoweth the wheat
from the chaff. Spiritual statistics are unknown
in the Gospels : they came in with St. Peter in
the pardonable intoxication of success : they
have since grown to be a mania. As the Church
coarsens she CLtimates salvation by quantity,
how many souls are saved : Jesus was concerned
with quality, after what fashion they were saved.
His mission was to bring Humanity to per-
fection.

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS 109

Human nature has been a slow evolution, and
Jesus restricted Himself to the highest reaches.
He did not say one word on the health of the
body, although He is the only man in history
that never knew sickness. Health is a matter of
physiology : it is assumed in the ideal of Jesus.
The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink : it
is Righteousness and Peace and Joy. He pro-
posed no rules for the training of the mind and
did not condescend to write a book, although
every one recognises Jesus as the Prophet of
our Race. Mental culture is the province of
Literature, and Literature is lower than the
highest, for Jesus once cried in a rapture, ' I
thank Thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and
earth, because Thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent and hast revealed them
unto babes.' The mind is greater than the
body ; but there is one place more sacred still
where God is enshrined, and the affections, like
cherubim, bend over the Will. The Soul is the
holiest of all, whose curtains no master dared to
raise till Jesus entered as the High Priest of
Humanity, and it is in this secret place Jesus
works. There are three steps in the Santa
Scala which the Race iS slowly and painfully

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110 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

ascending; barbarism where men cultivate the
body, civilisacion where they cultivate the in-
tellect, holiness where they cultivate the soul.
There is for the whole Race, for each nation,
for every individual, the age of Homer, the age
ol Socrates, the age of Jesus. Beyond the age
of Jesus nothing can be desired or imagined, for
it runs on those lofty tablelands where the soul
lives with God.

Jesus divested Himself of every other interest,
and for three years gave Himself night and day
to the culture of the human soul as a naturalist
to the cultivation of a rare plant, or a scientist to
the conquest of the electric force. He selected
twelve men from the multitude that offered
themselves, whom he considered malleable and
receptive for His discipline. They became His
disciples on whom He lavished labour He could
not afford to the world, and He became their
Master to whom they had committed them-
selves for treatment. Jesus separated these
men from the world and kept them under
observation night and day: He studied their
failings and idiosyncrasies: He applied His
method in every kind of circumstance and with
calculated degrees of intensity. With a mini-

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS iii

mum of failure, one out of twelve : with a
maximum of success, eleven men of such
spiritual force that they gave another face to
the world and lifted the Race to its highest
level. The Gospels contain the careful account
of this delicate experiment in religious science,
and Jesus' exposition of the principle of saint-
hood. Christianity for nineteen centuries has
been the record of its application.

Spiritual culture demands an Ideal as well as
a Discipline, and Jesus availed Himself of the
Ideal of the Prophets. Their chief discovery
was the character of God — when the Hebrew
conscience, the keenest religious instrument in
the ancient world, lifted the veil from the
Eternal, and conceived Jehovah as the imper-
sonation of Righteousness. Their chief service
was the insistence on the duty of Righteous-
ness — who placed in parallel columns the
characters of God and man, and dared to believe
that every man ought to be the replica of God.
Their text was the Holy One, — their endless
and unanswerable sermon, Holiness. Jesus
adopted the obligation of Holiness, but changed
it into a Gospel by revealing the latent re-
lationship between man and God. Had one

112 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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asked the Hebrew Prophet, Why ought I to be
holy? he had replied at his best, because Holi-
ness is the Jaw of your being. Jesus accepted
the law, but added, because a son ought tc be
like his Father. The Law without became an
instinct within. Holiness is conformity to type,
and the one standard of perfection is God Him-
self. Set the soul at liberty, and its history
will be a perpetual approximation to God. ' Be
ye holy, for I am holy,' said the Old Testament.
* Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in
Heaven is perfect,' said Jesus.

With a soul that is imperfect, discipline
would simply be development. With a soul
that Is sinful, discipline must begin with deliver-
ance. Jesus, as the Physician of the soul, had
not merely to do with growth : He had to deal
with deformity ; and Jesus, who alone has
analysed sin, Las alone prescribed its cure.
Before Jesus, people tried to put away sin by
the sacrifice of bulls and goats, and so exposed
themselves to the merciless satire of the Proph-
ets ; since Jesus, people have imagined that
*-.hey could be loosed from their sins by the
dramatic spectacle of Jesus' death, and sc have
made the crucifixion of none effect. If sin be

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS 113

a principle in a man's life, than it is evident
that it cannot be affected by the most pathetic
act in history exhibited from without ; it must
be met by an opposite principle working from
within. If sin be selfishness, as Jesus taught,
then it can only be overcome by the introduc-
tion of a spirit of self-renunciation. Jesus did
not denounce sin : negative religion is always
impotent. He replaced sin by virtue, which is
a silent revolution. As the light enters, the
darkness departs, and as soon as one renounced
himself, he had ceased from sin.

Jesus placed His disciples under an elaborate
and calculated regimen, which was intended at
every point to check the fever of self-will, and
reduce the swollen proportions of our lower
self. They were to repress the petty ambitions
of society. * When thou art bidden of any .nan
to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room
. . but when thou art bidden, go and sit
down in the lowest room.' They were to
mortify the self-importance and vain dignity
that will not render commonplace kindness. * If
I then, your Lord and Master, have washed
your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's
feet.* They were not to wrangle about place,

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114 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

or seek after great things. * Jesus took a child,
and set him by Him, and said unto th .m, . . .
he that is least among you all, the same shall
be great.* They were not to insist on rights
and resist injustice fiercely. * Whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the
other also. And if any man will sue thee at the
law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy
cloke also.' Jesus once cast into keen contrast
the life of the world, which one was inclined to
follow, and the life of the Kingdom His dis-
ciples must achieve. ' Ye know that they
v/hich are accounted to rule over the Gentiles
exercise lordship over them ; and their great
ones exercise authority upon them * — that is
the self-life where men push and rule. ' But so
shall it not be among you : but whosoever shall
be great among you, shall be your minister' —
this is the selfless life where men submit and
serve.

Jesus' regimen had two degrees. The first
was self-denial ; the second was suffering, which
IS self-denial raised to its full strength. If a
young man really desired to possess ' ageless
life,' he must sell all he had and give to the
poor. If a publican desired the Kingdom of

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THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS 115

God, he must leave all and follow Jesus. Men
might have to abandon everything they pos-
sessed and every person they loved, for Jesus'
sake and the Gospel's. The very instincts of
nature must be held in check, and at ames laid
on the altar. * He that loveth father and mother
more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that
loveth son or daughter more than Me is not
v/orthy of Me.' This was not the senseless
asceticism that supposed life could be bought
with money, and it was still less the jealousy of
a master that grudged any affection given to
another. It was the illustration of that Selfless-
ness which is the Law of Holiness, the enforce-
ment of that death which is the gate of Life.
It was the exposition of Jesus' famous paradox,
* He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he
that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.'
Behold His discipline of perfection, upon which
in a moment of fine inspiration Jesus conferred
the name of the Cross. The Cross is the sym-
bol of self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, and is
Jesus' method of salvation. If any one desires
to be saved by Jesus, this is how he is going to
be saved. It is the ' Secret of Jesus ' : the way
which He has Himself trod, and by which He

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leads His discipl' i unto God. * If any man will
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take
up his cross and follow Me.'

The Cross was an open secret to the first
disciples, and they climbed the steep ascent to
Heaven by the * Royal Way of the Holy
Cross,' but its simplicity has been often veiled
in later days. Perhaps the simplicity of the
symbol has cast a glamour over the modern
mind and blinded us to its strenuous meaning.
Art, for instance, with an unerring instinct of
moral beauty, has seized the Cross and ideal-
ised it. It is WTought in gold and hung from
the neck of light-hearted beauty ; it is stamped
on the costly binding of Bibles that go to
church in carriages ; it stands out in bold relief
on churches that are filled with easy-going peo-
ple. Painters have given themselves to cruci-
fixions, and their striking works are criticised
by persons who praise the thorns in the crown,
but are not quite pleased with the expression
on Jesus' face, and then return to their pleas-
ures. Composers have cast the bitter Passion
of Jesus into stately oratorios, and fashionable
audiences are affected unto tears. Jesus' Cross
has been taken out of His hands and smothered

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS 117

in flowers : it has become what He would have
hated, a source of graceful ideas and agreeable
emotions. When Jesus presented the Cross
for the salvation of His disciples, He was cer-
tainly not thinking of a sentiment, which can
disturb no man's life, nor redeem any man's
soul, but of the unsightly beam which must be
set up in the midst of a man's pleasures, and
the jagged nails that must pierce his soul.

Theological science has also shown an unfor-
tunate tendency to monopolise the Cross, till
the symbol of salvation has been lifted out of
the ethical setting of the Gospels and planted
in an environment of doctrine. The Cross has
been too laboriously traced back to decrees and
inserted into covenants : it has been too ex-
clusively stated in terms of Justification and
Propitiation. This is a misappropriation of the
Cross : it is a violation of its purpose. None
can belittle the fimction of the Queen of Sci-
ences or deny her right to theorise regarding
the Divine Purposes and the Eternal Right-
eousness, but it has been a disaster to involve
the Cross in these profound speculations.
When Theology has said her last word on the
Cross it is a mysteiy to the common people ;

ii8 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

when Jesus says His first word it is a plain
path. Jesus did not describe His Cross as a
satisfaction to God, else He had hardly asked
His disciples to share it ; He always spoke of it
as a Regeneration of man, and therefore Jesus
declares that if any man be His disciple he
must carry it daily. Theology has one terri-
tory, which is theory ; Religion has another,
which is life, and the Cross belongs to Re-
ligion. The Gospels do not represent the
Cross as a judicial transaction between Jesus
and God, on which He throws not the slightest
light, but as a new force which Jesus has in-
troduced into life, and which He prophesies
will be its redemption. The Cross may be
made into a doctrine ; it was prepared by Jesus
as a discipline.

There are two methods of healing for the
body, and they are not on the same moral
level. One physician prescribes a medicine
whose ingredients are unknown, and whose
operation is instantaneous, which is certain for
all and the same for all. The patient swallows
it and is cured without understanding and with-
out co-operation. This is cure by magic, and
h very suspicious^ Auother physician ni.a,l^es

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THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS 119

his diagnosis and estimates the symptoms, se-
lects his remedy in correspondence with the
disease, and takes his patient into his confi-
dence. He enlists one's intelligence, saying,
You must have this medicine, because you
have that disease. There is no secrecy, for
there is nothing to hide : there is no boasting,
for so much depends on the patient. This is
cure by science. There are two kinds of Relig-
ion for the relief of man. One offers a formu-
la to be accepted and swallowed. It may be
in the form of a sacrament, or of a text, or of a
view. But as soon as the person receives it
without doubt, he is saved. If he wishes to
understand the How of the operation, he is as-
sured that it is an incomprehensible mystery.
Here there is no connection with reason, no
action of the Will. It is salvation by magic.
The other religion makes a careful analysis of
sin, and proposes a course of treatment which a
man can understand and apply. It is an anti-
dote to the poison acting directly and gradu-
ally, in perfect harmony with the laws of hu-
man nature. Is one willing to make a trial ?
then he can enter into its meaning and test its
success. This is salvation by science, and it is

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120 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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i

not the least of the excellences in Jesus* method
that it is grounded on reason and can be tried
by experience. The action of the Cross on sin
is as simple in its higher sphere as the reduction
of fever by antipyrine or of inflammation by a
counter-irritant in physical disease.

Jesus do2s not appeal to authority for the
sanction of His method — always a hazardous
resort. He rests on facts which lie to every
one's hands. Self-examination is the vindica-
tion of the Cross. Is not every man con-
scious of a strange duality, so that he seems
two men ? There is the self who is proud,
envious, jealous — a lower self. There is the
self which is modest, generous, ungrudging — a
higher self. Just as the lower self is repressed
the higher lives ; just as the lower is pampered
the higher dies. We are conscious of this con-
flict and desire that the evil self be crushed,
mortified, killed ; that the better self be liberat-
ed, fed, developed. It goes without saying that
the victory of the evil self would be destruction,
that the victory of the better self would be
salvation. It is at this point Jesus comes in
with His principle of self-renunciation. If any
man will place himself under My direction, says

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS lai

Jesus, and take the rule from Me, * let him
deny himself, and take up his cross and follow
Me.' As Peter would thrice deny his Lord, so
must Jesus' disciple at all times deny his old
self and refuse to know it. The habit of self-
renunciation is the crucifixion of sin.

It were, however, a depreciation of the Cross
to limit it to a remedy for sin : it is also, in
Jesus' mind, a discipline of perfection for the
soul. It is more than a deliverance, it is an
entrance into the life of God. The Cross is not
only the symbol for the life of man, it is equal-
ly the symbol for the life of God, and it may
indeed be said that the Cross is in the heart of
God. Jesus has taught us that the equivalent
of life is sacrifice, and it is with God that sacri-
fice begins. ' God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son,' said Jesus with
profound significance, for His coming was the
revelation of the Divine nature, "^he Incarna-
tion was an act of sacrifice, so patent and so
brilliant that it has arrested every mind. It
was sacrifice unto the lowest and therefore life
in the highest, an outburst and climax of Life.
But Creation is also Sacrifice, since it is God
giving Himself; and Providence is Sacrifice,

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122 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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since it is God revealing Himself. Grace is
Sacrifice, since it is God girding Himself and
serving. With God, as Jesus declares Him,
Life is an eternal procession of gifts, a costly
outpouring of Himself, an unwearied suffering
of Love. To live is to love, to love is to suffer,
and to suffer is to rejoice with a joy that tills
the heart of God from age to age. The mystery
of Life, Divine and human, possibly the mystery
of the Holy Trinity, is contained in these words
of Jesus : * Verily, verily, I say unto you, except
a corn of wheat fall into the ground it abideth
alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.
He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto
life eternal.' The development of the soul is
along the way of the Cross to the heights of
life. As one ::;' the mystics has it, * A life of
carelessness is to nature and the self and the
Me the sweetest and pleasantest, but it is not
the best, and to some men may become the
worst. Though Christ's life be the most bitter
of all, yet it is to be preferred above all.' 'What,'
asks Herder, * has close fellowship with God
ever proved to man but a costly, self-sacrificing
service?* What else could it be if Love is

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS izx

the law of spiritual Life throughout the i ni-
versc ?

Progress by suffering is one of Jesus' most
characteristic ideas, and, like every other, is
embodied in the economy of human nature and
confirmed by the sweep ot human history.
The Cross marks every departure : the Cross is
the condition of every achievement. Modern
Europe has emerged from the Middle Ages,
Christianity from Judaism, Judaism from Egypt,
Egypt from barbarism, with throes of agony.
Humanity has fought its way upwards at the
point of the bayonet, torn and bleeding, yet
hopeful and triumphant. As each nation
suffers, it prospers ; as it ceases to suffer, it
decays. Our England was begotten in the sore
travail of Elizabeth's day. The American
nation sprang from the sons of martyrs.
United Germany was baptised in blood. The
pioneers of science have lived hardly. The
most original philosopher of modern times
ground glasses for a living, and was the victim
of incurable disease. The master poem of
English speech was written b)- a blind and for-
saken Puritan. The Nev/ World was found in
spite of a hostile court and treacherous friends.

124 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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Some have imagined an earthly paradise for
the race, where it would have lemained igno-
rant of good and evil, without exertion, without
hardship. Jesus saw with clearer eyes. He
made no moan over a lost Eden, He knew
that it is a steep road that leads to the stars.
Jesus believed that the price of all real life is
suftering, and that a man must sell all that he
has to buy the pearl of great price. Twice at
least He lifted this experience into a law. * En-
ter ye in at the strait gate . . . because
strait is the gate and narrow is the way w .lich
leadeth unto life.* And again, after His glow-
ing eulogy on John in His intensity : * From
the days of John the Baptist until now the
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent take it by force.'

Jesus Himself remains for ever the convinc-
ing illustration of this severe culture. His
rejection b)'^ a wicked generation and the out-
rages heaped upon Him seemed an unredeemed
calamity to the disciples. His undeserved and
accumulated trials were at times a burden
almost too great for Jesus' own soul. But He
entered into their meaning before the end,
because they were bringing His Humanity to

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS 12^

nd,
to

the fulness of perfection. Without His Cross
Jesus had been poorer in the world this day
and might have been unloved. It was suffer-
ing that wrought in Him that beauty of holi-
ness, sweetness of patience, wealth of sympathy,
and grace of compassion, which constitute His
divine attraction, and are seating Him on His
throne. Once when the cloud fell on Him, He
cried, * Father, save me from this hour ' ; when
the cloud lifted, Jesus saw of the travail of His
soul — ' I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto Me.* In the upper room
Jesus was cast down for an instant ; then
Iscariot went out to arrange for the arrest, and
Jesus revived at the sight of the Cross : * Now
is the Son of Man glorified.' Two disciples are
apeaking of the great tragedy as they walk to
Emmaus, when the risen Lord joins them and
reads the riddle of His Life. It was not a dis-
aster : it was a design. * Ought not Christ to
have suffered these things, and to enter into
His glory?' The Perfection of Jesus was the
fruit of the Cross.

* Thou must go without, go without — that is
the everlasting song v/hich every hour all our
life through hoarsely sings to us ' — is the pro-

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126 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

found utterance of a great teacher ; but Jesus has
said it better in His commandment of self-abne-
gation and His offer of the Cross. It has been
the custom to make a contrast between John
the Baptist with his stern regime and Jesus with
His gentle Gospel, but the difference was in
spirit, not in method. If the religion of John
was strenuous, so was the religion of Jesus. T< r
Ji necessity of the spiritual world Jesus Himself
could net break. Hardness is of the essence of
Religion, like the iron band within the golden
crown. Jesus was willing to undf^riake the
culture of every man's soul, but He knew no
other way than the Cross. If His disciples
wished to sit on His throne, they must drink
His cup and be baptised with His baptism.
Jesus did not walk one way Himself and pro-
pose another for the disciples, but invited them
to His experience if they desired His attain-
ment. His method was not the materialistic
cross of Munkacsy, it was the mystical cross of
Perugino. Jesus nowhere commanded that one
cling to His Cross, He everywhere commanded
that one carry His Cross, and out of this daily
crucifixion has been born the most beautiful

THE CULTURE OF THE CROSS 127

sainthood from St. Paul to St. Francis, from
A Kempis to George Herbert. For * there is
no salvation of the soul nor hope of everlasting
life but in the Cross.'

sfr^^>ms!ww

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

-1. jpu-._m'^mm^^^^mgmmmmi^iii^mi&

'ii,

VII

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

Religion is recognised not only as a univer-
sal factor in human history, but also as an es-
sential element of human nature, so that if any
person with a sense of responsibility proposes
to remove the supernatural Religion of the
past, he feels himself bound to replace it with a
natural Religion for the future. It is one thing
however to do homage to a ruler, it is another
to identify his throne, and, apart from Jesus, it
were hardly possible to determine the seat of
Religion. Some have argued that Religion is
the fulfilment of duty ; this is to settle Religion
in the conscience and to reduce it to morality.
Some have insisted that Religion is the accept-
ance of revealed truth ; this is to settle Religion
in the reason, and tO resolve Religion into
knowledge. Some have pleaded that Religion
is a state of feeling ; this is to settle Religion in

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133 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the heart and to dissolve it into emotion. The
philosopher, the theologian, the mystic can each
make out a good case, for each has without
doubt represented a side of Religion. None of
the three can exclude the other two ; all three
cannot include Religion. Piety, knowledge,
emotion are only prolegomena to Religion —
its favourite forms and customs. Localise Re-
ligion in any of those spheres, and you have a
provincial notion ; what we want is an imperial
idea of our greatest experience. As usual, we
owe it to Jesus.

Jesus recognised the variety of the religious
spirit and gave His direct sanction to its choice
fruits. Religion is obedience to the highest
law : * Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I
command you.' Religion is knowledge : * that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' Religion
is a sublime emotion : * She hath washed My
feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs
of her head.' But religion with Jesus is not
merely an influence diffused through our spirit-
ual nature like heat through iron ; it has a sep-
arate existence. Religion is not a nomad that
has to receive hospitality in some foreign de-

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

133

partment of the soul ; it has its own home and
habitation. It is a faculty of our constitution
as much as Conscience or Reason, with its own
sphere of operations and peculiar function.
When some exuberant writer refers to Religion
as a fungoid growth or a decaying superstition,
one is amazed at his belated state of mind.
Science discovers that Religion has shaped the
past of the Race, and concludes that it will
always be a factor in its evolution. Jesus did
not create Religion, it is a human instinct. He
defined it, and Jesus' synonym for the iculty of
Religion is Faith.

Jesus as the Prophet of Religion was ready
to submit every word of His teaching to
Conscience and Reason. He never suggested
that what would have been immoral in man
might be moral in God. His argument was
ever from the good in man to the best in God.
Human fatherhood was a faint suggestion of
Divine Fatherhood. * What man is there of
you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give
him a stone? ... If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how
much more shall your Father which is in Heaven
give good things to them that ask Him?' He

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134 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

never insisted that what was absolutely in-
credible to man was therefore all the more
likely to be true with God, but used the human
as the shadow of the divine. Common sense in
man was Grace in God. * What man of you,
having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them,
doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wil-
derness, and go after that which is lost till he
find it ? ' Jesus claimed no exemption for His
doctrine from the Law of Righteousness or the
Law of Fitness, but it was in another court He
chose to state His case for decision.

When Jesus made His chief appeal to the in-
dividual He addressed Himself to Faith. He
asked many things of men, but the first and last
duty was to believe. Faith lay behind life ; it
formed character, it inspired discipline. * What
shall we do,' said captious Jews, * that we might
work the works of God ? ' Jesus answered and
said unto them, * This is the work of God, that
ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.* Before
the soul came to perfection it would have to
suffer, b. t it must begin by believing, else there
could be no Religion. Jesus' mind was con-
tinually fixed on Faith ; the word was ever on
His lips. It was the recurring decimal of His

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FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

^iS

thinking, the keynote of His preaching. His
custom was to divide men into classes from the
standpoint of Religion, not morals — those who
believed, those who believed not. He marvelled
twice : once at men's unbelief, once at a Roman
centurion's faith. When any one sought His
help He demanded faith. When He rebuked
His disciples it was usually because they had
little faith. Understand what Jesus meant by
Faith and you understand what Jesus meant by
Religion.

Just as a ship is kept in the waterway by the
buoys on either side, so does one arrive at
Jesus' idea of Faith by grasping the startling
fact that it was quite different from the idea of
His own day. The contemporary believer of
Jesus was a Pharisee, and his faith stood in the
passionate acceptance of a national tradition.
He believed that the Jewish nation was the
exclusive people of God, and that Jerusalem
would yet be the metropolis of the world, with
a thousand inferences and regulations that had
grown like fungi on the trunk of this stately
hope. It was contrary to fact to say a Pharisee
believed in God : i^ came out that he did not
know God when he saw Him. It is correct to

1 1

136 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

say that he believed in a dogma which, in an-
other age, might have been that of the Holy
Trinity, but in his age happened to be that of the
national destiny. The dogma of the monopoly
of God was difficult to hold, being vulnerable
both from the side of God and man. Jesus Him-
self showed that it did not correspond with the
nature of God, whose mercy was not a matter of
ethnology. ' I tell you of a truth . . . many lepers
were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the p' >het,
and none of them was cleansed, saving 1 .lan
the Syrian.* He pointed out that it was con-
tradicted by the nature of man, whose piety
was not a matter of geography. ' I say unto
you, That many shall come from the east and
west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven.' While
this dogma had the advantage of being patriotic,
it had the misfortune of being incredible to any
fair-minded and reasonable person. You could
only believe it by shutting your eyes to facts,
and making the most intolerable assumptions.
Faith with a Pharisee was the opposite of
Reason.

Jesus also had a contrast in the background
of His mind, and it throws His idea of Faith

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

137

into bold relief. * Master,' said certain of the
Scribes and Pharisees to Jesus, * we would see a
sitjn from Thee.' It was dangerous, they con.
sidcred, to let truth stand on her merits : for a
prophet to rest his claim on his character. It
WaJ safer to shift from truth to miracles and to
depend on the intervention of the supernatural.
Jesus was angry because this wanton demand
for a sign was thr tacit denial of Faith, and the
open confession of an irreligious heart. * An
evil and adulterous generation,' He said, * seek-
eth after a sign.' A nobleman was impressed
by the spiritual power of Jesus, and besought
Him to heal his sick son. His faith was strong
enough to believe that Jesus could do this good
work; it was too weak to believe that Jesus
could work at a distance. Faith in this man's
mind was fettered by conditions of sight, and so
was less than faith. * Except,' said Jesus, * ye
see signs and wonders ye will not believe.*
When Jesus rose from the dead He found that
one of His apostles had not kept Easter Day,
and would not accept His Resurrection unless
Jesus afforded him physical proof of the most
humble and elementary kind. Jesus conceded
to Love what could not be given to faith, and

ill

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138 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

St. Thomas, who had lost faith in Jesus'
humanity, rose to the faith of His divinity.
But Jesus reproached him, and rated his faith
at a low value. It was only a bastard faith that
had not freed itself of sight. * Because thou
hast seen Me, thou hast believed : blessed are
vhey that have not seen and yet have believed.*
* What,' said St. Augustine, * is Faith, but to
believe what you do not see?* It was a happy
epitome of the teaching of Jesus. With Jesus
Faith is the opposite of sight.

