"What are you reading, Mary?"
"The New Testament.... Extraordinary how interesting it is."
"Interesting!"
"Frightfully interesting."
"You may say what you like, Mary; you'll change your mind some day. I
pray every night that you may come to Christ; and you'll find in the end
you'll have to come...."
No. No. Still, he said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." If the Greek
would bear it--within you.
Did they understand their Christ? Had anybody ever understood him? Their
"Prince of Peace" who said he hadn't come to send peace, but a sword? The
sword of the Self. He said he had come to set a man against his father
and the daughter against her mother, and that because of him a man's foes
should be those of his own household. "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild."
He was not meek and mild. He was only gentle with children and women and
sick people. He was brave and proud and impatient and ironic. He wouldn't
stay with his father and mother. He liked happy people who could amuse
themselves without boring him. He liked to get away from his disciples,
and from Lazarus and Martha and Mary of Bethany, and go to the rich,
cosmopolitan houses and hear the tax-gatherer's talk and see the young
Roman captains swaggering with their swords and making eyes at Mary of
Magdala.
He was the sublimest rebel that ever lived.
He said, "The spirit blows where it wills. You hear the sound of it, but
you can't tell where it comes from or where it goes to. Everybody that is
born from the spirit is like that." The spirit blows where it wants to.
He said it was a good thing for them that he was going away. If he didn't
the Holy Ghost wouldn't come to them; they would never have any real
selves; they would never be free. They would set him up as a god outside
themselves and worship Him, and forget that the Kingdom of God was within
them, that God was their real self.
Their hidden self was God. It was their Saviour. Its existence was the
hushed secret of the world.
Christ knew--he must have known--it was greater than he was.
It was a good thing for them that Christ died. That was how he saved
them. By going away. By a proud, brave, ironic death. Not at all the sort
of death you had been taught to believe in.
And because they couldn't understand a death like that, they went and
made a god of him just the same.
But the Atonement was that--Christ's going away.