Fatherhood of God and the Divine Sonship of man. A better righteousness
than that of the scribes and the Pharisees--not a slavish adherence to
the Law, with its supposed profits and rewards. Get the motive of life
right. Get the heart right and these things become of secondary
importance. As his supreme revelation was the personal fatherhood of
God, from which follows necessarily the Divine sonship of man, so there
was a corollary to it, a portion of it almost as essential as the main
truth itself--namely, that all men are brothers. Not merely those of one
little group, or tribe or nation; not merely those of any one little set
or religion; not merely those of this or that little compartment that we
build and arbitrarily separate ourselves into--but all men the world
over. If this is not true then Jesus' supreme revelation is false.
In connection with this great truth he brought a new standard by virtue
of the logic of his revelation. "Ye have heard that it hath been said,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you,
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven."
Struggling for recognition all through the Old Testament scriptures, and
breaking through partially at least in places, was this conception which
is at the very basis of all man's relationship with man.
And finally through this supreme Master of life it did break through,
with a wonderful newborn consciousness.
The old dispensation, with its legal formalism, was an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth. The new dispensation was--"But I say unto you,
Love your enemies." Enmity begets enmity. It is as senseless as it is
godless. It runs through all his teachings and through every act of his
life. If fundamentally you do not have the love of your fellow-man in
your hearts, you do not have the love of God in your hearts and you
cannot have.
And that this fundamental revelation be not misunderstood, near the
close of his life he said: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye
love one another." No man could be, can be his disciple, his follower,
and fail in the realisation of this fundamental teaching. "By this shall
all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." And
going back again to his ministry we find that it breathes through every
teaching that he gave. It breathes through that short memorable prayer
which we call the Lord's Prayer. It permeates the Sermon on the Mount.
It is the very essence of his summing up of this discourse. We call it
the Golden Rule. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them." Not that it was original with Jesus; other teachers
sent of God had given it before to other peoples--God's other children;
but he gave it a new emphasis, a new setting. _He made it fundamental._
So a man who is gripped at all vitally by Jesus' teaching of the
personal fatherhood of God, and the personal brotherhood of man, simply
can't help but make this the basic rule of his life--and moreover find
joy in so making it. A man who really comprehends this fundamental
teaching can't be crafty, sneaking, dishonest, or dishonourable, in his
business, or in any phase of his personal life. He never hogs the
penny--in other words, he never seeks to gain his own advantage to the
disadvantage of another. He may be long-headed; he may be able to size
up and seize conditions; but he seeks no advantage for himself to the
detriment of his fellow, to the detriment of his community, or to the
detriment of his extended community, the nation or the world. He is
thoughtful, considerate, open, frank; and, moreover, he finds great joy
in being so.
I have never seen any finer statement of the essential reasonableness,
therefore, of the essential truth of the value and the practice of the
Golden Rule than that given by a modern disciple of Jesus who left us
but a few years ago. A poor boy, a successful business man, straight,
square, considerate in all his dealings,--a power among his fellows, a
lamp indeed to the feet of many--was Samuel Milton Jones, thrice mayor
of Toledo. Simple, unassuming, friend of all, rich as well as poor, poor
as well as rich, friend of the outcast, the thief, the criminal, looking
beyond the exterior, he saw as did Jesus, the human soul always intact,
though it erred in its judgment--as we all err in our judgments, each in
his own peculiar way--and that by forbearance, consideration, and love,
it could be touched and the life redeemed--redeemed to happiness, to
usefulness, to service. Notwithstanding his many duties, business and
political, he thought much and he loved to talk of the things we are
considering.
His brief statement of the fundamental reasons and the comprehensive
results of the actual practice of the Golden Rule are shot through with
such fine insight, such abounding comprehension, that they deserve to
become immortal. He was my friend and I would not see them die. I
reproduce them here: "As I view it, the Golden Rule is the supreme law
of life. It may be paraphrased this way: As you do unto others, others
will do unto you. What I give, I get. If I love you, really and truly
and actively love you, you are as sure to love me in return as the earth
is sure to be warmed by the rays of the midsummer sun. If I hate you,
ill-treat you and abuse you, I am equally certain to arouse the same
kind of antagonism towards me, unless the Divine nature is so developed
that it is dominant in you, and you have learned to love your enemies.
What can be plainer? The Golden Rule is the law of action and reaction
in the field of morals, just as definite, just as certain here as the
law is definite and certain in the domain of physics.
