This is my ultimate and determining test of right--"What, in the
circumstances, would Christ have done?"--the Christ of the New
Testament, not the Christ of the commentators, theologians, priests
and parsons. The test is perhaps not infallible, but it is exceedingly
simple and gives as good practical results as any. I am not a Christian,
but so far as I know, the best and truest and sweetest character in
literature, is next to Buddha, Jesus Christ. He taught nothing new in
goodness, for all goodness was ages old before he came; but with an
almost infallible intuition he applied to life and conduct the entire
law of righteousness. He was a lightning moral calculator: to his
luminous intelligence the statement of the problem carried the
solution--he could not hesitate, he seldom erred. That upon his deeds
and words was founded a religion which in a debased form persists and
even spreads to this day is mere attestation of his marvelous gift:
adoration is a primitive mode of recognition.
It seems a pity that this wonderful man had not a longer life under more
complex conditions--conditions more nearly identical with those of the
modern world and the future. One would like to be able to see, through
the eyes of his biographers, his genius applied to more and more
difficult questions. Yet one can hardly go wrong in inference of his
thought and act. In many of the complexities and entanglements of
modern affairs it is no easy matter to find an answer off-hand to the
question,"What is it right to do?" But put it in another way: "What
would Christ have done?" and lo! there is light. I Doubt spreads her
bat-like wings and is away; the sun of truth springs into the sky,
splendoring the path of right and marking that of error with a deeper
shade.