Jesus crystallised the idea of Faith which is
held in solution throughout the Bible, and rests
on the assumption of two worlds. There is the
physical world which lies round us on every
side, and of which our bodies are a part. This
is one environment, and the instrument of
knowledge here is sight. There is the spiritual
world which is hidden by the ■■eil of the physical,
and of which our souls are a part. This is
another environment, and the instrument of
knowledge here is faith. There is an order in
the education of Humanity, and the first lesson
is not faith but sight. The race, and each
individual in his turn, begins with the ex-
perience of the physical : seeing visible objects^

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

139

'his

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ex-

kts,

handling material possessions, hearing audible
voices, looking at flesh-and-blood people. It is
a new and hard lesson to realise the spiritual :
to enter into the immaterial, inaudible, invisible,
intangible life of the soul ; to catch a voice that
only calls within, to follow a mystical presence
through a trackless wilderness, to wait for an
inheritance that eye hath not seen, to store our
treasure on the other side of the grave. This is
to leave our kindred and our father's house, and
to go into a land which God will show us. It
is to emerge from the physical, it is to enter
into the spiritual sphere. It is an immense
advance ; it is a tremendous risk. Any one
who shifts the centre of his life from the world
which is seen to the world which is unseen
deserves to be called a believer. Abraham was
the first man in history who dared to make this
venture and to cast himself on God. He dis-
covered the new world of the soul, and is to
this day the father of the faithful.

Jesus insisted on Faith for the same reason
that a mathematician relies on the sense of
numbers, or an artist on the sense of beauty :
it was the one means of knowledge in His
department. He was the Prophet of God an.d

140 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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must address the God-faculty in man. Between
Faith and God there was the same correspond-
ence as between the eye and Hght. Faith
proves God : God demands Faith. When any
one ignored Faith and fell back on sight in the
quest for God Jesus was in despair. Before
such wilful stupidity He was amazed and help-
less. You want to see, was His constant
complaint, when in the nature of things you
must believe. There is one sphere where sight
is the instrument of knowledge : use it there — •
'.t is not my sphere. There is another where
faith is the instrument ; use it there — that
is my sphere. But do not exchange your
instruments. You cannot see what is spiritual;
you might as well expect to hear a picture.
What you see you do not believe ; it is a mis-
nomer ; you see it. What you believe you
cannot see ; it would be an absurdity ; you
believe it. Faith is the instinct of the spiritual
world : it is the sixth sense — the sense of the
unseen. Its perfection may be the next step
in the evolution of the Race.

Jesus continually offered Himself as the
object of Faith because He was the Revelation
of the unseen world. Believe on Me, He said

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

141

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the

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the

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said

with authority, not on the ground that He was
God, whom no man could see, but because He
was sent by God, whom He declared. * Shew
us the Father and it sufficeth us,' was the con-
fused cry of Faith. * He that hath s^en Me
hath seen the Father,' was Jesus' answer. To
see Jesus was not sight : it was Faith. Sight
only showed a Jewish peasant, and therefore
Jesus said once to the Jews, * Ye also have seen
Me and believe not.' Faith detected His veiled
glory ; therefore Jesus said to St. Peter on his
great confession, * Flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is
in Heaven.' Jcbus did not depend on His
metaphysical equality with the Father, but on
His moral likeness to the Father — not on His
eternal generation, but on His spiritual charac-
ter. Reason must decide whether Jesus be God
and Man in two distinct natures and one per-
son : it is the function of faith to respond to
His Divine excellence, who was

* Fulfilled with God-head as a cup
Filled with a precious essence.'

God was made visible and beautiful to Faith
as Jesus spoke and worked, and the denial of
Jesus was the denial of God. ' The Father

142 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

t r f ;,i.

Himself, which hath sent Me, hath borne wit-
ness of Me. Ye have neither heard His voice at
any time nor seen His shape ; and ye have not
His word abiding in you, for Whom He hath
sent ye believe not.* Faith fulfils itself in the
discovery and acceptance of Jesus ; beyond
him nothing is to be desired, no one to be im-
agined. As Mr. T. H. Green says, ' Faith is
the communication of the Divine Spirit by
which Christ as the revealed God dwells in our
heart. It is the awakening of the Spirit of
Adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father.'

Two questions which harass the religious
mind in our day were never anticipated by
Jesus* hearers : they were impossible under His
idea of Faith. When Faith is an isolated and
subtle act of the soul, some will always ask.
What is Faith? and some will always reply,
There are seven kinds, more or less, and the
end will be hopeless confusion. If Faith be
defined as the sense of the unseen which de-
tects, recognises, loves, and trusts the goodness
existing in numerous forms and persons in the
world, and rises to its height in trusting Him
who is its source and sum, then it is needless
to inquire, * What is Faith ? * We are walking

ttili 'll

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

143

by Faith in one world every day with our souls,
as we are walking by sight in another world
with our bodies. No one asked Jesus, * How
can Faith be obtained ? ' because Jesus did not
regard Faith as an arbitrary gift of the Al-
mighty, or an occasional visitant to favoured
persons, but as one of the senses of the soul.
Jesus did not divide men into those who had
Faith and those who had not, but into those
who used the faculty, and those who refused to
use it. He expected people to believe when He
presented evidence, as you expect one to look if
you show him a picture. One might have weak
faith as one might have short sight : one might
be faithless as one might be blind. That is
beside the question. The Race has sight, al-
though a few may be blind, and the Race has
Faith, although a few may not believe.

Jesus regarded the feeblest effort of this
faculty with hope because it lifted the soul
above the limitations of this life and allied it to
the Eternal. * With God all things are possible,*
and therefore, * If thou canst believe, all things
are possible to him that believeth.' When His
disciples caught a glimpse of the higher life and
prayed * Increase our Faith,' Jesus encouraged

II-

144 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

them. * If ye had Faith as a grain of mustard
seed (synonym for smallness), ye might say unto
this sycamine tree (synonym for greatness). Be
thou plucked up by the root, and be thou
planted in the sea ; and it should obey you. It
was not easy to believe strongly any more than
to see far, and Faith, like any other faculty,
must be trained by discipline. Jesus was evi-
dently satisfied with the father who said with
tears, * Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbe-
lief,' and ever cast His protection over strug-
gling Faith. Positive unbelief or absolute in-
capacity of Faith, Jesus refused to pity or con-
done. It was not a misfortune : it was a wilful
act. It was atrophy through misuse or neglect,
and was, to His m.nd, bin.

This judgment would be a gross injustice if
Faith were an accomplishment of saints ; it is
an inevitable conclusion if Faith be an inherent
faculty. No one could be reduced to this help-
less state unless he had habitually shut his
soul against the unseen as it lapped him round
and had fastened his whole interest on this
world. It was one of the paradoxes of Jesus'
day, that the same people were the conventional
believers and the typical unbelievers. The

K !■

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

145

Pharisees believed in their creed with pathetic
tenacity and disbeheved in Jesus with hope-
less obstinacy, and the reason of their faith
and their unbelief was the same. It was
their utter and unqualified worldliness. They
believed in a kingdom where its citizens strove
for the chief seats of the synagogues and the
highest rooms at feasts ; they were offended
with a kingdom whose type was a little child
and whose Messiah came to serve. They had
lived so long in the dark of vain ambition and
material aims, that their eye-balls had withered,
and when they came into the open they could
not see. * How can ye believe,* said Jesus to
the Jews, illuminating at one stroke His idea of
Faith and the reason of their unbelief, 'which
receive honour one of another, and seek not the
honour that cometh from God only?'

Jesus* attitude to miracles hangs on His idea
of Faith. Define Faith as the antagonist of
reason, and miracles are then a necessity. They
are the twelve legions of angels which inter-
vene on the side of Truth. Define Faith as the
supplement to reason in the sphere of the un-
seen, and miracles are at best a provisional
assistance. If faith had been alert and strong,

146 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

then miracles had been an incumbrance. Since
Faith was weak and inert, miracles served a
purpose. For a moment the spiritual order
projected itself into the natural and arrested
attention. No one could deny another state,
and he might be roused to possess it. A mira-
cle was a sign, a lightning flash that proves the
electricity in the air ; otherwise a useless and
alarming phenomenon to men. Jesus did not
think highly of physical miracles ; He was an-
noyed when they were asked ; He wrought
them with great reserve ; He depreciated their
spiritual value on all occasions. If blind men
could not see the light, let them have the
lightning, but it was a poor makeshift. * If I
do not the works of My father, believe me not.
But if I do, though ye believe not Me (recognize
Me), believe the works, that ye may know and
believe that the Father is in Me and I in Him.'
So He put it to the Jews, and His heart some-
times failed Him about His own disciples.
* Believe Me that I am in the Father and the
Father in Me : or else believe Me for the very
works' sake.'

* You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigs,
To show inside lie germs of herbs unborn,

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

147

And check the careless step would spoil their birth ;
But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go.
. . . This book's fruit is plain,
Nor miracles need prove it any more.*

Jesus was Himself the one convincing and
permanent miracle, the ' avenue into the un-
seen.' When any one believes in Jesus he has
the key of revelation and the vision of Heaven.
* Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the
fig tree, believest thou ? thou shalt see greater
things tlip.n these. And He saith unto him,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye
shall see Heaven open, and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of
man.'

With Jesus* idea of faith religion is indepen-
dent of external evidence, and carries a warrant
in her own bosom. The foundation of Faith is
a grave problem, and its diflRculty is admirably
raised in an Eastern legend. The world rests on
an elephant. Very good: and the elephant itself
on a tortoise : and the tortoise ? on air — sooner
or later you come to air — no foundation. There
are two conceivable grounds on which Faith can
stablish herself, and each is a priceless assistance.
One is the testimony of faithful people in all

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148 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the ages; this is an infallible Church. The
other is that * volume which is a Divine sup-
plement to the laws of nature and of con-
science ' : this is an infallible Book. But what
is to certify the Church or the Book ? Their
character alone can be their certificate, and how
am I to identify this character save by my
Faith ? We end where we began — with Faith,
which must be self-verifying and self-sustaining.
We believe in Jesus, not because the prophets
anticipated Him or disciples have magnified
Him, but, in the last issue, because He is such
an one as wc must believe. Jesus is the justi-
fication because He is the satisfaction of Faith.
Faith is thankful for every aid, and strengthens
herself on the Bible, but Faith is self-sufficient.
' In its true nature,' to quote Mr. Green again,
* Faith can be justified by nothing but itself,'
or, as John Baptist has it, * What He hath seen
and heard, that He testifieth . . . he that
hath received His testimony hath set to his
seal that God is true.*

Jesus' idea of Faith explained His contradic-
tory attitude to this visible world, which was
sometimes one of friendliness, sometimes one of
watchfulness. When He saw the world as the

n \

FAITH Till': SIXTH SENSE

140

shadow of the real, He loved it and wove it
into an endless parable. Its fertility, tenderness,
richness, brilliancy were all signs of the King-
dom of Heaven fulfilled in Himself. * I am the
true vine ; ' * I am the good Shepherd " ; ' I am
the Light of the world ' ; He was the ' living
water.' He was the substance of every appear-
ance : the truth under every form. The spiritual
was embodied in this world, as Jesus was God
in human flesh, and he that believed, like St.
John, could see. This was the appreciation of
the world. When Jesus thought of the world
as the veil of the spiritual. He was concerned, and
warned His disciples lest they should be caught
by the glitter of the visible, lest they should be
held in the prison of the material. They must
have a sense of proportion, seeking first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness: they
must not fret about this world, knowing it to
be an appendage of the Kingdom. They ought
not to lay up for themselves treasures on earth,
because they would be lost ; they must store
their treasures in heaven, because they would
last. They ought not to fear the trials of this
life, because persecution cannot injure the soul ;
they ought to fear spiritual disaster only,

.((•

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150 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

because it is destruction to be cast into hell f re.
He that seeks to house his soul in barns is a
fool ; he that prepares an everlasting dwelling-
place is wise. The world as a parable is perfect ;
as a possession it is worthless. It is never to
be compared with the soul, or the kingdom of
God. Jesus did not denounce the world as
wicked, He disparaged it as unreal. This is the
depreciation of the world.

When Jesus' idea of faith is accepted, then
its province in human life will be finally de-
limitated, and various frontier wars brought to
an end. Painters will still give us charming
pictures of Fai.'^ and Reason, but they will no
longer represent Reason as a mailed knight
picking his way from stone to stone, while Faith
as a winged angel floats by his side. Faith and
Reason will be neighbouring powers, each
absolute in its own region. It is the part of
Reason to verify intellectual conceptions and
apply intellectual principles, and Faith mu"t
not disturb this work. It is the part of Faith
to gather those hopes and feelings which lie
outside the intellect, and Faith must not be
hampered by Reason. When the knight comes
to the ed^e of t\^Q q^iff , he can go no farther ;

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

i5»

dc-

then Faith, like Angelico'a San Michele, opens
his strong wings and passes out in the lonely
quest for God. An Eastern has understood
Jesus perfectly. * What Reason is to things
demonstrable,' he says, * is Faith to the invisible
realities of the spirit world.*

One may also hope that with Christian views
of Faith we shall not hear any more of a recon-
ciliation between Science and Religion, which
is as if you proposed to reconcile Geology and
Astronomy. Science has, for its field, everything
material ; religion, everything spiritual. When
the scientist comes, as he constantly does, on
something beyond his tests, as, for instance,
life, he ought to leave it to Religion. When
the saint comes on something material, as, for
instance, creation, he ought to leave it to
Science. Faith has no apparatus for science ;
science has no method of discovering God.
For the phenomena of the universe we look to
Science ; for the facts of the soul to Faith. * A
division as old as Aristotle,' say the authors of
the Unseen Universe, * separates speculators into
two great classes : those who study the How of
the universe, and those who study the Why.
All men of Science are embraced in the

152 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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former of these ; all men of Religion in the
latter.'

Define Faith as the Religious faculty, and
you at once lift from its shoulders the burden
of Theology. In the minds of many, Faith and
Religion have been so confounded together as
to be practically one, and Faith has been exer-
cised on dogmas when it should have been rest-
ing in God. Theology is a Science ; it is created
by reason. Religion is an experience; it is
guided by faith. The Catholic doctrine of the
Trinity, for instance, is a very elaborate effort
of reason, and is not, strictly speaking, within
the scope of faith. When one says * I believe '
in the Nicene Creed, one means that he assents
to the theological statement. When one says
* Lord, I believe ' in Jesus* sense, one means that
he trusts — a very different thing. Jesus' physical
Resurrection, in the same way, is y question that
can only be decided by evidence, and is within
the province of reason. His spiritual Resurrec-
tion is a drama of the soul, and a matter of faith.
When I declare my belief that on the third
day Jesus rose, I am really yielding to evi-
dence. When I am crucified with Christ, buried
with Christ, and rise to newness of life in

FAITH THE SIXTH SENSE

153

Christ, I am believing after the very sense of
Jesus.

Our wisdom in this day of confusion is to
extricate Faith from all entanglements, and
exercise the noblest, surest, strongest faculty of
our nature on Jesus Christ, whose Person con-
stitutes the evidence of the unseen, whose one
demand on all men is Trust, whose promise,
fulfilled to an innumerable multitude, is Rest.

' Reiiicaiber what a martyr said
On the rude tablet overhead :
I was born sickly, poor, and m-an,
A slave ; no misery could screen
The holders of the pearl of price
From Caesar's envy ; therefore twice
I fought with beasts, and three times saw
My children suffer by his law.
At last, my own release was earned,
I was some time in being burned ;
But at the close a hand came through
The fire above my head, and drew
My soul to Christ, whom now I see*

_ ...^LMi^iJsmmw'mm mm

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THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL
GRAVITATION

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VIII

THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITA-
TION

*This is my commandment/ said Jesus, ' that
ye love one another as I have loved you ' ;
* Every particle of matter in the universe,* said
Newton, 'attracts every other particle with a
force directly proportioned to the mass of the
attracting particle, and inversely to the square
of the distance,' are the two monumental de-
liverances in human knowledge, and the Law
of Love in the sphere of metaphysics is the
analogue of the law of gravitation in the sphere
of physics. The measure of ignorance in
Science has been isolation, when nature appears
a series of unconnected departments. The
measure of ignorance in Religion has been
selfishness, when the Race appears a certain
number of individuals fighting each for his own
hand. The master achievement of knowledge

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III

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15^ THE MIND OF THE MASTER

has been the discovery of unity. Before New-
ton, gravitation was holding the world together;
it was his honour to formulate the law. Before
Jesus, Love was preventing the dissolution of
the Race ; it was His glory to dictate the law.
Newton found a number of fragments and left
a physical universe. Jesus found a multitude
of individuals and created a spiritual kingdom.
The advance from a congeries of individuals to
an organised society is marked by four mile-
stones. First, we are simply conscious of other
men and accept the fact of their existence ; we
realise our mutual dependence and come to a
working agreement. This is the infancy of the
Race and conscience is not yet awake. Then
we discover that there are certain things one
must not do to his neighbour, and certain ser-
vices one may expect from his neighbour, that
to injure the next man is misery and to help
him is happiness. This is the childhood of the
Race, and conscience now asserts itself. After-
wards we begin to review the situation and to
collect our various duties : we arrange them
under heads and state them in black and white.
This is the youth of the Race, and reason is
now in action. Finally, we take up our list of

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 159

black and white rules and try to settle their
connection. It is not possible to trace them all
to one root and comprehend them in one act ?
What a light to conscience, a relief to reason, a
joy to the heart ! This is the mature manhood
of the Race, and the heart is now in evidence.
From an instinct to duties, from duties to rules,
and now from rules to Law. State that Law
and the Race becomes one society.

Jesus came at a point of departure ; He
received the race from Moses and led it into
liberty. The Jew of Jesus* day was, in spite of
all his limitations, the most spiritual man in
the world, and the more thoughtful Jews were
sick of a code and thirsting for a principle.
' Master,* said a scribe to Jesus, * which is the
great commandment in the law ? * and this
anonymous seeker after truth has suffered un-
just reproach. He has been imagined a mere
pedant held in the bonds of a vain theology, or
a cunning sophist anxious to entrap Jesus into
a war of words. He ought rather to be thought
of as an earnest student whose mind had out-
grown a worn-out system, and who was waiting
for the new order. His desire was not a puerile
comparison of rules ; he had tasted the tedium

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of such debates in Pharisaic circles : his desire
was to get from the branches to the root. He
believed that Jesus had made the discovery.
Jesue recognised a congenial mind and placed a
generous interpretation on the scribe's words,
* Thou art not far,' He said, * from the kingdom
of God;

Jesus addressed Himself to the unity of moral
law in His first great public utterance, and only
concluded His treatment before His arrest in
the garden. His sermon on the mount was a
luminous and comprehensive investigation of
the ten words with a purpose — to detect their
spiritual source and organic connection. It was
the analysis of a code in order to indentify the
principle. It was the experimental search for a
law conducted with every circumstance of
spiritual interest before a select audience ; it
was a sustained suggestion by a score of illus-
trations that the law had been found. Moses
said, ' do this or do that.' Jesus refrained from
regulations — He proposed that we should love.
Jesus, while hardly mentioning the word, plant-
ed the idea in His disciples' minds, that Love
was Law. For three years He exhibited and
enforced Love as the principle of life, until.

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION i6i

before he died, they understood that all duty
to God and man was summed up in Love. Prog-
ress in the moral world is ever from complexity
to simplicity. First one hundred duties ; after-
wards they are gathered into ten command-
ments ; then they are reduced to two : love of
God and love of man ; and, finally, Jesus says
His last word : * This is My commandment,
that ye love one another as I have loved you.'

When Jesus proposes to sum up the whole
duty of man in Love, one is instantly charmed
with the sentiment, and understands how it
made the arid legalism of the scribes to blossom
like the rose. How can one conquer sin? How
can one come to perfection ? How can one
have fellowship with God ? How can one save
the world? And to a hundred questions of
this kind Jesus has one answer : * Love the man
next you.* It is the poetry of idealism ; it is
quite beyond criticism as a counsel of perfec-
tion. But we are haunted with the feeling that
this is not a serious treatment of the subject.
We are inclined to turn from the Galilean
dreamer and fall back on the casuists. It is
one of our limitations to imagine that poetry
is something less than truth instead of its only

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162 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

adequate expression, and that the heart is an im-
pulsive child whose vagaries have to be checked,
instead of the imperial power in human nature.
We are redeemed in this matter by the inspira-
tion of Jesus. Had Jesus repeated the hackneyed
programme of negation with a table of * shalt
nots,' He would have afforded another Jreary
instance of moral failure. When Jesus publish-
ed His positive r- 'nciple of Love, and left each
man to draw up iiis own table, He gave a bril-
liant pledge of spiritual success. By this magi-
cal word of Love He not only brought the dry
bones together and made a unity ; He clothed
them with flesh and made a living body. He
may have forfeited the name of moralist. He has
gained the name of Saviour.

Jesus was not an agreeable sentimentalist
who imagined that He could cleanse the world
by rose-water ; He was the only thinker who
grasped the whole situation root and branch.
He did not propose to make sin illegal ; that
had been done without conspicuous benefit.
He proposed to make sin impossible by replac-
ing it with love. If sin be an act of self-will,
each person making himself the centre, then
Love is the destruction of sin, because love con-

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 163

nccts instead of isolating. No one can be en-
vious, avaricious, hard-hearted ; no one can be
gross, sensual, unclean, if he loves. Love is the
death of all bitter and unholy moods of the
soul, because Love lifts the man out of himself
and teaches him to live in another. Jesus did
not think it needful to eulogise the virtues : it
would have been a work of supererogation when
He had insisted on Love. It is bathos, for
instance, to instruct a mother in tenderness; the
maternal instinct will fulfil itself. Jesus has
changed ethics from a crystal that can only
grow by accretion into a living plant that flow-
ers in its season. He exposed the negative
principle of morals in His empty house swept
and garnished ; He vindicated the positive
principle in His house held by a strong man
armed. The individualism of selfishness is the
disintegrating force which has cursed this world,
segregating the individual and rending society
to pieces. The altruism of Love is the consoli-
dating force which will save the world, reconcil-
ing every man to his fellows and recreating
society. When Jesus makes Love the basis of
social life. He does not need to condescend to
details : He has established unity.

i64 THE MIND OF Til!-: MASTER

i H

When Jesus gave His doctrine of Love in its
final form, one is struck by a startling omission.
He laid on His disciples the repeated charge of
Love to one another, He did not once command
them to love God. While His preachers have
in the main exhorted men to love God, Jesus
in the main exhorted them to love their fellow-
men. This was not an accident — a bias given
to His mind by the immense suffering in the
world : it was an intention — the revelation of
Jesus* idea of Love. Conventional religion di-
vides love into provinces — natural love, ranging
from the interest of a philanthropist in the poor
to the passion of a mother for her child, and
spiritual love, whose humblest form is the fellow-
ship of the Christian Church and whose highest
is the devotion of the soul to God. This arti-
fice is the outcome of a limited vision ; it has
been published by a contracted heart. It has
ended in the disparagement of natural love and
the unreality of spiritual love. Jesus never
once sanctioned this mischievous distinction :
He bitterly satirises its effect on conduct. The
Pharisee offers to God the gift which God ought
to have gone to his parents' support — so de-
voted was he to God, so lifted above ordinary

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 165

affection ! Our Master accepted the solidarity
of sin, that no one could injure a fellow-creature
without hurting God. * If the world hate you,
ye know that it hated Me before it hated you ; '
and ' He that hateth Me, hateth My Father
also.* He accepted with as little reserve the
solidarity of Love — that no one could love a
fellow-creature with a pure, unselfish passion
without loving God. * He that receiveth you
receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth
Him that sent Me.' As St. John has it, with
an echo of past words, * Beloved, let us love one
another : for love is of God ; and every one
that loveth is born of God.' Life is the school
of love, in which we rise from love of mother
and wife and child through a long discipline
of sacrifice to the love of God. Love is the law
of Life.

