I
This is my ultimate and determining test of right—“What, in the
circumstances, would Jesus have done?”—the Jesus of the New Testament,
not the Jesus 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, next to Buddha, is 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 moral lightning 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 attestation of his marvelous gift:
adoration is merely a primitive form of approval.
It seems a pity that this wonderful man had not a longer life under
more complex conditions—conditions more nearly resembling those of
the modern world and of the future. One would like to be able to see,
through the eyes of his biographers, his genius applied to more and
other 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! Doubt spreads
her bat-like wings and is away; the sun of truth springs into the sky,
splendoring the path of right and masking that of wrong with a deeper
shade.