Part 8

There was nothing professional about Jesus Christ. He was not a place-seeker. He held no office in Church or State. He was a plain citizen, plainly dressed. His manner was simple and natural and without side. His speech was of the people; He was one of the crowd. No glittering halo aureoled His brow, promoting Him beyond His brethren. As a prophet, appearances were dead against Him. Why should He rise above his class-level and teach His betters and superiors high morality and spiritual truth? He had no crumbs of learning Himself--how could He feed others out of an empty basket? He had never studied in the schools and won academic distinction! Surely He overstepped Himself. His neighbours resented His common everyday look, easy manner, and arrogant pretensions. These things did not mix well together. They denounced His new, strange teachings as dangerous to the community; He was an unchartered, restless demagogue, roaming the country, disturbing the public weal. They scoffed at this common villager and His idle dream of founding a kingdom of righteousness built on the dregs of humanity, and derisively asked "When shall this kingdom come?"

Now, John the Baptist, hermit of the wilderness, was a prophet after their own heart. He played up to their ideal. He quickened their hot imagination. He was aglow with colour. He was a human tornado. His defiant attitude, eccentric apparel, and mystic fervour, were vividly picturesque; they caught the eye and compelled attention. He was an untamed child of the desert; he stood aloof from the common crowd. Even high-toned Pharisees were glamoured by his romantic pose. They listened raptly to his fiery message, and were fascinated by his insolent tongue and audacious words shot bolt-straight at them. His hearers staggered whilst he thundered burning condemnations on their smug sins and sordid lives; they writhed in agony as he lifted them from their feet and suspended them over the bottomless pit, choking in sulphurous fumes ascending from the fires of the damned below. Such ghastly presentment of the truth after the good old method of the prophets churned up the muddy depths of their polluted hearts. It converted the masses quickly, as a visitation of the plague could drop a panicky city to its knees, and when the excitement slowed down be as quickly forgotten as a nine-days' wonder out of fashion. The religious revival subsided like the froth blown off by the welcome wind of a new excitement. The emotions of a day spent down on the banks of the Jordan with John the Baptist, the idol of the people, were exhilarating, and something to be remembered for a lifetime by these hard-headed old Jews, and an interesting story to tell their children's children in years to come. The ministry of Jesus was not effervescent in character. He could have stormed men's imaginations with flaming pomp and splendour; He could have ridden a chariot of fire attended by thunder and lightning as running footmen to announce His presence, but men's hearts would have been unmelted by such fierce demonstrations of power. It might have awoke astonishment and intoxicated them into religious frenzy, but afterward it would have left behind a nasty chill on the heart.

Jesus Christ had no official position in the Church as a teacher. He had no mandate from the powers that be to carry on. He did not present Himself as a high Church dignitary, high as an enthroned archbishop robed in scarlet and gold; nor was He comfortably placed as a canon in a snug cathedral stall; nor even a meek young curate casting longing eyes on Church preferment. The Church of the day would have none of Him. They flung Him from the synagogue. His ideas were unproven and unpalatable to His countrymen; He must build a new romantic world for Himself and His followers to live in outside the orthodox world of His day, if they wanted liberty to breathe, and so He began at the bottom of society and quietly built upwards. He was just a man walking amongst suffering humanity, and was one of the sufferers Himself. He came like dew descending on mown grass, noiseless, fragrant, healing; silently He ministered amongst the people, winning home to human hearts by sympathy and gentleness and love, and gradually the new kingdom of righteousness grew up in the midst of the weary old world. He gained dominion over men by their resistible beauty and power of Divine truth which He expounded, and made attractive by parable and picture and by His own blameless walk and conversation. His teachings were exemplified in His life, and His life shines in undimmed beauty the exemplification of His teaching. He became a living gospel to them which all men could read, and His Divine personality was a centre of healing power which cured men's infirmities of body and mind. He had no money to pay for services rendered to Him, and He gave no hopes of worldly honour or possessions to His followers. He was homeless and at the mercy of friends for the shelter of a roof and the hospitality of His daily meals. He had intense sympathy with men, but He was no deluded optimist. He placed measured value on every man's pledge of fidelity to His cause, for He knew what was in man; with clear insight He saw into their dishonesty, selfishness, misery, but He knew they never had had a chance to do better, and He meant to give them a good chance all round. He frankly told people their sins, yet with all His straight speaking He won men and women to Himself. His manner was gracious, and He was indulgent to the frailties of our human nature with a sympathy that pardons all. The deep longings of His heart were for their happiness and uplifting, and the difficulty He encountered in leading them to follow the things that made for their peace was heartbreaking to His sensitive nature.

