CHAPTER V

THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF LOVE

I

THE TEACHING OF LOVE

Jesus taught His philosophy of life in three ways: the personal, by

example; the artistic, by parable; and the scientific, by propositions.

The first, though most vital and effective of all, is expensive and

wasteful. For in life principles are so embedded in "muddy particulars,"

trivial and sordid details, that they are liable to get lost. The Master

may be a long time with His disciples, and yet not really be known. Even

the disciples themselves, after months of such teaching, like James and

John may not know what manner of spirit they are of. Indeed it may

become expedient for them that the Master go away, that His Spirit may

be more clearly revealed.

The artistic method, too, has drawbacks. For though it gives the

principles a new artificial setting, with carefully selected details to

catch the crowd, yet the crowd catch simply the story. Only the

initiated are instructed; those who do not already know the principles

learn nothing, but "seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not

understand," as Jesus, past master of this art though He was, so often

lamented.

The third or scientific method is dry and prosaic. It observes what

qualities go together, or refuse to go together, in the swift stream of

life; pulls them out of the stream; fixes them in concepts; marks them

by names; and states propositions about them. It may go one short step

farther: it may arrange its propositions in syllogisms, and deduce

general conclusions, or laws. It may take, for instance, as its major

premise, Love is the divine secret of blessedness. Then for its minor

premise it may take some plain observed fact, Humility is essential to

Love. Then the conclusion or law will be, The humble share the divine

life and all the blessings it brings. Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Of course no one but a pedant draws out his teaching in this laboured

logical form. The syllogism is condensed; the major, and perhaps even

the minor, premise is omitted, and often only the conclusion appears.

At its best this method is hard and dry; yet this is the method employed

in such sayings as those handed down in the summary called the Sermon on

the Mount. Perhaps that is why the teaching of the "Sermon," in spite of

its clear-cut form, is much less studied and understood than the

teaching of Jesus' life and parables. To recover this largely lost

teaching one must warm and moisten the cold, dry terms; supply, when

necessary, omitted premises; use some one word rather than many for the

often suppressed middle term; and so draw out the latent logic that

underlies these laws.

The middle term of all this argument is Love. For that old-fashioned

word, in spite of its sentimental associations, much better than its

modern scientific synonyms, such as the socialising of the self,

expresses that outgoing of the self into the lives of others, which,

according to Jesus, is the actual nature of God, the potential nature of

man, the secret of individual blessedness and the promise of social

salvation.

In the two or three cases where the logic of His principle, applied to

our complex modern life, points clearly to a modification of His literal

precepts, as in the management of wealth and the bestowal of charity, I

shall not hesitate to put the logic of the teaching in place of the

letter of the precept, citing the latter afterward for comparison.

A logical commentary like this will be most helpful if it reverses the

order usual in commentaries of mere erudition, and introduces the steps

of the argument before rather than after the passage they seek to make

clear.

In whichever of the three ways it is taught, Love shines by its own

light and speaks with its own authority to all who have eyes to see and

ears to hear.

A person who loves carries with him a generous light-heartedness, a

genial optimism, which show all his friends that he has found some

secret which it is worth their while to learn.

Every well-told parable or fable, every artistically constructed novel

or play, makes us take sides with the large-hearted hero against the

mean, selfish villain.

In the same way Love's formulated laws, showing on what conditions it

depends and to what results it leads, convince every one who has the

experience by which to interpret them (and only to him who hath

experience is interpretation given) that Love is the supreme law of

life, and its requirements the right and reasonable conditions of

individual and social well-being.

II

THE FULFILMENT OF LAW THROUGH LOVE

Jesus was born in a nation which had developed law to the utmost nicety

of detail, and recognised all laws as expressions of the good will of

God seeking the welfare of men. Prolonged experiments in living had

proved certain kinds of conduct disastrous, and the states of mind

corresponding to them, despicable. Law had prohibited this disastrous

conduct, and the prophets had denounced these despicable traits.

Of course latent in the prohibitions of law was the constitution of the

blessed Kingdom that would result if the law were observed; and dimly

foreshadowed in the figurative expressions of the prophets was the

vision of the glorified human society that would emerge when the

despicable traits should be extirpated and the better order introduced.

This negative and latent implication of law Jesus developed into Love as

the positive and explicit principle of life; and this figuratively

foreshadowed prophet's vision He translated into the actual fact of a

community united in Love. He fulfilled the law by putting Love in the

heart, and fulfilled the prophets by establishing a community based on

Love. Jesus taught us to make every human interest we touch as precious

as our own, and to treat all persons with whom we deal as members of

that beneficent system of mutual good-will which is the Kingdom of

Heaven. But the moment we begin to do that, law as law becomes

superfluous; for what the law requires is the very thing we most desire

to do: prophecy as prophecy is fulfilled; for the best man's heart can

dream has come to pass.

In the ideal home, between well-married husband and wife, child and

parent, brother and sister, this sweet law prevails. In choice circles

of intimate friends it is found. Jesus extended this interpretation of

others in terms of ourselves, and of both others and self in terms of

the system of relations in which both self and others inhere, so as to

include all the dealing of official and citizen, teacher and pupil,

dealer and customer, employer and employee, man and man.

Jesus does not judge us by the formal test of whether we have kept or

broken this or that specific commandment, but by the deeper and more

searching requirement that our lives shall detract nothing from and add

something to the glory of God and the welfare of man.

Is the world a happier, holier, better world because we are here in it,

helping on God's good-will for men? If that be the grand, comprehensive

purpose of our lives, honestly cherished, frankly avowed, systematically

cultivated, then, no matter how far below perfection we may fall, that

single purpose, in spite of failure, defeat, and repented sin, pulls us

through. If we have this Spirit of Love in our hearts, and if with

Christ's help we are trying to do something to make it real in our lives

and effective in the world, our eternal salvation is assured. On the

other hand, is there a single point on which we deliberately are working

evil? Is the lot of any poor man harder, or the life of any unhappy

woman more sad and bitter, for aught that we have done or left undone?

Is any good institution the weaker, or any bad custom more prevalent,

for aught that we are deliberately and persistently withholding of help

or contributing of harm? If so, if in any one point we are consciously

and unrepentingly arrayed against God's righteous purpose, and the human

welfare which is dear to God; if there is a single point on which we are

deliberately setting aside His righteous will, and doing intentional

evil to the humblest of His children; then, notwithstanding our high

rank on other matters, our lack of the right purpose, at even a single

point, makes us guilty of the whole; we are unfit for His kingdom.

Jesus' principle of Love, though for clearness and incisiveness often

stated in terms of mere altruism, or regard for others, yet taken in its

total context, in the light of His never absent reference to the

Father's will and the Kingdom of Heaven, is much deeper and broader than

that. It gives each man his place and function in the total beneficent

system which is the coming Kingdom of God, and then treats him not

merely as he may wish to be treated, or we may wish to treat him, but as

his place and function in that system require.

Mere altruism is often weakly kind, making others feebly dependent on

our benefactions instead of sturdily self-supporting; making others

unconsciously egotistic as the result of our superfluous ministrations

or uncritical indulgence; and even fostering a subtle egotism in

ourselves, as the result of the fatal habit of doing the easy, kind

thing rather than the hard, severe thing that is needed to lift them to

their highest attainment. A true mother is never half as sentimentally

altruistic toward her child as a grandmother or an aunt; she does not

hesitate to reprove and correct, when that is what the child needs to

suppress the low and lazy, and rouse the higher and stronger self. The

just administrator discharges the incompetent and exposes the dishonest

employee, not merely because the good of the whole requires it; but

because even for the person discharged or exposed, that is better than

it would be to allow him to drag out an unprofitable and cumbersome life

in tolerated uselessness or countenanced graft.

"Treat both others and yourself as their place and yours in God's coming

Kingdom require;" that is the Golden Rule in its complete form. "All

things, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you"

(remembering that both you and they have places and functions in the

Father's Kingdom of Love); "even so do ye also unto them: for this is

the law and the prophets."

This fulfilment of law is a very different thing from selfishly breaking

the law. That such a reformer as Jesus ever took the conservative side

of any question seems at first sight so preposterous that most candid

critics believe that He never said the words attributed to Him about

breaking one of the least of these commandments, or else that He said

them in a lost context which would greatly alter their meaning. That,

however, is not quite sure. For Love at its best is never rudely

iconoclastic. Every good law in its original intent is aimed to lift

men out of their sensuality and selfishness into at least an outward

conformity to the requirements of social well-being. And however

grotesque, fantastic, and superfluous such a law under changed

conditions may become, its original intent will always keep it sacred

and precious, even after its purpose can be accomplished better without

it. To fulfil is not to destroy, or to take delight in destruction.

"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to

destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth

shall pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from

the law, till all things be accomplished."

At the same time Love is always changing and superseding laws and

institutions by pressure of adjustment to the changing demands of

individual and social well-being. Laws and institutions are made for

men, rather than men for institutions and laws; and the instant an old

law ceases to serve a new need in the best possible way, Love erects the

better service into a new law or institution, superseding the old. Any

law that fails to promote the physical, mental, social, and spiritual

good of the persons and the community concerned, thereby loses Love's

sanction and becomes obsolete. Law for law's sake, rather than for the

sake of man and society, is the flat denial of Love. To exalt any

tradition, institution, custom, or prohibition above the human and

social good it has ceased to serve, is to sink to the level of the

scribe and Pharisee--the deadliest enemies of Jesus, and all for which

He stood. "For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall

exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no

wise enter into the kingdom of heaven."

In Love's eyes all anger, contempt, and quarrelsomeness are as bad as

murder--indeed are incipient murder, stopped short of overt crime

through fear. The look, or word, or deed of unkindness, the thought, or

wish, or hope that evil may befall another, even the attitude of cold

indifference, is murder in the heart. And it is only because we lack the

courage to translate wish into will that in such cases we do not do the

thing which, if done without our responsibility, by accident or nature,

we should rejoice to see accomplished.

