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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) n 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. J TO MY PEOPLE IK GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF THEIR CHARITY, LOYALTY, AND PATIENCE CONTENTS PAOB I. JESUS OUR SUPREME TEACHER II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUTH , 25 III. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER 49 IV. AGELESS LIFE . • €,••• 67 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 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 8 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 M ii 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 ? n 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. I 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 w 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 B 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 y^mi i ! ilii 'ii! i 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 21 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 I pis 9 ( i; i i i 11 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 r:|' , I 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, Ililiii 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 .; > • 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* i 11 ill i 4 , 32 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- 11 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 ■■S! I|i i\ i m 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 I) ■papKHP 38 THE MIND OF THE MASTER .-^ :a I 11 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 f i 1. :ii 1 i 1 J ? ■ - : ( i /» 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 fal ^ii Hi 1 ■•■ 1 '/ 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 i :H if ii«( 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 I 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. was I Br i» M 1 l£ » 'li 1 4" 1 't THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER .ii,i ,*| ' iii. !;i S I 1^ . i Ill 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 ,•*•' ¥ ii ii!. Hi! ft r": k 1 ; 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. i 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 ' i: 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 I P i j I .■i. I ^■! :■! P^ ;< I 1 P S J '' ni! } 1 ■■ iiri 1 1 54 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 h I I P t i r f i 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. S8 THE MIND OF THE MASTER :r 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 Co THE MIND OF THE MASTER ■i " Hi 1 1 i 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. p:i ;■ wsaemoBsammm m -i i ■ ■\ i ) t 11