HIS GRASP UPON MANKIND.
So far we have been studying the character and work of Jesus as he
is presented in the evangelists, just as we might study any other
character of that period. We have not yet considered Jesus as he now
affects the world--a presence and force of our own times.
When the scientists proved the indestructibility of matter, when they
discovered the doctrine of the conservation of energy, showing us how
the coal measures, that warm millions of homes and drive the machinery
of land and sea, are but stored-up sunbeams of untold ages gone, they
showed us that through all her wonderful changes Nature loses none
of her substance. In this splendid formulation of natural law the
scientists have done a secondary but more important service; they have
given us a symbol from things material, an illustration of a law of the
higher sphere. Nothing is ever lost in the spiritual world.
A thought with life and truth in it, once set going, can no more
be lost than a drop of water falling on the fields can be lost.
Professor Harrison, of England, is right in his doctrine of posthumous
immortality, as far as it goes. He sees part of a truth and states it
well. Whatever force there may be in any human life abides in human
life. We may not be able to trace it, as we may not trace the identical
dew-drop that glittered on the grass this morning and that, exhaled
by the rising sun, has now disappeared from our view, but not from
existence.
It may well be that the influences that have conspired in shaping
our lives--in making us what we are to-day--have in some way come to
us from many thousands of lives. In a true sense Moses, David, Paul,
Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Luther, Calvin,
Wesley, with many others--our parents and teachers above all--all
these, and, it may be, myriads more unnamable, live in us to-day. This
is what Froude meant when he wrote of Martin Luther, “No man of our
times is what he would have been but for Luther.” This is true because
Luther’s life so enters into the influences of our times that no man
ever brought into relations with him could escape that influence.
And few have escaped it; none of the European nations, none of the
nations that have been brought into any sort of relations with
Christianity and the civilizations that have grown out of it; few,
if any, of what we call heathen nations; for the influences of
Luther’s life and doctrines are in the missionary movement of our
times, that now promises to do for these nations what the coming of
Christianity did for Europe, Eastern Asia, and Northern Africa in the
first centuries of our era--so changed them as to make a new epoch in
history; we might say, a new world.
What is true of such a man as Luther is true in a measure--less
extensive it may be, less real it cannot be--of every life that has
gone before us, and that has, in any way, entered into our own.
It would be easy to offer illustrations. Consider Francis
Bacon--perhaps Roger Bacon still more--in relation to the scientific
methods of our times. Think of Shakespeare, not in poetry only, but
in all literature; or of Kant, Spinoza, Locke, in philosophy; Calvin,
Wesley, and the rest, in theology and moral reforms. Or think of the
artists and inventors, the great soldiers and statesmen. You may easily
make out a very long list of names of human lives that, going before
us, now live in us. The list will show names that stand for diverse and
antagonistic elements; but all these enter into our lives, just as, to
return to our illustration from the world of waters, the water pure
from the clouds, sparkling in mountain springs, foul and reeking from
swamps and all manner of ugly places, enters, it well may be, into the
constituent elements of the dew-drop that reflects the sun upon each
grass-blade in the fields.
It is nothing peculiar to the life of Jesus of Nazareth that his
influence should abide in human history. Every human life, the humblest
and unworthiest, so abides. But the influence of Jesus is different
from that of other men. I am not now speaking of degree, but kind. As
his method of thinking, of teaching; as the work he proposed to do
and as the plans he adopted difference him from mere men, so does the
history of the influence that flowed out from him into life and so
made modern civilization, so does the character of his influence now
difference him from men.
It would carry us too far for the design of these discussions to enter
now into the subject of the relation of Jesus to the history of his
era. Our calendar intimates the extent and power of that influence;
we count time from his birth; this is 1889, A. D. That influence has
entered into whatever has made the world of our times. The history of
this influence is the history of the Christian era.
We will consider the influence of Jesus, as it may be a matter of
observation and consciousness.
Consider the power of the teachings of Jesus upon the human conscience.
This is to me a growing wonder. Other men’s words stimulate the
conscience to a degree, but only when they echo his or approach harmony
with them. This is so strangely true that no words of any teacher stir
the conscience--except to protest--that antagonize and contradict
Jesus. There is no risk of exaggeration or dogmatism here; it is
perfectly safe and perfectly fair to say no doctrine of God or man,
of rights and wrongs, that repudiates or denies what Jesus teaches,
has any power over the human conscience. Other words and doctrines may
quicken the intellect and dominate it; may excite the imagination and
stir the emotions; but if they are contrary to his doctrines and his
life they have no grasp upon the moral side of man.