From a strange and unexpected source there has come the confirmation of

this New Testament conception of the prevalence, not to say the

universality, of murder. A brilliant but grossly perverse English man of

letters was sentenced to imprisonment a few years ago for the foulest

crime. From the gaol in which he was confined there came a most

realistic description of the last days and final execution within its

walls of a lieutenant in the British army, who was condemned for killing

a woman whom he loved.

The poem has the exaggeration of a perverted and embittered nature; but

beneath the exaggeration there is the original truth, which underlies

Jesus' identification of murder and hate. After describing the last days

of the condemned man, his execution and his burial, the poem concludes

as follows:--

"In Reading Gaol by Reading town

There is a pit of shame,

And in it lies a wretched man

Eaten by teeth of flame,

In a burning winding sheet he lies

And his grave has got no name.

"And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

In silence let him lie:

No need to waste the foolish tear,

Or heave the windy sigh:

The man had killed the thing he loved,

And so he had to die.

"And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word:

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword."

Charge up against ourselves as murder the bitter looks, the hateful

words, the unkind thoughts, the selfish actions, which have lessened the

vitality, diminished the joy, wounded the heart, and murdered the

happiness of those whom we ought to love, whom perhaps at times we think

we do love, and who can profess to be guiltless?

The harboured grudge, the unrepented injury, the offence for which we

have not begged pardon, the employer's refusal to "recognise" his

employees or their representatives, and treat with them on fair and

equal terms, the workman's cultivated attitude of hostility to his

employer, are all such flagrant violations of Love that acts of formal

piety or public worship on the part of a person who harbours such

feelings are an affront.

Controversies, lawsuits, industrial or political warfare in mere pride

of opinion, class prejudice, or greed of gain, without first making

every effort to respect the rights and protect the interests of the

other party and so bring about a reconciliation, are all violations of

Love and doom the person who is guilty of them to dwell in the narrow

prison-house of a hard and hateful secularity, where the last farthing

of exacted penalty must be paid, and hate is lord of life. "Ye have

heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and

whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto

you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of

the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in

danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in

danger of the hell of fire. If, therefore, thou art offering thy gift at

the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against

thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way, first be

reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with

thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art with him in the way; lest haply

the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to

the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou

shalt by no means come out thence, till thou have paid the last

farthing."

Marriage to the Christian is an infinitely higher and holier estate than

it could have been to any of the earlier schools. It is an opportunity

to share with another person the creative prerogative of God. It brings

opportunity for Love enhanced by the highest of complementary

differences, under circumstances of tenderest intimacy, with the

requirement of lifelong constancy.

From Love's point of view any lack of tender reverence for the person

of another, whether in or out of marriage sinks man to the plane of the

brute. Not that the normal exercise of any appetite or passion is base

or evil in itself. All are holy, pure, divine, when Love through them

assumes the lifelong responsibilities they involve. All that falls short

of such tender reverence and permanent responsibility is lust. Jesus

established chastity on the broad, rational basis of respect for the

dignity of woman and the sanctity of sex. The logic of His teaching on

this point is to place chastity on the eternal rock foundation of

treating another only as Love and a true regard for the other's

permanent welfare will warrant. In other words, Jesus permits no man to

even wish to treat any woman as he would be unwilling another man should

treat his own mother, sister, wife, or daughter. For, from His

standpoint, all women are our sisters, daughters of the most high God.

This standard is searching and severe, no doubt; but it is reasonable

and right. There is not a particle of asceticism about it. And the man

who violates it is not merely departing a little from the beaten path of

approved conventionalities. He is doing a cruel, wanton wrong. He is

doing to another what he would bitterly resent if done to one whom he

held dear. And what right has any man to hold any woman cheap, a mere

means of his selfish gratification, and not an object of his protection,

and reverence, and chivalrous regard? The worst mark of uneliminated

brutality and barbarism which the civilised world is carrying over into

the twentieth century, to curse and blacken and pollute and embitter

human life for a few generations more, is this indifference to the

Spirit of Love, as it applies at this crucial point.

To destroy a wife's health, to purchase a moment's pleasure at the cost

of a woman's lasting degradation, or to participate in practices which

doom a whole class of wretched women to short-lived disease and shame,

and early and dishonoured death (a recent reliable report estimates the

cost of lives from this cause alone in a single city as 5000 a year) is

so gross and wanton a perversion of manhood, that in comparison it would

be better not to be a man at all.

All the devices for gratifying sexual passions without the assumption of

permanent responsibilities, such as seduction, prostitution, and the

keeping of mistresses, Christianity brands as the desecration of God's

holiest temple, the human body, and the wanton wounding of His most

sensitive creation,--woman's heart. The Greeks placed little restriction

on man's passions beyond such as was necessary to maintain sufficient

physical health and mental vigour to perform his duties as a citizen in

peace and in war. If the individual is complete in himself, with no God

above who cares, no Christ who would be grieved, no Spirit of Love to

reproach, no rights of universal brotherhood and sisterhood to be

sensitively respected and chivalrously maintained, then indeed it is

impossible to make out a valid claim for severer control in these

matters than Plato and Aristotle advocate. If there are persons in the

world who are practically slaves, persons who have no claim on our

consideration, then licentiousness and prostitution are logical and

legitimate expressions of human nature and inevitable accompaniments of

human society. Christianity, however, has freed the slave in a deeper

and higher sense than the world has yet realised. Christianity does not

permit any one who calls himself a Christian to leave any man or woman

outside the pale of that consideration which makes this other person's

dignity, and interest, and welfare as precious and sacred to him as his

own. Obviously all loose and temporary sexual connections involve such

degradation, shame, and sorrow to the woman involved, that no one who

holds her character, and happiness, and lasting welfare dear to him can

will for her these woful consequences. One cannot at the same time be a

friend of the kindly, generous, sympathetic Christ and treat a woman in

that way. It is for this reason, not on cold, ascetic grounds, that

Christianity limits sexual relations to the monogamous family; for there

only are the consequences to all concerned such as one can choose for

another whom he really loves. If Christianity, at these and other vital

points, asks man to give up things which Plato and Aristotle permit, it

is not that the Christian is narrower or more ascetic than they; it is

because Christianity has introduced a Love so much higher, and deeper,

and broader than anything of which the profoundest Greeks had dreamed,

that it has made what was permissible to their hard hearts forever

impossible for all the more sensitive souls in whom the Love of Christ

has come to dwell.

"Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I

say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her

hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right

eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it

is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not

thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand causeth thee to

stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for

thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go

into hell."

Divorce is a confession of failure in Love's supreme undertaking. No two

Christians, who have caught and kept alive the Spirit of Love in the

married state, ever were or ever will be, ever wished to be or ever can

be, divorced. No one Christian who has the true Christian Spirit of Love

toward husband or wife will ever seek divorce unless it be under such

circumstances of infidelity or brutality, neglect or cruelty, as render

the continuance of the relation a fruitless casting of the pearls of

affection before the swinishness of sensuality. The determination of the

grounds on which divorce shall be granted belongs to the sphere of the

state, and is a problem of social self-protection. The Christian church

makes a serious mistake when it spends its energies in trying to build

up legal barriers against divorce. Its real mission at this point is to

build up in the hearts of its adherents the Spirit of Love which will

make marriage so sweet and sacred that those who once enter it will

find, as all true Christians do find, divorce intolerable between two

Christians; and tolerable even for one Christian only as a last resort

against hopeless and useless degradation. To translate Christ's Spirit

into the life of the family is a much more Christian thing to do than to

attempt to enact this or that somewhat general and enigmatical answer of

His into civil law. It is generally a mistake, a departure from the

Spirit of the Master, when the Christian community as such turns from

its specific task of positive upbuilding of personality to the legal

prohibition of the things that are contrary to the Christian Spirit.

Laws and prohibitions, statutes and penalties against drunkenness,

Sabbath-breaking, theft, murder, gambling, and divorce, we must have.

But those laws and penalties are best devised and enforced by the state,

as the representative of the average sentiment of the community as a

whole, rather than by the distinctively Christian element in the

community, which in the nature of things is very far above the average

sentiment. Undoubtedly the Christian Spirit is the only force strong

enough to save the family from degeneration and dissolution in this

intensely individualistic, independent, materialistic, luxurious age.

But we must rely mainly on the Spirit working within, not on a law

imposed from without; on the healing touch of the gentle Master, not on

the hasty sword of the impetuous Peter.

"It was said also, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a

writing of divorcement; but I say unto you, that every one that putteth

away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an

adulteress; and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away

committeth adultery."

Love fulfils at once the law of truth-telling and the law against

swearing; for words spoken in Love need no adventitious support. The

appeal to anything outside one's self, and one's simple statement, is

clear evidence that there is no Love, and therefore no truth within.

Love has no desire to deceive, and hence no fear of being disbelieved.

To back up one's words with an oath is to confess one's own lack of

confidence in what one is saying, and to invite lack of confidence in

others. Anything more than a plain statement of fact or feeling comes

out of an insincere or unloving heart. Of course here, as in the case of

divorce, what is the obvious and only law for the disciple of Jesus may

or may not be wise for the civil authorities to enact into law and

impose upon all. If the state and the courts think an oath helpful, the

sensible Christian usually will conform to public custom and

requirement; even though for him the practice is superfluous and

meaningless.

"Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt

not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths; but I

say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the

throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet;

nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt

thou swear by thy head, for thou canst not make one hair white or black.

But let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay; and whatsoever is more than

these is of the evil one."