"I think the confusion with respect to the Golden Rule arises from the
different conceptions that we have of the word love. I use the word
love as synonymous with reason, and when I speak of doing the loving
thing, I mean the reasonable thing. When I speak of dealing with my
fellow-men in an unreasonable way, I mean an unloving way. The terms are
interchangeable, absolutely. The reason why we know so little about the
Golden Rule is because we have not practised it."
Was Mayor Jones a Christian? you ask. He was a follower of the
Christ--for it was he who said: "By this shall all men know ye are my
disciples, if ye love one another." Was he a member of a religious
organisation? I don't know--it never occurred to me to ask him. Thinking
men the world over are making a sharp distinction in these days between
organised Christianity and essential Christianity.
The element of fear has lost its hold on the part of thinking men and
women. It never opened up, it never can open up the springs of
righteousness in the human heart. He believed and he acted upon the
belief that it was the spirit that the Master taught--that God is a God
of love and that He reveals Himself in terms of love to those who really
know Him. He believed that there is joy to the human soul in following
this inner guide and translating its impulses into deeds of love and
service for one's fellow-men. If we could, if we would thus translate
religion into terms of life, it would become a source of perennial joy.
It is not with observation, said Jesus, that the supreme thing that he
taught--the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of God--will come. Do not
seek it at some other place, some other time. It is within, and if
within it will show forth. Make no mistake about that,--it will show
forth. It touches and it sensitises the inner springs of action in a
man's or a woman's life. When a man realises his Divine sonship that
Jesus taught, he will act as a son of God. Out of the heart spring
either good or evil actions. Self-love, me, mine; let me get all I can
for myself, or, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself--the Divine law
of service, of mutuality--the highest source of ethics.
You can trust any man whose heart is right. He will be straight, clean,
reliable. His word will be as good as his bond. Personally you can't
trust a man who is brought into any line of action, or into any
institution through fear. The sore is there, liable to break out in
corruption at any time. This opening up of the springs of the inner life
frees him also from the letter of the law, which after all consists of
the traditions of men, and makes him subject to that higher moral guide
within. How clearly Jesus illustrated this in his conversations
regarding the observance of the Sabbath--how the Sabbath was made for
man and not man for the Sabbath, and how it was always right to do good
on the Sabbath.
I remember some years ago a friend in my native state telling me the
following interesting incident in connection with his grandmother. It
was in northern Illinois--it might have been in New England. "As a boy,"
said he, "I used to visit her on the farm. She loved her cup of coffee
for breakfast. Ordinarily she would grind it fresh each morning in the
kitchen; but when Sunday morning came she would take her coffee-grinder
down into the far end of the cellar, where no one could see and no one
could hear her grind it." He could never quite tell, he said, whether it
was to ease her own conscience, or in order to give no offence to her
neighbours.
Now, I can imagine Jesus passing by and stopping at that home--it was a
home known for its native kindly hospitality--and meeting her just as
she was coming out of the cellar with her coffee-grinder--his quick and
unerring perception enabling him to take in the whole situation at once,
and saying: "In the name of the Father, Aunt Susan, what were you doing
with your coffee-grinder down in the cellar on this beautiful Sabbath
morning? You like your cup of coffee, and I also like the coffee that
you make; thank God that you have it, and thank God that you have the
good health to enjoy it. We can give praise to the Father through eating
and drinking, if, as in everything else, these are done in moderation
and we give value received for all the things that we use. So don't take
your grinder down into the cellar on the Sabbath morning; but grind your
coffee up here in God's sunshine, with a thankful heart that you have it
to grind."
And I can imagine him, as he passes out of the little front gate,
turning and waving another good-bye and saying: "When I come again, Aunt
Susan, be it week-day or Sabbath, remember God's sunshine and keep out
of the cellar." And turning again in a half-joking manner: "And when you
take those baskets of eggs to town, Aunt Susan, don't pick out too many
of the large ones to keep for yourself, but take them just as the hens
lay them. And, Aunt Susan, give good weight in your butter. This will do
your soul infinitely more good than the few extra coins you would gain
by too carefully calculating"--Aunt Susan with all her lovable
qualities, had a little tendency to close dealing.
I think we do incalculable harm by separating Jesus so completely from
the more homely, commonplace affairs of our daily lives. If we had a
more adequate account of his discourses with the people and his
associations with the people, we would perhaps find that he was not,
after all, so busy in saving the world that he didn't have time for the
simple, homely enjoyments and affairs of the everyday life. The little
glimpses that we have of him along these lines indicate to me that he
had. Unless we get his truths right into this phase of our lives, the
chances are that we will miss them entirely.
