Jesus said: “Follow me.” But we decline; we had rather not. We do not wish
to follow a person until we know where he is going.
If by following Jesus is meant living as he lived, doing as he did,
believing as he believed, teaching as he taught and dying as he died, we
are not in it. We shall have to say: Thank you, we guess not. We prefer to
go some other way.
We do not see any necessity of following anybody very far, if at all. This
following business is played out. Those who profess to follow Jesus don’t
do it in the daytime.
But we can go a little farther and say that we do not think Jesus was a
man that a self-respecting person would like to follow. He does not
inspire us with any particular admiration. The man who could let his lips
forget to speak kindly of his mother cannot have our admiration. The man
who came not to bring peace, but a sword, to the world cannot have our
admiration. The man who said: “believe and be saved, believe not and be
damned,” cannot have our admiration.
If we follow anybody, it is going to be a person that commands our
respect, whose greatness and goodness compel our admiration, and who did
not try to win men by tricks. We regard Jesus, as he is painted in the
four gospels, as a character below the ideal of this age, a character
that, to imitate, would dwarf the noblest man. If Jesus were alive it
would be his duty to-day to follow others, rather than to command others
to follow him.