It was the habit of Jesus* mind to trace the
seen at every point into the unseen, and He
gave the law of Love its widest and farthest
range. He was not content with insisting that
the unity of the human stood in Love, He sug-
gested that Love was also the unity of the
Divine. The same bond that made one fellow-
ship of St. John and St. Peter was the principle

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i66 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

of cotnmunion between the Father and the Son.
With Jesus the Trinity was never a metaphysical
conception — a state of being ; it was an ethical
fact — a state of feeling. It was a revelation of
Love which found its life in sacrifice. As the
Father gave the Son, so the Son gave Himself,
and as the Son gave Himself, so must Hb dis-
ciples give themselves for the brethren. God
and Christ were one in love ; Christ and man
were one in love. The great Law had full
courses and God and man were united in the
sacrifice of love. ' Therefore doth my Father
love Me, because I lay down My life that I
might take it again. This commandment have
I received of My Father.* * This is My com-
mandment, that ye love one another as I have
loved you.' ' If ye keep My commandments,
ye shall abide in My love ; even as I have kept
My Father's commandments and abide in His
love.' ' If a man love Me, he will keep My
words : and My Father will love him, and we
will come unto him, and make our abode with
him.' Perhaps the most profound symbol of
Jesus was the washing of the disciples' feet, and
therefore the preamble of St. John, * knowing . . .
that He was come from God and went to God.*

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 167

It seemed only an act of lowly and kindly
service ; it really was an illustration of the Law
which holds in one God Almighty and the
meanest man who is inhabited by Jesus' Spirit.
Apart from the 'icarnation, which is the
theoretical grounr a united humanity, and
His Spirit, which is the practical influence
working towards that high end, Jesus made two
contributions to the cause of unity. He has
stated in convincing terms the principle which
alone can repair the disruption in society and
close its fissures. What rends soc'-^Xy in every
land is the conflict between the rights of the one
and the rights of the many, and harmony can only
be established by their reconciliation. Peace
can never be made by the suppression of the
individual — which is collectivism, nor by the
endless sacrifice of a hundred for the profit of
one — which is individualism. Jesus came to
bring each man's individuality to perfection,
not to sink him in the mass. Jesus came to
rescue the poor and weak from the tyranny of
power and ambition, not to leave them in bond-
age. Both ends were His, and both nre em-
braced in His new commandment. For the
ideal placed before each individual is nc; rule

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but service, and in proportion to his attainments
will be his sacrifices. By one stroke Jesus secures
the welfare of the many who share in the suc-
cess of the one, and the sanctification of the
one whose character is developed by his service
of the many. It will not be necessary to cripple
any man's power lest it may be a menace to his
neighbours, because he will be their voluntary
servan^t-, nor will his neighbours be driven to
the vice of oppression, because they will not
fear. Where Jesus' idea prevails a rivalry of
service will be the habit of society, and he will
stand highest who stoops lowest in the new
order of life.

Jesus also offered in the Church a model of
the perfect society, and therefore He established
the Church on an eternal and universal principle.
Wherever a number of isolated individuals come
together and form one body there must be some
bond of unity. With a nation it is geography —
the people live within certain degrees of latitude.
With a par/ it is opinion — its members bind
themselves for a common end. With a firm it is
business — its partners trade in the same article.
Jesus contemplated a society the most compre-
hensive and intense, the most elastic and

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 169

cohesive in history, which would embrace all
countries, suit all times, cultivativt all varieties,
fulfil all aspirations. It was the ambition of
Jesus as the Son of Man, and this was the
question before His mind : What delicate and
pervasive moral system could bind into one the
diverse multitude that would call Him Lord,
so that I — some obscure nineteenth century
Christian — may feel at home in St. Paul's Ca-
thedral, or at St. Peter's, Rome, or in the
Metropolitan Church of Athens, or at a Salva-
tion Army meeting? This were indeed an
irresistible illustration of spiritual communion
and a prophecy of the unity of the Race. * I
belong,' said Angelique, the Abbess of Port
Royal, * to the order of all the saints, and all
the saints belong to my order.' What is the
bond of this mystical order? Jesus stated and
vindicated it in the upper room.

It is the fond imagination of many pious
minds that the basis of spiritual unity must lie
in the reason, and stand in uniformity of doc-
trine. This unfortunate idea has been the
poisoned spring of all the dissensions that have
torn Christ's body from the day when Eastern
Christians fought in the streets about His Di-

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170 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

vinity to the long years when Europe was
drenched in blood about His lovely Sacraments,
It is surely a very ghastly irony that the im-
mense sorrow of the world has been infinitely
increased by the fierce distractions of that soci-
ety which Jesus intended to be the peace-
maker, and that Christian divisions should have
arisen from the vain effort after an ideal which
Jesus never once had within His vision. With
St. John and St. Thomas Ma'jthew the publican
and Simon the zealot at the same Holy Table,
it is not likely that Jesus expected one model
of thought : with His profound respect for the
individual and His sense of the variety of
truth, it is certain He did not desire it,

Jesus realised that the tie which binds men
together in life is not forged in the intellect
but in the heart. Behind nations and parties,
behind all the divisions and entanglements of
society stands the family. Love is the first
and the last and the strongest bond in experi-
ence. It conquers distance, outlives all changes,
bears the strain of the most diverse opinions.
What a proof 01 Jcsus' divine ir"?ght that He

did not make His Church a rchd;] wjifthfT of

the Temple or the Porcu — but a fa./ tl v : 'iid

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 171

not demand in His farewell that His disciples
should think alike, but- that they should feel
alike! He believed it ossible to bind men to
their fellows on the one condition that they
were first bound fast to Him. He made Him-
self the centre of eleven men, each an indepen-
dent unit ; He sent through their hearts the
electric flash of His love and they became one.
It was an experiment on a small scale ; it
proved a principle that has no limits. Unity is
possible wherever the current of love runs
from Christ's heart through human hearts and
back to Christ again. No one is cast out unless
he refuse to love : no one is isolated unless he
be non-conducting. Within the Church visible,
with its wearisome forms and lamentable con-
troversies, lives the Church invisible, the com-
munion of love, and its spirit is a perpetual
witness to Christ's mission of atonement :
* That they all may be one ; as Thou, Father,
art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may
be one in us, that the world may believe that
Thou hast sent Me.*

Whenever doctrine and Love have entered
the lists, not as friends but as rivals. Love has al-
ways won and so has confirmed the wisdom of

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172 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus. He has had servants in every country
distinguished for their devout spirit and con-
troversial ability. Their generation crowned
them for their zeal against heresy, but succeed-
ing generations conferred a worthier immortal-
ity. The Church forgot their polemics, she
kept their hymns. Bernard of Clairvaux de-
pop' later* Europe in order to conquer the Holy
Land with the sword for Him v/ho preached
peace throughout its borders ; but we only re-
member the saint who wrote :

' Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts.'

Toplady divided his time between composing
hymns instinct with love, and assailing John
Wesley with incredible insolence. His acri-
monious defence of the Divine Sovereignty is
buried and will never be disinterred, but while
the Church lasts she will sing

' Rock of ages, cleft for me.'

Rutherford, of St. Andrews, laboured at
books of prodigious learning against Prelacy,
and the dust lies heavy uj)on them this day,
but the letters he wrote in his prison on the
love of Christ have been the delight of Scot-
tish mystics for two centuries. If any one

LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITATION 173

feels compelled to attack a religious neighbour,
h.'s contemporaries may call him faithful, his
successors will endeavour to forget him. If
any one can -vorthily express the devotion of
Christian hearts, his words will pass into the
heritage of Christendom. What is not of love,
dies almost as soon as it is born : what is of
love lives for ever. It has the sanction of
Eternal Law ; it has in it the breath of immor-
tality.

The Christian consciousness grows slowly
into the mind of Jesus. First it clings to legal-
ism with St. Peter ; afterwards it learns faith
with St. Paul ; it enters at last into love with
St. John, the final interpreter of Jesus. We
are now in the school of St. John, and are be-
ginning to discover that none can be a heretic
who loves, nor any one be other than a schis-
matic who does not love. None can be cast out
of God's kingdom if he loves, none received
into it if he does not love. Usher cannot ex-
communicate Rutherford because he was not
ordained by a Bishop, nor Rutherford condemn
Usher because he was a head and front of Prel-
acy. Channing cannot exclude Faber because
he believes too much, or Faber exclude Chan-

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174 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

ning because he believes too little. None can
read Jesus* exposition of Love and imagine
such moral disorder. It would be the suspen-
sion of spiritual gravitation. We are protected
from one another by the Magna Charta of the
kingdom : we are under a Law that has no re-
gard to our prejudices. He that loves is
blessed ; he that hates is cursed — is the action
of an automatic law. It is the very condition
of the spiritual world, which is held together
by love : it is the very nature of God Himself,
who is Love.

' I'm apt to think the man
That could surround the sum of things and spy
The heart of God ard secrets of His Empire
Would speak but love, with him the bright result
Would change the hue of intermediate scenes
And make one thing of all Theology,'

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DEVOTION TO A PERSON THE
DYNAMIC OF RELIGION

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DEVOTION TO A PERSON THE
DYNAMIC OF RELIGION

Nothing is easier than to create a religion ;
one only needs self-confidence and foolscap
paper. An able Frenchman sat down in his
study and produced Positi. ism, which some
one pleasantly described as Catholicism minus
Christianity. It stimulated conversation in
superior circle -. for years, and only yesterday
Mr. Frederic Harrison was explaining to Pro-
fessor Huxley that this ingenious invention of
M. Comte ought to be taken seriously. An
extremely clever woman disappeared into Asia
and returned with another religion which has
distinctly added to the innocent gaiety of the
English nation. One never knows when a new
religion may not be advertised. Various in-
teresting societies are understood to be work-
ing at something, and each novelty receives a

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178 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

good-natured welcome. No person with any
sense of humour resents one of these efforts to
stimulate the jaded palate of society, unless it
be paraded a season too long and threatens to
become a bore. Criticism would be absurd:
you might as well analyze A/tce in Wonderland,
Comparison with Christianity is impossible : it
were an insult to Jesus.

The great religions of the East compel an-
other treatment ; one bows before them with
wonder and respect. They are not the ephem-
era of fashion ; they are hoar with antiquity.
They are not the pastime of a coterie, they
have shaped the destinies of innumerable mil-
lions. The most profound instinct of the soul
breathes in their creeds and clothes itself in
their forms, and, notwithstanding their limita-
tions and corruptions, these ancient faiths have
each made some contribution to the Race. One
has anticipated the self-renunciation of Jesus,
another has asserted the mystery of the Eternal,
a third has vindicated the unity of God, and a
fourth has saturated with filial piety the future
rivals of the West. It were unbelief in Divine
Providence to deny those faiths a snare in the
development of humanity : it were inexcusable

:i!i

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 179

ignorance to regard them as systems of organ-
ised iniquity. They bear traces of noble an-
cestry, they preserve in their history a record
of splendid service. Stricken by time, their
ruins affect our imagination Hke the columns of
Karnak. Dying at the heart, these worn-out
reUgions still make more converts than Chris-
tianity. No reverent Christian will allow him-
self to despise the religions 01 the past ; no
intelligent Christian doubts that his will be the
religion of the future. A child of the East,
the religion of Jesus has conquered the West ;
conceived, as appears, by a Galilean peasant, it
has no limitations of thought or custom ; with
only a minority of the Race, it embraces the
dominant nations of the world. The mind of
Jesus seems nothing more in the world as yet
than a grey dawn ; but wi-e men can see it is
the rising sun.

The final test of any religion is its inherent
spiritual dynamic : the force of Christianity is
the pledge of its success. It is not a school of
morals, nor a system of speculation, it is an en-
thusiasm. This religion is Spring in the spirit-
ual world, with the irresistible charm of the
quickening wind and the bursting bud. It is a

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180 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

birtn, as Jesus would say, a breath of God ihat
makes all things new. Humanity does not
need morals, it needs motives : it is sick of
speculation, it longs for action. Men see their
duty in every land and age with exasperating
clearness. We know not how to do it.

I'll

' Wh< m do you count the worst man upon ';arth,
Re sure he knows, in his conscience, more
Of what right is tiian arrives at birth
In the best man's acts that we bow before.'

No one condemns the good, he leaves it un-
done. No one approves the evil, he simply
does it. Our moral machinery is complete but
motionless. The religion which inspires men
with a genuine passion for holiness and a con-
straining motive of service will last. It has
solved the problem of spiritual motion.

Jesus did not create goodness — her fair form
had been already carved in white marble by
austere hands ; His office was to place a soul
within the ribs of death till the cold stone
changed into a living body. Before Jesus, good-
ness was sterile, since Jesus, goodness has blos-
somed ; He fertilised it with His spirit. It
was a theory, it became a force. He took the
corn, which had been long stored in the

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 18

that

not

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ete but
s men
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It has

iir form
rble by
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stone
Is, good-
las blos-
lirit. It
)ok the
in the

granaries of philosophy, and sowed it in the
soft spring earth ; He minted the gold and
made it current coin. Christianity is in Re-
ligion what steam is in mechanics, the power
which drives. Jesus wrote nothing, He said
little, but He did what He said and made
others do as He commanded. His religion
began at once to exist ; from the beginning it
was a life. It is the distinction of Christianity
that it goes. This is why some of us, in spite of
every intellectual difificulty, must believe Jesus
to be the Son of God — He has done what no
other ever did, and what only God could do.
He is God because He discharges a * God-
function.'

' 'Tis one thing to know and another to practise,
And thencu I conclude that the real God-function
Is to furnish a motive and injunction,
For practising what we know already.'

Religion with Jesus has a dynamic, and it is
Jesus Himself, for Jesus and His religion are as
soul and body. He did not evolve it as an in-
tellectual conception. He exhibited it as,a state
of life. It was never a paper scheme like Plato's
Republic or More's Utopia. Jesus' religion was
in life before it appeared in the Gospels ; it had

i82 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

[^: I

been fulfilled in Himself before it was preached
to the world. The Gospels are not only a pro-
gramme, they are already a history. Chris-
tianity has been apt to sink into a creed or a
ceremony — it is the decadence of Pharisaism—
in Jesus' hand it was a life. Jesus never pro-
posed that men should discuss His Gospel, He
invited men to live it. * Whosoever cometh to
Me, and heareth My sayings and doeth them
... is like a man which built an house ... on
a rock.' He did not suggest lines of action.
He commanded His disciples to do as He did.

* Jesus . . . saw a man named Matthew sitting
at the receipt of custom, and He saith unto
him, Follow Me.' He did not dismiss His fol-
lowers as pupils to a task, He declared that
they would have a common life with Him.

* Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door
of the sheep ... by Me, if any man enter in.
He shall be saved, and shall go in and out and
find pasture.' Jesus combines every side of
religion in Himself, and is the sum of His
Gospel. ' I am the way, the truth, and the
life.'

Jesus made a claim that separates Him from
every other teacher — a claim of solitary and

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 183

absolute infallibility. TLe attitude of other
masters has been modest and qualified. * This,
I think, is true, but you must not believe it as
my word ; this, I think, is right, but you must
not do it after my example. Examine and
decide for yourselves. I am, like yourselves, a
seeker and a sinner.' Their disciples accepted
this situation, and so Simmias said to Socrates,
* We must learn, or we must discover for our-
selves, the truth of these matters; or if that
be impossible, we must take the best and most
impregnable of human doctrines, and, embark-
ing on that as on a raft, risk the voyage of life,
unless a stronger vessel, some divine word,
could be found on which we might take our
journey more safely and more securely. . . .
Cebes and I have been considering your argu-
ment, and we think that it is barely sufficient.*

* I daresay you are right, my friend,' said
Socrates in the Phaedo.

Jesus did not affect such humility, nor make
such admissions. He did not obliterate or
minimise Himself ; He emphasised and as-
serted Himself. *Ye have heard that it hath
been said by them of old time,* opens one
paragraph after another of Jesus* great sermon,

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184 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

and then follows, ' But I say unto you.* Jesus

brushes aside the ancients as if they had
never been. His disciples were not to own any

authority beside Him ; He was to be absolute,
with Apostles and Prophets only His witnesses
and interpreters, never His equals. * Be not ye
called Rabbi, for One is your niaster, even
Christ, and all ye are brethren.* His words are
ushered in with the solemn formula, * Verily,
verily ' ; they fall on the inner ear like the
stroke of a bell ; they are independent of a»'gu-
ment. It is ever * I,' and one's soul answers
with reverence. Fort his 'I' that sounds kom
every sentence of the teaching of Jesus is not
egotism ; it is Deity.

Jesus makes the most unqualified demand on
the loyalty of His disciples, and believes that
the attraction of His Person will sustain their
obedience. The beginning of the religious life
was no reception of dogma or dream of mysti-
cism ; it was to break up a man's former envi-
ronment, and to follow the lead of Christ.
' Believe in Me,' and * Come to Me,* He was
ever saying, as if it were natural to trust Him,
impossible to resist Him. The hardness of
religion had its compensations : it carried as-

.i 1 1

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 185

sociation with Jesus. * Whosoever will come
after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross and follow Me.* The immense sacrifices
of religion would be an office of love. * There
is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or
sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children,
or lands, for my sake.' . . . Religious cow-
ardice was a synonym for treachery to Christ ;
it was a breach of friendship that could not be
healed. ' Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me
and of My v/ords, of him shall the Son of Man
be ashamed when He shall come in His own
glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy
angels.' The slightest kindness was exalted
into an act of merit, because it was inspired by
devotion to Christ. * For whosoever shall give
you a cup of water to drink in My name, be-
cause ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto
you, he shall not lose his reward.' When Jesus
came from the Father, the religious instincts
were withering in the dust, and vainly feeling
for something on which they could climb to
God; Jesus presented Himself, and gathered
the tendrils of the soul round His Person. He
found religion a rite ; He left it a passion.
Perhaps the most brilliant inspiration of

,li

186 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus was to fling Himself on the earliest,
latest, strongest passion of our nature, and
utilise it as the driving force of His religion.
All our life from infancy to age we are in the
school of love, and never does human nature
so completely shed the slough of selfishness,
or wear so generous a guise, or offer such un-
grudging service as when under this sway.
Here is stored to hand the latent dynamic for a
spiritual enterprise ; it only remains to make
the connection. Do you wish a cause to en-
dure hardness, to rejoice in sacrifice, to accom-
plish mighty works, to retain for ever the dew
of its youth? Give it the best chance, the
sanction of Love. Do not state it in books ;
do not defend it with argument. These are
aids of the second order ; if they succeed, it is
a barren victory — the reason only has been
won ; if they fail, it is a hopeless defeat — the
reason has now been exasperated. Identify
your cause with a person. Even a bad cause
will succeed for a space, associated with an
attractive man. The later Stewarts were hard
kings both to England and Scotland, and yet
women sent their husbands and sons to die
for ' Bonnie Prince Charlie,' and the ashes of

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION iSy

liest,
and

gion.

1 the

lature

hness,

:h un-
sway.

ic for a

) make
to en-
accom-

he dew

ice, the
books ;

lese are
ed, it is
as been
eat— the
Identify
id cause
with an
ere hard
and yet
s to die
ashes of

that romantic devotion are not yet cold.
When a good cause finds a befitting leader, it
will be victoriour before set of sun. David
had about him such a grace of beauty and
chivalry that his officers risked their lives
to bring him a cup of water, and his people
carried him to the throne of Israel on the love
of their hearts. Human nature has two domi-
nant instincts — the spring of all action as well
as the subject of all literature — Faith and
Love. The religion which unites them will be
omnipotent.

It was Jesus who summoned Love to meet
the severe demands of Faith, and wedded for
the first time the ideas of Passion and Right-
eousness. Hitherto Righteousness had been
spotless and admirable, but cold as ice ; Pas-
sion had been sweet and strong, but unchast-
ened and wanton. Jesus suddenly identifies
Righteousness with Himself, and has brought
it to pass that no man can love Him without
loving Righteousness. Jesus clothes Himself
with the commandments, and each is trans-
figured into a grace. He illustrates His Dec-
alogue in the washing of feet, and compels
His disciples to follow His example. *If I

i88 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

B-^

then, your Lord and Master, have washed your
feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet.'
By one felicitous stroke He makes Love and
Law synonymous, and Duty, which had always
been respectable, now becomes lovely. It is a
person, not a dogma, which invites my faith ;
a person, not a code, which asks for obedience.
Jesus stands in the way of every sfilfishness ;
He leads in the path of every sacrifice ; He is
crucified in every act of sin ; He is glorified in
every act of holiness. St. Stephen, as he suf-
fered for the Gospel, saw the heavens open and
Jesus standing to receive him. St. Peter flee-
ing in a second panic from Rome, meets Jesus
returning to be crucified in his place. Con-
science and heart are settled on Jesus, and one
feels within his soul the tides of His virtue.
It is not the doctrines nor the ethics of Chris-
tianity that are its irresistible attraction. Its
doctrines have often been a stumbling-block,
and its ethics excel only in degree. The life
blood of Christianity is Christ. As Louis said
*L'6tat c'est moi,* so may Jesus say * I am My
Relig^'on.' What Napoleon was to his soldiers
on the battle-field, Jesus has been to millions
separated from Him by the chasm of centuries.

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 189

No emotion in human experience has been so
masterful, none so fruitful, as the passion for
Jesus. It has inspired the Church, it has half
saved the world.

Before Jesus could utilise this love He had
to create it, and this was not accomplished
either by His example or His teaching. The
effect of His awful purity was terror: ' Depart
from me,' said St. Peter, * for I am a sinful man,
O Lord.' The result of three years' teaching
was perplexity : an average apostle asked for a
th:;<'phany: VShow us the Father, and it suf-
ficeth us.' Holiness compels awe, wisdom _om-
pels respect ; they do not allure. Nothing can
create Life but Life ; nothing can beget Love
but Love. He that is not loved hates; he
that is loved, loves, is a law of experience. As
the earth gives out the heat which it has re-
ceived from the sun, so the devotion of Jesus*
disciples to Him in all ages has been the return
of His immense devotion to them. He lavish-
ed on His first disciples a wealth of love in His
friendship; He sealed it with His sacrifice of
Himself upon the cross. ' Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends.* ' I am the good Shepherd :

1'; H

jii;i.:|il
«ll«''

i 1 1

liylili

190 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.*
Twelve men came into His intimacy ; in eleven
he kindled a fire that made them saints and
heroes, and the traitor broke his heart through
remorse, so he also must have loved. But Jesus
expected that His love would have a wider
range than the fellowship of Galilee, and that
the vvorld would yield to its spell. It was not
for St. John, His friend, Jesus laid down His
life ; it was for the Race into which He had
been born and which He carried in His heart.
No one has ever made such a sacrifice for
Humanity, "^j one has dared to ask such a
recompense. The eternal Son of God gave
Himself without reserve, and anticipated that
to all time men would give themselves for Him.
He proposed to inspire His Race with a per-
sonal devotion, and that profound devotion was
to DC their salvation. * Give Me a cross where-
on to die,* said Jesus, * and I will make thereof
a throne from which to rule the world.* The
idea was once at least caught most perfectly in
an early Christian gem, where, on a blood-red
stone the living Christ is carved against His
cross ; a Christ with the insignia of His imperial
majesty. Twice was Jesus' imagination power-

v4' 11 I I'll |l!j

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 191

fully affected — once by the horrors of the cross,
when He prayed, * O My Father, if it be pos-
sible, let this cup pass from Me ' ; that was
the travail of His soul — once by the magnetic
attraction of the cross, when He cried, * And
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all
men unto Me ' ; this is the endless reward of
His travail.

The passio for Jesus has no analogy in com-
parative religion ; it has no parallel in human
experience. It is a flame of unique purity and
intensity. Thomas does not believe that Jesus
is the Son of God, or that, more than any other
man, He can escape the hatred of fanaticism ;
but he must share the fate of Jesus. * Let us
also go,' said this morbid sceptic, * that we may
die with Him.* At the sight of His face seven
devils went out of Mary Magdalene ; for the
blessing of His visit, a chief publican gave half
his goods to the poor. When a man of the
highest order met Jesus he was lifted into the
heavenly places and became a Christed man,
whose eyes saw with the vision of Christ, whose
pulse beat with the heart of Christ. Browning
has nothing finer than 'A Death in the Desert,*
wherein he imagines the love of St. John to

h''i

i 111

il^ t| 1 I

"}y:

192 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus. No power is able to rouse the apostle
from his last sleep, neither words nor cordials.
Then one has a sudden inspiration : he brings
the Gospel and reads into the unconscious ear,

' I am the resurrection and the life,'
with the effect of an instantaneous charm.

' Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once
And sat up of himself ?,nd looked at us.'

This man had leant so long on Jesus' bosom
— some seventy years — that at the very sound
of His words the soul of Jesus* friend came up
from the shadow of death. It is the response
of the flower of the Race to Jesus.

This passion is placed beyond comparison,
because it is independent of sight. St. Paul
denied the faith that was once dear to him, and
flung away the world that was once his ambi-
tion, to welcome innum.erable labours and ex-
haust the resources of martyrdom, for the sake
of one whom he had never seen, save in mystical
vision, and formerly hated to the shedding of
blood. Men were lit as torches in Nero's gar-
den, and women flung to the wild beasts of the
amphitheatre ; and for what ? For a system,
for a cause, for a Church? They had not

(Hill

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 193

)s'Lle
iials.
•ings
; ear,

)Osori
sound
me up
jponse

irison,
:. Paul
,, and
ambi-
ind ex-
le sake
ystical
ling of
I's gar-
of the
lystem,
id not

enough knowledge of theory to pass a Sunday-
school examination ; they had no doctrine of
the Holy Trinity, nor of the Person of Jesus,
nor of His Sacrifice, nor of Grace. They died
in their simplicity for Him * Whom having not
seen ye love,' and the name of the Crucified
was the last word that trembled on their dying
lips. With an amazing candour Jesus had
warned His disciples : * Ye shall be brought
before governors and kings for My sake. . . .
And ye shall be hated of all men for My name's
sake.' With a magnificent confidence Jesus
encouraged His disciples, * He that endureth to
the end shall be saved. . . . Whosoever
therefore shall confess Me before men, him will
I confess also before My Father which is in
Heaven.' The warning and the promise were
both fulfilled in the history of the disciples* pas-
sion. * Christianus sum,' confesses the martyr,
and then the hoarse refrain * Christianus ad
leonem.* But Perpetua sees a ' great ladder of
gold reaching from earth to heaven,' and on its
highest round stands the Good Shepherd ; while
Saturus is brought to the throne of the Lord
Jesus and ' gathered to His embrace.* * Men,*
says Mr. Lecky, * seemed indeed to be in love

lUllJiililUi't^

■h

•|

j: ;

Iff'

^Jw

I'ti

Imii

194 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

with death. Believing they were the wheat of
God, they panted for the day when they should
be ground by the teeth of wild beasts into the
pure bread of Christ.* Love of life and love of
kin, fear of pain and fear of death, were power-
less before this taiisman * For My sake.'