It is easy to make the experiment and to make it conclusively. Read
books that contradict his doctrines--that seek to overthrow them. If
you read with candor I am not afraid for you to read what his fiercest
enemies say. Take Voltaire, where he ridicules the Bible; Paine,
in that very misnamed pamphlet, _The Age of Reason_; Hume, in his
speculations concerning providence, miracles, inspiration, and the
whole agnostic literature of our day. These writings do not take hold
upon the conscience except as they may weaken or paralyze it; they do
not strengthen any purpose to do right, confirm any sense of personal
obligation, invigorate any will for right doing. Make the experiment
with any words of men that contradict or repudiate Jesus, the lightest
and weightiest, the silliest and subtlest; mere platform declamations
or the sober scientific worship of materialism that knows no
spirit--man, angel, or God. Do any of them stir our sense of obligation
to high duty? Do any of them make our perception of duty clearer? Our
love of virtue stronger? Our hatred of evil intenser? All who have made
the experiment may answer for themselves.
I do not say that only the words of Jesus take hold upon the
conscience; this would not be true. There are passages in Seneca, in
Epictetus, in Socrates, in Plato, in Confucius, in the words of many
ancient sages and modern teachers, that do stir the conscience. Your
Shakespeare will furnish many illustrations. So will George Eliot,
Hawthorne, and very many other writers. But these things I do say with
perfect assurance:
1. No words or teachings of any writer or teacher, of any age, that
antagonize or repudiate the words of Jesus have power over the
conscience.
2. Those words and teachings of men who never knew Jesus--as Socrates,
Confucius, and other such men--that most affect the conscience are
those words and teachings of theirs most in harmony with the doctrines
and character of Jesus. All light is good, but that which is nearest
sunlight is best.
3. The words and teachings of those who do know Jesus, that most
powerfully affect the conscience, are those that most perfectly echo
his words.
Furthermore, this is true: The words and teachings of Jesus not only
stir the conscience as no others do; they illuminate the conscience.
Others may affect the sensibility of conscience to a degree, but leave
it in the shadows as to the very rights and wrongs of things. The
words of Jesus--once their meaning is understood--as they apply to any
concrete case of rights and wrongs, not only awaken the sensibility
of conscience so that the feeling of obligation to do right and avoid
wrong is most pronounced and unmistakable, but this also is true: the
light which his words pour on the question in consideration makes
transparent what the right thing is and what the wrong thing is.
There is something here that defies analysis, something that will not
be held in logic forms. Take any doctrine Jesus taught and exemplified.
It may be about truth, honesty, chastity, charity. Read it, see what
it means, apply it to your case, and conscience says, “Amen” to it,
and upon the instant. Conscience receives it as the reason receives
an axiom. Given the facts, you need only to apply his tests, and that
instant you not only suppose, not only think, you know what is your
right and your wrong in the case. If there were no other reason, herein
there is reason enough to follow the Man of Galilee wherever he leads.
I urge upon you for your use in the tests that await you, as a method
of finding out rights and wrongs and determining duty, what I have
tried under many conditions of life and action; a most simple principle
of action--one that has never for one moment failed me or left me
in doubt. It is worth more than all reasonings, than all books of
casuistry, than all advices of friends; nay, it is better than mere
praying as if for some new light or other revelation than that which
has come to enlighten every man that cometh into the world. It is to
ask, “What does Jesus teach here? What would he say if he were to
speak? What would he do if this were his case?”
Blunders of judgment, many and grievous; failures in living up to
the light that the Master gives, more grievous than any blunders of
judgment--these things I confess to sorrowfully and with bitter shame;
but for the truth’s sake, my conscience’ sake, and my Lord’s sake,
this much I must say, and I cannot say less: never have I asked,
“What would he do?” but that the light has shined resplendent and
all-revealing, and the right and the wrong stood out clear, sharp, as
when electric lights shine about us, and I knew what I ought or ought
not to do.
At this point we may recur a moment to what was, in part, considered
heretofore: the fullness, the completeness of his teachings difference
him from all others.
There is not in any other teacher such statement of principles that
you cannot find outside their teachings one single ethical principle
that they have not taught. Other teachers give us many principles of
ethics; does any of them give all? Jesus does, though he wrote no book
and elaborated no system; though we have but few of his words recorded.
What I ask is this: Is there in any teacher of any nation one single
principle of rights and wrongs that the suffrage of the race could
approve, that Jesus does not teach? Is there one single principle of
Jesus as to rights and wrongs that the suffrage of good men can condemn
as false? Men may, indeed, reject his teachings, and oppose them with
bitterest hate, but which one of them--the least or the greatest--can
they show to be immoral, wrong?
As all colors are potentially contained in the pure white light, and
as the composition of all colors produces the pure white light, so the
teachings of Jesus contain in principle all the forms of ethical truth
that were ever in the minds of men. But here the analogy fails. All the
ethical truth that all others have taught when brought together fails
to make the sum total of his teachings; some colors are lacking in
them; together they do not make the pure white light of the gospels.