Love is slow to take offence, and quick to overlook. Selfishness is

sensitive to slights, resentful at wrongs; for it sees others only as

their acts affect us. Love seeks out the whole man behind the harsh word

or bad deed, takes his point of view, and tries to discover some clue to

his concealed better self.

Whether he does well or ill, Love lets us appeal to nothing less than

his best self, and do nothing less than what on the whole is best for

him and for the community to which he and we both belong. Hence, whether

we give or withhold what he specifically asks (and Love enlightened by

modern sociology tells us we usually must withhold from beggars and

tramps what they ask), in either case we shall not consult merely our

personal convenience and impulse, but do what we should wish to have

done to us, for the sake of society and for our own good as members of

society, if we were in his unfortunate plight. "Ye have heard that it

was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto

you, Resist not him that is evil, but whosoever smiteth thee on thy

right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law

with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And

whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain. Give to

him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not

thou away."

Love is kind to the evil and vicious, and magnanimous to the hostile and

hateful. Kindness in return for favours received or in hope of favours

to come; kindness to those whose conduct and character we admire, is all

very well in its way, but is no sign whatever that he who is kind on

these easy terms is a true child of Love. To share the great Love of God

one must go out freely to all, regardless of return or desert,--be

impartial as sunshine and shower.

When our enemy is plotting to harm us, to break down our good name, to

injure those whom we love, even while we defend ourselves and our dear

ones against his malice and meanness, we must be secretly watching our

chances to do him a good turn, and win him from hatred to Love. Nothing

less than this complete identification with the interests of all the

persons we in any way touch, however bad some of their acts, however

unworthy some of their traits, can make us sharers and receivers, agents

and bestowers of that perfect Love which is at once the nature of God,

the capacity of man, the fulfilment of law, and the condition of social

well-being.

"Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate

thy enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that

persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven;

for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain

on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what

reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute

your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the

Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly

Father is perfect."

III

THE COUNTERFEITS OF LOVE

Just because Love is so costly, it has a host of counterfeits. These

counterfeits are chiefly devices for gaining the rewards and honours of

Love, without the effort and sacrifice of loving. One of the most

obvious rewards of Love is being thought kind, generous, good. But this

can be secured, apparently, by professing religion, joining the church,

repeating the creed, giving money to the poor, subscribing large sums to

good causes,--all of which are much cheaper and easier than being kind,

and true, and faithful, and considerate in the home, on the farm, in the

factory, in the store. Yet Jesus tells us that unless we have Love in

the close and intimate relations of our domestic, economic, social, and

political life, all symbols of its presence elsewhere, all "services"

directed otherwise, become intolerable nuisances, whose places would be

better filled, and whose work better done, if they were once well out of

the way and decently buried. All this, however, is not to deny, but by

contrast to affirm, the great indispensable uses of symbols, officers,

and institutions that are genuinely and effectively devoted to the

cultivation and propagation of Love.

The pure gold of the Spirit is most conveniently and effectually

circulated when mixed with the alloy of rites, ceremonies, creeds,

officers, and organisations. Though no essential part of the pure

Gospel, yet these forms and observances, these bishops and clergy, these

covenants and confessions, are as practically useful for the maintenance

and spread of the Christian Spirit as courts and constitutions,

governors and judges, are for the orderly conduct of the state. Their

authority is founded on their practical utility. When their utility

ceases, when they come to obscure rather than reveal the Spirit they are

intended to express, then schism and reformation serve the same

beneficent purpose in the church that declarations of independence and

revolution have so often achieved in the state. That form of church

government is best which in any given age and society works best; and

this may well be concentrated personal authority in one set of

circumstances, and democratic representative administration in another.

Each has its advantages and its disadvantages.

Modes of worship rest on the same practical basis. Spontaneous prayer or

elaborate ritual, much or little participation by the people, long or

short sermons, prayer-meetings or no prayer-meetings,--all are to be

determined by the test of practical experience. It is absurd to profess

to draw hard and fast rules about these matters from the precept or

practice of Jesus and His Apostles, or the early church fathers, working

as they did under conditions so widely different from our own. Probably

centralised authority and elaborate ritual are most effective when

bishops and priests can be found who will not abuse their power for

their own aggrandisement. Until then, more democratic forms of worship

and of government are doubtless more expedient. The friendly competition

of the two systems side by side helps to keep sacerdotalism modest and

make independency effective.

Creeds likewise have their practical usefulness, especially in times of

theological ferment and transition, serving the purposes of party

platforms in a political campaign. But it is the grossest perversion of

their function to make assent to them obligatory on all who wish to

enjoy the most intimate Christian fellowship, or to test Christian

character by their formulas. One might as well refuse citizenship to

every person who could not assent to every word in some party platform

or other. The creed is an intellectual formulation of the results of

Christian experience, interpreting the Christian revelation; and it

will vary from age to age with ripening experience, and maturer views of

the content of the revelation. No creed was altogether false at the time

of its formulation. No creed in Christendom is such as every intelligent

Christian can honestly assent to. The attempt to make creed subscription

a test of church membership, or even a condition of ministerial

standing, is sure to confuse intellectual and spiritual things to the

serious disadvantage of both. The most sensitively honest men will more

and more decline to enter the service of the church, until subscription

to antiquated formulas, long since become incredible to the majority of

well-trained scholars, ceases to be required either literally or "for

substance of doctrine." It is sufficient that each candidate for the

ministry be asked to make his own statement, either in his own words or

in the words of any creed he finds acceptable, leaving it for his

brethren to decide whether or not such intellectual statement is

consistent with that spiritual service which is to be his chief concern.

Unless Christianity, in the persons of its leaders as well as of its

laity, can breathe as free an intellectual atmosphere as that of Stoic

or Epicurean, Plato or Aristotle, it will at this point prove itself

their inferior. Infinitely superior as it is in every other respect, it

is a burning shame that its timid and conservative modern adherents

should endeavour, at this point of absolute intellectual openness and

integrity, to place it at a disadvantage with the least noble of its

ancient competitors. The pure Spirit of Love will win the devotion of

all honest hearts and candid minds. But the insistence on these

antiquated formulas is sure to repel an increasing number of the most

thoughtful and enlightened from organised Christian fellowship. The only

serious reason for preferring the independent to the hierarchical forms

of church organisation at the present time is the tendency of the latter

to keep up these forms of intellectual imposition and imposture. Until

the church as a whole shall rise to the standards of intellectual

honesty now universally prevalent in the world of secular science, the

mission of the independent protest will remain but partially fulfilled.

"Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savour,

wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to

be cast out and trodden under foot of men."

Any thought of the reputation or respectability or honour a right act

will bring, just because it puts something else in place of Love,

destroys the rightness of the act and the righteousness of the doer.

Righteousness will always remain a dry, dreary, forbidding, impossible

thing until we welcome right as the service of those whom we love, and

the promotion of interests we share with them; and shrink from wrong as

what harms them and defeats our common ends. Without Love, righteousness

either dries up into a cold, hard asceticism, or evaporates into a

hollow, formal respectability; and in one way or the other misses the

spontaneity and expansion of soul which is Love's crown and joy. "Take

heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them:

else ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven."

Love is too intent on its objects to be aware of itself or call

attention to its own operations. The air of doing a favour takes all the

Love out of an act; for Love gives so simply and quietly that it seems

to ask rather than bestow the favour. In this way both giver and

receiver together share Love's distinctive reward of two lives bound

together as one in the common Love of the Father.

"When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the

hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have

glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right

hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father which seeth

in secret shall recompense thee."

Professed Love, if unfruitful or pernicious, is false. If we make no one

happier; help no one over hard places; bind no wounds; comfort no

sorrows; serve no just cause; do no good work; still worse, if we make

any one's lot harder; add to his burden or sorrow; corrupt public

officials; break down beneficent institutions; plunder the poor, even if

within technical legal forms; drive the weak to the wall; and connive in

the perversion of justice,--then the absence of good fruits, or the

presence of bad ones, is proof positive that we have never seen or known

Love, that our profession of Love is a lie, our proper place is with

Love's foes, and our destiny with the doers of evil.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but

inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men

gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree

bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil

fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt

tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good

fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye

shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall

enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my

Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord,

did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out devils, and by

thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I

never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

Neither eloquent speech nor elegant writing, neither ornate ceremonial

nor orthodox symbol, nor anything short of actual toil to serve human

need and help human joy can translate Love into life. Though the most

beautiful idea in the world, the mere idea of Love is of no more value

than any other mere idea. If it fails of expression in hard, costly

deeds, its ritualistic or verbal profession is a sham. In Love's

service, so far as things done are concerned, there is no high or low,

first or last. To preach sermons and conduct religious services, to

teach science in the university, or make laws in Congress, is no better

and no worse than to make shoes in the shoeshop or cook food in the

kitchen. All work done in Love counts, stands, endures. All work done in

vanity and self-seeking, all work shirked with pretence of religion, or

excuse of wealth, or pride of social station, leaves the soul hard,

hollow, unreal, and fails to stand Love's searching test.

"Every one therefore which heareth these words of mine, and doeth them,

shall be likened unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock; and

the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat

upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon the rock. And

every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be

likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the

rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon

that house, and it fell; and great was the fall thereof."

IV

THE WHOLE-HEARTEDNESS OF LOVE

Love asks for the whole heart or nothing; and all the heart has, be it

little or much, must go with it. The pursuit or possession of wealth, as

an end in itself, or a means to mere selfish ends, will drive Love out

of the soul.

All the wealth we can give to Love's service is most useful and welcome;

but the retention of any for miserly pride, or vain ostentation, or

indolent uselessness for ourselves or our children, fills the heart so

full of self that Love can find there no room. Not that giving away all

one has is essential or desirable; but that every dollar one gives,

spends, keeps, invests, or controls be held subject to the orders of

Love.

