So convinced was Jesus that love alone was the master law of life, that
He based His own life wholly on His conviction, cheerfully accepting
all the risks which were implied. He was perfectly aware of the
consequences to Himself and His reputation when He made Himself the
friend of publicans and sinners. These consequences He ignored, making
Himself of no reputation, that He might uplift by His love those who
needed His love the most. Under the constant contradiction of those
who mistook His spirit, and even libelled His character, He manifested
neither bitterness nor resentment. He suffered injuries without
retaliation, and went so far as to denounce all forms of retaliation as
a wasteful expenditure of spirit, wrong in themselves, and attaining no
end but the worse injury of those who employed them. He might easily
have used the miraculous power which He possessed for His own defense,
and for the confusion of His enemies. Had He been selfishly ambitious,
He might have organized a party so strong, that it would have become an
irresistible force, which would have shattered the old order whose
evils He denounced, and have made Him the dictator of a new order,
based on the ideals in which He believed. He did none of these things,
not through lassitude of spirit or failure to perceive their possible
issues, but simply because these were not the things to do. In His
judgment the only abiding kingdom belonged to the meek. He who
suffered injustice with patience would prove the ultimate conqueror.
There was an irresistible might in love and meekness against which the
people raged in vain. Love was a working and practicable law of life;
in the long issue of things it was the only law that justified itself.
Was Jesus right in these conclusions? Can human life proceed along the
lines He indicated? Certainly it has never yet done so. The woman who
is a sinner finds no Jesus to absolve her utterly among the priests of
His religion. The resentment of injury is regarded even by good men as
entirely justified when injury to the person involves the rights of
social order. Force is regarded by persons of the highest amiability
as necessary to the defense of society, and the Church applauds the
punishments inflicted by the civil magistrate, and even hastens to
bless the banners and baptize the deadly weapons of the warrior.
Meekness, which endures injury without resentment, is regarded as the
sign of a servile and cowardly spirit, and is the subject of ridicule
and contempt. No Christian society exists in which a Peter would be
freely pardoned his offense; the best that could be hoped would be the
infliction of humiliating penance, and a reluctant reinstatement in the
apostleship after a long period of bitter ostracism. Yet who would
venture to challenge the conduct of Jesus in these respects? Who would
not find his opinion of Jesus tragically lowered, and his adoration
practically destroyed, if some new and more authentic Gospel were
discovered by which we learned that Jesus smote with leprosy the
Pharisees who resisted Him, as Elisha smote Gehazi: that He sanctioned
the stoning of the adultress taken in the act of sin; or that He
branded Simon Peter for his perfidy, and drove him out forever from the
apostleship he had disgraced, denouncing him as a son of hell and a
predestined citizen of the outer darkness? Could such acts be
attributed to Jesus, though each act in itself would precisely
represent the common temper of Christian courts and so-called Christian
men under circumstances of similar and equal provocation, the worship
of Jesus would at once cease throughout the world.
The dilemma is truly tragic. A Jesus who should be proved to have
lived according to the conventions we respect, who did not rise above
conventional ideals of either love or justice, who approved force, and
resented injuries, who repudiated the friend who had betrayed Him, who
shunned the contact of persons whose touch dishonoured Him--such a
Jesus would cease to be our Jesus. He would no longer attract us, He
would not touch our hearts, He would barely command our respect.
Astounding fact! Those very things in the life of Jesus which we
disapprove are the things for which we love Him; and those tempers
which we ourselves disallow are in Him the sources of our adoration.
We are bound therefore to ask, can that method of conduct be wrong
which has won this triumphant issue? It may be ironically true that we
love Him most for those very acts of His which we are least likely to
imitate; but is not this our tacit testimony to the essential rightness
of these acts? In our better, or our softer moments; or in those
moments when we are most conscious of the cruelty of life, and most in
need of love, do we not feel, as the life of Jesus grows before us,
that this is how life should be lived? Dare we question that a world
governed wholly by the ideals of Jesus would be a far happier world
than this we know? Love, as the one necessary law of life, clearly
stands justified in Jesus, since it has produced the most adorable
character in history. If we admit this, it is foolish to speak of
Christ's ideals as impracticable. What we approve in another's life we
cannot wholly repudiate in our own. Let it be added also, that a life
lived by another is always a life that others can live. We may seek to
cover our failure, and the world's failure, to reproduce the life of
Jesus, by the plea of incompetence, but against our plea Jesus records
His verdict, "_Behold I have left you an example_."
From that verdict there is no appeal.