And I think that with all his earnestness, Jesus must have had an
unusually keen sense of humour. With his unusual perceptions and his
unusual powers in reading and in understanding human nature, it could
not be otherwise. That he had a keen sense for beauty; that he saw it,
that he valued it, that he loved it, especially beauty in all nature,
many of his discourses so abundantly prove. Religion with him was not
divorced from life. It was the power that permeated every thought and
every act of the daily life.
VIII
IF WE SEEK THE ESSENCE OF HIS REVELATION, AND THE PURPOSE OF HIS LIFE
If we would seek the essence of Jesus' revelation, attested both by his
words and his life, it was to bring a knowledge of the ineffable love of
God to man, and by revealing this, to instil in the minds and hearts of
men love for God, and a knowledge of and following of the ways of God.
It was also then to bring a new emphasis of the Divine law of love--the
love of man for man. Combined, it results, so to speak, in raising men
to a higher power, to a higher life,--as individuals, as groups, as one
great world group.
It is a newly sensitised attitude of mind and heart that he brought and
that he endeavoured to reveal in all its matchless beauty--a following
not of the traditions of men, but fidelity to one's God, whereby the
Divine rule in the mind and heart assumes supremacy and, as must
inevitably follow, fidelity to one's fellow-men. These are the
essentials of Jesus' revelation--the fundamental forces in his own
life. His every teaching, his every act, comes back to them. I believe
also that all efforts to mystify the minds of men and women by later
theories _about_ him are contrary to his own expressed teaching, and in
exact degree that they would seek to substitute other things for these
fundamentals.
I call them fundamentals. I call them his fundamentals. What right have
I to call them his fundamentals?
An occasion arose one day in the form of a direct question for Jesus to
state in well-considered and clear-cut terms the essence, the gist, of
his entire teachings--therefore, by his authority, the fundamentals of
essential Christianity. In the midst of one of the groups that he was
speaking to one day, we are told that a certain lawyer arose--an
interpreter of, an authority on, the existing ecclesiastical law. The
reference to him is so brief, unfortunately, that we cannot tell whether
his question was to confound Jesus, as was so often the case, or whether
being a liberal Jew he longed for an honest and truly helpful answer.
From Jesus' remark to him, after his primary answer, we are justified in
believing it was the latter.
His question was: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?"
Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first
and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and
the prophets."
Here we have a wonderful statement from a wonderful source. So clear-cut
is it that any wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot mistake it.
Especially is this true when we couple with it this other statement of
Jesus: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." We must never forget that Jesus
was born, lived, and died a Jew, the same as all of his disciples--and
they never regarded themselves in any other light. The _basis_ of his
religion was the religion of Israel. It was this he taught and
expounded, now in the synagogue, now out on the hillside and by the
lake-side. It was this that he tried to teach in its purity, that he
tried to free from the hedges that ecclesiasticism had built around it,
this that he endeavoured to raise to a still higher standard.
One cannot find the slightest reference in any of his sayings that would
indicate that he looked upon himself in any other light--except the
overwhelming sense that it was his mission to bring in the new
dispensation by fulfilling the old, and then carrying it another great
step forward, which he did in a wonderful way--both God-ward and
man-ward.
We must not forget, then, that Jesus said that he did not come to
destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them. We must not
forget, however, that before fulfilling them he had to free them. The
freedom-giving, God-illumined words spoken by free God-illumined men,
had, in the hands of those not God-illumined, later on become
institutionalised, made into a system, a code. The people were taught
that only the priests had access to God. They were the custodians of
God's favour and only through the institution could any man, or any
woman, have access to God. This became the sacred thing, and as the
years had passed this had become so hedged about by continually added
laws and observances that all the spirit of religion had become crushed,
stifled, beaten to the ground.
The very scribes and Pharisees themselves, supposed to minister to the
spiritual life and the welfare of the people, became enrobed in their
fine millinery and arrogance, masters of the people, whose ministers
they were supposed to be, as is so apt to be the case when an
institution builds itself upon the free, all-embracing message of truth
given by any prophet or any inspired teacher. It has occurred time and
time again. Christianity knows it well. It is only by constant vigilance
that religious freedom is preserved, from which alone comes any high
degree of morality, or any degree of free and upward-moving life among
the people.
It was on account of this shameful robbing of the people of their Divine
birthright that the just soul of Jesus, abhorring both casuistry and
oppression under the cloak of religion, gave utterance to that fine
invective that he used on several occasions, the only times that he
spoke in a condemnatory or accusing manner: "Now do ye, Pharisee, make
clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is
full of ravening and wickedness. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk
over them are not aware of them.... Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! For
ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch
not the burdens with one of your fingers.... Woe unto you, lawyers! For
ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in ye hindered."