Wealth is not so essential to the Christian as it was to Epicurus and

Aristotle, for God can be glorified and man can be served with very

little furniture of fortune; and therefore the Christian is able, in

whatsoever material state he is, therewith to be content. On the other

hand, the Christian cares more for money than either the Stoic or Plato;

for there are ranges in God's universe of beauty, truth, and goodness

which cannot be aesthetically appreciated and artistically and

scientifically appropriated without large expenditure of labour and the

wealth by which labour is supported; and there are wide spheres of

business enterprise and social service essential to human welfare which

only the rich man or nation can effectively promote. Divine and human

service is possible in poverty; it is more effective and at the same

time more difficult in wealth. The Christian rich and the Christian poor

serve the same Lord, and have the same Spirit; but the accomplishment of

the Christian rich man can be so much greater than that of the

Christian widow with her mite, that the Christian who is strong enough

to stand it is in duty bound to treat money as a talent which in all

just ways he ought to multiply. On the contrary, the moment it begins to

make him less sympathetic, less generous, less thankful, less

responsible, he must give it away as the only alternative to the loss of

his soul, the deterioration of his personality.

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust

doth consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for

yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume,

and where thieves do not break through nor steal, for where thy treasure

is, there will thy heart be also."

Toward science and art, business and politics, the application of the

Christian Spirit is different from anything we have met before. The

Christian will not shirk these things, like the Epicurean and the Stoic;

because they are ways of serving that truth, beauty, welfare, and order

which are included in the Father's will for all His human children. In

all these things we are co-workers with God for the good of man.

Diligence and enthusiasm, devotion and self-sacrifice in one or more of

these directions is the imperative duty, the inestimable privilege of

every one who would be a grateful and obedient son of God, a helpful and

efficient brother to his fellow-men.

Yet in all his devotion to science or art, in all the energy with which

he gives himself to business or politics, the Christian can never forget

that God is greater than any one of these points at which we come in

contact with Him; and that, when we have done our utmost in one or

another of these lines, we are still comparatively unprofitable servants

in His vast household. As God is more than the thing at which we work,

so the Christian, through relation to Him, is always more than his work.

He never lets his personality become absorbed and evaporated in the work

he does; but ever renews his personal life at the fountain which is

behind the special work he undertakes to do. Thus the true Christian is

never without some useful social work to do; and he never lets himself

get lost in doing it. To keep this balance of energy in the task and

elevation above it, which enables one to take success without elation

and bear failure without depression, is perhaps the crowning achievement

of practical Christianity.

"The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy

whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole

body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee

be darkness, how great is the darkness! No man can serve two masters;

for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will

hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

He who heartily loves and serves others will trust Love in God and his

fellows to take proper care of himself. One who really loves others will

take reasonable care not to be a burden to them, and to the world, and

will avail himself of the insurance company, the savings bank, and the

bond market as the devices of a complex modern society to distribute

losses and conserve gains to the common advantage of all. Love does not

make the individual or his family a parasite on the economy and industry

of society. Love makes a man bear his own permanent burden as a

preliminary to being of much use and no harm to his family, his friends,

and his community. Such prudent provision of the means of Love's

independence and service is consistent with entire absence of worry

about one's personal fortunes. The essential question which Love, and

Jesus as the Lord and Master of Love, puts to a man is not "How much

money have you?" but "What use do you intend to make of whatever you

have, be that little or much?" If that aim is selfish, and the money is

either saved or spent in sordid, worried selfishness, that low aim makes

the money a curse. If held subject to whatever drafts Love may make upon

it,--whether gifts to the poor, or support of good causes, or employment

of honest workmen, or development of industrial enterprises, be the form

Love's drafts take,--then all wealth so held is a blessing to the world

and an honour to its owner, a glory to God and a service to man.

"Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall

eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put

on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?

Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap,

nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye

of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add

one cubit unto his stature? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment?

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither

do they spin; yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was

not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of

the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall

he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Be not therefore

anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or,

Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the

Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all

these things."

Though material means sought as ends are fatal to Love, Love's ends kept

in view insure needed means. To worry about to-morrow is to fail in

devotion to the tasks of to-day, and so spoil both days. To do our best

work to-day is to gain power for to-morrow. Competition complicates, but

does not render insoluble, the problem of making all that we have and

all that we do express Love to all whom our action affects. To be sure,

there are city slums, uninsured accidents and sickness, unsanitary

tenements, unjust conditions of labour, where even the service of Love

does not bring to the worker appropriate means and rewards; but it is

because Love has not quite kept pace at these points with swift-moving

modern conditions. But public spirit, political progress, economic

reform, are more sensitive to these violations of its laws than ever

before, and eagerly bent on finding and applying the remedy,--more Love

of all for each, and each for all.

"But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these

things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow,

for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is

the evil thereof."

Love throws off all that hampers its action, as a runner his coat for a

race. Love requires the sound body, the clear mind, the strong will, the

sensitive heart, and foregoes all indulgences that impair these things,

though in themselves innocent as eating and drinking. Yet Love makes no

fuss about its sacrifices, takes them as a simple matter of course, not

worth mentioning; for what Love gives up in mere sensuous indulgence is

as nothing to the widened affections and enlarged interests gained. To

be solemn or sad over what we give up, to proclaim or parade one's

self-denials, would be an insult to Love; it would show that the persons

we love and the causes we serve are not really as dear to our hearts as

the pitiful things we forego for their sake--would show that our Love

was a sham.

All pleasure that comes from healthy exercise of body, rational exercise

of mind, sympathetic expansion of the affections, strenuous effort of

the will, in just and generous living, is at the same time a glorifying

of God and an enrichment of ourselves. All pleasure which sacrifices the

vigour of the body to the indulgence of some separate appetite, all

pleasure which enslaves or degrades or embitters the persons from whom

it is procured, all pleasure which breaks down the sacred institutions

on which society is founded,--is shameful and debasing, a sin against

God, and a wrong to our own souls. The Christian will forego many

pleasures which Epicurus and even Aristotle would permit, because he is

infinitely more sensitive than they to the effect his pleasures have on

poor men and unprotected women whose welfare these earlier teachers did

not take into account. On the other hand, the Christian will enter

heartily into the joys of pure domestic life, and the delights of

struggle with untoward social and political conditions, from which Plato

and the Stoics thought it honourable to withdraw. Where God can be

glorified and men can be served, there the Christian will either find

his pleasure, or with optimistic art, create a pleasure that he does not

find.

"Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance;

for they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast.

Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when

thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face, that thou be not seen

of men to fast, but of thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father,

which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee."

Just because Love includes the interests of all the persons we deal

with, it excludes all mean, selfish traits from our hearts. There can be

no pride and guile, no lust and cruelty, no avarice and hypocrisy, no

malice and censoriousness, in a heart which welcomes to its interest and

affection, and serves and loves as its own, the aims and needs of its

fellows. That is why Love's true disciples are few, and the slaves of

selfishness many. Ask how many,--not entirely succeed, for none do,--but

how many make it the constant aim of their lives to treat others as more

widely extended aspects of themselves, and, in order to do that,

endeavour to keep out all the greed, hate, lust, pride, envy, jealousy,

that would draw lines between self and others, and we see the answer:

that the way must be narrow, a way few find, and still fewer follow when

found.

"Enter ye in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the

way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in

thereby. For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth

unto life, and few be they that find it."

V

THE CULTIVATION OF LOVE

Love is so akin to our nature, so eager to enter our souls, that to want

is to get it; to seek is to find it; to open our hearts to its presence

is to discover it already there. Whoever knows what true prayer is--the

intense, eager yearning for good of insistent, importunate hearts--knows

that there never was and never can be one unanswered prayer. No man who

has longed to have Love the law of his life, and struggled for it as a

miser struggles for money, or a politician strives to win votes, ever

failed to get what he wanted. For every person we meet gives occasion

for Love, and every situation in life affords a chance to express it.

The difficulty is not to get all we want, but to want all we can have

for the asking.

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it

shall be opened unto you, for every one that asketh receiveth; and he

that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or

what man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf,

will give him a stone, or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a

serpent? 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?"

Love will not grow in our hearts without deep, unseen communion with the

Spirit of Love, who is God. To dwell reverently on the Infinite Love; to

keep in one's heart a sacred place where His holy name is adored; to

eagerly seek for Love's coming in our own hearts, in the hearts of all

men, and in all the affairs of the world; to gratefully receive all

material blessings as gifts for use in Love's service; to beseech for

ourselves and bestow on others that forgiveness which is Love's attitude

toward our human frailties and failings; to fortify ourselves in advance

against the allurements of sense, and the base desire to gain good for

ourselves at cost of evil to others; to remember that all right rule,

all true strength, all worthy honour inhere in and flow from Love, and

Love's Father, God,--to do this day by day sincerely and simply without

formality or ostentation,--this is to pray, and to insure prayer's

inevitable answer--a life through which Love freely flows to bless both

the world and ourselves.

"And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to

stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that

they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their

reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and

having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy

Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use

not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they shall

be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them; for

your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven,

so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one."

Our only ground of assurance that Love forgives us is our loving

forgiveness of others. In the light of that fact of experience it is

easy and obvious to believe that the Father whose children we are, is

not less loving and forgiving than we. If we restore to our esteem and

friendship those who have wronged us, then we are sure that Love at the

heart of the Universe, Love in the Father, Love in all the Father's true

children, fully and freely forgives us. If we have this experience of

our own forgiveness of our fellows, we know that Love would not be Love,

but hate, God would not be God, but a devil, if any sincerely repented

wrong or shortcoming of which we have been guilty could remain

unforgiven.

"For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also

forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will

your Father forgive your trespasses."