He had but few friends, and of the inner circle He gathered round Him all were not loyal; for He was betrayed into the hands of His enemies by one of the intimates of the band, and was forsaken by all in the hour of His supreme trial. He returned good for evil, blessing for cursing, and died in the act of praying for His enemies. No one could bring any serious accusation against Him, and he was declared innocent by the judge who condemned Him to death. Yet He was sacrificed as one whose life did not count; He was thrown as a sop to slake the blood-thirst of a howling Jewish mob. In the annals of the law-court His name is not mentioned, and there is no record of His trial and crucifixion to be found in history.

Looked at from the standpoint of men of His time, His life was a failure, and the delectable vision of a kingdom of righteousness on earth, the coming of which He pictured in glowing, fluent colours, reads like a dainty fairy-tale spun for children's amusement. Yet He himself saw through the darkness into the white light of the future, and beheld the crowning success of His mission. He saw the coming triumph of the Conquering Cross, which should subdue all things unto itself, and in place of the finest legend ever planted on human credulity by an artist in words He saw outlined through the dissolving mists of time, solid and well founded, the City Beautiful, with its shining streets, its many mansions and translucent atmosphere, peopled with white-robed citizens redeemed and ever blest; and the verdict of to-day is that the ministry of Jesus Christ on earth was the turning point in the world's destiny. No other personality has exerted such profound influence on the lives of men as Jesus of Nazareth, the despised and rejected of His day.

The ministry of Christ on earth lasted about three years in all. Until He was thirty years of age He was content to rest in deep obscurity. Nazareth, with its quiet remote valley, was world enough for Him to move in, and when His hour was come He found Himself. He opened His mouth and taught the people. He passed from village to village, a travelling storm-centre, exposing respectable old sins, ripping up time-honoured religious hypocrisies, vexing the Pharisees, and confounding the vain traditions of the elders. He laid down new laws of life and conduct for men's observance, and unfolded the love of God to man in its plenitude of tenderness and pity; even to waifs and strays and outcasts of city slums who had never received a kind, hopeful word from the lips of their own religious teachers. In fact, it was God breaking in upon history, opening a new permanent way into heaven for lost men to return home by, and to cull the wayside flowers of joy and happiness whilst homeward bound.

Thus Jesus in three short years fearlessly and swiftly accomplished His world-wide mission, and died triumphantly in full achievement of His benign purpose.

Not half the story of those few full, crowded hours of His glorious life has been collected and cast into history. It is a brief narrative of a brief career; so little of His life comes in view. Just a few detached incidents and a few disjointed conversations jotted down from the mellowed memory of three or four old men years after the events occurred furnish us an incomplete memoir of His earthly ministry--that is all we have. There was no adoring pen of a ready writer like Boswell to fix on the spot His sayings and doings. We possess only stray fragments of the life-story gathered up from memory and hearsay, and on these gathered fragments we found all our spiritual faith and base our eternal hope of blessedness. The structure seems to have been casually and hastily put together, but its design is the work of the Supreme Architect, and the house was well built and the foundation securely placed, for it has sheltered many millions of people through many generations of time. The roof is still rainproof, and the walls stand firm in their pillared strength. _It is the living words of Christ that form the stronghold of the ages_. His words are seed-thoughts dropped into the hearts of men which bring forth fruit manifold. Again they drop into other hearts, and springing up yield fruit abundantly unto life everlasting; and so generation after generation men fall under His gracious spell, and turn to His words for guidance, for inspiration, for joy. You never reach the end of Christ's words. They are growing words. There is always something new springing out of them unexpectedly: new thoughts, new laws, new problems, new solutions, new enemies, new friends, new hopes, new consolations. The words of Christ are spending and being spent, but they are never exhausted. They pass into new meanings, into new currency, but they never pass away. They are the hope of all the ages.

The early Christians lived in a state of spiritual elation; they daily, hourly, expected the Second Coming of Christ. It was the one article of their religious creed. The end of the world was to be the next important festival in the Church calendar, so they held in full near view their heavenly home, which was already feathered for their reception. At the sound of the Archangel's trumpet the heavens would open, the dead rise from their graves, and they would be caught up in the air to meet the Lord, and float off triumphantly into mansions of eternal rest furnished for their home coming. They saw it all vividly as a drama soon to be enacted, in which they each would play their ordered parts. The present was a dream-life to them, a mirage quickly to melt away. This hope of immortality was the first bright ray of light the gospel of Jesus Christ shed upon mankind. Having minds heavily charged with celestial visions, the common round of daily duties became unreal to them. They had a short creed and no theology. They sat on the brink of eternity, and the radiance streaming from its shining heights bedazzled their minds with bewildering raptures.

