“_A great epoch was exhausted, and passing away to give place to
another, the first utterances of which had already been heard in the
north, and which awaited but the_ INITIATOR _to be revealed_.”
“_He came. The soul the most full of love, the most sacredly virtuous,
the most deeply inspired by God and the future, that men have yet
seen on earth; Jesus. He bent over the corpse of the dead world, and
whispered a word of faith. Over the clay that had lost all of man but
the movement and the form, He uttered words until then unknown_, LOVE,
SACRIFICE, A HEAVENLY ORIGIN. _And the dead arose. A new life circulated
through the clay, which philosophy had tried in vain to re-animate.
From that corpse arose the Christian world, the world of liberty and
equality. From that clay arose the true Man, the image of God, the
precursor of Humanity._”--MAZZINI.
♦The Story of Israel♦
“Suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe” is the sum of the history of
the isolated, unsuccessful,[2] little Semitic nation of Israel.
[2] Unsuccessful, that is to say, as a nation.
But she has been made great--against her will indeed--by the fact that
she sheltered a unique succession of patriotic men who were impelled
by the miserable little ideals and ambitions of their nation, to raise
their voices in expostulation, or solemn warning, or hot indignation,
each according to his time and his manner.
♦The Seers♦
There is nothing in the national character or circumstances to warrant
it, but in the message spoken by these men, each in his turn, there was
that power and significance, that forward look, which we describe as
“vision.” In contradistinction to the Aryan SEEKERS, these were SEERS.
♦God♦
They had found God; this was their secret. They believed that God had
spoken, and must yet speak to man more clearly still: in the hope of
hearing that voice of God they lived, and that men might be prepared to
recognize that Voice when it should speak, they toiled and suffered.
The case of the human race was, in their thinking, bad. It was not
that man had suffered, but that he had sinned, this was the tragedy.
For if the relation of man to the Unseen were a personal relation,
then suffering became at once the effect of a moral cause. “Ah, sinful
nation.... They have forsaken the Lord.” Therefore was “the whole head
sick, and the whole heart faint.”
♦The Hope♦
The word of the Seer was nevertheless a word of hope. Hope was indeed
their note. The God of their vision was a God Who must, by His very
nature, right all wrong, end all evil, and speak the word which must
reveal the way back to Himself as the only true rest of man.
The Hope grew stronger in all religious souls as its fulfilment seemed
to be delayed, and every earnest young mother dreamed that the child she
bore might be the Bearer of that final message from Jehovah.
* * * * *
♦The Silence♦
Four hundred years of silence might well have ended the Hope, but
it lived on: a sordid, national Hope in the people at large, a high
world-wide Hope in the hearts of the silent waiting few, who studied the
writings of those old Seers, and looked out upon the great world in its
darkness; and believed that not only should the Light come, but that
it should be the true glory of Israel to enlighten through It all the
nations.
* * * * *
♦Jesus♦
“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Many such questions must
have been asked, even by those of the purest spiritual insight during
the brief working life of Jesus. There was no human ideal of dignity or
greatness which He did not ruthlessly deny.
♦Consecration♦
He gave Himself in solemn sacrament to His service, but used as the
symbol of consecration a ceremony which usually typified repentance from
sin on the part of man, remission on the side of God.
♦Method of Service♦
His human gifts and powers were unmeasurable, and He brought them to His
life-work in all their perfection; but during a season of sore strain
in solitary meditation, He set aside deliberately each well-tried human
method which would have brought those powers and gifts into service; and
chose to work out His purpose in a way startlingly new to human history,
to the last inexplicable even to those who most deeply trusted Him.
It was a small matter that He rejected all such aids to the personal
life as would have won for Him the allegiance of the People, and that
He would have none of the glory and dignity which hedges the king idea,
and which upholds in that office even men of weakest calibre. But it is
truly strange to find that His was not, in any way known to history,
a _religious_ life; there was no apartness about it, no mystery, no
sanctity.
He chose the simple, familiar open air life of the people. Until the
pressure of work became too heavy, He maintained His family, He made
friendships, He was the most brotherly of men. He entered keenly into
every department of the life of the remote little country-side as it
presented itself to Him; He was simply a Man among men.
His brothers were staggered by the waste of energy and power, and we
cannot wonder at their remonstrance: “If Thou do these things, show
Thyself openly.” For His method certainly involved the greatest amount
of labour for the least visible return. He travelled on foot up and
down the country roads, resting in the quietest spots, healing and
aiding the poorest and sometimes the least deserving of the country
folk. He taught also, wasting the loveliest of His exquisite word
pictures upon groups of unappreciative fishermen and villagers.
♦The Cross♦
And in the end, as if to crown fittingly a career so utterly at variance
with all previous conceptions of greatness, He set His face steadfastly
to go to the capital, where were for Him nothing save cruel torture and
shameful death--the punishment inflicted by men upon those who dare to
subvert, and in so doing to condemn their own methods.
He died a young man, in defence of His chosen life; and to all
appearance the strange little movement died with Him that day; for He
had few followers, only one or two of whom were men of any promise.
♦Character♦
♦Motive♦
♦Selflessness♦
♦Calm♦
“My Father worketh, and I work.” “My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent Me, and to finish HIS work.” Such words as these, so often upon His
lips, reveal to us the secret of the life of Jesus. The Father-thought
filled His heart to the exclusion of all memory or thought of His own
great Name and Power. Jesus had, so to speak, no Self; His centre was
God; with Whose will and purpose He found Himself in perfect accord.
He was the first human being who was unconscious of the need of
at-one-ment; He was, from the beginning, at one with His own nature,
because at one with the Centre of the universe. There was no conflict
in His life. “Christ’s life outwardly,” writes Professor Drummond, “was
one of the most troubled lives ever lived. Tempest and tumult, tumult
and tempest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the worn body
was laid in the grave. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The
great calm was always there. At any moment you might have gone to Him,
and found rest.... There was nothing the world could do to Him that
could ruffle the surface of His spirit. Such living as mere living is
altogether unique. It is only when we see what it was in Him that we
know what the word rest means. It is the mind at leisure from itself; it
is the perfect poise of the will; the absolute adjustment of the inward
man to the stress of all outward things; the preparedness against every
emergency; the stability of assured convictions; the eternal calm of an
invulnerable faith; the repose of a heart set deep in God.”
* * * * *
St. John, writing long years after Jesus’ bodily presence had been
withdrawn, uses two words of Him, which better than any other serve to
tell His character. He was “_full of grace and truth_.” Human qualities
both, though rare; never indeed found in fulness and in balanced
perfection even in the noblest human character; nevertheless, humanity
is brought very near to the Unseen when we read that these qualities
represent to the most seeing of all the Seers, “the glory of the only
begotten of the Father.”
♦Grace♦
“Grace,” essence of all gentle, sympathetic, forth-going, self-effacing,
womanly virtues.
♦Truth♦
“Truth,” essence of all strong, courageous, strenuous, manly virtues.
It has been as difficult to grasp the union of truth and grace in Jesus,
as it has been to receive the divine and the human. The Mediæval Church,
feeling after the “grace,” and failing to recognize it in Him, elevated
the virgin mother to symbolize the character. The great artists--with
truer insight--struggled to express the union on canvas, but the task
was beyond even their art; the “Christs” have been, without exception,
far short of the ideal. Grace may be womanly, it is never effeminate.
That “perfect poise,” whether of the divine and the human, or of the
grace and the truth, alone explains, and alone represents to the
Christian, the only Son of the Father, Jesus Christ our Lord.