To judge harshly another man's failings, however bad they may be, shows

that we are less loving than he. For he may have failed through strength

of appetite, or heat of passion,--failings that are still consistent

with Love; but harsh judgment has no such excuse, and is therefore a

deadly--that is, loveless--sin. We would never think of proclaiming to

the idly curious or the coldly critical the failings of one whom we

love; hence proclamations of any one's failings is a sure sign that we

have no Love for him, and as long as there are any whom we do not love

and protect, we have no part or lot in the great Love of God. Yet such

charitableness does not forbid our practical judgment of the difference

between sheep and wolves, good men and bad, when important issues are

involved. That Love requires. What it forbids is the rolling as a sweet

morsel under our tongue, and the gleeful recital to others, of the

mistake or the sin of another, as something in which we take mean

delight because we think it makes him inferior to ourselves.

"Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye

shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured

unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,

but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou

say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye, and lo,

the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam

out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the

mote out of thy brother's eye."

Love will waste no time trying to explain itself to the selfish. If Love

does not commend itself by its own light and warmth to a man, no forms

of words can make him understand it. The sensual, the greedy, the hard,

and the cruel Love will treat as gently and kindly as circumstances

permit; yet expect as a matter of course that they will interpret Love's

justice as hardness, kindness as weakness, temperance as asceticism,

forbearance as cowardice, sacrifice as stupidity. Those who love will

not mind being misunderstood by those who do not; knowing that any

attempted explanation would only increase their conceit and hardness of

heart, and so make a bad matter worse.

"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls

before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and

turn and rend you."

Since Love is "the greatest thing in the world," we are bound to stand

ready with girt loins, and trimmed, burning lamps, to shed its light far

and wide. To cover it up would be to deprive ourselves and our fellows

of the one sight in all the world best worth seeing, and so to hinder

its spread. False modesty that would keep Love's good works out of sight

is as bad as false pride that would thrust oneself forward. Though works

done merely to be seen are not good at all, yet good works genuinely

done for Love's sake gain added influence and lustre when frankly and

freely allowed to be seen as the beautiful things that they are. The

Christian is under spiritual compulsion to be a missionary. Other

systems draw their little circles of disciples about them, as Jesus

drew His twelve. One cannot hold what he believes to be a true and

helpful view of life without wishing to communicate it to others. Yet

this tendency, which is natural to every principle, is characteristic of

Christianity in a unique degree. For the Christian Spirit consists in

Love, the desire to give to others the best one has. And what can be so

good, so desirable to impart, as this very Spirit of Love, which is

Christianity itself? That is why the Christian must, in some form or

other,--by journeying to foreign lands, by contribution to missionary

work at home, by gifts to Christian education, by support of settlement

work, or perhaps best of all by the silent diffusion of a Christian

example in the neighbourhood, or the unnoticed expression of the

Christian Spirit in the home,--be a propagator of the Spirit of Love he

has himself received.

"Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a lamp and put it under the bushel, but on the

stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your

light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify

your Father which is in heaven."

VI

THE BLESSEDNESS OF LOVE

Does virtue bring happiness? is a question every philosophy of life must

meet. Yet before it can be rightly answered it must be rightly put.

For if by virtue you mean something negative, conventional,--not lying,

not cheating, not swearing, not drinking; and if by happiness you mean

something passive, external,--riches, offices, entertainments, and

honours; then virtue and happiness do not necessarily go together in

life, and no philosophy can show that they should.

If a man were to persuade himself that they do go together, and should

seek this sort of happiness by cultivating this sort of virtue, he would

miss true virtue and true happiness. For both virtue and happiness are

positive, active; so interrelated that the happiness must be found in

that furtherance of our common social interests in which the exercise of

virtue consists.

Jesus bids us take an active, devoted interest in the interests of

others and of society. Now whoever shares and serves a wide range of

interests has an interested, and therefore an interesting, life. But the

interesting life is the happy life. Love, whether it has much or little

wealth and station, always has interests and aims; always finds or

makes friends to share them,--in other words, is always happy.

The beatitudes are illustrations of this deep identity between interest

taken and happiness found; statements of the truth that Love going out

to serve and share the interests and aims of others, and blessedness

flowing in to fill the heart thereby enlarged for its reception, are the

outside and inside of the same spiritual experience.

To think little of self is the key to the joy that goes with much

thought for others.

Love is so going out to others as to make them as real as self. But that

is what no man puffed up with self-importance can do. Where self is much

in the foreground others are pushed to the rear. Self-importance and

Love cannot dwell together in the same house of clay. As one goes up in

the scales of the balance the other goes down. To be rich in the shared

lives of others one must be poor in his own self-esteem. The two are in

inverse proportion. Modesty is impossible of direct cultivation. It

isn't safe to talk or even think about it much. As Pascal remarks, "Few

people talk of humility humbly." Like Love it is the manifestation of

something deeper than itself. Unless one is in intimate personal

relations with one whom he reveres as greater, stronger, better than

himself, it is obviously impossible for him to be modest. If he is in

such relations, it is equally impossible for him not to be modest.

Hence, as Love is the inmost quality of the Christian, the inevitable

manifestation to his fellow-men of what the Father is to him, so modesty

is the surest outward sign of this inward grace. Conceit is a public

proclamation of the poverty of one's personal relations. For if this

conceited fellow, this vain woman, really had the honour of the intimate

acquaintance of some one better and greater than their petty, miserable

selves, they could not possibly be the vain, conceited creatures that

they are. Every one who lives in the presence of the great Father, and

walks in the company of His glorious Son, is sure to find modesty and

humility the natural and spontaneous expression of his side of these

great relationships. "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the

kingdom of heaven."

Our shortcomings frankly confessed prepare us for Love's consolation.

We all fall short of that patient consideration, that courteous

kindliness, which makes the feelings and interests of others as precious

as our own. Some of us fail in one way, some in another. But we all are

unprofitable servants of the Love that would make our lives one with all

the lives that we touch. To forget or deny that we fail is to lose sight

of Love altogether. He who thinks he succeeds thereby shows that he

fails; he who knows and laments that he fails comes as near as man can

to the goal.

Love neither asks nor expects a clean record; else it would have no

disciples. Love fully and freely forgives, at the eleventh hour welcomes

the idler, and offers its fulness of joy to all who, whatever their

repented past may have been, make service and kindness to others their

eager present concern. For no sin frankly confessed, no wrong deed

sincerely repented, no loss squarely met, no bereavement bravely

endured, can shut out from Love's consolation those who serve with the

best there is in them the persons who still need their aid. "Blessed are

they that mourn; for they shall be comforted."

To meet criticism with kindness, crossness with geniality, insult with

courtesy, and injury with charity is the way to conquer the world.

By nature we are creatures of suggestion. A hateful look, an ugly word,

a spiteful sneer, a cruel blow, make us hateful and ugly and spiteful

and cruel in turn. For the empty heart flashes back in resentment

whatever attitude another's act suggests.

Meekness greets as a friend the just critic, and for unjust and unkind

treatment makes allowance as due to the blindness or hardness or

weakness of the pitiful person who has nothing better to give. Meekness

makes the soft answer that turns away wrath, and treats one who wrongs

us all the more gently. Thus the meekness of Love gives both power to

possess our own souls in patience under all provocation, and power, not

indeed to coerce the bodies of others, but to win the consent of their

souls. "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth."

Righteousness is something of which we can have no more and no less than

we wish.

He who is good enough is not good at all, and never will be any better.

For righteousness is right relation to others; and so long as there are

things we can do to help others, its infinite task is unfinished. Yet

though the goal ever advances and never comes within reach, aspiration

is achievement; progress is attainment. If we could come to the end of

our journey; if we could see the world's claims on us met, the deeds of

which we are capable done, that moment would mark the death of our

souls. Just because Love grows by loving and serving, and makes ever

greater and greater demands, it prophesies there shall be forever and

ever things to do that will make life worth while. "Blessed are they

that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled."

The depth of our sympathy for those below us in secular service and

station measures our worth in the eyes of those spiritually higher than

we.

Love is like a tree; if it is not to be scorched in the blaze of

ambition and withered in the heat of competition, its roots of sympathy

must go down as deep into the soil of the obscure and lowly lives on

whose humble toil we depend as its branches spread into the upper air of

social distinction and station.

Unless we have much sympathy for those who toil on the farm and on the

sea, in the factory and the mine, behind the counter and the desk, in

the kitchen and laundry, what we call courtesy in the drawing room, or

charity on the platform, is hollow mockery and Pharisaic sham. "Blessed

are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy."

In order for Love to shine through them there must be nothing else in

our hearts.

Love demands everything or nothing. It refuses to dwell in quarters or

halves of our souls. The least flaw of pride, greed, or lust is enough

to make them opaque. Greed, lust, pride, hate, so blind our eyes to the

real selves of others that we cannot see or treat them as they really

are; that is, cannot love them. It reduces them to mere means and tools

of our passions and pleasures; and one who so regards persons can never

love either them or any person aright. Only the pure can see Love; for

only the pure can experience that union of one's whole self with the

whole self of others in which Love consists. "Blessed are the pure in

heart; for they shall see God."

Just so sure as we love two or more persons we shall do all in our power

to keep them from hating each other.

We wish everyone to love those whom we love. If anybody hates one we

love, it hurts us as much as it does the one hated, even more than it

would to be hated ourselves. And if anyone whom we love is hating

another, we are even more sorry for him than we are for the person he

hates, and make all haste to deliver him from this most dreadful

condition. The more we love our fellows, the more we hate to see

misunderstanding, ill-will, strife, between them.