This sublime passion did not die with the
sacrifice of the martyrs, a mere hysteric of Re-
ligion, foi it has continued unto this day the
hidden spring of all sacrifice and beauty in the
Christian life. The immense superstitions of
the Middle Ages were redeemed by the love
of Jesus, radiant in the life of St. Francis,
reflected from the labours of the * Friends
of God.* There was a glory over all the
bitter controversies of the sixteenth century,
because on the one side piety desired a spiritual
access to Jesus* Person ; and on the other,
piety longed for the comfort of His Real
Presence. Both the excessive ceremonialism
and the vulgar sensationalism, which are
the two poles of modern religion, may be
pardoned, because the High Churchman at his
altar and the evangelist at the street corner are
one in their utter devotion to Jesus. Not only
has the best theology been fed by this spirit, so

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 195

at of
lould
3 the
)ve of
>ower-

[h the
d{ Re-
ay the

in the

ions of

;he love

Francis,

Friends

all the
[century,

spiritual
other,

IS "Real

.onialism

ich are
may be

.n at his
rner are

|Not only
spirit, so

that Bonaventura, questioned regarding his
learning, pointed to tlie crucifix ; and the living
hymnology been its incarnation, so that to
remove the name of Jesus were to leave no
fragrance ; but all the vast and varied philan-
thropy of public Christianity and the sweet and
winsome graces of private life have been the
fruit of this unworldly emotion. * For My sake,*
has opened a new spring of conduct, from which
has flowed the heroism and saintliness of nine-
teen centuries. When Jesus founded His
religion on personal attachment, it seemed a
fond imagination : the perennial vitality of
Christianity has been His vindication.

This perpetual passion in the hearts of His
disciples implies the mystical presence of Jesus,
who promised, * A little while and ye shall not
see Me, and again a little while and ye shall see
Me, because I go to the Father,' and ' Lo, I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'
The presence of the living Christ, the object of
adoration and service, has been wonderfully
realised by the mystics, and distinctly held forth
in the sacraments, but it is apt to be obscured
in the consciousness of the Church by two differ-
ent influences. One is a mechanical theology

196 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

which builds every act of Christ into the struc-
ture of a system till no virtue comes from the
flowing garments of His life, because they are
nothing but the grave-clothes of a dead Lord.
The other is an idealising criticism, which
evaporates the Person of Christ in His teaching,
and while it may leave us a master, certainly
denies us a Lord. This were to cast Religion
back on its former condition when it was either
an invention of the scribes or the philosophers,
and to barter the indescribable charm of Chris-
tianity to secure a creed or to disarm unbelief.
It is to reduce the religion of Jesus to the
impotence of Judaism or Confucianism : it is
to sell Jesus again without the thirty pieces
of silver.

Jesus* idea lifts Christianity above the plane
of arid discussion and places it in the region of
poetry, where the emotions have full play and
Faith is vision. Theology becomes the expla-
nation of the fellowship between the soul and
Jesus. Regeneration is the entrance into His
life. Justification the partaking of His Cross,
Sanctification the transformation into His char-
acter, Death the coming of the Lord, Heaven
His unveiled Face. Doctrines will be but

THE DYNAMIC OF RELIGION 197

3 struc-
om the
hey are
d Lord.
, which
caching,
:ertainly
Religion
as either
jsophers,
of Chris-
unbelief,
s to the
sm: it is
ty pieces

the plane
region of
I play and
le expla-
soul and
into His
;is Cross,
His char-
Heaven
be but

moods of the Christ-consciousness ; parables of
the Christ-life. Suffering will be the baptism of
Jesus and the drinking of His cup, and if every
saint have not the stigmata on his hands and
feet, he will at least, like Simon the Cyrenian,
have the mark of the Cross upon his shoulder.
And service will be the personal tribute to
Jesus, whom we shall recognise under any dis-
guise, as his nurse detected Ulysses by his
wounds, and whose Body, in the poor and
miserable, will ever be with us for our dis-
discernment. Jesus is the leper whom the saint
kissed, and the child the monk carried over the
stream, and the sick man the widow nursed into
health, after the legends of the ages of faith.
And Jesus will say at the close of the day,
* Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren ye have done it
unto Me.'

We ought to discern the real strength of
Christianity and revive the ancient passion for
Jesus. It is the distinction of our religion : it
is the guarantee of its triumph. Faith may
languish ; creeds may be changed ; churches
may be dissolved ; society may be shattered.
But one cannot imagine the time when Jesus

198 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

will not be the fair image of perfection, or the
circumstances wherein He will not be loved.
He can never be superseded ; he can never be
exceeded. Religions will come and go, the
passing shapes of an eternal instinct, but Jesus
will remain the standard of the conscience and
the satisfaction of the heart, Whom all men
seek, in Whom all men will yet meet.

! ■^-*-3

2!: m

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO

TYPE

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE

Two at least of the chief convictions which
sustain the heart of Humanity rest, in the last
issue, on a basis of pure reason. One 's the
belief that the soul is immortal ; the other is
the belief that it will be judged. We repudi-
ate the opposite, because the annihilation of
the spiritual and the confusion of the moral
are unthinkable. ' For my own part,' says Mr.
Fiske, ' I believe in the immortality of the
soul, not in the seiise in which I accept the
demonstrable truths of science, but as a su-
preme act of faith in the reasonableness of
God's work.' It is incredible that when the
long evolution of nature has come to a head
the flower should be flung away. This were to
reduce design to a fiasco. * What can be more
in the essential nature of th.ngs,* writes Mr.
W. R. Greg, in his Enipnas of Life^ a very

202 THE MIND OF TlIK MASTER

honest book, * than that the mere entrance into
the spiritual state will effect a severance of
souls ? ' It is incredible that the present failure
of justice should end in no redress, and the im-
mense wrongs of this life hive no * complement
of recompense.* This were to turn order to
chaos, and put us all to ' permanent intellec-
tual confusion.* Pessimistic thinkers, whose
reason has been deflected by the presence of
an arrogant materialism, and moral triflers,
whose conscience is satisfied with a deity of
imbecile good nature — the bon Dicu of the
French — may deny jndgment ; the one, be-
cause there is no soul, the other, because there
is no judge. But the masters of thought in all
ages and of all nations have accepted judgment
as an axiom in the calculation of human life ;
they have used it as a factor in the creation of
human history. Reference of every moral ac-
tion to an eternal standard, revisal of every in-
dividual life by a supreme authority, are em-
bedded in the creeds of the Race. The Book
of the Dead was the sacred writing of the old-
est civilisation, and it describes how the soul is
weighed in the intangible scales of righteous-
ness. The Greek moralists conceived the

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 203

ce into

ince of
failure

the im-

)lement

rder to

intellec-

, whose

scnce of
triflers,

deity of

! of the

one, be-

jse there
ht in all

udgment

man life ;
eation ot
moral ac-
evcry in-
are em-
rhe Book
f the old-
he soul is
ighteous-
ved the

Furies let loose on the guilty soul, and placed
their abode behind the judgment seat of Areop-
agus. The ' Bible of the Middle Ages' was a
rehearsal of judgment, wherein not only the
saints and sinners of the past, but those of that
very day, received their due recompense of re-
ward. Angelico wrought out his Inferno and
Paradiso in a picture which fails somewhat on
the left hand, where sinners are tormented by
their own sins, because he was ignorant of sin,
but succeeds gloriously on the right, where the
glorified arrive in a flower-garden — which is the
outer court of Heaven — for he only of men had
seen the angels. When ihe ages of faith had
closed and every conviction of the past was
put to the question, one belief still held an iron
grip, and Michael Angelo painted his Judg-
ment in the Pope's Chapel of the Vatican. It
is a picture which confuses and overwhelms
one ; it was an awful agony of Art • but it was
also an intense reality of the soul.

We have a robust common sense of morality
which refuses to believe that it does not matter
whether a man has lived like the Apostle Paul
or the Emf '^ror Nero. One may hesitate to
speculate about the circumstances of the other

'f^»

U '

204 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

world ; one may love the splendid imagination
of the Apocalypse more than the vulgar real-
ism of modern sentiment, but one can never
crush out the conviction that there must be
one place for St. John, who was Jesus* friend,
and another for Judas Iscariot, who was His
betrayer. It were unreasonable that this mad
confusion of circumstances should continue,
which ties up the saint and the miscreant to-
gether to the misery of both ; it were supreme-
ly reasonable that this tangle be unravelled
and each receive his satisfaction. One has
seen sheep and swine feeding in the same field
till evening, and has followed till the sheep
were gathered into their fold, and the swine
ran greedily to their stye. The last complaint
that would have occurred to one's mind was
that their owners had separated them, the last
suggestion that they should be herded to-
gether. What was fitting had happened ; it
was separation according to type.

Jesus did not supersede this conviction as
the superstition of an imperfect morality, nor
condemn it as a contradiction of the Divine
Love. His * enthusiasm of Humanity * did not
blind Him to deep lines of moral demarcation ;

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 205

His *hugc tenderness' did not propose an
equality for Judas and John. He did not
come to reduce the moral order to an anarchy
of grace, and to break the inevitable connec-
tion between sin and punishment. It has been
said by a profound thinker that Antinomian-
ism is the only heresy, and it is desirable to re-
mind one's self, in a day of flabby sentiment,
that Jesus was not an Antinomian. Had
Jesus condoned sin, then He had been the de-
stroyer of our Race, and not its Saviour, for
the comforting of our heart had been a poor
recompense for the debauchery of our con-
science. But it is a conspicuous instance of
Jesus* balance, that He combined the most
tender compassion for the sinner with the most
unflinching condemnation of sin. It is Jesus
who has compared sin unto Gehenna, * where
their worm dieth not and the fire is not
quenched' ; who places the rich man of soft
and luxurious life in torment, so that he begs
for a drop of water to cool his tongue ; who
casts the unprofitable servant into outer dark-
ness, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth ;
who declares that the fruitless branches of the
vine will be gathered and burned ; who sends

2o6 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the servants of self into the 5re prepared for
the Devil and his angels. Jesus spake in para-
bles, and it were folly to press His words into
a description of circumstances. Jesus spake
also with marked emphasis, and it were dishon-
esty to deny that He believed in the fact of
judgment.

Jesus went with the general reason of the
Race in affirming the certainty of judgment,
and therein He is at one with the Catholic
creeds of Christendom. Jesus has also gone
with the general reason in affirming the morality
of judgment, and therein He has differed from
that solitary creed which has raised uncharita-
bleness into an article of faith. What has filled
many honourable minds with resentment and
rebellion is not the fact of separation, but the
principle of execution ; not the dislike of an
assortment, but the fear that it wil'i not be into
good and bad. No power will ever convince a
reasonable being that one man should be
elected to life and have Heaven settled on him
as an entailed estate, and another be ordained
to death and * be held in the way thereto' ; or
that one be ' blessed ' because he has held the
oithodox creed, and another be * cursed * be-

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 207

cause he has made a mistake in the most pro-
found of all sciences. If Heaven and Hell —
be they places or states — are made to hinge on
the arbitrary will of the Almighty, or on the
imperfect processes of human reason, then
Judgment will not be a fiasco, it will be an
outrage. It will be a climax of irresponsible
despotism, whose monstrous injustice would
leave Heaven without blessing and Hell with-
out curse.

Reason cannot agree with such a reading of
judgment ; reason cannot disagree with the
reading of Jesus. Jesus never made judgment
depend either on the will of God or the belief
of man. He rested judgment on the firm foun-
dation of what each man is in the sight of the
Eternal. He anticipated no protest in his par-
ables against the justice of this evidence : none
has ever been made from any quarter. The
wheat is gathered into the garner. What else
could one do with wheat ? The tares are burned
in the fire. What else could one do with tares ?
When the net comes to the shore, the r^ood fish
are gathered into vessels ; no one would throw
them away. The bad are cast aside ; no one
would leave them to contaminate the good.

208 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

The supercilious guests who did not value the
great supper were lef* severely alone. If men
do not care for Heaven, they will not be forced
into it. The outcasts, who had never dared to
dream of such a supper, were compelled to
come. If men hunger for the best, the best
shall be theirs. The virgins who had taken the
trouble of bringing oil went in to the marriage ;
they were evidently friends of the bridegroom :
the virgins who had made no preparation were
shut out from the marriage ; they were mere
strangers. Had the foolish virgins been re-
jected because they were a few minutes late,
they would have had just cause of complaint.
When the bridegroom declined tneir company
for the simple reason mat He did not know
them, they had no answer. It would be
equally out of place either for friends to be re-
fused, or strangers to force admission to a mar-
riage. It is all fair and fitting — exactly as
things ought to be : Jesus' judgment is the very
apotheosis of reason.

Twice has the Judgment been described with
authority — once by the greatest prophet that
has spoken outside the Hebrew succession,
once by the chief prophet of Jew and Gentile.

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 209

e the
men

arced

ed to

:d to
best

n the

riage ;

•00m :

I were
mere

en re-

s late,

plaint.

npany
know
Id be
be re-
mar-
ly as
very

with

that

jssion,

mtile.

Plato has told us that the judges of the great
assizes will sit at a place on the other side,
where all roads from this world meet, and
where, divided by the throne of justice, they
part again into two — the way which leadeth to
the Islands of the Blessed, and the way that
goeth to the * House of Vengeance and Punish-
ment, which is called Tartarus.' Men are not
to appear before the judges in the body, lest
justice should be partial, since there are many
' having evil souls who are apparelled in fair
bodies ' : neither are the judges to be clothed,
lest their bodies be * interposed as a veil before
their own souls.' The judgment is to be abso-
lutely real ; each judge * with his naked soul
shall pierce into the other naked soul,' and each
soul will go to its own place. Just as bodies
have a shape of their own, so is it with souls.
Some are scarred by crimes, some are crooked
with falsehood, some deformed by inconti-
nence ; these are despatched to Tartarus.
Other souls show the fair nroportions of holi-
ness and truth, and on them the judges look
with admiration as they go to the Islands of the
Blessed. Nothing is arbitrary ; everything is
reasonable. It is registration rather than ex-

f*¥i-'' >

iiiit

'W '^■^■''•iilil

2IO THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Lmination ; it is fulfilment rather than judg-
ment.

The Judgment of Plato is one of the supreme
efforts of human reason, surely not unillumi-
nated by the Spirit of God ; and one compares
it with the Judgment of Jesus to find a consid-
erable difference in drapery, and an exact cor-
respondence in principle. According to Jesus,
there will be a Judgment on the confines of
the * Unseen Universe,* and each soul will ap-
pear before Him seated on the Throne ot His
glory. There will be instant division, but no
confusion : it will be manifestation and con-
firmation. The sheep and the goats, which
have been one flock in the pastures of this life,
will fall apart, each breed according to its
nature. Those who have lived the selfless life,
who saw Him an hungered and gave Him meat,
fulfilling the Law of Love, shall stand on one
side, because by their choice they are of one
kind ; and those who have loved the self life,
who saw Him a stranger and took Him not in,
disobeying the Law of Love, shall stand on the
other side, because by their choice they are of
another kind. * Come, ye blessed ' is said to
the selfless, because by the constitution of the

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 211

judg-

preme
illumi-
npares
consid-
,ct cor-
1 Jesus,
fines of
will ap-
ot His
but no
ind con-
"which
this life,
g to its
fless life,
im meat,
on one
of one
self life,
not in,
Ind on the
are of
said to
)n of the

moral universe they cannot be anything else
than blessed. * Depart, ye cursed ' is said to
the selfish because even God Himself could not
prevent them being cursed. Their state in
neither case is * prepared,* but is the inheritance
of character. It is a recognition of fitness, as
reasonable as an arrangement into species, as
natural as the ripening of harvest.

Jesus makes a marked advance on Plato by
magnifying the function of the Judge, and an-
ticipating the date of the Judgment. The
Judge in St. Matthew's Gospel is not an official
referring to a Law : He is identical with the
Law itself. Each soul is tried not by its obedi-
ence to a written standard, but by its relation
to a living Person. Jesus' * Come * is the sym-
bol of a Law, the Law of attraction. His
* Depart ' is the symbol of another Law, the
Law of repulsion, and Jesus Himself is in both
events the magnetic force. The personal fac-
tor, which is the heart of the religion of Jesus,
asserts itself in the Judgment. Jesus monopo-
lises the outlook of life : He is the wounded
Man the priest passes, whom the Samaritan
helps. His acceptance or rejection is the test
of the soul, and the crisis simply culminates at

312 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the Judgment. Human life will then finally
break against Jesus as a rock in the midst of a
stream, each current to follow its own direction
unfettered and unmingled. The presence of
Jesus is our Judgment.

We are accustomed to refer Judgment to the
threshold of the other world. We ought to
acclimatise the idea in this world, for if Jesus
once enlarged on the august circumstances of
the future Judgment, He referred continually
to the awful responsibility of a present Judg-
ment. One can easily understand how the
revelation of Jesus' moral Glory on the other
side will raise to the highest power both His
attraction and His repulsion, and suddenly
crystallise into permanence the fluid principles
of a man's life. The stream will be frozen in
the fall. But this will only be the consumma-
tion of a process which is now in action. Je-
sus has not to wait for His Throne to command
attention or affect the soul. He is the most
dominant and exacting Personality in human
experience, from whose magical circle of influ-
ence none can tear himself. Can any one follow
Jesus* life from Nazareth to Calvary, and stand
face to face with Jesus' Cross, and be neither

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 213

finally
it of a
rection
:nce of

t to the
jght to
if Jesus
inces of
itinually
\\. Judg-
[low the
le other
loth His
iuddenly
irinciples
"rozen in
Insumma-

lion. Je-
:ommand
:he most
human

of influ-
»ne follow

Lnd stand
le neither

better nor worse? Incredible and impossible.
Certain minds may hesitate over the Nicene
Creed, but it is trifling to treat Jesus as a name
in history, or a character in a book. He is the
Man whom Plato once imagined, whom Isaiah
prophesied, whom the most spiritual desire, who
exhausts Grace and Truth. Beyond all ques-
tion, and apart from all theories, Jesus is the
Revelation of the Divine goodness : the incar-
nate Law of God : the objective conscience of
Humanity. As soon as we enter the presence
of Jesus we lose the liberty of moral indiffer-
ence. One Person we cannot avoid — the in-
evitable Christ ; one dilemma we must face,
' What shall I do with Jesus which is called
Christ.* The spiritual majesty of this Man
arraigns us at His bar from which we cannot
depart till we become His disciples or His
critics, His friends or His enemies. With cer-
tain consequences. Belief in Jesus is justifica-
tion, for it is loyalty to the best; disbelief in
Jesus is condemnation, it is enmity to the best.
Jesus stated the position in a classical passage,
* He that believeth on Him is not condemned :
but he that believeth not is condemned already,
because he hath not believed in the name of

314 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the only begotten Son of God. And this is
the condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than
light, because their deeds were evil.'

As the mere presence of a good man in a
room will compel the silent opinion of every
other person, and be their judgment, so Jesus
was for three years, from His public appearance
at Nazareth to His crucifixion on Calvary, a
criterion of character and a factor of division.
He was the problem burdening every man's
intellect, the law stimulating every man's con-
scifince, the life exciting every man's imagina-
tion, the figure by which all kinds of men ad-
justed themselves. According to the Gospels,
every one was sensitive to Jesus. As soon as
He was born wise men came from far to wor-
ship Him, and Herod sent soldiers to slay Him.
When He was presented in the Temple, Simeon
took the infant in his arms and spake by the
Holy Ghost, * Behold, this child is set for the
fall and rising again of many in Israel.* If He
preached in the synagogue of His boyhood, the
people, under the irresistible influence of Jesus
Personality, 'wondered at the gracious word
which proceeded out of His mouth,* so strong

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 215

his is

o the

than

in in a

every
) Jesus
earance
Ivary, a
livision.
yr man's
n's con-
imagina-
|men ad-
Gospels,

soon as
r to wor-

lay Him.

, Simeon

:e by the

t for the
If He
ood, the
of Jesus

jus word
so strong

was His power of attraction, and then would
have ' cast Him down headlong,* so great was
His power of repulsion. If He visited a coun-
try town in Galilee, a Pharisee would invite
Him to a feast in order to insult Him, and a
publican would make a ' great feast in his own
house,' in order to honour Him. The people
v jre divided over Jesus, ' for some said, He is
a good Man,' others said. Nay, but He de-
ceiveth the people, and the very Council was
torn with controversy, the majority sending
officers to arrest Him, but Nicodemus breaking
silence in His defence. If two men disputed
in those days, it was about Jesus ; if they
talked together by the way, it was of Jesus ;
the atmosphere was electrical with Jesus.
' Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man,
am? ' asked Jesus of His disciples, for He knew
they could not ignore Him. It was a day of
judgment — searching and conclusive. To so
many Jesus was the * Son of the living God,'
to so many, *a man gluttonous and a wine-
bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.' He
was either the Rock on which wise men built,
or the stone which would grind wicked men to
powder. Jesus was much impressed by the

ai6 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

rw''---f

spectacle of this unconscious but decisive judg-
ment. * The Father judgeth no man, but hath
committed all judgment unto the Son. . . ,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is com-
ing, and now is, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
shall live. . . . And (the Father) hath given
Him authority to execute judgment also, be-
cause He is the Son of Man.*

Jesus compared Himself to the Light be-
cause it bringeth to the birth everything that is
good in the world, and as Jesus fulfilled His
course, elect souls were drawn to Him. Simeon
saw Him only in His weakness, and was ready
to * depart in peace * ; John Baptist recognised
Him of a sudden, and laid down his ministry
at Jesus* feet ; St. John spent one night with
Him, and followed Him unto old age ; St.
Matthew heard one word from Him, and left
all he had ; a dying robber had the good for-
tune to be crucified beside Him, and acknowl-
edged Him King of Paradise. There was a
latent affinity between these men and Jesus.
He was the Good Shepherd, and they were
* His own sheep.* * He calleth His own sheep
by name . . . and the sheep follow Him.'

ii«:,i;ii|;!iji.j:

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 217

judg-
hath

> • • •

com-
ir the

hear

given
50, be-

ht be-
that is
ed His
Simeon
ready
)gnised
linistry
it with
^e; St.
nd left
od for-
:knowl-
was a
Jesus.
y were
sheep
Him.'

Jesus also compared Himself to Light because
it layeth bare every evil thing, and the light of
Jesus raised sin to its height. The Sadducean
priests accomplished His crucifixion, lest He
should diminish their Temple gains ; the Phari
sees hated Him to death because He had ex-
posed their hypocrisy ; the foolish people
turned against Him because He would not feed
them with bread ; Herod Antipas set Him at
nought because Jesus did not play the conjuror
for his amusement ; Pilate sent Jesus to the
cross in order to save his office ; Judas Iscariot
betrayed Him because he could now make no
other gain of Him. There was a latent antipa-
thy between these men and Jesus. * If God
were your Father,* Jesus said to such men once,
* ye would love Me : for I proceeded forth
and came from God. . . , Ye are of your
father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye
will do.*

It was a drama of judgments, conducted in
the face of the world for three years, with an
evident justification and an evident condemna-
tion, but the former did not of necessity imply
a visible goodness, nor the latter a visible
badness on the part of the judged. Those who

I-

kit I *

■

2i8 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

approximated to the John type were not at all
saintly : St. Matthew was a publican, and St.
Mary Magdalene was a sinner. There was
simply one point in their favour, they hated
their evil selves and welcomed Jesus* cross.
Those who approximated to the Judas type were
not all evil livers. The Pharisees were careful
about the works of the Law, and devoted to
the cause of Judaism. There was only one
point against them, they were satisfied with
themselves, and were determined to have noth-
ing to do with Jesus' cross. The children of
Light are not so much those who have walked
in the Light as those who love the Light. The
children of darkness are not so much those who
walked in darkness as those who love darkness.
There were men ready for Jesus because they
had * an honest and good heart.* There were
men alien to Jesus because they were sensual
and hyprocrites. It is a question not so much
of action as of bias.

Jesus knew that it was not possible to divide
men into two classes by the foliage of the outer
life, as it is seen from the highway. Few people
are saints or devils in their daily conduct : most
are a mixture of good and bad. Below the

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 219

ot at all
and St.
lere was
ey hated
is' cross,
type were
re careful
evoted to
only one
ified with
liave noth-
:hildren of
,ve walked
ight. The
those who
darkness,
ause they
fhere were
re sensual
so much

to divide
)f the outer

ew people
luct: most
iBelow the

variety of action lies the unity of principle.
Some people have grave faults and yet we
believe they are good ; some are paragons of
respectability and yet we are sure they are bad.
No one would refuse St. Peter a place with
Jesus, although he denied Him once with
curses ; none propose a place with Jesus for Ju-
das although he only committed himself once in
public. An instinct tells us the direction of the
soul ; the trend of character. We concur with
the judgment of Jesus, Who said of Judas,
* One of you is a devil ' ; but of St. Peter,
' Satan hath desired to have you, that he may
sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee.'