After long and patient waiting the heavens did not open, no clarion voice trumpeted the dead from their graves or welcomed saints into paradise; the sordid, sin-stained earth remained their polluted dwelling-place. The illusion of the millennium faded away and disappointment frosted their early hopes, yet bravely they held on and died in the faith. The Saviour's promise did not fulfil on the comfortable lines they planned, but it would make good another way equally great. The Church learnt to take long views of the promises, and turned its thoughts to things terrestrial. The affairs of the present grew interesting to them; they commenced setting their earthly house in order, and when the Church settled down into the slow, steady stride characteristic of every long march it became clear that she was destined to rank amongst the permanent institutions of the world. She formed new rules of life for her children's guidance, and thus faith in Christ gradually lost the fragrant aroma of otherworldliness which first perfumed it, and in lapse of time the plan of salvation became more thought of than salvation itself. A vast ecclesiastical system was organized, having endless intricate ramifications, and God was appointed head of one department of it; and to-day heavy accretions of theology accumulate and fasten deadly tight on the old Church like barnacles crusting the bottom of a long floated ship, hindering its speed to port.

Verily the time has now come that the good ship of the Church be careened, and the foul accretions of mediaeval theology stripped off and the solid copper bottom of truth flash clean and bright in the sunlight, and the truth as it is in Jesus recover its splendour and power as in days of the early Church. His teachings shall yet win men to righteousness, and the fruits of His lips bring peace and joy to those who believe on His name.

The words of Christ have a future before them in moulding the growing goodness of the world and in solving the hard problems of social reform which vex humanity. He is the wise Reconciliator who can adjust society and bring into harmony the classes of men now gnashing their teeth at one another on opposing fronts. Jesus Christ is the true Political Economist, but He taught far in advance of His times--truth always marches a bit ahead of us. At present in social science we are only just touching the hem of His garment, and healing virtue flows from it; presently we shall approach nearer to Him, and, feeling the full throb of His loving heart, we shall understand Him better, and His life-blood will pour into our veins and complete the healing of the nations.

*XIII*

*THE LURE OF THE LIVING WORD*

The English State Church suffers from excess of theology and paucity of gospel. Our narrow Church creeds, in which the gospel of Jesus Christ is kept under cork by ecclesiastical cellar-men, must be broken that the good wine of the kingdom may flow freely. The gospel of Jesus Christ in the unwholesome captivity of rigid creeds is a feeble, mean, contemptible gospel, quite unable to save mankind, which business it undertook to achieve when coming into the world. If the teaching of Jesus Christ is no larger or kindlier than these old crumbling creeds show, it deserves to be scrapped, for there is no room in them for Christ to have fair play. Christianity is not a formula, it is a passion; it is not theology, it is truth. These dismal dogmas have not enough spiritual nourishment in them to keep men's souls alive; men starve on such unleavened food.

What are these antiquated creeds of the Church which strangle religion? They are ancient dismantled strongholds where the fighting forefathers of the faith housed themselves tightly and fought their foes tenaciously. The modern fathers of the Church still inhabit these tottering towers of refuge, although their day of usefulness is spent. Loyal Churchmen still breathe lovingly the chilly, stifling atmosphere of these spiritual dungeons of traditional Christianity.

We are living in a new age since August, 1914, and a new spirit possesses the people. With this terrific war raging new standards of values in religion, as in politics, have come into operation, shattering old ideals evermore. To encourage and strengthen them in this era of strain and conflict men need the larger, cleaner, diviner truth which fell from the lips of the living Christ. We want these truths to win through--the spoken words of Christ, with the free airs of heaven blowing across them, bringing healthiness of life, sanity of faith, and manifold charities, to all men who dwell on earth. The lure of the Living Word alone can hold men firm in this age of upheaval, when the old world has caved in and the plans of the new world are not yet manifest. There is finer, simpler, fuller spiritual teaching in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, touching our present need than in all books of theology ever written and all Sunday sermons weekly preached. It is these half-forgotten things that matter on which new emphasis must be thrown.