Not that the Christian is unwilling or afraid to fight. Where deliberate

wrong is arrayed against the rights of men, where fraud is practised on

the unprotected, where hypocrisy imposes on the credulous, where vice

betrays the innocent, where inefficiency sacrifices precious human

interests, where avarice oppresses the poor, where tyranny tramples on

the weak, there the man who shares the Father's Love for His maltreated

children, the man who walks daily in the companionship of the Christ who

owns all the downtrodden as His brothers, will be the most fearless and

uncompromising foe of every form of injustice and oppression. Property,

reputation, position, time, strength, influence, health, life itself if

need be, will be thrown unreservedly into the fight against vice and

sin. He cannot keep in with the Father and with Christ and not come out

in opposition to everything that wrongs and injures the humblest man,

the lowliest woman, the most defenceless little child.

Fighting, however, is not altogether uncongenial to the descendants of

our brute progenitors. To fight our own battles, and occasionally a few

for our neighbours, comes all too naturally to most of us. Fighting

God's battles on principle is a very different thing. To feel entirely

tranquil in the midst of the combat; to know that we are not alone on

the side of the right; to have the real interests of our opponents at

heart all the time; to be ever ready to forgive them, and to ask their

forgiveness for any excess of zeal we may have shown; to have the peace

of God in our hearts, and no trace of malice, in deed, or word, or

thought, or feeling,--this is not altogether natural, and the man who

does his fighting on that basis gives pretty good assurance of dwelling

in the Christian Spirit. No other adequate provision for maintaining

peace in the midst of effective warfare, and making peace for others as

well as for ourselves the instant the need for war is over, has ever

been devised. The peacemakers of this fearless, earnest, strenuous type

have the unmistakable right to be called the children of God. "Blessed

are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God."

All who love must expect to be hated by the foes of those whom they

love.

Because Jesus loved the common people and sought to deliver them from

their fears and errors, the men who traded on those fears and errors put

Him to an ignominious death. If we love and serve the despised, the

abused, the plundered, those who despise and abuse and plunder them will

do to us the worst they dare. The road of Love is marked at every turn

by a cross. Whoever in business, society, or politics makes as real as

his own the interests and the wrongs of all whom he can reach and touch,

will be disliked, criticised, misrepresented, vilified, condemned. He

will pay Love's price of persecution.

Christian sacrifice closely resembles Greek temperance and courage.

There is, however, this essential distinction. The Christian takes on

not merely the pains and privations which are essential to his personal

welfare, or the welfare of his community or state; he takes on whatever

suffering the Father's Love for all His children calls him to undergo;

gives up whatever indulgences the service of Christ requires him to

dispense with; adopts whatever mingling of hardship and self-denial will

keep him in most effective and sympathetic fellowship with those who

have discovered the same great spiritual secret as himself. Thus, though

to the uninitiated outsider much of his life looks hard and severe, on

the inside it is easy and light; for the companionship with the Father,

with Christ, and with Christian people is so much greater and dearer

than the material and sensuous delights it may incidentally take away,

that on the inside it does not wear the aspect of loss and sacrifice at

all, but rather that of a glory and a gain. Still, since this element

of pleasant things foregone, and hard things endured, is ever present,

and since it has to be judged by people on the outside as well as by

those on the inside of the experience, in recognition of this truth

Christianity has made its symbol before the uninitiated world the cross.

As in the life of the Master, so in the life of every faithful disciple,

the cross must be borne, the perpetual sacrifice must be made, as the

price of Love's presence in a world of selfishness and hate; but the

cross is transfigured into a crown of rejoicing, the sacrifice is

transformed into privilege and pleasure by those precious personal

relationships which are the supreme glory and gladness of the soul, and

which could be maintained on no cheaper terms. The sacrifice that the

Christian makes to get his Father's will, his Master's mission,

accomplished in the world which so sorely needs it, is like the

sacrifice a mother makes for her sick and suffering child,--the dearest

and sweetest experience of life. The cross thus gladly borne, the yoke

of sacrifice thus unostentatiously assumed, is the supreme expression of

the Christian Spirit.

Like all high-cost things, sacrifice for Love's sake carries a high

premium. It admits, as nothing else does, to the inner circle of the

immortal lovers of their fellows, to the intimate fellowship of the

Lord of Love, Jesus Christ.

Joy follows incidentally and inevitably from the maintenance of these

great Christian relationships. A gloomy, depressed, despondent tone and

temper, unless it be demonstrably pathological, is public proclamation

that the deep mines of these Christian relationships, with their

inexhaustible resources, are either undeveloped or unworked. For no man

who looks through sunshine and shower, through food and raiment, through

family and friendship, through society and the moral order of the world,

up into the face of the Giver of them all as his Father; who knows how

to summon to his side the gentle and gracious companionship of Christ,

alike in the pressure of perplexity and in the quiet of solitude; who

knows how to unlock the treasures of Christian literature, to

appropriate the meaning of Christian worship, and to avail himself of

the comfort and support that is always latent in the hearts of his

Christian friends,--no man in whom these vast personal resources are

developed and employed can ever long remain disconsolate.

Even in prosperity, popularity, and outward success it takes

considerable mixture of these deeper elements to keep the tone of life

constantly on the high level of joy. But adversity is the real test.

Then the man without these interior resources gives way, breaks down,

becomes querulous, fretful, irritable, sour. On the other hand, the man

who can make mistakes, and take the criticism they bring, and go on as

cheerfully as if no blunder had been made and no vote of censure had

been passed; the man who can be hated for the good things he tries to

do, and condemned for bad things he never did and never meant to do; the

man who can work hard, and contentedly take poverty for pay; the man who

can serve devotedly people who revile and betray him in return; the man

who can discount in advance the unpopularity, misrepresentation, and

defeat a right course will cost, and then resolutely set about it; the

man who takes persecution and treachery as serenely as other men take

honours and emoluments,--this man, we may be sure, has dug deep an

invested heavily in the field where the priceless Christian treasure

lies concealed.

"Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake; for

theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach

you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely,

for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward

in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

VII

THE SUPREMACY OF LOVE

Jesus' Spirit of Love is capable of absorbing into itself whatever we

have found valuable in the four previous systems.

The Epicurean's varied and spontaneous joy in life is not diminished,

but enhanced, by the Christian Spirit, which multiplies this joy as many

times as there are persons whom one knows and loves. The Epicurean lives

in the little world of himself, and a few equally self-centred

companions. The Christian lives in the great world of God, and shares

its joys with all God's human children. It is the absence of this larger

world, the exclusive concern for his own narrow pleasures, that makes

the consistent Epicurean, with all his polish and charm, the essentially

mean and despicable creature we found him to be.

To be sure, Mill, Spencer, and others have endeavoured to graft the

altruistic fruits of Christianity on to the old Epicurean stock. There

is this great difference, however, between such Christianised

Epicureanism as that of Mill and Spencer, and Christianity itself.

These systems have no logical bridge, no emotional bond by which to pass

from the pleasures of self to the pleasures of others. They can and do

point out the incompleteness of merely egoistic Epicureanism; they

exhort us to care for the pleasures of others as we do for our own. But

the logical nexus, the moral dynamic, the spiritual motive, is lacking

in these systems; and consequently these systems fail to work, except

with the few highly altruistic souls who need no spiritual physician.

This logical bond, this moral dynamic, this spiritual motive which

impels toward altruistic conduct, the Christian finds in Christ. He

certainly did love all men, and care for their happiness as dearly as He

cared for His own. But this same Christ is the Christian's Lord and

Master and Friend. Yet friendship for Him, the acceptance of Him as Lord

and Master, is a contradiction in terms, unless one is at the same time

willing to cultivate His Spirit, which is the Spirit of service, the

Spirit which holds the happiness and welfare of others just as sacred

and precious as one's own. He that hath not this Spirit of Christ is

none of His. Hence what men like Mill and Spencer preach as a duty, and

support by what their critics have found to be very inadequate and

fallacious logical processes, Christianity proclaims as a fact in the

nature of God, as embodied in Christ, and a condition of the divine life

for everyone who desires to be a child of God, a follower and friend of

Jesus Christ. Christianity, therefore, includes everything of value in

Epicureanism, and infinitely more. It has the Epicurean gladness without

its exclusiveness, its joy without its selfishness, its naturalness

without its baseness, its geniality without its heartlessness.

In like manner Christianity takes up all that is true in the Stoic

teaching, without falling into its hardness and narrowness. The truth of

the Stoic teaching consisted in its power to transform into an

expression of the man himself, and of the beneficent laws of Nature,

whatever outward circumstance might befall him, Now put in place of the

abstract self the love of the perfect Christ, and instead of universal

law the loving will of the Father for all His children, and you have a

deepened, sweetened, softened Stoicism which is identical with a sturdy,

strenuous, and virile Christianity.

If a man has in his heart the earnest desire to be like Christ, and to

do the things that help to carry out Christ's Spirit in the world, it is

absolutely impossible that he should ever find himself in a situation

where what he most desires to do cannot be done. Now a man who in every

conceivable situation can do what he most desires to do is as completely

"master of his fate" and "captain of his soul" as the most strenuous

Stoic ever prayed to be. And yet he is saved from the coldness and

hardness and repulsiveness of the mere Stoic, because the object of his

devotion, the aim of his assertion, is not his own barren, frigid,

formal self, but the kindly, sympathetic, loving Christ, whom he has

chosen to be his better self. Like the Stoic, he brings every thought

into captivity; but it is not the captivity of a prison, the empty

chamber of his individual soul, swept and garnished; it is captivity to

the most gracious and gentle and generous person the world has ever

known,--it is captivity to Christ.