And here is the lesson for us. It is the spirit that must always be kept
uppermost in religion. Otherwise even the revelation and the religion
of Jesus could be compressed into a code, with its self-appointed
instruments of interpretation, the same as the Pharisees did the Law and
the Prophets that he so bitterly condemned, with a bravery so intrepid
and so fearless that it finally caused his death.
No, if God is not in the human soul waiting to make Himself known to the
believing, longing heart, accessible to all alike without money and
without price, without any prescribed code, then the words of Jesus have
not been correctly handed down to us. And then again, confirming us in
the belief that a man's deepest soul relation is a matter between him
and his God, are his unmistakable and explicit directions in regard to
prayer.
It is so easy to substitute the secondary thing for the fundamental, the
by-thing for the essential, the container for the thing itself. You will
recall that symbolic act of Jesus at the last meeting, the Last Supper
with his disciples, the washing of the disciples' feet by the Master.
The point that is intended to be brought out in the story is, of course,
the extraordinary condescension of Jesus in doing this menial service
for his disciples. "The feet-washing symbolises the attitude of humble
service to others. Every follower of Jesus must experience it." One of
the disciples is so astonished, even taken aback by this menial service
on the part of Jesus, that he says: Thou shall never wash my feet. Jesus
answered him, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me."
In Oriental countries where sandals are worn that cover merely the soles
of the feet, it was, it is the custom of the host to offer his guest who
comes water with which to wash his feet. There is no reason why this
simple incident of humble service, or rather this symbolic act of humble
service, could not be taken and made an essential condition of salvation
by any council that saw fit to make it such. Things just as strange as
this have happened; though any thinking man or woman _today_ would deem
it essentially foolish.
It is an example of how the spirit of a beautiful act could be
misrepresented to the people. For if you will look at them again, Jesus'
words are very explicit: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with
me." But hear Jesus' own comment as given in John: "So after he had
washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again,
he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master
and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master,
have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I
have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his
lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know
these things, happy are ye if ye do them." It is a means to an end and
not an end in itself. The spirit that it typifies is essential; but not
the act itself.
The same could be rightly said of the Lord's Supper. It is an observance
that can be made of great value, one very dear and valuable to many
people. But it cannot, if Jesus is to be our authority, and if correctly
reported, be by any means made a fundamental, an essential of salvation.
From the rebuke administered by Jesus to his disciples in a number of
cases where they were prone to drag down his meanings by their purely
material interpretations, we should be saved from this.
You will recall his teaching one day when he spoke of himself as the
bread of life that a man may eat thereof and not die. Some of his Jewish
hearers taking his words in a material sense and arguing in regard to
them one with another said: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Hearing them Jesus reaffirming his statement said: "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink
his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.... For my flesh is meat
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." His disciples, likewise, prone
here as so often to make a literal and material interpretation of his
statements, said one to another: "This is a hard saying; who can hear
him?" Or according to our idiom--who can understand him? Jesus asked
them squarely if what he had just said caused them to stumble, and in
order to be sure that they might not miss his real meaning and therefore
teaching, said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth
nothing: the words that I speak unto you, _they_ are spirit, and _they_
are life."
Try as we will, we cannot get away from the fact that it was the words
of truth that Jesus brought that were ever uppermost in his mind. He
said, Follow me, not some one else, nor something else that would claim
to represent me. And follow me merely because I lead you to the Father.
So supremely had this young Jewish prophet, the son of a carpenter, made
God's business his business, that he had come into the full realisation
of the oneness of his life with the Father's life. He was able to
realise and to say, "I and my Father are one." He was able to bring to
the world a knowledge of the great fact of facts--the essential oneness
of the human with the Divine--that God tabernacles with men, that He
makes His abode in the minds and the hearts of those who through desire
and through will open their hearts to His indwelling presence.
The first of the race, he becomes the revealer of this great eternal
truth--the mediator, therefore, between God and man--in very truth the
Saviour of men. "If a man love me," said he, "he will keep my words: and
my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode
with him.... If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even
as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love."
It is our eternal refusal to follow Jesus by listening to the words of
life that he brought, and our proneness to substitute something else in
their place, that brings the barrenness that is so often evident in the
everyday life of the Christian. We have been taught _to believe in_
Jesus; we have not been taught _to believe_ Jesus. This has resulted in
a separation of Christianity from life. The predominating motive has
been the saving of the soul. It has resulted too often in a selfish,
negative, repressive, ineffective religion. As Jesus said: "And why call
ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?"