When Jesus judges by type, our Christ
approximation, or our Christ alienation, one is
struck by His absolute fairness. We are esti-
mated not by what we have done but by what we
desire to be. With Jesus the purpose of the
soul is as the soul's achievement, and He will
not be disappointed. If one surrender himself
*o Jesus, and is crucified on His cross, there is
no sin he will not overcome, no service he will
not render, no virtue to which he will not attain.
He has made a good beginning, he has a long
time. If one refuse the appeal of Jesus, and

220 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

^iiilii

cling to his lower self, there is no degradation
to which he may not descend. He has made a
bad beginning, and he also has a long time.
Both have eternity. We choose our type, and
with God it is fulfilled ; so that St. Mary
Magdalene in her penitence was saved, and
Simon in his self-righteou:me. , lost already.

' All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure.
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's

account ;
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act.

Fancies that broke through language and escaped ;
All I could never be,
All men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God whose wheel thf p'cher shaped.'

Judgment by type sets the ful-.i ; m a new
and solemn light. We can no longei .:hink of
Heaven as a state of certain happiness, and
Hell as a state of certain misery, for every man,
whatever may be his ideal. They are now
relative terms, so that one man's Heaven might
be another man's Hell. If one hunger and
thirst for God, then for him is prepared the
beatific vision and the eternal service. He has
his heaven, and is satisfied. If one seek nothing

JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO TYPE 221

beyond himself and his own gratification, then
he will be left to himself, and taste the fulness
of his lusts. He has his hell and is satisfied.
St. John was already in Heaven with his head
on Jesus' bosom. Judas was in Hell as he went
into the outer darkness. Each was at home,
the one with Jesus, the other away from Jesus.
None need be afraid that he who has followed
Jesus will miss heaven, or that he who has
made the ' great refusal ' will be thrust into
Heaven. One is afraid that some will inherit
Hell and be content.

■T'MI

luit'iigiiBi

OPTTMISM THE ATTITUDE OF

FAITH

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH

Professor Orr opens his admirable Kerr Lec-
tures on the * Christian View of God and the
World,' with an exposition of the German idea,
*Weltansicht,' and pleads with much force for
a Christian theory of the world. It is an in-
teresting coincidence that the two eminent men
who delivered the last Gifford Lectures have
both addressed themselves to the same subject
in their treatment of religion. The Master of
Balliol, in his Evolution of Religion, and Professor
Pfleiderer, in his Philosophy of Religion, have
felt it necessary to embrace * Optimism and
Pessimism.' It is a sign of the times : it is also
a reflection on the past. Philosophy for more
than a century has realised the situation, and
has faced the problem of the Race with energy
and tenacity. * What is the meaning of Life ? '
and * What is its drift ? ' this kind of question

ir I

L. > I

226 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

lay heavy on the mind of thinkers, and they
did their best to answer it. Unfortunate^ the
apparatus at their command was defective, for
the philosophers were not able to avail them-
selves of the two chief factors in the situation —
the revelation of the Will of God in sacred his-
tory, and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus
Christ. They worked with the postulates of
reason and the visible facts of history. Some-
times they came to a conclusion of hope, some-
times of despair : but they wrestled to the end
with unshaken courage. Whether philosophy
has failed or succeeded, it deserves the credit of
an honourable attempt. Philosophy was not
blind to the world out-look, nor indifferent to
the world-sorrow.

While the problem has taken shape within a
century, it has existed since the beginning of
ordered thought, and the pendulum has swung
with regular beat between two extremes. The
Homeric age with its frank joy in nature — the
brightness of the sky and the glory of a man's
strength — which is the fresh youth of the world
— was followed by the age of iEschylus with its
sense of the tragedy of life — its shameful falls, its
irresistible hindrances, its inevitable woes —

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 227

which is the haggard manhood of the world.
The splendid idealism of the greater Hebrew
prophets who saw the dawn breaking afar on
the Person of the Messiah gave way to the
bitter cynicism of the author of Ecclesiastes.
Judaism, if you accept the Prophets as its most
characteristic interpreters, raised optimism to a
creed and embodied it as a people. Buddhism,
if you judge it by the example of its illustrious
founder, disparaged even existence, and has
clouded the horizon of the East. At the be-
ginning of last century Leib itz declared this
the best of all possible worlds, and towards its
close Rousseau preached a state of nature as
Paradise, but after this century had been born
in blood and fire, Schopenhauer considered that
life was less than gain, and Leopardi hungered
for death. In our own day we have heard
Emerson lift up his voice in perpetual sun-
shine, and have gone with Carlyle when he
walked in darkness and saw no light ; and if
Pippa sings, —

' God's in His heaven,
All's right with the world,'

Thompson has written the * City of Dreadful

'■:'lt::

228 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Night.* It is a long action and reaction — an
antithesis that, cutside Religion, has no syn-
thesis, and one is driven to the conclusion that
optimism and pessimism are only half truths.
They are the offspring of moods of thought,
and carried to an extreme include their own
Nemesis. The shallow optimism of Leibnitz
was the preparation for Schopenhauer, and the
morbid pessimism of Hartmann is a prophecy
of optimism.

The controversies of philosophy have often
been metaphysical — in the regions beyond life,
but no one can deny that this long strife has
been practical — in the midst of life's hurly-burly.
No human being can escape it unless he be dead
to the passion of Humanity, or unless he had
never realised the distinction between what is
and what ought to be — the Real and the Ideal.
The unspeakable agony of human life, which
has been a long Gethsemane, and the unintel-
ligible condition of the lower animals, which is
a very carnival of slaughter, beat on the doors
of reason and heart. It is not wonderful that
some have tried to shelter themselves in a fool's
Paradise from the groans they could not still,
or that others, feeling the hideous facts, judged

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 239

is better to die than to live, — that some have
imagined no other God than a blind and cruel
Necessity, or that others have conceived two
contending forces of good and evil. Nothing
is wonderful in speculation or action save in-
difference to the enigma of life.

One recognises the limitations of Philosophy,
and turns with expectation to Theology, which
is fully equipped for the solution of this prob-
lem. Theology is the science of religion,
whose work it is to collect and analyse the facts
of the spiritual consciousness, and it is rich in
treasures. It has, for instance, a doctrine of
God, with profound conceptions of His right-
eousness and love. His wisdom and power.
Correlate the character of God and the destiny
of the Race. Should not this illuminate the
darkness ? Theology has a doctrine of the In-
carnation, which implies the union of humanity
with Himself in the Eternal Son of God. Is
this high alliance to have no influence on the
future of the Race? Theology has also a
doctrine of the Holy Ghost, which asserts the
Presence of God in this world and His con-
tinual operation. Will not the immanence of
God carry great issues ? From her standpoint

) J,l

1 H S!

230 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Theology commands the situation in its length
and breadth, and can speak with a solitary
authority on the mystery of life and the goal
of the Race. It suddenly occurs to one as
amazing that Philosophy should undertake a
subject for which Theology alone can be
adequate.

It is much more amazing to discover that on
this burning question Th-^ology up till quite a
recent date has been sil and still delays her
deliverance. Christian Theology has nothing
to say to the Race ; her concern has been
wholly with the individual. The Race has
been the subject of a huge catastrophe, and is
left out of account. It is on the individual
Theology expends all her labour, and her most
elaborate doctrines are the explanation how he
is to be saved from the general wreckage. Her
outlook for him is an unqualified optimism so
far as he is separated from his Race. He will
be sustained and trained in this life as in a
penitentiary, and then will begin to live in
Heaven — his real home. No single doctrine of
Theology, with the doubtful exception of
original sin, has, till recently, been applied to
the Race. The realisation of the Fatherhood,

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 231

and the expansion of the Incarnation, are of
yesterday. Theology will now explore the
consequences of the Incarnation, and toll us
soon what it means that the Son of God is also
the Son of Man. Hitherto pessimism or
optimism lay outside Theology because the
Race had been abandoned.

When one consults the supreme Book of
Religio , the result is at first a perplexity and
then an encouragement. Any one might take
a brief for the pessimism of the Bible, and
prove his case to the hilt. The irresistible
assaults of evil, the loathsome taint of sin, the
inevitable entail of punishment, the wrong of
the innocent, the martyrdom of the righteous,
the slavery of labour, the futility of life, the
moan of sorrow, are all in this Book, through
which the current of human life rushes to the
eternal sea. But if one should choose to take
a brief for the optimism of the Bible, he could
as easily win his case. The beauty of peni-
tence, the passion for God, the struggle after
righteousness, the joy of forgiveness, the attain-
ments in character, the examples of patience,
the victory over this world, invest human life
in the Bible with undying beauty. It is natural

fit ci

232 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

that both pessimists and optimists should claim
the sanction of the Hebrew Scriptures: that
any intelligent reader might lay down the book
with the vision of the Race carrying its bitter
cross along the Vi^ Dolorosa or crowned with
glory in the heavenly places. It seems a con-
tradiction : it points to a solution. No one
would dare to say that there is no ground for
tne alternation of moods of hope and despair
that have lifted and cast down the seers of our
Race. Within one connected and consistent
literature both moods find their strongest and
sanest utterance — a pessimism that, even in
Ecclesiastes, still clings to God and morals, an
optimism that is nev^er shallow or material.
Within the same book we look for the recon-
ciliation of this long antinomy and the revela-
tion of a deeper unity. We are not disap-
pointed ; it is found in Jesus.

No one has seriously denied that Jesus was
an optimist, although it has been hinted that
He was a drearier, and no one can object to
the optimism of Jesus, for it was in spite of cir-
cumstances. He was born of a peasant
woman : in early age He worked for His
bread : as a Prophet He depended on alms ;

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 233

during the great three years He knew not
where to lay His head. But the bareness and
hardship of His life never embittered His soul,
neither do they stiffen Him into Stoicism. A
sweet contentment possesses Him, and He
lives as a child in His Father's house. This
poorest of men warns His disciples against
carking care and vain anxiety ; He persuades
them to a simple faith in the Divine Providence.
They are to * take no thought for the morrow,
for the morrow will take thought for the things
of itself.' * Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof.' They are to * behold the fowls of
the air,' and to *take no thought for meat or
drink,' to * consider the lilies of the field,' and
to * take no thought for raiment.' Jesus met
the grinding poverty of a Galilean peasant's
life with one inexhaustible consolation, —
* Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have
need of all these things.'

The severity of Jesus' circumstances was
added to their poverty, since this Man, who
lived only for others, was the victim of the most
varied injury. He was exiled as soon as He
was born ; His townsmen would have killed Him :
His brethren counted Him mad ; the city of His

\! I

'-"?,'*■ n

234 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

mighty works did not believe ; the multitudes
He had helped forsook Him ; the professional
representatives of religion set themselves against
Jesus, and pursued this holiest of men with in-
genious slanders ; He was a ' Samaritan* (or
heretic), and * had a devil * ; He was a ' glutton-
ous man and a winebibber,' and kept disreputa-
ble company ; He was a blasphemer and de-
ceiver. A huge conspiracy encompassed Him,
and laboured for His death ; one of His inti-
mates betrayed Him ; the priests of God pro-
duced false witnesses against Him ; the people
He loved clamoured for His death ; the Roman
power He had respected denied Him justice ;
He was sent to the vilest death. During this
long ordeal His serenity was never disturbed ;
He was never angry save with sin. He never
lost control of Himself or became the slave of
circumstances. His bequest to the disciples was
Peace, and He spake of Joy in the upper room.
He was so lifted above the turmoil of this life,
that Pilate was amazed ; and, amid the agony of
the Cross, He prayed for His enemies. Nothing
has so embittered men as utter poverty or
social injustice. Jesus endured both, and
maintained the radiant brightness of His soul.

OPTIMISxM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 235

His was optimism set in the very environment
of pessimism.

Jesus saw the Race into which He had been
born in the Hght that illuminated His own life,
and held out to them the Hope which surtained
His own soul. Pagan poets had placed the age
of gold in the far past ; Hebrew prophets re-
ferred it to the distant future. Jesus dared to
say it might be now and here. It was the glory
of Isaiah to imagine a Kingdom of Righteous-
ness that would yet be established, with outward
sanctions of authority, on earth. It was the
achievement of Jesus to set up the Kingdom of
Righteousness within the heart with the eternal
sanctions of Love. He was the first to insist
that the one bondage a man need fear was sin ;
that no man need be the slave of sin unless he
willed ; that freedom from sin was perfect
liberty, and that any man could enter into
Heaven by retiring within a clean and loving soul.
The highest reaches of optimism have conceived
a state of physical comfort and placed it far away.
Jesus preached a Kingdom of Holiness, and
placed it in the soul. He had the faith to^de-
liver this Gospel where the Jewish world was a
hollow unreality, and the Pagan world one cor-

236 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

ruption. It was the very extravagance of op-
timism.

The attitude of Jesus was amazing in the
wideness of His vision, in the assurance of His
hope. His kingdom might be as a grain of
mustard seed : in its branches the souls of men
would yet take refuge. It might be only a
morsel of leaven hidden in the mass of society :
the world would be regenerated by its influence.
He prepared twelve men with immense care
that they might carry His kingdom to the ends
of the world. Although He never passed beyond
the borders of Syria in His mission, He grasped
the nations in His faith, and saw them * come
from the east, and from the west, and from the
north, and from the south,* and ' sit down in the
Kingdom of God.* Before His betrayal Jesus
administered a sacrament that was to last till His
second coming. After He rose from the dead
He commanded His disciples to evangelise the
world. He did not hesitate to say that all men
would be drawn to Him, Who was a synonym
for Righteousness, Joy and Peace. Jesus hoped
the best, not for the individual only, but also
for the Race.

The grounds for Jesus* sublime optimism

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 237

were three, and the first was the will of God.
With the extreme left of pessimism Jesus
believed that there was a Will at the heart of
the universe working slowly, constantly, and
irresistibly. But it is not blind, immoral,
impersonal — mere Titanic force. It is the ex-
pression and energy of Love. This Will might
appear under strange phenomena, might impose
great sufferings, might have immense restraint,
but it works for goodness. It might send Jesus
to the Cross, but now and ever it was a sure
and gracious Will. The future lay in that Will
and must be bright. It was an ancient Father
that said, * God works all things up into what
is better ; ' and a modern heretic who declared,
' God, who spent ages in fitting the earth for
the residence of man, may well spend ages
more in fitting rectified man to inhabit a
renovated earth.* This was the faith and
patience of Jesus.

Jesus also believed in man, and therein he
differed from the pessimists of His own day.
The Pharisees regarded the mass of people as
moral refuse, the unavoidable waste from the
finished product of Pharisaism. With Jesus
the common people were the raw material for

238 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

the Kingdom of God, rich in the possibilities of
sainthood. When Jesus made His own Apologia
in the 15th chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, He
also offered their apology for the people. They
were not callous and hopeless sinners, only
sheep that have wandered from the fold, and
know not the way back ; not useless and worth-
less human stuff, but souls that carried beneath
the rust and grime the stamp of their birth,
and might be put out at usury ; not outcasts
whose death would be a good riddance, but
children loved and missed in their Father's
House. This wreck, Jesus perpetually insisted,
is not the man — only his lower self, ignorant,
perverted, corrupt ; the other self lies hidden
and must be released. 'hat is the real self,
and when it is released you come to the man.
* When he came to himself,* said Jesus of the
prodigal. This was Jesus* reading of publicans
and sinners, — the pariahs of that civilisation.
He moved among the people with a sanguine
expectation ; ever demanding achievements of
the most unlikely, never knowing when He
might not be gladdened by a response. An
unwavering and unbounded faith in humanity
sustained His heart and transformed its subjects.

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 239

Zacchaeus, the hated tax-gatherer, makes a vast
surrender, and shows also that he is a son of
Abraham. St. Mary Magdalene, the byword
of society, has in her the passion of a saint.
St. Matthew abandons a custom-house to write
a Gospel. St. John leaves his nets to become
the mystic of the ages. St. Peter flings off his
weakness, and changes into the rock of the
Church. With everything against him, Jesus
treated men as sons of God, and His optimism
has had its vindication.

Jesus* attitude of hope rested also on His
ideal of Life. His own disciples could not
enter into His mind or see with His eyes.
Modern reformers have sadly missed His stand-
point. Laden with reproach and injury. He
seemed to His friends the victim of intolerable
ill-usage. As the Cross loomed in sight they
besought Him to save Himself. They pitied
Him who did not pity Himself; they were
furious for Him who was Himself satisfied.
For life with Jesus was not meat and drink, nor
ease and honour. It was the perfection of the
soul, and the way unto this high goal was the
Cross. If suffering was the will of God, then it
is a good in disguise ; if it be the discipline of

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240 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

holiness, it is to be welcomed. The Son of Man
must be crucified before He can rise in power.
He must fall as a corn of wheat into the ground
before He can bring forth much fruit. This
was the order of things for Him and for all
men, and out of the baptism of fire men will
come clean souls. Jesus did not ignore the
black shadow of sin ; He did not fall into the
sickly optimism of last century. Jesus did no?;
regard man as the sport of a cruel Fate ; He
did not yield to the gloomy pessimism which is
settling down on this dying century. He
illuminated the darkness of human misery with
the light of a Divine purpose, and made the
evidence for despair an argument for hope.

It must be admitted that Jesus had moods,
and in one of them He sometimes lost heart.
One cannot forget the gloom of certain
parables : — the doom of the fruitless tree ; the
execution of the wicked husbandman ; the
casting out of the unprofitable servant ; the
judgment on the uncharitable. He once
doubted whether there would be faith at His
coming ; He prophesied woe to Capernaum ;
He wept over Jerusalem ; He poured out His
wrath on the Pharisees. But it was not about

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 241

the world — the Samaritan woman, the mother
from Tyre, the Roman centurion — His faith
failed. It was about the Church — the Priests,
the Scribes, the Pharisees, the Rulers. It
remains for ever a solemn warning that while
tlie Church is continually tempted to lose hope
of the world, the one section of humanity of
which Jesus despaired was the Church.

When one turns for facts to verify Jesus' op-
timism, the handiest, although not the most
conclusive, is the growth of the Christian
Church. The Church is to the kingdom what
the electric current is to electricity. It is the
kingdom organised for worship and aggres-
sion ; it is the kingdom coming to a point and
reduced to machinery. You could have the
kingdom without the Church, and that day
may come ; you could have no Church without
the kingdom. The Church is a rough index of
the spread and vitality of the kingdom, and
no one can deny that the history of the Church
has been the outstanding phenomenon of
modern times. It began with a handful of
Jewish peasants, cast out by their own nation,
and it embarked on a march of unparalleled
conquest. From Jerusalem to Antioch, from

242 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Antioch to Asia, from Asia to Rome, this new
unworldly faith made its victorious way, and
from Rome to the ends of the earth. There is
almost no land now where the Church has not
sent her missionaries, has not planted her
standard, has not enrolled her converts ; and if
there be such, it is watched with greedy eyes.
Her weakness, her failings, her blunders, her
sins, have been patent to all, but they have
only served to prove how prolific were the
sources that recruited her shattered ranks, how
constant the force that made itself felt through
so imperfect an instrument. There are great
religions on the earth besides the Church, but
they have seen their best days, and have begun
to decay. The faith of Jesus is moving to its
zenith. There are strong empires to-day divid-
ing the world between them, but none will
venture to say that one of them is so likely to
live as the Church Catholic. Her increase may
be by thousands or millions, but it is evident
she has no serious rival to dispute her final
triumph, no hopeless hindrance save her own
coldness.

But no one can have understood Jesus, who
concludes that the Church embraces the king-

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 243

dom of God. Are there not many persons who
have no formal connection with the Church,
and yet are keeping the commandments of
Jesus, and have the likeness of His character?
They have not been baptized in His Name,
but they follow in His steps; they do not
show forth His Name, but they die daily in His
service. They have been born into a Christian
atmosphere ; they have inherited the Christian
nature ; they have responded to the Christian
spirit. What is one to say about these Samari-
tans ? They do not answer to their names at
the temple with the Priests and Levites, and
therein they may have suffered loss ; but they
show well on the roadside where the sick man
is lying. What did Jesus mean by His marked
approbation of the Samaritans? It was not
that He thought them right in their separation
from the Jewish Church, and He] spoke plainly
on that matter to the Samaritan woman. It
was to show that life was deeper than forms,
and that incorrect doctrine may be consistent
with the noblest character.

The kingdom Jesus imagined is wider even
than the sphere of Christendom, and extends
where men have owed nothing to the subtle

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244 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

strain of Christian heredity. In that great
Mogul Emperor Akbar, who in the sixteenth
century had discovered the principle of relig-
ious toleration : those Moslem saints whose fine
charity is embodied in the legend of Abou-ben-
Adhem : in the renunciation of Buddha, the
light of Asia : that Roman Emperor, whom
the young men called ' Marcus my father,' the
old men * Marcus my son,' the men of middle
age ' Marcus my brother,'— in such lives one
recognises the distinctive qualities of the king-
dom. It is surely a narrow mind, and worse —
a narrow heart — that would belittle the noble
sj^ngs that fell from the lips of outside saints
or discredit the virtues of their character. Is
it not more respectful to God, the Father of
mankind, and more in keeping with the teach-
ing of the Son of Man, to believe that every-
where and in all ages can be found not only
the prophecies and broken gleams, but also the
very children of the kingdom? In Clement's
noble words, * Some with the consciousness
of what Jesus is to them, others not as yet;
some as friends, others as faithful servants,
others barely as servants.*
The Sermon on the Mount is the measure of

OPTIMISM THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH 245

Jesus* optimism, and its gradual fulfilment His
justification. His ideas have matured in the
human consciousness, and are now bursting
into flower before our eyes. Thoughtful men
of many schools are giving their mind to the
programme of Jesus, and asking whether it
ought not to be attempted. The ideal of Life,
one dares now to hope, is to be realised within
measurable distance, and the dreams of the
Galilean Prophet become history.

When the kingdom comes in its great.iess, it
will fulfil every religion and destroy none, clear-
ing away the imperfect and opening up reaches
of goodness not yet imagined, till it has gath*
ered into its bosom whatsoever things are true
and honest and just and pure and lovely. It
standeth on the earth as the city of God with
its gates open by night and by day, into which
entereth nothing that defilcth, but into which
is brought the glory and power of the nations.
It is the natural home of the good ; as Zwin-
gli, the Swiss reformer, said in his dying con-
fession, * Not one good man, one holy spirit,
one faithful soul, whom you will not then be-
hold with God/

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'II

1^1

FATHERHOOD THE FINAL
IDEA OF GOD

XII

FATHERHOOD THE FINAL IDEA
OF GOD

It is an attractive theory that the spiritual
dominates the physical, and the soul, in the
long run, selects it.s own body : it is an evident
fact that life is created by thought, and every
action has its root in the Unseen. What one
thinks to-day, he will do to-morrow ; and the
first equipment for living is a creed. No one
is so simple that he does not hold some article
firmly — it may be attachment to his tribe : no
one is so liberal that he has cleansed his house
of every article — he will possibly deny the
knowledge of God. Totemism and agnosti-
cism are the extremes of belief ; but the im-
mense variety between those brackets proves
that whether one affirms or denies, he must
have a belief as he must have a home. His-
tory proves the necessity of a creed : experi-

:*!"

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250 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

ence proves its effect. As the light of the sun
colours the tiniest blade of grass, so the idea in
the background of the mind ti"ges every detail
of life. We grant that a man's theology will
be built on his belief, and will follow its lines
to the highest pinnacle. This is a grudging con-
cession, a limited analysis. The whole energy of
a human life, however it may have been fed on
the way, and whatever common wheels it may
turn, arises from the spring among the hills.
Belief gives the trend to politics, constitutes
the rule of business, composes the atmosphere
of home, and creates the horizon of the soul.
It becomes the sovereign arbiter of our desti-
nies, for character itself is the precipitate of be-
lief.

Belief, within the sphere of religion, has a
wide range, but its centre is God. Tell me
what is your conception of God, and I will
work out your doctrine of man, of forgiveness,
of life, of punishment. Given the axioms, and
geometry is only a question of process. Given
your God, and your whole theology can be
constructed within a measurable time. The
chief service of a prophet is not to rebuke sin,
aor instruct in virtue : it is to give the world a

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 251

radiant idea of God. Has he no word on God ?
Then his silence is irreparable— every other
doctrine will be isolated and fruitless. Has he
a fitting idea of God ? Then his blank chap-
ters can be supplied ; they are contained in the
introduction. If a prophet deal after a satisfy-
ing fashion with the idea of God, he will be
permanent. If a prophet complete and crown
the idea of God, he will be final. Many may
expound him : none can transcend him. Jesus
taught the world various principles of religion
— the nature of faith, the glory of sacrifice, the
secret of peace, the strength of love. These
were the splendid incidents of His Gospel.
The Gospel of Jesus was the revelation of God.
Jesus availed Himself o^ what existed, and
began with the assumption of God. He never
fell into the banality of theology, and set Him-
self to prove the existence of God, which is as
if a geologist should introduce his science with
an argument for the reality of the world.
W'-en one has to begin before the beginning,
he is filled with despair, for that way lies mad-
ness. We are entiiled to take some things for
granted, as, for instance, the evidence of our
senses and the teaching of an instinct. Belief

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252 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

in God is an instinct, a part of the constitution
of the soul. It may be confirmed and illus-
trated : it must not be proved, for the proof of
an instinct is its denial. When Jesus said God
He appealed to the belief latent in every
human being, and called it into a nobler exer-
cise. He did not create the idea of God — He
illumined it.