When misfortune and calamity overtakes him, he transforms it into a

blessing and a discipline, not like the mere Stoic through passive

resignation to an impersonal law, as of gravitation, or electricity, or

bacteriology, but through active devotion to that glory of God which is

to be furthered mainly by kindness and sympathy and service to our

fellow-men. The man who has this love of Christ in his heart, and who is

devoted to the doing of the Father's loving will, can exclaim in every

untoward circumstance, "I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth

me." He can shout with more than Stoic defiance: "O death, where is thy

sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" In all the literature of Stoic

exultation in the face of frowning danger and impending doom, there is

nothing that can match the splendid outburst of the great Apostle: "Who

shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or

anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that

loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels,

nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,

nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate

us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Everything that we found noble, and strong, and brave in Stoicism we

find also here; the power to transform external evil into internal good,

and to hold so tightly to our self-chosen good that no power in earth or

heaven can ever wrest it from us,--a good so universal that the

circumstance is inconceivable in which it would fail to work. Yet with

all this tenacious, world-conquering strength, there is, drawn from the

divine Source of this affection a gentleness, and sympathy, and

tenderness, and humble human helpfulness, which the Stoic in his

boastfulness, and hardness, and self-sufficiency could never know.

The Christian abhors lying and stealing, scolding and slandering,

slavery and prostitution, meanness and murder, not less but far more

than the Stoic. But he refrains from these things, not under constraint

of abstract law, but because he cares so deeply and sensitively for the

people whom these things affect that he cannot endure the thought that

any word or deed of his should bring them pain or loss or shame or

degradation. Thus he gets the Stoic strength without its hardness, the

Stoic universality without its barrenness, the Stoic exaltation without

its pride, the Stoic integrity without its formalism, the Stoic calm

without its impassiveness.

Christianity is as lofty as Platonism; but it gets its elevation by a

different process. Instead of rising above drudgery and details, it

lifts them up into a clearer atmosphere, where nothing is servile or

menial which can glorify God or serve a fellow-man.

The great truth which Plato taught was the subordination of the lower

elements in human nature to the higher. In the application of this

truth, as we saw, Plato went far astray. His highest was not attainable

by every man; and he proposed to enforce the dictates of reason by fraud

and intimidation on those incapable of comprehending their

reasonableness. Thus he was led into that fallacy of the abstract

universal which is common to all socialistic schemes. Christianity takes

the Platonic principle of subordination of lower to higher; but it adds

a new definition to what the higher or rather the highest is; and it

introduces a new appeal for the lowliest to become willing servants and

friends of the highest, instead of mere constrained serfs and slaves.

This highest principle is, of course, Love of the God who loves all His

human children, friendship to the Christ who is the friend of every man.

Consequently there are no humble working-men to be coerced and no

unfortunate women to be maltreated; no deformed and ill-begotten

children to be exposed to early death, as in Plato's exclusive scheme.

To the Christian every child is a child of God, every woman a sister of

Christ, every man a son of the Father, and consequently no one of them

can be disregarded in our plans of fellowship and sympathy and service;

for whoever should dare to leave them out of his own sympathy and love

would thereby exclude himself from the Love of God, likeness to Christ,

and participation in the Christian Spirit.

Thus Christianity gives us all that was wise and just in the Platonic

principle of the subordination of the lower elements in our nature to

the higher; but its higher is so much above the highest dream of Plato

that it guards certain forms of social good at points where, even in

Plato's ideal Republic, they were ruthlessly betrayed.

Christianity finally gathers up into itself whatever is good in the

principle of Aristotle. The Aristotelian principle was the devotion of

life to a worthy end and the selection of efficient means for its

accomplishment. On that general formula it is impossible to improve. "To

this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world," is

Jesus' justification of His mission, when questioned by Pontius Pilate.

"One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching

forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto

the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," is Paul's

magnificent apology for his way of life. The concentration of one's

whole energy upon a worthy end, and the willing acceptance of pains,

privations, and penalties which may be incidental to the effective

prosecution of that end, is the comprehensive formula of every brave

and heroic life, whether it be the life of Jew or Gentile, Greek or

Christian. It is not because it sets forth something different from this

wise and brave prosecution of a noble end that Christianity is an

improvement on the teaching of Aristotle; it is because the end at which

the Christian aims is so much higher, and the fortitude demanded by it

is so much deeper, that Christianity has superseded and deserves to

supersede the noblest teaching of the greatest Greeks. What was the end

which Aristotle set before himself and his disciples? Citizenship in a

city state half free and half enslaved, with leisure for the philosophic

contemplation of the learned few, bought by the constrained toil of the

ignorant, degraded many; the refined companionship of choice congenial

spirits for which it was expected that the multitude would be forever

incapacitated and from which they would be forcibly excluded. Over

against this aristocracy of birth, opportunity, leisure, training, and

intelligence Jesus sets the wide democracy of virtue, service, Love.

Whoever is capable of doing the humblest deed in Love to God and service

to man becomes thereby a member of the kingdom of the choicest spirits

to be found in earth or heaven, and entitled to the same courteous and

delicate consideration which the disciple would show to his Master. The

building up of such a kingdom and the extension of its membership to

include all the nations of the earth and all classes and conditions of

men within its happy fellowship, and in its noble service, is the great

end which Jesus set before himself and which He invites each disciple to

share.

Whatever hardship and toil, whatever pain and persecution, whatever

reviling and contumely, whatever privation and poverty may be necessary

to the accomplishment of this great end the Master himself gladly bore,

and He asks His followers to do the same. In a world full of hypocrisy

and corruption, pride and pretence, avarice and greed, cruelty and lust,

malice and hate, selfishness and sin, there are bound to be many trials

to be borne, much hard work to be done, many blows to be received, much

suffering to be endured. All that is inevitable, whatever view one takes

of life. Christ, however, shows us the way to do and bear these things

cheerfully and bravely as part of His great work of redeeming the world

from the bondage and misery of these powers of evil, and establishing

His kingdom of Love. To keep the clear vision of that great end before

our eyes, to keep the sense of His companionship warm and glowing

within our hearty never to lose the sense of the great liberation and

blessing this kingdom will bring to our downtrodden, maltreated brothers

and sisters in the humbler walks of life, Jesus tells us is the secret

of that sanity and sacrifice which is able to make the yoke of useful

toil easy, and the burden of social service light; and to transform the

cross of suffering into a crown of joy.

Each of these four previous principles is valuable and essential; and

the fact that Christianity is higher than them all, no more warrants the

Christian in dispensing with the lower elements, than the supremacy of

the roof enables it to dispense with the foundation and the intervening

stories. Both for ourselves, and for the world in which we live, we need

to make our ideal of personality broad and comprehensive. We need to

combine in harmonious and graceful unity the happy Epicurean disposition

to take fresh from the hand of nature all the pleasures she innocently

offers; the strong Stoic temper that takes complacently whatever

incidental pains and ills the path of duty may have in store for us; the

occasional Platonic mood which from time to time shall lift us out of

the details of drudgery when they threaten to obscure the larger outlook

of the soul; the shrewd Aristotelian insight which weighs the worth of

transient impulses and passing pleasures in the impartial scales of

intellectual and social ends; and then, not as a thing apart, but rather

as the crown and consummation of all these other elements, the generous

Christian Spirit, which makes the joys and sorrows, the aims and

interests, of others as precious as one's own, and sets the Will of God

which includes the good of all His creatures high above all lesser aims,

as the bond that binds them all together in the unity of a personal life

which is in principle perfect with some faint approximation to the

divine perfection.

The omission of any truth for which the other ancient systems stood

mutilates and impoverishes the Christian view of life. Ascetic

Puritanism, for instance, is Christianity minus the truth taught by

Epicurus. Sentimental liberalism is Christianity without the Stoic note.

Dogmatic orthodoxy is Christianity sadly in need of Plato's search-light

of sincerity. Sacerdotal ecclesiasticism is Christianity that has lost

the Aristotelian disinterestedness of devotion to intellectual and

social ends higher and wider than its own institutional aggrandisement.

The time is ripe for a Christianity which shall have room for all the

innocent joys of sense and flesh, of mind and heart, which Epicurus

taught us to prize aright, yet shall have the Stoic strength to make

whatever sacrifice of them the universal good requires; which shall

purge the heart of pride and pretence by questionings of motive as

searching as those of Plato, and at the same time shall hold life to as

strict accountability for practical usefulness and social progress as

Aristotle's doctrines of the end and the mean require. It is by some

such world-wide, historical approach, and the inclusion of whatever

elements of truth and worth other systems have separately emphasised,

that we shall reach a Christianity that is really catholic.

To take the duties and trials, the practical problems and personal

relationships of life up into the atmosphere of Love, so that what we do

and how we treat people becomes the resultant, not of the outward

situation and our natural appetites and passions, but of the outward

situation and Love within our hearts,--this is what it means to live in

the Christian Spirit; this is the essence of Christianity. Strengthened

character and straightened conduct are sure to follow the maintenance of

this spiritual relationship. Not that it will transform one's hereditary

traits and acquired habits all at once, or save one from many a slip

and flaw. Even the Christian Spirit of Love takes time to work its moral

transformation. The tendency of it, however, is steady and strong in the

right direction; and in due time it will conquer the heart and control

the action of any man who, whether verbally or silently, whether

formally or informally, maintains this conscious relationship to that

Love at the heart of things which most of us call God. Jesus and all who

have shared His spiritual insight tell us that the maintenance of this

relationship, close, warm, and quick, is the pearl of great price, the

one thing needful, the potency of righteousness, the secret of

blessedness; and that there is more hope of a man with a bad record and

many besetting sins who honestly tries to keep this relationship alive

within his breast, than there is of the self-righteous man who boasts

that he can keep himself outwardly immaculate without these inward aids.

Christianity of this simple, vital sort is the world's salvation.

