salvation of the life_ that he taught. When the life is redeemed to
righteousness through the power of the indwelling God and moves out in
love and in service for one's fellow-men, the soul is then saved.
A man may be a believer in Jesus for a million years and still be an
outcast from the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. But a man can't
believe Jesus, which means following his teachings, without coming at
once into the Kingdom and enjoying its matchless blessings both here and
hereafter. And if there is one clear-cut teaching of the Master, it is
that the life here determines and with absolute precision the life to
come.
One need not then concern himself with this or that doctrine, whether it
be true or false. Later speculations and theories are not for him.
Jesus' own saying applies here: "If any man will do his will he shall
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." He enters into the Kingdom,
the Kingdom of Heaven here and now; and when the time comes for him to
pass out of this life, he goes as a joyous pilgrim, full of anticipation
for the Kingdom that awaits him, and the Master's words go with him: "In
my Father's house are many mansions."
By thus becoming a follower of Jesus rather than merely a believer in
Jesus, he gradually comes into possession of insights and powers that
the Master taught would follow in the lives of those who became his
followers. The Holy Spirit, the Divine Comforter, of which Jesus spoke,
the Spirit of Truth, that awaits our bidding, will lead continually to
the highest truth and wisdom and insight and power. Kant's statement,
"The other world is not another locality, but only another way of seeing
things," is closely allied to the Master's statement: "The Kingdom of
God is within you." And closely allied to both is this statement of a
modern prophet: "The principle of Christianity and of every true
religion is within the soul--the realisation of the incarnation of God
in every human being."
When we turn to Jesus' own teachings we find that his insistence was not
primarily upon the saving of the soul, but upon the saving of the life
for usefulness, for service, here and now, for still higher growth and
unfoldment, whereby the soul might be grown to a sufficient degree that
it would be worth the saving. And this is one of the great facts that is
now being recognised and preached by the forward-looking men and women
in our churches and by many equally religious outside of our churches.
And so all aspiring, all thinking, forward-looking men and women of our
day are not interested any more in theories about, explanations of, or
dogmas about Jesus. They are being won and enthralled by the wonderful
personality and life of Jesus. They are being gripped by the power of
his teachings. They do not want theories about God--they want God--and
God is what Jesus brought--God as the moving, the predominating, the
all-embracing force in the individual life. But he who finds the Kingdom
of God, whose life becomes subject to the Divine rule and life within,
realises at once also his true relations with the whole--with his
neighbour, his fellow-men. He realises that his neighbour is not merely
the man next door, the man around the corner, or even the man in the
next town or city; but that his neighbour _is every man and every woman
in the world_--because all children of the same infinite Father, all
bound in the same direction, but over many different roads.
The man who has come under the influence and the domination of the
Divine rule, realises that his interests lie in the same direction as
the interests of all, that he cannot gain for himself any good--that is,
any essential good--at the expense of the good of all; but rather that
his interests, his Welfare, and the interests and the welfare of all
others are identical. God's rule, the Divine rule, becomes for him,
therefore, the fundamental rule in the business world, the dominating
rule in political life and action, the dominating rule in the law and
relations of nations.
Jesus did not look with much favour upon outward form, ceremony, or with
much favour upon formulated, or formal religion; and he somehow or other
seemed to avoid the company of those who did. We find him almost
continually down among the people, the poor, the needy, the outcast, the
sinner--wherever he could be of service to the Father, that is, wherever
he could be of service to the Father's children. According to the
accounts he was not always as careful in regard to those with whom he
associated as the more respectable ones, the more respectable classes of
his day thought he should be. They remarked it many times. Jesus noticed
it and remarked in turn.
We find him always where the work was to be done--friend equally of the
poor and humble, and those of station--truly friend of man, teaching,
helping, uplifting. And then we find him out on the mountain side--in
the quiet, in communion--to keep his realisation of his oneness with the
Father intact; and with this help he went down regularly to the people,
trying to lift their minds and lives up to the Divine ideal that he
revealed to them, that they in turn might realise their real relations
one with another, that the Kingdom of God and His righteousness might
grow and become the dominating law and force in the world--"Thy Kingdom
come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
It is this Kingdom idea, the Divine rule, the rule of God in all of the
relations and affairs of men on earth that is gripping earnest men and
women in great numbers among us today. Under the leadership of these
thinking, God-impelled men and women, many of our churches are pushing
their endeavours out into social service activities along many different
lines; and the result is they are calling into their ranks many able men
and women, especially younger men and women, who are intensely
religious, but to whom formal, inactive religion never made any appeal.