Jesus availed Himself also of what had been
done, and accepted that character of God,
which v/as the discovery of ancient piety. As
the belief in God began with the first father of
the Race, the doctrine of God began with the
Hebrew saints. Long centuries before Jesus,
patriarchs and prophets had been wrestling
with the problems of the Divine Being and the
Divine Name. With the sword of faith and
great travail of soul, those pioneers of religion
had conquered, foot by foot, the land of prom-
ise, and left it as an heritage unto their chil-
dren. They had extricated the idea of God
from the work of men's hands and the phenom-
ena of nature : in later days the pious Jew
guarded it from the abstractions of philosophy
and the corrosion of scepticism. This mono-
theism was not the natural tendency of the

I'm. h:(

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 253

Semite, born of the desert environment — that
ingenious naturalistic theory is now exploded ;
it was the slow, painful attainment of Hebrew
faith reinforced by the Divinr- Spirit. We owe
the * Living God ' to the Jew, and as often as
this sublime conception is obscured or sapped
by the eccentricities of modern speculation, the
religious consciousness must fall back on the
masculine vigour and ethical grandeur of Old
Testament thought.

The genius of the Jewish mind was not meta-
physical ; it could not have produced the Atha-
nasian Creed : it was ethical ; it is embodied in
the Ten Words. With the Jew, therefore, God
was not abstract Being — the First Cause of
things. He was actual character, the * Holy
One of Israel.* Jehovah dwelt in the high and
holy place, and with him also of a humble and
contrite heart ; and if He ' maketh the clouds
His chariot,' and * walketh upon the wings of
the winds,' His 'righteousness is like the great
mountains,' His * judgments are a great deep.'
There grew in the consciousness of this people
the idea of a God who was not only real — no
carved and painted log of prophetical satire, but
also moral — no complacent deity tasting the

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254 THE MIND at THE MASTER

sweetness of his worshippers' sins. They veri-
fied His character in the disasters that followed
national corruption, in the swift recoveries that
rewarded national repentance. In the mirror
of a cleansed conscience the prophets saw the
face of God ; they traced His life in the proc-
esses of righteousness. We fail sometimes to
appreciate the force of this discovery ; we forget
to imagine the surprise. With moderns, Deity
and virtue are synonymous; with ancients,
deities and vice were synonymous. Upon two
hills only was the Divine raised above the

' Howling senses' ebb and flow.'

One was the Acropolis where the golden shaft
in Athene's hand guided the mariner passing
Salamis. The other was the Holy Hill where
Jehovah remained the refuge of every righteous
man. But the advantage lay with the Jew.
The wisdom of Athens was seated in reason,
and did not affect life : the wisdom of Jerusa-
lem was seated in conscience, and created con-
duct. The Jewish Savonarola who thundered
in Jerusalem, * Wash you, make you clean ; put
away the evil of your doings from before mine
eyes,* had come out from a secret place where

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 255

the Seraphim said, * Holy, holy, holy is the
Lord of Hosts.*

Jewish piety has laid the world under a hope-
less debt by imagining the austere holiness of
God, and has doubled the obligation by adding
His tenderness. It was an achievement to
carve the white marble ; a greater to make it
live and glow. The saints of Israel touched
their highest when they infused the idea of the
Divine spirituality with passion, and brought it
to pass that the Holy One of Israel is the kind-
est deity that has ever entered the heart of man.
There was no human emotion they did not
assign to God ; no relationship they did not
use as the illustration of His love ; no appeal
of affection they did not place in His lips ; no
sorrow of which they did not make Him par-
taker. When a prophet's inner vision had been
cleansed by the last agony of pain, he dares to
describe the Eternal as a fond mother who holds
Ephraim by the hands, teaching him to go ; who
is outraged by his sin, and yet cannot bear that
Israel should perish : as a Husband who has
offered a rejected love, and still pleads ; who is
stained by a wife's unfaithfulness, and pursues
an adulteress with entreaties. One cannot lay

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356 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

his hand on the body of prophetical Scripture
without feeling the beat of the Divine heart :
one can detect in its most distant member the
warmth of the Divine love.

Your first conclusion is that faith can go no
farther: your second reading reveals one signifi-
cant reserve. Prophets continually call God the
Father of the nation ; they never (with one
don- tful exception) call Him Father of the in-
dividual. Psalmists revel in an overflowing im-
agery for God, but one word lying to their hand
they do not use. He is the ' Shepherd of Is-
rael ' and * our dwelling-place in all generations ' ;
He is the ' Rock of my Salvation * and a * very
present help in trouble ' : He is the ' Health
of my countenance,* and ' thy shade on thy
right hand ' ; but He is not Father. King is
the Psalmists' chief title for God and his high-
est note. ' The Lord reigneth.' These saints
are unapproachable in their familiarity with the
Eternal ; they will argue and complain ; they
will demand and reproach, but never at any
moment are they so carried beyond themselves
as to say * My Father.' They are bold within
a limit : they have restraints in their language.
It is not a refusal to say Father, because the

It ill

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 57

idea is an offence : it is an unconsciousness —
because the idea has not yet dawned. The
clouds which had gradually risen from the base
and sides of the doctrine of God still veil the
summit.

When one passes from the Gospels to the
Psalms he is struck by the absence of Father.
When one returns he is struck by its presence.
The Psalmist never said the word ; Jesus never
said anything else. With Jesus, God and
Father were identical. Fatherhood was not a
side of Deity ; it was the centre. God might
be a King and Judge ; He was first of all, and
last of all, and through all, Father. In Father-
hood every other relation of God n.ust be
harmonised and find its sphere. Short of His
Fatherhood you cannot stop in the ascent of
God. Under Fatherhood is gathered every
other revelation. Jesus reasoned in terms of
the Father: * If ye then, being evil, know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how
much more shall your Father which is in
heaven give good things to those that ask
Him?' He laboured in the fellowship of the
Father: *I seek not Mine Dwn will, but the
will of the Father which hath sent Me.* He

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358 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

rested in che wisdom of the Father 1 * In that
hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank
Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that Thou hast hid these things from the wise
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
babes : even so, Father ; for so it seemed good
in Thy sight.' And Jesus suffered in the faith
of the Father : ' Therefore doth My Father
love Me because I lay down My life that I
might take it again. . . . This commandment
have I received of My Father.* When the
consciousness of God awoke with power in the
soul of the Holy Child, He was filled with a
sudden enthusiasm, * Wist ye not that I must
be about My Father's business ? * When He
had fulfilled His calling and offered His sacri-
fice, His soul turned to His Father: 'Father,
into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.' From
Nazareth to Calvary the love of the Father
was Jesus' dwelling-place.

' In that one thought He abode
For ever in that thought more deeply sinking.'

No one can ignore this constant and radiant
sense of the Divine Fatherhood in the life of
Jesus. It must be a suggestive fact to an un-

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 259

believer, for it will be admitted on every hand
that Jesus knew more about Religion than any
man that has ever lived. It ought to be an ab-
solute conclusion to a believer, since he holds
that Jesus is Himself Very God of Very God.
It goes without saying that Jesus' sense of
the Fatherhood must be supreme. It is a con-
tradiction of the Gospels to say that it was ex-
clusive. Jesus toiled for three years to write
the truth of the Fatherhood on the minds of
the disciples, with at least one result, that it is
interwoven with the pattern of the Gospels.
He pleaded also with His friends that they
should receive it into their hearts till St. John
filled his epistles with this word. With minute
and affectionate care, Jesus described the whole
circle of religious thought, and stated it in
terms of the Fatherhood. Prayer was to be to
the Father : say ' Our Father, which art in
heaven.' The principle of life was the Will of
the Father : he only attained who had done
the ' Will of our Father which is in heaven.'
The type of character was the Father : * Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect.* Providence is the mind-
ful oversight of a Father : ' Your heavenly

h '

260

THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things.* Repentance was a return to the
Father : * I will arise and go to my father.'
One of the few rays Jesus cast on the future
showed the Father's dwelling-place : ' In My
Father's house are many mansions.' The
effect of such passages is cumulative and irre-
sistible. They are better than the proof texts
for a dogma ; they are an atmosphere in which
religion lives and move? and has its being.
They are sunrise.

People with dogmatic ends to serve have
striven to believe that Jesus reserved Father
for the use of His disciples ; but an ingenuous
person could hardly make the discovery in the
Gospels. One searches in vain to find that
Jesus had an esoteric word for His intimates,
and an exoteric for the people, saying Father
to John and Judge to the publicans. It had
been amazing if Jesus were able to employ
alternatively two views of God according to
His audience, speaking now as an Old Testa-
ment Prophet, now as the Son of God. It is
recorded in the Gospels, ' Then spake Jesus to
the multitude and His disciples, saying, . . . one
is your Father, which is in heaven.' This at-

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 261

tempt to restrict the intention of Jesus is not
of yesterday ; it was the invention of the Phar-
isees. They detected the universal note in
Jesus' teaching ; they resented His unguarded
chaiity. Their spiritual instincts were not
wide, bu : ' ley were very keen, within a limited
range, uxiu the Pharisees judged with much
correciness that the teaching of Jesus and the
privileges of Judaism were inconsistent. If a
publican was a son oi God, what advantage
had a Pharisee ? It was natural that they
should murmur : we are now thankful that
they criticised the Master. Jesus made His
defence in His three greatest parables, and in
the Parable of the Prodigal Son He defined
the range of the Divine Fatherhood beyond
reasonable dispute. His deliverance was given
with deliberation — in Jesus' most finished par-
able ; the parable was created for a definite
purpose — to vindicate Jesus' intercourse with
sinners. It contains Jesus' most complete de-
scription of a sinner — from his departure to his
return ; with emphasis it declares that sinner a
son of God — a * son was lost and is found.*
Between the son in the fai country and the
son at home is an immense difference ; but if

26a THE MIND OF THE MASTER

he had not been a son from home, there had
been no home for his return. The possibiHty
of salvation lies in sonship. It would not be
fair to rest any master doctrine on a single par-
able, were it not that the parable is Jesus'
definition of Fatherhood, given in answer to
the practical challenge of privilege, were it not
that it simply crystallises the whole teaching
of Jesus on God from His boyhood to His
death, if Jesus did not teach a Divine
F'atherhood embracing the Race, then He used
words to conceal thought, and one despairs of
ever understanding our Master.

When Jesus speaks of Fatherhood, it is al-
most a stupidity to explain that He is not
thinking of any physical relation — the ' off-
spring ' of the heathen poets, and that Father
is not a synonym for Creator. Jesus rested
His own Sonship on community of character.
God was love, for He gave His only Son, and
Jesus was love, for He gave Himself. He rea-
lised His Sonship in community of service.
* My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.'
The bond between son and father in the spirit-
ual world is ethical. It is perfect between the
Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity : it is

IHVIIimiiHHBBP!!"

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 263

only a suggestion between a sinner and God.
As one can detect some trace of likeness be-
tween a father and his son, although the son
may have played the fool, and defiled the
fashion of his countenance, so the most de-
graded and degenerate of human outcasts still
bears the faint remains of che Divine image.
The capability of repentance is the remains of
righteousness ; the occasional aspirations after
goodness are the memories of home ; the rec-
ogn'tion of right and wrong is an affinity to the
mind of God. The sonship is hidden in Zac-
cheus and Mary Magdalene — a mere possibility ;
in St. John and St. Paul it is revealed — a beau-
tiful actuality, so that this paradox is only the
deeper truth that one may be, and yet become,
a son, as the ethical likeness is acknowledged
and cleansed. Jesus' message was, * You are a
son.' As soon as it was believed, Jesus gave
power to live as a son with God.

With this single word * Father,' Jesus in-
stantly defines the relation of man and God,
and illuminates theology. He transfers the
Divine idea from the schools, where they discuss
the Sovereignty of God, to the hearth, where
the little children can say ' Our Father' with

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264 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

understanding. It was a felicitious image
which suddenly appropriated for theology the
analogies of love and the associations of home ;
which teaches us to argue with irresistible force
what my father on earth would not do because
it is evil my Father in heaven will not do ;
what my father here will do of good, that and
more my Father above will do. Granted that
this is anthropomorphic reasoning, how else
can we arg'' ih.in from the good in us to the
better in God ? Granted that this analogy is
faint, that only invests it with more winsome
attraction. What an astounding gaucherie it
has been to state the intimate relation between
God and the soul in the language of criminal
law, with bars, prisoners, sentences. This ter-
minology has two enormous disadvantages. It
is unintelligible to any one who is not a crimi-
nal or a lawyer ; it is repulsive to any one who
desires to love God. Take it at the Iiighest, it
was the spirit of Moses. Without disparage-
ment to a former dispensation, it has been su-
perseded by the spirit of Jesus.

On*"^ is not astonished that some of Jesus'
deepest sayingn z.vt stiJ r,n.'athomed, or that
some of His widest piirciplfs ire not yet ap-

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 265

plied. Jesus is the Eternal Son, and the ages
overtake Him slowly. One is aghast to dis-
cover that the doctrine which Jesus put in the
forefront of His teaching and laboured at with
such earnestness did not leave a trace on the
dominant theology of the early Church, and for
long centuries passed out of the Christian con-
sciousness. Had it not been for the Lord's
Prayer and, in a sense, the three Creeds, no
witness had been left for the Fatherhood in
Christian doctrine and worship. The Anglican
communion has thirty-nine articles, with one on
oaths, one on the descent into hell, one on the
marriage of priests, one on how to avoid people
that are excommunicate, and not one on the
Fatherhood. The Presbyterian communion
has a confession with thirty-three chapters,
which deal in a trenchant manner with great
mysteries, but there is not one expounding the
Fatherhood of God. It was quite allowable
that theology should formulate doctrines on
subjects Jesus never mentioned, such as original
sin ; and elaborate theories on facts Jesus left
in their simplicity, such as His sacrifice. These
speculations are the function of that science,
but it is inexcusable that the central theme of

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266 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus* teaching should have been ignored or
minimised. This silence, from the date of the
Greek fathers to the arrival of the modern
Broad Churchman, has been more than an
omission ; it has been a heresy.

It is an endless consolation that our Master's
words are indestructible and eternal. Certain
ideas of Jesus disappeared, and seemed to have
died ; they were not dead, they were only
sown. When their due time came they awoke
to life, and it is now spring-time with the
Fatherhood. The disciples of Jesus owe a debt
that can never be paid to three men that have
brought us back to the mind of our Master.
One was Channing, for whose love to Jesus one
might be tempted to barter his belief; the
sfxond was Maurice, most honest and con-
scientious of theologians ; and the third was
Erskine of Linlathen, who preached the Father-
hood to every one he met, from Thomas Carlyle
to Highland shepherds. This sublime truth
received ar first the same treatment from the
nineteenth century as from the first. Its in-
herent grace has not been an immediate com-
mendation ; its utter reasonableness has been
an indirect provocation. But the spirit of Jesus

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 267

has been working in men a.^e after age, and it
is now evident that the name for God that lay-
in Jesus' heart is to be acclimatised in the
Christian consciousness.

Two persons hesitate to accept the Father-
hood in its fulness who are neither biassed by-
spiritual pride nor are disloyal to Jesus. With
one it is an ethical difficulty, that stands in the
way ; he has a rooted suspicion that the asser-
tion of God's Fatherhood means the denial of
His authority, and that we shall exchange' the
Holy One of Isra<;) for a magnified Eli. Certain
advocates of Jesus' i4«a have themselves to
blame for this misapprehension, since they have
invested the 'Holy Father* of Jesus, whose
Name is 'hallowed,' with a cloud of sickly-
sentiment, making Him a God too weak to
rule, too soft-hearted to punish. If this con-
ception should obtain, Christianity would
deserve to lose her hold on the conscience, and
morality- would have to fight for very existence.
Jesus is not responsible for this helpless Deity,
this pitiable descent from the God of the
prophets. With Jesus, the Father was Lord of
heaven and earth, who ' seeth in secret,' and
holds the times in His hand, who has not only

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268 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

prepared the ' many mansions,' but also the
cleansing fires of Gehenna. No judge is so
omniscient as a father, no despot so absolute.
The Father of the Sermon on the Mount is not
less awful than the God of the Ten words, nor
is the conscience of St. John less strenuous
than the conscience of Moses.

The second objection is practical, and carries
much force, for it simply comes to this, that
experience is a denial of the Fatherhood. One
admires the Galilean dreamer with his Father-
God, and His charming illustrations of the lilies
and the birds, but this one says is an idyll, and
life is real. What signs of paternal government
can be found in the martyrdom of man from
the first days of history to the last war, in the
hideous sufferings of slavery, or in the equal
miseries uf great cities? With such a record
before one, it is certainly open to argue that
Jesus was too optimistic. Granted, but that
does not close the question. With the record
of His own life before one, it is not open to
conclude Jesus was wrong. He drank the
bitterest cup ; He suffered the shamefullest
death, and yet reconciled the incalculable
tragedy of 1 1 is life with the love of His Father.

FATHERHOOD, FINAL IDEA OF GOD 269

if^i

Jesus did not regard suffering as the contradic-
tion of love ; it was one of its methods. When
Jesus said Father on the Cross, it may have
been a pathetic delusion, but it was the delusion
of Him who of all the Race knew God best.

One joyfully anticipates the place this final
idea of God will have in the new theology.
Criticism has cleared the ground and gathered
its building materials. A certain conception of
God must be the foundation and give shape to
the whole structure. No one can seriously
doubt that it will be the Fatherhood, and that
Jesus' dearest thought will dominate theology.
No doctrine of the former theology will be lost ;
all will be recarv^d and refaced to suit thn nrw
architecture. Sovereignty will remain, not that
of a despot, but of a father; the Incarnation
will not be an expedient, but a consummation ;
the Sacrifice will not be a satisfaction, but a
reconciliation : the end of Grace will not be
standing, but character ; the object of punish-
ment will not be retribution, but regeneration.
Mercy and justice will no longer be antinomies ;
they will be aspects of Love, and the principle
of human probation will be exchanged for the
principle of human education.

2^o THE MIND OF THE MASTER

One sees already the place which the Father-
hood will have in the new life into which the
race in every land is entering. While piety
imagined God as the Father of a few and the
Judge of the rest, humanity was belittled and
Pharisaism reigned ; slavery was defended from
the Bible, and missions were counted an imper-
tinence. When He is recognised as the uni-
versal Father, and the outcasts of Humanity as
His prodigal children, every effort of love will
be stimulated, and the Kingdom of God will
advance by leaps and bounds. As this sublime
truth is believed, national animosities, social
divisions, religious hatreds and inhuman
doctrines will disappear. No class will regard
itself as favoured: no class will feel itsc'f re-
jected, for all men everywhere will be embraced
in the mission of Jesus and the love of the
Father.

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH

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XIII

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH

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The difference between the eternal vision of
God and the temporal outlook of man has been
compared to one standing on a hill with the
landscape in its length and breadth before him,
and another crossing the plain in a swiftly mov-
ing train, on whom the landscape breaks part
by part. This ingenious illustration, after it has
served its purpose to show the relation of eter-
nity and time, may be utilised to suggest that
we also have an eternal kinship. We retain
what we have seen after it has vanished ; we
anticipate what has yet to be seen before it ap-
pears. It is the present which is not yet ours,
since it is only being transferred to the exposed
plate of experience — the past and the future are
carried in our consciousness. One faculty of
our mysterious nature records, as by an auto-
matic register, the experiences of yesterday, so

274 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

that not one deed, or word, or thought is lost —
not one but can be reproduced by some com-
monplace spell, the crowing of a cock at early-
dawn, or the fragrance of dried rose-leaves in
some old-fashioned drawing-room. Another
pictures with minute prophetic power the ex-
periences of to-morrow, so that the distant hori-
zon is golden with inspiring illusions, or black
with brooding anxieties. We are the slaves of
memory and imagination, but in the conflict for
the control of the soul imagination is easily vic-
tor. Hope rather than repentance is the instru-
ment of salvation.

Imagination is the faculty which represents
the future, foresight is the quality which pos-
sesses it ; and foresight is one of the standards
of character. Without foresight no one can
claim to be of serious account — he may take
lessons from an ant ; with it no one need de-
spair of any achievement — he has outrun time.
Foresight confers distinction on every effort of
man, and raises it a degree. It elevates econ-
omy into providence ; it broadens business into
enterprise ; with this addition politics become
statesmanship, and literature prophecy. Life
gains perspective and atmosphere ; it is rein-

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH 275

forced by unseen hopes and rewards. The bur-
den of the future becomes a balance in life, tem-
pering the intoxication of joy with the cares of
to-morrow, and softening the bitterness of sor-
row with its compensations. Foresight, send-
ing on its spies into the land of promise, returns
to brace and cheer every power of the soul, and
becomes the mother of all hardy and strenuous
virtue.^, a self-restraint, and self-denial, of sacri-
fice and patience. He who seizes to-day may
have pleasure ; he who grasps to-morrow shall
have power.

An admirable work of modern art shows
Jesus standing at the door of a carpenter's shop,
and stretching Himself after a long day's labour.
The setting sun falling on His outspread arms
makes the shadow of the cross, and carries ter-
ror into Mary's heart. The attitude of the
body was typical of the attitude of the soul.
Jesus grasped at the future, as He seemed also
to carry with Him a mysterious past. Before
Him extended the long distances of the Divine
Will, and He arranged His life for Calvary.
When a pious scholar came by night to discuss
His new ideas, Jesus could not explain the
Kingdom of God without a reference to His

275 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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cross. As He spake in the synagogue of Ca-
pernaum after the miracle of the loaves, His sacri-
fice rose before Him, and the bread of life be-
came His Flesh and His Blood. On the way
to Jerusalem He drew His disciples aside, and,
while the people passed in their carelessness,
Jesus described the tragedy that was at hand.
The sight of certain foreign Jews, full of curios-
ity about this new Master, suggested to Him
that throne from which He was to rule the
world, and He saw across His Passion the vic-
tory of His Love. In the upper room His vi-
sion had passed beyond the cross, and He com-
manded that the sacrament of His Body and
Blood should be celebrated till His second ad-
vent. After His resurrection He gave the first
earnest of the Holy Ghost, and anticipated the
spread of the Evangel throughout the world.
With Jesus the present was ever eclipsed by the
future, so that while the multitude would have
made Him a King, He saw Himself forsaken
on a cross ; and while He was about to be cruci-
fied, He was promising to return for the judg-
ment of the world. He set His face sted-
fastly, lifted above the ebb and flow of cir-
cumstances, because the Divine Will was

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lUI'i

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH

ever revealing itself, peak above peak, to the
ages of ages.

Possessed by the spirit of to-morrow, it was
natural that our Master should labour to imbue
His disciples with the same ; but on a first read-
ing His teaching presents a perplexing paradox.
This Man, who was born amid the narrow
circumstances of poverty, and acquainted with
its exacting cares, belittles ordinary prudence to
an audience of country folk, and gives counsels
of perfection about an easy mind. With the
scanty wages of Galilee, and the charge of little
children, they were to allow to-morrow to take
care of itself, and not even concern themselves
about the bare necessaries of life. He saw His
chosen disciples fling away their only means of
livelihood with approval, and sent them forth
on a mission, as bare as the monks of St.
Francis. If a young man won His love. He
did not hesitate to demand the sacrifice of his
possessions, and He pursued, with bitter mock-
ing, rich men who doubled their investments.
As for Himself, He was dependent on the
charity of pious women, and had to work a
miracle to pay the temple tax. He seems to
justify the light heart of imprudence, and the

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278 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

recklessness of impulse, to condemn prudence
as unbelief, and enterprise as crass foolishness.
Parallel with this depreciation of foresight,
runs an endless exhortation to its practice. The
Kingdom of God as the Chief Good is to be the
first object in life ; it is the pearl of great price
which one ought to secure as the best of all his
possessions. It was wisdom to humble one's
self as a little child, because the child-character
stood highest in the coming State ; and better
to take the lowest room at the feast of life,
since the lowest would be the highest in the
end. If one did sell all he had for Christ's
sake, he would have treasure in heaven ; and
they who abandoned their best in His service,
had the promise of a hundred-fold return. It
was shrewder to labour for the Living Bread
than for the meat that perisheth, because it
would endure ; and to place one's capital in
heaven rather than on earth, because of the
moth and rust which corrupt, and the thieves
which break through and steal. Lazarus, with
his good things on the other side, has the
advantage over Dives with his brief while of
purple and fine linen ; and as a mere matter of
profit and loss, he that saves his soul is wiser

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH 279

than he who gains a world. Jesus amazes us
twice, first by casting the principle of prudence
out of common life and making no provision
for the future ; and second, by introducing the
principle of prudence into the sphere of religion,
and making the rewards of the Kingdom of
heaven a subject of calculation.

Let us remember that one of Jesus' most
convincing characteristics was a certain sound-
ness of mind, which kept Him continually in
contact with fact and life. He accepted creation
before proceeding to regeneration, and preferred
to utilise human nature rather than quarrel
with it. Foresight is an instinct which is
atrophied in criminals and wastrels, which
flourishes in workers and rulers. It may be
cultivated either within the sphere of the seen
or the unseen, and as a matter of fact has
seldom been adopted by faith. With two
worlds before His eye, Jesus proposed to shift
the venue of this influential motive from this
world into that which is to come, and sought
to accomplish the change by starving foresight,
when expended upon the material, and foster-
ing it when devoted to the spiritual. As it is
evidently out of the question that one can

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280 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

make the best of both worlds— ye cannot serve
God and Mammon, as our Master said in His
conclusive way — Jesus desired that His dis-
ciples should concentrate themselves upon the
world which remaineth.