Criticised by enemies and caricatured by friends; fossilised in the

minds of the aged, and forced on the tongues of the immature; mingled

with all manner of exploded superstition, false philosophy, science that

is not so, and history that never happened; obscured under absurd

rites; buried in incredible creeds; professed by hypocrites;

discredited by sentimentalists; evaporated by mystics; stereotyped by

literalists; monopolised by sacerdotalists; it has lived in spite of all

the grave-clothes its unbelieving disciples have tried to wrap around

it, and holds the keys of eternal life.

INDEX

Accident, Stoic explanation of, 83-85.

Adversity, test of Christian character, 276.

Altruism, 10-15, 222.

Ambition, 143-144, 182.

Amputation of morbid reflections, 33.

Apperception, 66-70.

Aristotle--

Limitations of, 212-213.

Summary of, 213-214.

On--

Celibacy, 180-181.

Chastity, 202-204.

Courage, 204-206.

Friendship, 209-212.

Need of instruments, 191-194.

Pleasure, 160-175.

Prudence, 200.

Social nature of man, 176-179.

Temperance, 201.

Test of character, 184.

The end, 179-191.

The mean, 194-198.

The virtues, 199-208.

Wealth, 192.

Wisdom, 199.

Completed in Christianity, 284-287.

Arnold, Matthew, 100, 107.

Avarice, 146-147.

Bacteria, on the whole beneficent, 84-85.

Beatitudes, 265.

Blessedness of Love, 264-277.

Boss, political, evolution of, 150-151.

Carlyle, 160-161, 190.

Celestial Surgeon, 19.

Celibacy, 180-181.

Chastity, 202-204, 229-232.

Cheerfulness, 19.

Christian--

Church government, 240.

Forgiveness, 259-260.

Joy, 275.

Modesty, 265.

Peace, 270-272.

Sacrifice, 254-256, 273-274.

Use and misuse of creeds, 241-243.

Worship, 240.

Interpretation of--

Art, 249-251.

Business, 249-251.

Divorce, 233-235.

Marriage, 228.

Murder, 225-228.

Pleasure, 255.

Politics, 249-251.

Profanity, 235.

Science, 249-251.

Wealth, 248-252.

Christianity--

The completion of--

Aristotle, 284-287.

Epicureanism, 277-279.

Plato, 282-284.

Stoicism, 279-282.

Missionary character of, 262-263.

In need of intellectual honesty, 241-243.

Supremacy of, 277-291.

Christmas Sermon, Stevenson's, 19.

Circumstances alter acts, 129.

Cleanthes' hymn, 97-99.

Clubs, women's, 188-189.

Commandments, Aristotelian, 213.

Cosmopolitanism, Stoic, 94-95.

Courage, 204-206.

Cowardice, 128.

Creeds, 241-243.

Cynicism, 82.

Cynic's prayer, 96-97.

Death, Christian triumph over, 281.

Epicurean disposition of, 7, 8, 45.

Stoic view of, 73, 77.

Whitman on, 18.

Degeneration, Plato's stages of, 143-153.

Democracy, ancient and modern, 122.

Plato on, 147-149.

Depression, 32-33.

Diet, 5, 21-22, 124-126.

Difficulty, Stoic attitude toward, 75-76.

Divorce, logical outcome of Epicureanism, 44.

Christian attitude toward, 233-235.

Education, Plato's scheme of, 131-138.

Egoism, duty of adequate, 10-15.

Electricity, beneficent, 84.

Eliot, George, 46-51.

Emerson, 165-167.

End, not justification of means, 178-179.

Epictetus, 71-77, 81, 84, 87, 88, 89, 96, 97.

Epicurean--

Day, 34-35.

Definition of personality, 37, 51.

Gods, 9, 95.

Heaven, 45.

Man, 40-41.

Woman, 42-44.

Epicureanism, defects of, 36-45, 110, 159, 169-172.

Merits of, 23-25, 52-53.

Parasitic character of, 40, 44-45, 52.

Epicurus, 1-9.

Equality, Plato on, 148.

Evil, Stoic solution of, 87-90.

Eye of good man upon us, 6.

Fighting, a Christian duty, 270-272.

Fitzgerald, 15-16.

Forgiveness, 79, 259-260.

Fortitude, 126-129.

Friendship, 6, 166-167, 209-212.

Gentleness before all morality, 19.

Gilbert, W.S., To the Terrestrial Globe, 108.

Gluttony, 125.

Golden Rule, 223.

Good, the, according to Plato, 130.

Gravitation, beneficent, 83-84.

Gyges' ring, 115-116.

Handles, two to everything, 71.

Happiness and Virtue, 264.

Harmony, effect of, in education, 134.

Health, 10-13, 69.

Henley, To R. T. H. B., 100.

Heretic, definition of, 53-54.

Honesty, intellectual, 241-243.

Horace, Ode on Philosophy of Life, 10.

Humility, 265.

Hurry, 29-30.

Imaginary presence of good man, 6.

Independence of outward goods, 4, 74.

Indifference to external things, 71, 77-78, 81.

Intellectual honesty, 241-243.

Jesus' three ways of teaching, 215-218.

Joy, 275.

Judas meets himself, 79.

Judging others, 260.

Judgment, Epicurean, Stoic, Platonic, and Aristotelian, 183.

Christian, 220-221.

Kant, categorical imperative, 86.

Good-will only real good, 85-86.

Uncompromising modern Stoic, 85.

Law, Jewish, transcended by Christianity, 219-238.

Stoic reverence for, 82-86.

Liberty, excess of, leads to slavery, 149.

Lincoln's letter to Greeley, 198.

Literature in education, 132-135.

Love, Christian, 215-291.

Lucretius, 8-9.

Marcus Aurelius, 77, 96.

Marriage, 228.

Mean, Aristotle's doctrine of the, 194-198.

Meekness, 268.

Melancholy, 33-34.

Mental healing, 30, 66, 70.

Mercy, 269.

Mill, Christian elements in his doctrine, 63.

Definition of happiness, 54.

Distinction in quality of happiness, 55-57.

Incompleteness of doctrine, 277-278.

Inconsistency of, 57-58, 63-65.

On social nature of man, 60-62.

Missionary character of Christianity, 262-263.

Modesty, 265.

Morrow, how meet most pleasantly, 7.

Murder, Christian definition of, 225-228.

Mysticism, 164.

Narrow way, 256.

Natural desires, 3.

Neoplatonism, 161-164.

"New Thought," 162.

Oaths, 235.

Obligation not to be relaxed, 167-168.

Office, good for one, bad for another, 186-187.

Omar Khayyam, 15-17, 38.

Opinion in our power, 74-75, 87.

Optimism, superficiality of modern, 82.

Otherworldliness, 36.

Pain, 2, 4.

Parasitic character of Epicureanism, 40, 44-45.

Patience, 128.

Penitence, 267.

Perfectionism, 92-93.

Persecution, 272-276.

Pessimism, 37-38.

Philosophers, as kings, 138.

Plato--

Defects of, 120-122, 162-168.

Merits of, 159-162, 278.

On--

Athletics, 136.

Cardinal virtues, 123-131.

Democracy, 147-149.

Education, 131-138.

Literature in education, 132-135.

Philosophers as kings, 138.

Riches and rich men, 145-147.

Righteousness, 113-223, 138-142, 153-159.

The good, 130, 137.

Completed in Christianity, 282-284.

Play, 26-28.

Pleasure, 2-4, 20, 39, 30-65, 110-111, 169-175, 255.

Politician, 117-119, 150-152.

Poverty, 4.

Power, things in our, 74.

Prayer, 257-258, 268.

Present, the time to live, 6, 36.

Procrastination, 6-7.

Prudence, 5-6, 20, 251.

Purity, 270.

Reading Gaol, 226.

Religion of Stoics, 95-100.

Reverence, 215.

Rewards and penalties not essential to virtue, 112-115.

Riches, 4-5, 67-69, 89, 145-147, 248-252.

Righteousness, 113-123, 138-142, 153-159.

Romola, 46-51.

Sacrifice, 254-256, 273-274.

Self-regard and excessive self-sacrifice, 10-15.

Seneca's pilot, 77.

Sexual morality, 202-204, 270.

Sin, 93.

Sleep, 22.

Social nature of man, 60-62, 176-179.

Socrates' prayer, 159.

Sorrow, Stoic attitude toward, 76-77.

Spencer, 10-15, 277-278.

Spirit, one of three elements in our nature, 126-128.

Stevenson, 18, 19, 201.

Stoic--

Acceptance of criticism, 103.

Attitude toward sorrow, 76-77, 78, 80, 101-102.

Cosmopolitanism, 94-95.

Doctrine of no degrees in vice, 90-92.

Equanimity, 103-105.

Fortitude, 105-106.

Indifference, 71-81.

Paradoxes, 90-95.

Perfection of the sage, 93-93.

Religion, 95-103.

Resignation, 97, 104-105.

Reverence for law, 82-86.

Solution of problem of evil, 87-90.

Stoicism, coldness of, 107-109.

Completed in Christianity, 279-282.

Defects of, 106-109, 159.

Permanent value of, 101-106, 279-282.

Two principles of, 101.

Temperance, 200-204.

Theatre, 27.

Tito Melema, 46-51.

Tranquillity, 75.

Travel, foreign, the paradise of Epicurean women, 42.

Trial, Stoic endurance of, 75,89-90.

Tyranny, Plato on, 149-153.

Tyrant, most miserable of men, 153.

Unrighteousness the greatest evil, 140-141, 154-157.

Vexation, Stoic formula for, 78.

Virtue, 87-88, 110-116, 199-208.

Wealth, 4-5, 67-69, 145-148, 182, 248-252.

Whitman, Walt, 17, 18.

Wisdom, 129-131, 199.

Work, excessive, 10-15, 23-25.

Worry, folly of, 24, 29-30, 33, 252-253.

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