When the Church begins actually to throw the Golden Rule onto its
banner, not in theory but in actual practice, actually forgetting self
in the Master's service, careless even of her own interests, her
membership, she thereby calls into her ranks vast numbers of the best of
the race, especially among the young, so that the actual result is a
membership not only larger than she could ever hope to have otherwise,
but a membership that commands such respect and that exercises such
power, that she is astounded at her former stupidity in being shackled
so long by the traditions of the past. A new life is engendered. There
is the joy of real accomplishment.
We are in an age of great changes. Advancing knowledge necessitates
changes. And may I say a word here to our Christian ministry, that
splendid body of men for whom I have such supreme admiration? One of the
most significant facts of our time is this widespread inclination and
determination on the part of such great numbers of thinking men and
women to go directly to Jesus for their information of, and their
inspiration from him. The beliefs and the voice of the laymen, those in
our churches and those out of our churches, must be taken into account
and reckoned with. Jesus is too large and too universal a character to
be longer the sole possession, the property of any organisation.
There is a splendid body of young men and young women numbering into
untold thousands, who are being captured by the personality and the
simple direct message of Jesus. Many of these have caught his spirit and
are going off into other lines of the Master's service. They are doing
effective and telling work there. Remember that when the spirit of the
Christ seizes a man, it is through the channel of present-day forms and
present-day terms, not in those of fifteen hundred, or sixteen hundred,
or even three hundred years ago.
There is a spirit of intellectual honesty that prevents many men and
women from subscribing to anything to which they cannot give their
intellectual assent, as well as their moral and spiritual assent. They
do not object to creeds. They know that a creed is but a statement, a
statement of a man's or a woman's belief, whether it be in connection
with religion, or in connection with anything else. But what they do
object to is dogma, that unholy thing that lives on credulity, that is
therefore destructive of the intellectual and the moral life of every
man and every woman who allows it to lay its paralysing hand upon them,
that can be held to if one is at all honest and given to thought, only
through intellectual chicanery.
We must not forget also that God is still at work, revealing Himself
more fully to mankind through modern prophets, through modern agencies.
His revelation is not closed. It is still going on. The silly
presumption in the statement therefore--"the truth once delivered."
It is well occasionally to call to mind these words by Robert Burns,
singing free and with an untrammelled mind and soul from his
heather-covered hills:
Here's freedom to him that wad read,
Here's freedom to him that wad write;
There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heared
But them that the truth wad indict.
It is essential to remember that we are in possession of knowledge, that
we are face to face with conditions that are different from any in the
previous history of Christendom. The Christian church must be sure that
it moves fast enough so as not to alienate, but to draw into it that
great body of intellectually alive, intellectually honest young men and
women who have the Christ spirit of service and who are mastered by a
great purpose of accomplishment. Remember that these young men and women
are now merely standing where the entire church will stand in a few
years. Remember that any man or woman who has the true spirit of service
has the spirit of Christ--and more, has the religion of the Christ.
Remember that Jesus formulated no organisation. His message of the
Kingdom was so far-reaching that no organisation could ever possibly
encompass it, though an organisation may be, and has been, a great aid
in actualising it here on earth. He never made any conditions as to
through whom, or what, his truth should be spread, and he would condemn
today any instrumentality that would abrogate to itself any monopoly of
his truth, just as he condemned those ecclesiastical authorities of his
day who presumed to do the same in connection with the truth of God's
earlier prophets.
And so I would say to the Church--beware and be wise. Make your
conditions so that you can gain the allegiance and gain the help of this
splendid body of young men and young women. Many of them are made of the
stock that Jesus would choose as his own apostles. Among the young men
will be our greatest teachers, our great financiers, our best
legislators, our most valuable workers and organisers in various fields
of social service, our most widely read authors, eminent and influential
editorial and magazine writers as well as managers.
Many of these young women will have high and responsible positions as
educators. Some will be heads and others will be active workers in our
widely extended and valuable women's clubs. Some will have a hand in
political action, in lifting politics out of its many-times low
condition into its rightful state in being an agent for the
accomplishment of the people's best purposes and their highest good.