Theology is the great imposture planted on mankind as a substitute for the teachings of Jesus Christ. When one leaves the words of Christ and strays amongst the words of men, it is like a traveller switching off the main line whereon his destination lies and losing himself on a side-track. It is disaster to side-track on the journey of life. Keep to the words of Christ and you keep on the main line. The gospel as revealed in the teachings of Jesus is entirely free from the sacerdotal imperative which nowadays imposes priest and ritual in the path of spiritual worship and blocks the fair-way to God. Priests and rituals and creeds are non-essentials; they are only wrappings: they are not religion, nor the best part of it. We must distinguish between living, breathing Christianity and the man-made ecclesiastical garments which clothe it fashionably, because the difference between them is vital and far-reaching. True religion, however, is seldom found stripped of all temporary wrappings, but its spiritual vigour survives in spite of Church-made millinery which encumbers it and impedes its healthy growth. Strip the religion of Jesus Christ of its grave-clothes and put the pure gospel in her mouth, and never tidings could be told to weary, heavy-laden men to-day which would be hailed as half so welcome. The one thing needful to make this world an earthly paradise, delightful to dwell in, is for men to live face to face with God, without a screen of ritual or image or priestcraft obstructing the view of our Heavenly Father; it is the light of God's countenance that cheers the heart of man, and strengthens him to live a good life in all sincerity of purpose.

Ecclesiastics have built up the Church into a colossal business trust which corners the Bread of Life and doles it to hungry mortals on terms of its own making. The Church is a wealthy corporation with immense property and privilege to safeguard and hold against all comers, and these temporal possessions engage its keenest thought and ceaseless activity. So it has important work to do other than saving the souls of men. To maintain its temporal authority in the world it has tampered with the teaching of Jesus Christ; by cunning craftiness of man the gospel has been twisted into theology, and the way of salvation shrouded behind a dense veil of ceremonial observances which the Church imposes on people and declares necessary to the saving of their souls. Much conflicting religious literature is issued annually by free-lances of the Press to explain the downright simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus; and these conflicting opinions add other stumbling-blocks in the way, for they baffle the brains of the gentle reader, beating up a thick dust of doubt around him that his faith is smothered in a cloud of perplexity which darkens the daylight of truth.

The words of Jesus, when read and pondered over, prove religion to be a very simple matter. Yet this simplicity is its standing peril. So little human wisdom is needed to understand the words of Christ that we are apt to fear they do not mean what they say in plainest language--the language runs too easy for the majesty and importance and solemnity of the theme. We think there is an occult mystery lurking behind the honest homely phrases. Language so often bewilders simple-minded people that we are hard of belief when told we can find the way to heaven ourselves without the aid of a bishop's pastoral staff to point it out. The difficulty is to convince the plain man that he understands the words of Jesus when he reads them, and that he feels his spirit touch the Spirit of the Saviour of his soul without a priest between to make the contact. The Church as a commercial organization would fall quickly into bankruptcy if the gospel in its naked plainness was believed in whole-heartedly.

Very superior people tell us that the teachings of Jesus are only the beginning of God's revelation to man; they tell us that new revelations are constantly flowing in upon us through the sacred channel of the Church, and that the Church alone holds the key which deciphers these confidential messages despatched from mysterious sources for our edification. This is ecclesiastical bluff. The teachings of Jesus in the gospels suffice the spiritual needs of men through all time--time past, time present, and time to come. When God legislates once He legislates for aye, for truth is unchanging and cannot be improved on as the world grows older. No Divine after-thoughts will be added to the written word nor supplementary revelation supplied to guide men through the tangling maze of life. The Spirit of God is equal to all emergencies arising between now and the sundown of time. New-fallen light may illumine the written word in the forward quest of faith, for every age makes its own theology and coins new language to express old truths. The words of Christ are inexhaustible treasure locked in a deep mine, and in that mine lies many a lode of truth untapped by the diggers. The old gospel mine yields more and more treasure as the searchers strike deeper and deeper into its secret heart. The last nugget of truth has not yet been lifted from the treasure-house of God's Word.

Back to the words of Christ: this is the one hope of a truly good life--national or individual. If we forsake Christ and turn to the teachings of the Church for our spiritual well-being, we suffer for our folly in so doing. The real meaning of anything is to be found at its beginning not in its latest developments. As religious systems develop and grow old they grow corrupt, and on the earthly journey pick up error with truth, and the two mixed together look equally sacrosanct to the uninitiated, simple soul, and even the very elect are ofttimes deceived. Water is purest at the spring-head; the farther it flows from the fountain, the more contaminated it becomes. Back to Jesus Christ and His teachings in the gospels. His words are the very life and light of men.