But this brings round again the question, "What is this Christian thing?"
What are the characteristic and specific elements which, though they
cannot be nakedly abstracted from other elements, yet have to be kept
salient amid everything else? What is the Christianity which is generally
not in the conscious possession of men at the front, and yet receives the
seal of their glorious excellences? What is the Christianity which lies
hidden by traditional disguise and contemporary practice? Where is it to
be found?
X
At any rate, in the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. We are blessed by the
privilege, given to us by the work of realistic historians, of going to
Him as our real Brother. We can study the religion of this Man. It was
rooted first and last in one dominant reality--the Father and His will.
From the first sight given to us of Him as a boy and onwards He was rich
in one thing--He was rich towards God. He looked at the world without
insensibility to its pain, without evasion of its evil--rather with
uniquely sensitive insight into both--as God's world and the scene of
God's sovereign activity. And He expected others to share His view. He
was repeatedly astonished to find those around Him heedless of the air
which He drew in with open mouth, blind to what He saw, deaf to what He
heard, unelated by His joy. He was surprised to find them strangely and
otherwise absorbed, with hearts elsewhere centred than in God. He expected
to find them united to God in a loving loyalty. He found them in a
spiritual adultery.
This unshared absorption of Jesus was not the fruit of adversity nor a
resort in disappointment. He was not driven to it by anxiety. It came
first for Him in peace, in full health, and youth and powers. His was a
house which was built in fine weather upon a rock, so that when the storms
of adversity beat on it, it stood firm. His religion stood the severest
test, namely, the quiet of normal and uneventful days. It was ready for
the strain of a campaign. He emerged out of the peace of Nazareth
prepared for enterprise. For the Father to Him was not only the object of
immobile worship and delight--not only a Name to be hallowed, but was He
Who called Him out to a venture for His kingdom and the doing of His will.
That was how Jesus came among men. He came calling men to a great
adventure, to non-calculating and self-regardless co-operation with the
active energy and will of the Father. How much He knew beforehand of
whither that will would lead Him can never be known. To suppose that He
knew all and saw the end in the beginning and had no steps in the dark to
take, would be to deny to Him the essential element of human faith and
trust, which is that it has to step out beyond the light of knowledge into
the darkness of uncertainty. On the other hand, to suppose that He knew
nothing, is to deny to Him that humanly heroic resolution with which He
set His face to tread the path which led Him to suffering. In our
ignorance let us grip this certainty, that for Him the one sufficient
thing was that the Father knew all things--the times and the seasons, the
cup to be drunk, the will to be done and the final outcome. That was
enough for Him and must be enough for us.
This religion of Jesus then is that to which all can turn, as their
hearts are full beyond expression with proud and thankful sorrow for the
great company of those who have trustfully given themselves to death for
others. Jesus is the Word, that is, the full and crowning expression of
that which is hardly articulate in others. His open-eyed self-consecration
to do the will of the Father seals and ratifies their confused yet
steadfast devotion. He is first among many brethren, giving full
utterance to their dumb trustfulness. In a world of mixed and partial
motives He is the absolute and unmitigated lover of God--loving with all
His mind and soul and strength, freely hazarding all upon the Father.