Jesus embodied His comparative view of
material and spiritual foresight in a parable
which has a double distinction. The Unjust
Steward is the only parable of Jesus which
gives for one instant a shock of moral offence
to the reader; it is also the only one which
illustrates the action of the principle of fore-
sight on two different ethical levels. It is quite
allowable for us to be surprised that Jesus
should choose a case of deliberate and clever
fraud for a parable ; it is scarcely pardonable
that any intelligent person should suppose that
Jesus approved or condoned the fraud. One is
indeed struck by Jesus* felicity in selecting a
set of circumstances which will so certainly
excite intellectual curiosity, and so perfectly"
bring out His point. Within the briefest
space the place of foresight in human action
is defined, while its lower application is
skilfully depreciated, and its higher power
fully enforced. It is Jesus' most incisiv« de-

THE FORKSIGHT OF FAITH 281

liverance on worldliness, and other-worldli-
ness.

The parable is a palimpsest whose surface
presents a story in commercial life, so ignoble
and uninviting that it does not deserve record,
and contains beneath half-hidden, half-revealed,
a gospel of Jesus. But this palimpsest has a
peculiarity of its own, because the upper legend
is not an obliteration of the lower truth, but
rather its introduction — the envelope which
holds the message. One ought not to erase the
legend before he has mastered it, because in
that case he will miss the key to the interpreta-
tion of the truth. This indolent and luxurious
steward, without conscience or manliness, is the
lowest type of a man of this world. The un-
expected discovery of his embezzlement, and
his threatened dismissal from office, are the
sudden changes which affect the ease and
comfort of the present life. His vivid anticipa-
tions of the hardness of life for a poor and dis-
graced man show how selfishness can be served
by imagination. And the fellow's fraudulent
device is an example of insurance against com-
ing risks, and of adaptation to new circum-
stances. Jesus did not choose an honourable

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282 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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♦ *

merchant because He required the dismissal for
His parable, and He desired to invest sheer
worldliness with a dash of contempt. This was
a petty rascal — a mere fox of a man — but he
saved himself, according to his lights, by fore-
sight.

The under writing on the parchment corre-
sponds with the upper, save for one or two sig-
nificant blanks, and is a translation of the same
story into another language. This self-indul-
gent steward is replaced by the disciple of Jesus
with his cross. Death will release him from
this inhospitable life and restore him to his
home. Yet his imagination has never realised
what shall be the splendour of his spiritual
environment. And he is not striving with all
his might so to till the opportunities of this
life that he shall reap their harvest in the life
which is to come. That shallow trickster will
sell his conscience to secure a roof above his
head for a brief space ; but Jesus* disciple will
not bestir himself to make certain of everlasting
habitations. It was to Jesus quite astonishing
either that any one should take much thought
what might befall him in this world which
passeth away, or that any one should be indif-

THE FORESIGHT OK FAITH 285

ferent to the infinite attraction of the world
which abideth. The parable is a eulogium on
foresight, and a plea that its whole lorce should
be used to secure the * everlasting habitations.'
It is Jesus* argument for * other-worldliness.'

It may be frankly admitted that a very
coarse and sordid interpretation can be put on
this argument, and the conduct of the unjust
steward be repeated with aggravation on the
spiritual side of things. The parable does ' ^nd
itself to that materia) Theology whether of
Rome or L^neva, which teaches that Heaven
can be literally bought. Whether the price he
the merits of Jesus or the merits of saints, the
sufferings of Jesus or the alms of penitents,
does not matter, since in either case the princi-
ple is the same and is clearly unreasonable.
Heaven is a spiritual state and its settlement
on any person, either on account of a payment
in blood or money, is an absurdity. His intro-
duction into this new environment without re-
spect to his fitness would be an outrage. This
is too literal a rendering of the steward's book-
keeping ; too flagrant a contradiction of the
whole spirit of Jesus' teaching. What is in-
tended is different. Jesus* blood will give

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THE MIND OF THE MASTER

white robes which are the dress of Heaven:
the faithful use of riches will produce character
which is the passport to Heaven. One can
imagine how the penitent thief might become
suddenly fit for Paradise, because he did hom-
age to goodness — when goodness was obscured
by the shame and weakness of the cross. One
cannot imagine Ananias obtaining entrance by
the unwilling gift of all he possessed, or by an
aci of mercenary faith. Foresight wiPi win
Heaven, but it is not the foresight of a mercan-
tile speculation.

One remembers at the same time that certain
persons in the Gospels did use their earthly
possessions after such a wise and gracious fash-
ion that they proved themselves not unworthy
to have a place in the Kingdom of Heaven,
either in this world or the next. The Magi
who brought their gifts to the Holy Child ; the
faithful women who made a home for God's
Son ; St. Matthew, and such as he, who left all
to follow Him ; Zaccheus, who in honour of
His coming gave half of his goods to the poor ;
Joseph, who obtained Christ's body from Pilate
and laid it in his own garden tomb, were good
stewards. These men did make friends with

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH 285

the mammon of unrighteousness, and changed
their gold and silver into eternal riches. They
did not make their sacrifices for ends of gain,
but for love's sake. Keeping the one com-
mandment of Love, they had kept all the
others, and had a right to enter in by the gate
into the City. This little handful saw farther
than all their generation, for in the things of
the Spirit foresight is not the cunning calcula-
tion of chances, it is rather the sacrifice of every-
thing for Christ. There are two passages which
go well together in the Gospcis : one is * Then
took Mary a pound of spikenard, very costly,
and anointed the feet of Jesus ' ; and the other,
* In my Father's house are many mansions . . .
I go to prepare a place for you.*

According to the mind of Jesus, the foresight
which prepares one for the future life is a cer-
tain attitude of soul. No person, it may be as-
sumed, would refuse the reversion of a blessed
future, with its high hopes of the freeaom of
holiness and the unfettered service of the Di-
vine Will, but many persons are not minded to
subordinate its unseen excellence to the solid
possession of the present. They have made
themselves so absolutely at home among the

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286 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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principles and rewards of a material world that
they would be out of place amid the very differ-
ent conditions and occupations of a spiritual
world. It is this unfitness that will deny them
a habitation. Certain persons, on the other
hand, are determined that the physical shall not
fling its * tangling veil ' so close around their
hearts as to blind them to the glory of the Un-
seen, and are prepared to use the things which
are seen as the stepping-stone to the things
which are eternal. They store within their
souls these intangible treasures of goodness,
which are wrested from the experiences of sacri-
fice as pearls are from the dark caverns of the
deep. With such gold they purchase their
home in the Land of Promise. Their fitness
will ensure their habitation.

* He who flagged not in the earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing only he,
His soul well knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts and that hardly to eternal life.'

Jesus approved the man who lived under the
power of the Unseen, who was guided by a
resolute, strenuous faith, who was det*irmined
not to lose the future. He had no hope of easy-
going, thoughtless, improvident persons — the

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THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH 287

pauper class— in the spiritual world : from them
he expected no great endeavours : for them he
prophesied nothing but disasters. The man
who had forethought built his house on the
rock : the man who had none built his on the
sand. The rock-house stood, the sand-house
fell. The servant who played the fool because
his master delayed his coming was cast out :
had he persevered unto the end, he would have
been accepted. It was the catastrophe of short-
sightedness : he ought to have kept his master's
coming before his eyes. Five virgins are re-
solved that they will on no account miss the
marriage, and make their arrangements at a cost
of thought. Five have other things to think
about besides the marriage, and do not burden
themselves with preparations. Five enter in
because for them the Kingdom of God was
first : five remain outside because for them it
was an ordinary matter. The wise virgins were
of the same temper as Jesus Himself, and so
they were His friends.

* Other-worldliness' has been the subject of
much satire in our materialistic day, and has
been condemned for its enervating and crippling
influence on life. It is right, therefore, to re-

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288 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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mind one's self that * Other-worldliness' has two
forms and that both are not open to such
charges. One school of piety has always held
that the choice preparation for the Eternal
World is seclusion and devotion, and when the
Second Advent was confidently expected, in
the middle ages, society was disorganised and
life arrested in Europe. Western Christendom
Was caught in a spasm of repentance, and even
irreligious people were shaken ; some entered
sacred houses ; some hid themselves in caves ;
some set out for Palestine to meet the Lord.
The fruits of that brief emotion remain unto
this day in stately buildings and ecclesiastical
donations. Yet about that very time some one
conceived a very lovely parable that also re-
maineth. How a godly monk prayed and fasted
and longed to see Christ. How one day a light
began to shine in his lonely cell, and he waited
for the visible revelation of his loved Lord ; how
at that very moment his summons came to feed
the poor at ^the convent gate ; how he obeyed
the call and gave out the loaves of bread and
returned in sorrow, for he was sure that he
had missed the condescension of the Lord ; and
how Christ was waiting for him, and said.

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH 289

* Hadst thou refused thy duty, I had left ; since
thou wast faithful, I tarried to bless thee.
Two complimentary chapters in * Other-worldli-
ness.*

Charles V. of Spain was the greatest person-
age in the history of his day — the heir of four
royal lines, ruler of Spain, the Netherlands,
Austria and Naples, for whom Cortes had also
conquered the New World. He led huge ar-
mies, gained great victories, conducted momen-
tous affairs, lived amid critical events. In his
day the Ottoman was beaten back from the
frontiers of Europe and the Christian Church
was divided. It was in this wide place Charles
lived, amid these stirring circumstances he
moved ; yet he was ever thinking of the end,
and had resolved, with Isabella, his loved
Queen, to retire at a certain time into a holy
place and wait for Christ. The Master came
for her before the day arrived, but Charles ab-
dicated his throne and divested himself of
power amid general sorrow and admiration, and
gave his last days to the practice of religion in
the Monastery of Yuste. Contrast with this
cloistered piety the scene in the American
Senate-house during the Revolution, when at

t9o THE MIND OF THE MASTER

M ■■■ '

E' '

mid-day a great darkness fell and no man could
see his brother's face. Even these stout Puri-
tans were for the moment dismayed. Voices
cried, ' It is the Day of Judgment,' and tnc^e
was some confusion. Then one of the Fathers
rose and said, * Whether it be the Judgment
Day or no, I know not, but this I know, that it
is God's Will we save our country, and we
shall be judged accordingly. I move that the
candles be lit and that we go on with our bus-
iness.' Two schools of ' Other-worldliness,'
and very different. With the Catholic foie-
sight spelt devotion — with the Puritan, duty.

It is an ungenerous task to compare these
types of piety, and one ought to be grateful
for each in its place. The Master is not likely
to despise that delicate and reverent feeling
which would wait for His coming in a secret
place and meet Him in prayer. Nor is it to
be thought that He will set any store by the
mechanical performance of loveless service and
exalt Judas with his bag above Mary with her
spikenard. Jesus has wrought a beautiful har-
mony, for in one of His parables He has taken
the most mystical form of * Other-worldliness*
— ^that which watches for His Second Advent,

THE FORESIGHT OF FAITH 291

and has laid on His waiting servant the most
homely task — to give to the household their
meat in due season. With one touch of grace
He has made duty a synonym for piety, and
has reconciled the inner and outer life. He
has vii^dicated the ' Other-worldliness ' of the
Gospels, for He has made the foresight of the
Kingdom of God, in its loftiest ambition as
well as its minutest calculation, identical with
the unsparing and self-forgetful service of man.

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THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE

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XIV

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE

When William Blake, the painter-poet, lay
dying, he said * he was going to that country he
had all his life wished to see,' and just before
he died * he burst into singing of the things he
saw.' It was the passion of a saint, whose
heart had long been lifted above the present
world ; it was the vision of a mystic, whose
imagination had long been exercised on the
world to come. Few outside the Bible succes-
sion have been inspired of the Holy Ghost like
him who wrote the Songs of Innocence and il-
lustrated the Epic of Job. But common men
share in their measure this instinct of the eternal,
this curiosity of the unseen. One must be af-
flicted with spiritual stupidity or cursed by in-
curable frivolity who has never thought of that
new state on which he may any day citer, nor
speculated concerning its conditions. Amid

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396 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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the pauses of this Hfe, when the doors aie closed
and the traffic on the streets has ceased, our
thoughts travel by an irresistible attraction to
the other life. What like will it be, and what
will be its circumstances? What will be its
occupations and history ? * God forgive me,*
said Charles Kingsley, facing death, * but I look
forward to it with an intense and reverent
curiosity.* He need not have asked pardon, for
he was fulfilling his nature.

One is not astonished that this legitimate
curiosity has created a literature, or that its
books can be divided into sheep and goats.
Whenever any province transcends experience
and is veiled in mystery, i* is certain to be the
play of the childish and irresponsible fancy or
the subject of elaborate and semi-scientific
reasoning. Were it possible to place a foolscap
on one of our most sublime ideas, and turn im-
mortality itself into an absurdity, it is done when
a vulgrr imagination has peddled with the de-
tails of the future, and has accomplished a
travesty of the Revelation of St. John. From
time to time ignorant charlatans will trade on
religious simplicity and trifle with sacred emo-
tions, whose foolishness and profanity go before

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 397

them unto judgment. Heaven is the noblest
imagination of the human heart, and any one
who robs this imagination of its august dignity
and spiritual splendour has committed a crime.
Certain thoughtful and reverent writers, on the
other hand, have addressed themselves to the
future existence and its probable laws with a
becoming seriousness and modesty. The Un-
seen Universe^ which was written by two emi-
nent scientists, and Isaac Taylor's Physical
Theory 0/ Another Life, are books worthy of a
great subject, and a fit offering on the altar of
Faith. Within a limited range science and
philosophy are welcome prophets on the unseen,
but at a point they leave us, and we stand
alone, awestruck, fascinated, before the veil.
No one has come from the other side and spoken
with authority save Jesus.

One who believes in the pre-existence of our
Master approaches the Gospels with high ex-
pectations and sustains a distinct disappoint-
ment. Jesus* attitude to the other world ij a
sustained contradiction because His life reveals
a radiant knowledge and His teaching preserves
a rigid silence. As Jesus moves through the
Gospels, the sheen of Heaven is visible upon

298 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Him. Above the mixed noises of earth the
voice of the Eternal fell on Hi3 ear ; beyond
the hostile circle of Pharisees He saw the joy
iu the presence of God. Once and again came
the word from heaven, * This is my Beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased,' and in His
straits the angels ministered unto Him. He
lived so close to the frontier that His garments
were once shot through with light, and His re-
lations with the departed were so intimate that
He spake with the past leaders of Israel con-
cerning His mission. It does not surprise one
that Jesus should suddenly disappear any more
than that a bubble should rise to the surface of
water, or that He ascended from the earth any
more than that a bird should open its wings
and fly. It was not strange that Jesus should
pass into the unseen ; it was strange that He
should appear in the seen.

Jesus had established in His own Person that
communication which ancient ages had desired,
and modern science is labouring to attain. C.it
may be pardoned for anticipating some amaz-
ing results — a more complete apocalypse. What
unsuspected applications of natural law, what
new revelations of spiritual knowledge, what im-

im-

TH£ CONTINUITY OF LIFE 299

mense reaches of Divine service, what boundless
possibilities of life, might not Jesus have re-
vealed in the sphere of the unseen. We search
in vain for these open mysteries — this lifting of
the veil from the occult. Whatever Jesus may
have seen, and whatever He may have known,
were locked in His breast,

* . , . or something sealed
The hps of that Evangelist.'

No believer in the pre-existence of Jesus can
affect indifference to this silence ; every one
must desire some relief from its pressure.
Most likely Jesus recognised that frequent
references to the circumstances of the unseen
world would have obscured one of the chief
points in His teaching. He was ever insisting
that the kingdom of heaven was no distant
colony in the clouds, but an institution set up
in this present world. He was ever hindered
by the gross conceptions of the Jews, who
could not compass any other Utopia than a
conquering Messiah and a visible Theocracy.
It was hard enough to cleanse the sight of His
disciples from a religious imperialism, and to
possess them with a vision of a spiritur 1 society.

300 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Had He once excited their imagin<ition with an
apocalypse of gold, then they had never grasp-
ed the fact that the kingdom of God is within,
and they had been quite unsettled for the
labour of its establishment. They must under-
stand with all their hearts that where Jesus and
the men of His Spirit were the Kingdom stood,
whether in some obscure village of Galilee or
in the many mansions of His Fathers house.
There are moods in which we should have liked
a chapter on heaven from Jesus, in our wiser
moments we see it would have been premature.
When the Kingdom had been fairly founded on
earth an apocalypse of glory would be a re-en-
forcement of hope. While the Kingdom was
only an ideal it had been the destruction of
faith.

Jesus broke His reserve on the last night of
the three years' fellowship, when He was aoout
to depart from His disciples' sight by the way
of the Cross, aiid they would be left to face the
world in His name. They had come together
to the veil, and before He passed withinj
through His rent body, He must give His
friends an assurance of the unseen that their
hearts may not be troubled. As often as He

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 301

had spoken of the Ageless Life, He had touch-
ed on the life to come, now He gave His soh-
tary deliverance on the sphere of that life, and
the form is characteristic of the Master. There
could never be competition or comparison be-
tween Jesus and St. John ; the magnificence of
the apocalypse fades before one simple word of
the last discourse. Jesus utilises the great par-
able ol the Family for the last time ; and as
He had invested Fatherhood and Sonhood with
their highest meaning so He now spiritualises
Home. What Mary's cottage at Bethany had
been to the little company during the Holy
Week, with its quiet rest after the daily turmoil
of Jerusalem ; what some humble house on the
shore of Galilee was to St. John, with its associ-
ations of Salome ; what the great Ten.ple was
to the pious Jews, with its Presence ot the
Eternal, that on the higher scale was Heaven.
Jesus availed Himself of a wealth of tender
recollections and placed Heaven in the heart
of humanity when He said, ' My Father s
House.'

It is, however, one thing to be silent about
the circumstances of the future and another to
be silent about its nature. The reticence of

302 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus about the next world has an ample com-
pensation in His suggestions -egarding the next
life. Jesus was not indifferent to surround-
ings — He was grateful for the home at Beth-
any ; Jesus was chiefly concerned about life —
He counted it of the last importance to give a
right direction to life. During all His ministry
Jesus was fighting ideas of life which were false,
not so much because they were wicked as be-
cause they were temporary. He was insisting
on ideals of life which were true, not only
because they were good but because they were
eternal. His conception of life was open to
criticism just because it was so independent of
time and space. It was not national, it was
human ; it was not for His da/, but for ever.
You are impressed by the perspective in Jesus'
teaching, the sense of beyond, and it is always
spiritual. Neither this world in its poverty nor
the next in its wealth is to be compared with
life, any more than a body with a soul. The
great loss of the present is to exchange your
life for this world, the great gain in the world
to come is still to obtain life. The point of
connection between the seen and the unseen —
the only bridge that spans the gulf — is life. In

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 303

this state of things we settle its direction, in
the next we shall see its perfection. According
to the drift of Jesus* preaching, the whole
spiritual content of this present life, its knowl-
edge, skill, aspirations, character, will be carried
over into the future, and life hereafter be the
continuation of life here.

This assumption underlies Jesus* words at
every turn, and comes to the surface in the
parables of Service and Reward. They imply
the continuity of life : they illuminate its con-
ditions. The Master commits five talents to
the servant, and the trust is shrewdly managed.
The five become ten, and the Master is fully
satisfied. What reward does He propose for
His serv^ant ? Is it release from labour and re-
sponsibility — a future in contrast with the
past ? Is it, so to say, retirement and a pen-
sion ? It would not be absurd, but it would be
less than the best. Something more could
surely be done with this man's exercised and
developed gifts — his foresight, prudence, cour-
age, enterprise. The past shapes the future,
and this servant, having served his apprentice-
ship, becomes himself a master, ' ruler over
many things.* So he entered into the joy of

304 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Ui m

his Lore, and the joy for which Jesus endured
the Cross is a patient and perpetual ministry.
Life will be raised, not reversed ; work will not
be closed, it will be emancipated. The fret
will be gone, not the labour; the disappoint-
ment, not the responsibility. Our disability
shall be no more ; our capacity shall be ours
for ever, and so the thorns shall be taken from
our crown.

This conception of the future as a continua-
tion under new and unimaginable forms of
present energy, has hardly been allowed full
play. The religious mind has been dominated
by a conventional idea which is taught to our
children, which is assumed in conversation :
which is implied in sermons, which inspires our
hymnology on the * Last Things.' Heaven is
a state of physical rest — a release from care,
labour, struggle, progress, which more thought-
ful people represent to themselves as an end-
less contemplation of God, and less thoughtful
reduce to an endless service of praise. We ful-
fil the Divine Will here in occupation, there we
shall fulfil it in adoration. We shall leave the
market-place with its arduous, yet kindly busi-
ness, and enter a church where night and day

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 305

the ceaseless anthem swells up to the roof.
Upon this heaven the mystics, from St. John
to Faber, have lavished a wealth of poetry,
which we all admire and sing, and this is its
sum : —

* Father of Jesus, love's reward.
What rapture will it be
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie
And gaze and gaze on Thee. '

It is the Christian Nirvana.

If this Paradise of inaction be the true idea
of Heaven, then it invites serious criticism.
For one thing, it can have only a lukewarm at-
traction for average people (who are the enor-
mous majority of the race), and may be repug-
nant to those who are neither unbelieving nor
evil-living. Cloistered piety may long for this
kind of life as the apotheosis of the monastic
ideal, but all God's children are not cast in the
mould of A Kempis. What, for instance, can
an Engl'sh merchant, a respectable, clean-liv-
ing, and fairly intelligent man, we shall sup-
pose, think of the conventional Heaven ? He
will not tell any one, because a sensible man
rarely gives confidences on religion, and he

may feel it wise to crush down various

3o6 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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thoughts. But one has a strong sense of in-
congruity between the life he lives here and
the life it is supposed he will live hereafter, and
this without reflection on his present useful
and honourable way of living. One imagines
how he will miss his office, and his transactions,
and his plans, and his strokes of success, not
because he has lost the machinery for making
money, but because he misses the sphere for
his strongest powers — his shrewdness, persever-
ance, enterprise, integrity. It were ludicrous
to suggest that this excellent man, even in his
old age, longs for death as the passage to that
new world where he may begin life afresh, or
that he wishes to be set free from the duties of
this world that he may give himself, without
hindrance, to the exercises of devotion. If he
were to tell you so, you would detect the un-
reality, but in justice to this type, he does not
cant when death comes to his door. He will
brace himself, as a brave and modest man, to
face the inevitable, and will resign himself to
Heaven, as one does to a great function from
which exclusion would be a social disgrace, to
which admission is a joyless honour. Certainly
this man is not a St. John, but it does not fol-

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 307

low that he is quite hopeless. The conven-
tional heaven is antipathetic to him not be-
cause he is unspiritual but because he is
natural.

It must also strike one that an office of devo-
tion would be an inept and disappointing con-
clusion to the present life. For what purpose
are we placed and kept in this world? Faith
answers, in order that we may be educated for
the life to come : this is how Faith solves the
perplexing problem of the life which now :s.
Providence endows a person with some natural
gift, arranges that this gift be developed, affords
it a field of exercise, trains it within sight of
perfection. There is something which this
person can do better than his fellows, and that
is his capital for future enterprise. Two pos-
sessions we shall carry with us into the unseen :
they are free of death, and inalienable — one is
character, the other is capacity. Is this capacity
to be consigned to idleness and wantonly
wasted? It were unreason: it were almost a
crime. How this or that gift can be utilised in
the other world is a vain question, and leads to
childish speculation. We do not know where
the unseen universe is, nor how it is constituted,

3o8 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

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much less how it is ordered, but our reason may
safely conclude that the capacity which is
exercised under one form here will be exercised
under another yonder. * It is surely a frivo-
lous notion,' says Isaac Taylor, that the vast
and intricate machinery of the universe, atuJ
the profound scheme of God's governmcni
are now to reach a resting place, where nothinj^^
more shall remain to active spirits through an
eternity but recollections of labour, anthems of
praise, and inert repose.'

This uninviting Heaven owes its imagination
to two causes — the tradition of asceticism and
an abuse of the Apocalypse. Fantastic ideas of
religion, which were reared under monastic
glass, have been acclimatised in certain schools,
whose favoured doctrines have no analogy in
life, and whose cherished ideals make no appeal
to the heart. Sensible people agree that char-
acter is the pledge of goodness, and that work
is a condition of happiness, and that a sphere
where good men could do their work without
weariness in the light of God's face would be
an ideal heaven, but sensible people are apt to
be brow-beaten by traditions and to say what is
not real. Unfortunately a really preposterous

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 309

Paradise has been also credited with the glory
of St. John's new Jerusalem, which cometh
down ' from God ... as a bride adorned for
her husband,' whose foundations were * gar-
nished with all manner of precious stones,' whose
street was ' pure gold, as it were transparent
glass.' This is the vision of a Jewish mystic,
very splendid poetry to be read for the sound
and beauty thereof, and they are not to be
lightly forgiven who have reduced it to bathos
in certain pictures and books. St. John imag-
ined the kingdom of Jesus in its glory moving
like a stately harmony before the eyes of God,
and cast his imagination into the ancient
symbols of Jewish literature. He intended the
age of gold.

Any view of the future may be fairly tried by
this criterion — does it strengthen, gladden,
inspire us in the present? Whenever this
question is put, we turn to Jesus with His
doctrine of continuity. Where the traditional
forecast fails is in the absence of Hope. It
takes all purpose from our present effort, whose
hard-won gains in service are to be flung away.
It takes all opportunity from the future, which
is to be a state of practical inertia. It is the

310 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

depreciation of the market-place, the workshop,
the study ; it is the vindication of a Trappist
monastery. Where the forecast of Jesus tells
is in the spirit of Hope ; it invests the most
trivial or sordid details of this life with signifi-
cance, changing them into the elementary ex-
ercises of a great science ; it points to the
future as the heights of life to which we are
climbing out of this narrow valley. One of the
most pathetic sights in this life is to see a dying
man struggling to the last in his calling, putting
another touch to his unfinished picture, adding
another page to his half-written book. ' Art is
long ; life is short ' comes to our mind, but how
stands the case? If the monkish heaven be
true, then this foolish mortal had better be
dop.'' V ith art or letters, for they can have no
place in the land to which he hasteth. If Jesus'
heaven be true, then he is bound to gather the
last penny of interest on his talents, and make
himself fit for his new work. Jesus heartens
His followers by an assurance that not one hour
of labour, not one grain of attainment, not one
honest effort on to the moment when the tools
of earth drop from their hands, but will tell on
the after life. Again, one is tempted to quote

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 311

the sagacious Taylor : ' All the practical skill
we acquire in managing affairs, all the versatility,
the sagacity, the calculation of chances, the
patience and assiduity, the promptitude and
facility, as well as the highest virtues, which
we are learning every day, may well find scope
in a world such as is rationally anticipated
when we think of heaven as the stage of
life which is next to follow the discipline of
life.'

It follows upon Jesus' suggestion of the next
life, — the continuation of the present on a
higher level, — that it will be itself a continual
progress, and Jesus gives us frequent hints of
this law. When He referred to the many man-
sions in His Father's house. He may have been
intending rooms — places where those who had
been associated together on earth may be
gathered together ; but He may be rather in-
tending stations — stages in that long ascent of
life that shall extend through the ages of ages.
In the parable of the unjust steward Jesus uses
this expression in speaking of the future, * ever-
lasting tents.' It is at '^nce a contradiction and
an explanation, for it combines the ideas of rest
and advance — a life of achievement, where the

312 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

tent is pitched, a life of possibilities, where it is
being for ever lifted.

' Will the future life be work,
Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries,
Repeat in large what they practised in small.
Through life after life in unlimited series.
Only the scales be changed, that's all ? '

Does not this conception of the future solve
a very dark problem — the lives that have never
arrived. Beside the man whose gifts have been
laid out at usury and gained a splendid interest,
are others whose talents have been hid, not by
their own doing, but by Providence. They real-
ised their gift ; they cherished it ; they would
have used it ; but for them there was no
market. Providence, who gave them wings,
placed them in a cage. Round us on every side
are cramped, hindered, still-born lives — mer-
chants who should have been painters, clerks
who should have been poets, labourers who
should have been philosophers. Their talent is
known to a few friends ; they die, and the talent
is buried in their coffin. Jesus says No. It has
at last been sown for the harvest ; it will come
into the open and blossom in another land.
These also are being trained — trained by wait-

THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 313

ing. They are the reserve of the race, kept be-
hind the hill till God requires it. They will get
their chance ; they will come into their kingdom,

• Where the days bury tksir golden suns
In the dear hopeful West. '

The continuity of life lifts the shadow also
from another mystery — the lives that have been
cut off in their prime. When one is richly en-
dowed and carefully trained; =»nd has come to
the zenith of his power, his sudden removal
seems a reflection on the economy of God's
kingdom. Why call this man to the choir
celestial when he is so much needed in active
service? According to Jesus, he has not sunk
into inaction, so much subtracted from the
forces of righteousness. He has gone where
the fetters of this body of humiliation and em-
barrassment of adverse circumstances shall be
no longer felt. We must not think of him as
withdrawn from the field ; we must imagine
him as in the van of battle. We must follow
him, o'lr friend, with hope and a high heart.

' No, at noon-day, in the bustle of man's worktitne,
Greet the unseen with a cheer ;
Bid him forward breast and back as either should be.
" Strive and thrive, "cry "speed, fight on, fare ever
There as here ! ' "

WBi*

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

There are times when one wishes he had
never read the New Testament Scriptures —
that he might some day open St. Luke's Gos-
pel, and the most beautiful book in the world
might come upon his soul like sunrise. It is a
doubtful fortune to be born in Athens and
every day to see the Parthenon against the vio-
let sky : better to *^ake a single pilgrimage and
carry forever the vision of beauty in your
heart. Devout Christians must be haunted by
the fear that Jesus' sublime words may have
lost their heavenliness through our familiarity,
or that they may have been overlaid by our
conventional interpretations. This misgiving
is confirmed by the fact that from time to time
a fresh discovery is made in Jesus' teaching.
As a stranger, unfettered by tradition, will de-*
tect in a private gallery some masterpiece gen-

3i8 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

erations have overlooked, so an unbiassed
mind will rescue from neglecting ages some
idea of the Master. Two finds have been made
within recent years: the Divine Fatherhood
and the Kingdom of God.

If any one will take the three Gospels and
read them with an open ear, he will be amazed
by the continual recurrence of this phrase, the
* Kingdom of God ' or * Heaven.' Jesus is ever
preaching the Kingdom of God and explaining
it in parables and images of exquisite simplic-
ity. He exhorts men to make any sacrifice that
they may enter the Kingdom of God. He
warns certain that they must not look back lest
they should not be fit for the Kingdom of God.
He declares that it is not possible for others to
enter the Kingdom of God. He encourages
some one because he is not far from the King-
dom of God. He gives to His chief Apostle
the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. He
rates the Pharisees because they shut up the
Kingdom of Heaven against men. He com-
forts the poor because theirs is the Kingdom
of Heaven ; and He invites the nations to sit
down with Abraham in the Kingdom of
Heaven. The Kingdom was in His thought

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

319

the chiefest good of the soul and the hope of

the world.

• One far-off divine event
To wiich the whole creation moves.'

Every prophet of the first order has his own
message and it crystalises into a favourite idea.
With Moses the ruling idea was law ; with
Confucius, it was morality; with Buddha, it
was Renunciation ; with Mohammed, it was
God ; with Socraten, it was the Soul. With
the Master, it was the Kingdom of God. The
idea owed its origin to the Theocracy, its in-
spiration to Isaiah, its form to Daniel, its popu-
larity to John Baptist. When the forerunner's
voice was stifled in the dungeon of Herod,
Jesus caught up his word and preached the
Utopia of John with a wider vision and
sweeter note. The hereditary dream of the
Jew passed through the soul of Jesus and was
transformed. The local widened into the uni-
versal ; the material was raised to the spiritual.
A Jewish state with Jerusalem for its capital,
and a greater David for its king, changed at
the touch of Jesus into a moral kingdom whose
throne should be in the heart and its borders
conterminous with the race. The largeness of

320 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

Jesus' mind is its glory «nd its misfortune.
The magniftcent conception was refused by his
countrymen bee luse their God was a national
Deity ; it has been too often reduced by His
disciples because they have no horizon. They
have been apt to think that Christianity is an
extremely clever scheme by which a limited
number of souls will secure Heaven — a rocket
apparatus for a shipwrecked crew. Perhaps
therefore outside people should be excused for
speaking of Christianity as a system of the
higher selfishness, because they have some
grounds for their misunderstanding. Every
one ought to read Jesus' own words and he
would find that Jesus did not live and die to
afford select Pharisees an immunity from the
burden of their fellow-men, but to found a
Kingdom that would be the salvation of the
world.

It has been a calamity that for long Christians
paid hardly any attention to the idea of the
Kingdom of Jesus on which He was always in-
sisting, and gave their whole mind to the en-
tirely different idea of the Church, which Jesus
only mentioned once with intention in a pas-
sage of immense difficulty. The Kingdom-

m§

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

32)

idea flourishes in every corner of the three
Gospels, and languishes in the Acts and Epis-
tles, while the Church-idea is practically non-
existent in Jesus* sermons, but saturates the
letters of St. Paul. This means that the idea
which unites has been forgotten, the idea which
separates has been magnified. With all respect
to the ablest Apostic of Jesus, one may be al-
lowed to express his regret that St. Paul had
not said less about the Church and more about
the Kingdom. One gratefully c knowledges
St. Paul's own mystical idea of the Church, also
one knows why the Church has a stronger fas-
cination for the ordinary religious person than
the Kingdom. With him the Church is a
visible and exclusive institution which men can
manage and use. The Kingdom is a spiritual
and inclusive society whose members are se-
lected by natural fitness and which is beyond
human control. One must affirm this or that
to be a member of the Church ; one must be
something to be a part of the Kingdom of God.
Every person who is like Christ in character, or
is of His mind, is included in the Kingdom.
No natural reading of Church can include
Plato; no natural reading of Kingdom can

382 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

exclude him. The effect of the two institu-
tions upon the world is a contrast. The char-
acteristic product of the Church is ecclesiastics ;
the characteristic product of the Kingdom is
philanthropists.

Jesus' Kingdom commends itself to the
imagination because it is to come, when God's
will is done on earth as it is done in heaven — it
is the Kingdom of the Beatitudes. It com-
mends itself to the reason because it has come
wherever any one is attempting God's will — it
is the Kingdom of the Parables. An ideal
state, it ever allures and inspires its subjects ;
a real state, it sustains, commands them. Had
Jesus conceived His Kingdom as in the future
only, He had made His disciples dreamers ;
had He centred it in the present only. He had
made them theorists. As it is, one labours on
its building with a splendid model before his
eyes ; one possesses it in his heart, and yet is
ever entering into its fulness. When Jesus sat
down with the twelve in the upper room, the
Kingdom of God had come ; when the Son of
Man shall be seen * coming in a cloud with
power and great glory * it shall be * nigh at
hand.* As Jesus came once and ever cometh,

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

323

so His Kingdom is a present fact and an endless
hope.

Jesus commands attention and respect at
once when He insisted on a present Kingdom.
It was not going to be, it was now and here.
That very day a man could see, could enter,
could possess, could serve the Kingdom of
God. Jesus did not despise this world in which
we live nor despair of human society to which
we belong. He did not discount earth in
favour of heaven nor make the life which now
is a mere passage to rest. He deliberately
founded His Kingdom in this world, and antici-
pated it would run its course amid present cir-
cumstances. If you had pointed to rival forces
and opposing interests, Jesus accepted the risk.
If sin and selfishness had their very seat here,
then the more need for the counteraction of
the Kingdom. In fact, if there is to be a king-
dom of God anywhere, it must be in this
world ; and if it be impossible here where
Jesus died, it will be impossible in Mars or
anywhere. When Jesus said the Kingdom of
Heaven, be sure He did not mean an unseen
refuge whither ,1 handful might one day escape
like persecuted and disheartened Puritans flee-

334 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

ing from a hopeless England, but He intended
what might be and then was in Galilee, what
should be and now is in England. ' To those
who speak to you of heaven and seek to sepa-
rate it from earth,' wrote Mazzini, 'you will
say that heaven and earth are one even as the
way and the goal are one.* And he used also
to say, and his words are coming true before
our eyes, * The first real faith that '\all arise
upon the ruins of the old worn-ou ,ods will
transform the whole of our actual social organi-
sation, because the whole history of humanity
is but the repetition in form and degree of the
Christian prayer, " Thy kingdom come : Thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven." *

Jesus' next point is that the Kingdom con-
sists of regenerate individuals, and therefore
He was always trying to create character.
This is the salient difference between Jesus and
the Jewish reformers and all reformers. The
reformer, who has his own function and is to
be heartily commended, approaches humanity
from the outside and proceeds by machinery ;
Jesus approaches humanity from the inside
and proceeds by influence. No one can ask a
question without at the same time revealing

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

32s

his mind ; and so when the Pharisees demanded
of Jesus when the Kingdom of God should
come, one understands what was their method
of social reformation. The new state of things
which they called the Kingdom of God — and
no better name for Utopia has ever been
found — was to come with observation. It was
to be a sudden demonstration, and behold the
golden age has begun. What they exactly
meant was the arrival of a viceroy from God
endowed with supernatural power and author-
ity. Till He came, patriotism could do noth-
ing ; when He came, patriotism would simply
obey, and in a day the hopes of the saints
would be realised and the promises of the
prophets fulfilled. At one blow the Roman
grip would be loosened from the tiiroat of the
Jewish nation ; the grinding bondage of taxa-
tion swept away ; the insolent license of Her-
od's court ended ; the pride of the priestly
aristocracy reduced, and the gross abuses of the
temple worship redressed. When the Messiah
came, they would see the ideal of patriotism
in all ages : * A Free State and a Free Church.'
It was a splendid dream, the idea of a ready-
made commonwealth, that has touched in turn

326 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

and glorified Savonarola and Sir Thomas More,
Scottish Covenanters and English Puritans,
and inspired the noblest minds in Greece. It
is that society can be regenerated from without
and in the mass ! It is regeneration by machin-
ery — very magnificent machinery no doubt,
but still machinery.

Jesus believed that if the Kingdom of God
is to come at all, it must be by another meth-
od, and it was the perpetual exposition of His
method that brought Him into collision with
the Pharisees. He knew that the Messiah for
the Jews must not be a supernatural Roman
emperor or a Deus ex machind, doing for men
what they would not do for themselves. This
Messiah was a moral impossibility and this
paternal Government would be useless. The
true Messiah was a Saviour who would hold up
a personal ideal and stimulate men to fulfil it.
What was any nation but three measures of
meal to be leavened ; you must leaven it parti-
cle by particle till it be all changed. Instead
of looking hither and thither for the Kingdom
of Goa it would be better to look for it in
men's own hearts and lives. The Pharisees
prated about being free, meaning they had cer-

1 i: ■ • ^

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

327

tain political privileges; but Jesus told them
that the highest liberty was freedom from sin.
Did a Pharisee — and the Pharisee with ail his
faults was the patriot of his day — desire to bet-
ter his nation ; then let him begin by bettering
himselfc When the Pharisees learned humility
and sympathy, the golden age would not be
far distant from Jewry. Jesus* perpetual sug-
gestion to the patriotic class of His day was
that they should turn from the politics of the
state to the ethics of their own lives.

Jesus afforded a standing illustration of His
own advice by His marked abstention from
politics. His attitude is not only unexpected,
it is amazing and perplexing. He never said
one word against the Roman domination ; He
was on cordial terms with Roman officers ; He
ca?t His shield over the hated publican ; He
tolerated even Herod and Pilate. This was
not an accident ; it was His line. When clever
tacticians laid a trap for xlim and pressed Him
for a confession of His political creed, He
escaped by telling them He had none. Some
things were civic, some religious. Let each
sphere be kept apart. ' Render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar's, and unto God the

328 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

things which are God's:' as for Him, His con-
cern was with divine things. Jesus was so
guarded that He refused to arbitrate in a dis-
pute about property — a duty now greedily un-
dertaken by His servants. When He stood
before Pilate, on the day of the cross. He told
that bewildered officer that His kingdom was
not of this world, and did not give him the
slightest help in arranging a compromise.

On the other hand, none can read Jesus'
words without being perfectly certain that they
must sooner or later change the trend of poli-
tics and the colour of the state. His contempt-
uous depreciation of the world. His solemn
appreciation of the soul. His sense of the
danger of riches, His doctrine of the Father-
hood of God, His sympathy with the poor, His
enthusiasm of humanity, were not likely to re-
turn unto Him void. No man can read Jesus'
Sermon on the Mount or His parables — largely
taken from the sphere of labour — or His argu-
ments with the Pharisees, without being leav-
ened with new and unworldly ideas. When
these ideas have taken hold of the mind, thev
will be carried as principles of action into the
state. Moral truths ripen slowly; but given

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

329

time, and Christianity was bound to become
the most potent force in the state, although
Jesus had never said one word about politics,
and His apostles had adhered closely to His
example. Men who have been fed with
Christ's bread, and in whose heart His spirit is
striving, will not long tolerate slavery, tyranny,
vice, or ignorance. If they do not apply the
principle to the fact to-day, they will to-
morrow. Their conscience is helpless in the
grip of Christ's word. They will be con-
strained to labour in the cause of Christ, and
when their work is done men will praise them.
It is right that they should receive their crown,
but the glory does not belong to Hampden
and Howard and Wilberforce and Shaftesbury
and Lincoln and Gordon ; it belongs to Jesus,
who stood behind these great souls and in-
spired themv He never assailed Pilate with
bitter invective, or any other person, except re-
ligious hypocrites ; He never hinted at an in-
surrection. But it is Jesus, more than any
other man or force, that has made Pilates im-
possible, and taught the human race to live
and die for freedom.

Politics are after all only a necessary machin-

330 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

1.-'^

U : i i

ery ; what comes first is ideas. Just as there is
the physical which we see and handle, and the
metaphysical which eye has not seen nor ear
heard, so there is the political, which takes
shape in government and legislatures and laws,
and there is the meta-political — to use a happy
phrase in Lux Mundi — which is before all and
above all, or politics are worthless. And just
as no wise physicist rails at the metaphysical
because it cannot be weighed in scales, but freely
acknowledges that it is the spirit of the ma-
terial, so every one knows that all worthy
politics are the offspring of noble ideas. When
Jesus denied Himself to politics, He did not
abdicate His Kingdom ; He set up His throne
above all the world-kingdoms and entrenched
it among the principles that judge and govern
life. When He declined to agitate. He did not
abandon the people. He could not, for, unlike
many of their pseudo-friends, Jesus loved the
people unto death. But He had a wide hori-
zon. He was not content to change their cir-
cumstances, He dared to attempt something
higher — to change their souls.

Had Jesus depended on a scheme rather than
an influence. He had failed. Imagine if He had

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

331

anticipated the fruits of Christianity, and asked
the world to accept the emancipation of the
slave and the equality of woman, and civil
rights and religious liberty, Christianity would
have been crushed at its birth. It would have
spelled anarchy, and in that day would have
been anarchy. With the slow, sure education
of centuries, these changes have come to be
synonymous with righteousness. Christianity
may be to-day pregnant with changes for which
we are not prepared. They will come to birth
bye-and-bye and find people prepared for them.
What to our fathers would have seemed a rev-
olution will seem to our children a regenera-
tion. A century ago a slave-owner would have
defended himself from God's Word, to-day he
would be cast headlong out of the Church.
Yesterday a master sweated his servants with-
out sense of wrong-doing, to-day he is ashamed.
To-day a millionaire is respected ; there are
signs that in future years a man leaving a huge
fortune will be thought a semi-criminal. So
does the Spirit of Jesus spread and ferment.
Christ did not ask for power to make laws, He
asked for a few men to train — for soil in which
to sow His truth. He was content to wait till

MMW

332 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

pt?'

a generation arose, and said, * Before God this
must be done,' and then it would be done as
Jesus intended. Possess the imagination with
an ideal, and one need not vex himself about
action.

Jesus laid Himself alongside sinful people,
and out of them He slowly built up the new
kingdom. If a man was a formalist, he must
be born again ; if the slave of riches, he must
sell all he had ; if in the toils of a darling sin,
he must pluck out his right eye to enter the
kingdom of God. New men to make a new
state. The kingdom was humility, purity, gen-
erosity, unselfishness. It was the reign of
character; it was the struggle for perfection.
Chunder Sen, the Indian prophet described
Jesus' Kingdom perfectly : ' A spiritual congre-
gation of souls born anew to God.* Say not,
* Lo here, lo there,' as if one could see a system
or a government. *The kingdom of God is
within you.'

Investigate a little farther, and you notice
that Jesus fused His disciples into one body,
and, by this act alone, separated Himself from
the method of philosophy. Philosophy is con-
tent with an audience ; Jesus demands a soci-

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

333

ety. Philosophy teaches men to think ; Jesus
moves them to do. Philosophy can do no more
because it has no centre of unity : the king-
dom of God is richer, for there is Jesus. Soc-
rates obliterated himself; Jesus asserted Him-
self, and united His followers to each other by
binding them to Himself. Loyalty to Jesus
was to be the spinal cord to the new body, and
the sacraments were to be the signs of the new
spirit. Each was perfect in its simplicity — a
beautiful poem. One was Baptism, where the
candidate for God's kingdom disappeared into
water and appeared again with another name.
This meant that he had died to self and had
risen a new creature, the child of the Divine
Will. The other was the Lord's Supper, where
Jesus' disciple eats bread and drinks wine in
remembrance of His death. This meant that
he had entered into the spirit of his Master
and given himself to the service of the world.
Those are the only rites of Jesus, those His
bonds, and with this lowly equipment — two
pledges of sacrifice — began the Kingdom of
God. Within all nations, and under the
shadow of all governments, dividing none, re-
sisting none, winning all and uniting all, was

334 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

to rise tht new state of peace and goodwill
toward men.

How was the kingdom to impress itself upon
the world and change the colour of human life ?
As Jesus did Himself, and after no other fash-
ion. Of all conquerors He has had the high-
est ambition, and above them all He has seen
His desire. He has dared to demand men's
hearts as well as their lives and has won them
— how ? By coercion ? by stratagem ? by clever-
ness ? by splendour ? By none of those means
that have been used by rules. 3y a scheme of
his own invention — by the Cross. The Cross
meant the last devotion to humanity ; it was
the pledge of the most uncomplaining and
effectual ministry. When you inquire the re-
sources of the Kingdom of Heaven, behold the
Cross. They are faith and love. Its soldiers
are the humble, the meek, the gentle, the peace-
ful. * Forgive your enemies,' said Jesus ; * help
the miserable, restore the fallen, set the captive
free. Love as I have loved, and you will suc-
ceed.' Amazing simplicity! anr»izing origi-
nality ! Hitherto kingdoms had stood on the
principle of selfishness — grasp and keep. This

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

335

kingdom was to rest on sacrifice — suffer and
serve. Amazing hope, that anything so weak,
so helpless, could regenerate the masterful
world ! But Jesus has not been put to shame :
His plan has not failed. There are many em-
pires on the face oi the earth to-day, but none
so dominant as the kingdom of God. Jesus by
the one felicitous stroke of the Cross has re-
placed the rule of rights by the idea of sacri-
fice ; and when Jesus' mind has obtained every-
where, and the men cease to ask, ' What am I
to get,' and begin to say, * What can I give,'
then we shall see a new heaven and a new earth
wherein dwelleth righteousness.

It was natural that the imagination of Jesus
should inspire heroic souls in every age ; it was
perhaps inevitable that few could enter into
His mind. Nothing has given such a moral
impetus to human society ; nothing has con-
ferred such nobility of character as the King-
dom of God ; nothing has been so sadly mis-
understood. The sublime self-restraint of
Jesus, His inexhaustible patience, His immov-
able charity, His unerring insight, did not de-
scend to certain of His disciples. They longed

336 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

to anticipate the victory of righteousness, and
burned to cleanse the world by force. Such
eager souls gained for themselves an imperish-
able name, but they failed. When the Roman
Empire was laid waste, and the world seemed
to be falling to pieces, St. Augustine described
the new empire that should rise on the ashes of
the old. The City of God stands first among
his writings, and created the Holy Roman Em-
pire, but the Papacy has not redeemed human-
ity. When the life of Florence was eaten out
by the Medicis, Savonarola purified the city for
a space with a thunderstorm. The Florentines
cast out their Herods at the bidding of their
Baptist, they burned their vanities in the mar-
ket-place, they elected Jesus King of Florence
by acclamation. In a little they bi ought Herod
back, and burned the Baptist in the same
market-place. The Puritans were at first quiet,
serious, peaceable men who were outraged by
the reign of unrighteousness,, and drew the
sword to deliver England. They made the
host of God triumphant for a little. Then
came the reaction, and iniquity covered the
land as with a flood. It was high failure, but

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

337

it was failure. It does not become us to criti-
cise those forlorn hopes ; we ought to learn
from their reverses. The Kingdom of God can
only rule over willing hearts ; it has no helots
within its borders. It advances by individual
conversion, it stands in individual consecration.
Laws can do but little for this cause; the sword
less than nothing. The kingdom will come in
a land when it has come in the hearts of the
people — neither sooner nor later.

The Kingdom of God cometh to a man when
he sets up Jesus' Cross in his heart, and begins
to live what Mr. Laurence Oliphant used to
call • the life.' It passes on its way when that
man rises from table and girds himself and
serves the person next him. Yesterday the
kingdom was one man ; now it is a group.
From the one who washes to the one whose
feet are washed the kingdom grows and multi-
plies. It stands around us on every side, —
not in Pharisees nor in fanatics, not in noise
nor tumult, but in modest and Christ-like men.
One can see it in their faces, and catch it in the
tone of their voices. And if one has eyes to

see and ears to hear, then let him be of good

i,i

■' 1

338 THE MIND OF THE MASTER

cheer, for the Kingdom of God is come. It is
the world-wide state, whose law is the Divine
will, whose members obey the spirit of Jesus,
whose strength is goodness, whose heritage is
God.

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