Some will be editors of widely circulating and influential women's
magazines. Some will be mothers, true mothers of the children of others,
denied their rights and their privileges. Make it possible for them,
nay, make it incumbent upon them to come in, to work within the great
Church organisation.
It cannot afford that they stay out. It is suicidal to keep them out.
Any other type of organisation that did not look constantly to
commanding the services of the most capable and expert in its line would
fall in a very few months into the ranks of the ineffectives. A business
or a financial organisation that did not do the same would go into
financial bankruptcy in even a shorter length of time. By attracting
this class of men and women into its ranks it need fear neither moral
nor financial bankruptcy.
But remember, many men and women of large calibre are so busy doing
God's work in the world that they have no time and no inclination to be
attracted by anything that does not claim their intellectual as well as
their moral assent. The Church must speak fully and unequivocally in
terms of present-day thought and present-day knowledge, to win the
allegiance or even to attract the attention of this type of men and
women.
And may I say here this word to those outside, and especially to this
class of young men and young women outside of our churches? Changes,
and therefore advances in matters of this kind come slowly. This is true
from the very nature of human nature. Inherited beliefs, especially when
it comes to matters of religion, take the deepest hold and are the
slowest to change. Not in all cases, but this is the general rule.
Those who hold on to the old are earnest, honest. They believe that
these things are too sacred to be meddled with, or even sometimes, to be
questioned. The ordinary mind is slow to distinguish between tradition
and truth--especially where the two have been so fully and so adroitly
mixed. Many are not in possession of the newer, the more advanced
knowledge in various fields that you are in possession of. But remember
this--in even a dozen years a mighty change has taken place--except in a
church whose very foundation and whose sole purpose is dogma.
In most of our churches, however, the great bulk of our ministers are
just as forward-looking, just as earnest as you, and are deeply desirous
of following and presenting the highest truth in so far as it lies
within their power to do so. It is a splendid body of men, willing to
welcome you on your own grounds, longing for your help. It is a mighty
engine for good. Go into it. Work with it. Work through it. The best
men in the Church are longing for your help. They need it more than they
need anything else. I can assure you of this--I have talked with many.
They feel their handicaps. They are moving as rapidly as they find it
possible to move. On the whole, they are doing splendid work and with a
big, fine spirit of which you know but little. You will find a wonderful
spirit of self-sacrifice, also. You will find a stimulating and precious
comradeship on the part of many. You will find that you will get great
good, even as you are able to give great good.
The Church, as everything else, needs to keep its machinery in continual
repair. Help take out the worn-out parts--but not too suddenly. The
Church is not a depository, but an instrument and engine of truth and
righteousness. Some of the older men do not realise this; but they will
die off. Respect their beliefs. Honest men have honest respect for
differences of opinion, for honest differences in thought. Sympathy is a
great harmoniser. "Differences of opinion, intellectual distinctions,
these must ever be--separation of mind, but unity of heart."
I like these words of Lyman Abbott. You will like them. They are spoken
out of a full life of rich experience and splendid service. They have,
moreover, a sort of unifying effect. They are more than a tonic: "Of
all characters in history none so gathers into himself and reflects from
himself all the varied virtues of a complete manhood as does Jesus of
Nazareth. And the world is recognising it.... If you go back to the
olden time and the old conflicts, the question was, 'What is the
relation of Jesus Christ to the Eternal?' Wars have been fought over the
question, 'Was he of one substance with the Father?' I do not know; I do
not know of what substance the Father is; I do not know of what
substance Jesus Christ is. What I do know is this--that when I look into
the actual life that I know about, the men and women that are about me,
the men and women in all the history of the past, of all the living
beings that ever lived and walked the earth, there is no one that so
fills my heart with reverence, with affection, with loyal love, with
sincere desire to follow, as doth Jesus Christ....
"I do not need to decide whether he was born of a virgin. I do not need
to decide whether he rose from the dead. I do not need to decide whether
he made water into wine, or fed five thousand with two loaves and five
small fishes. Take all that away, and still he stands the one
transcendent figure toward whom the world has been steadily growing, and
whom the world has not yet overtaken even in his teachings.... I do not
need to know what is his metaphysical relation to the Infinite. I say it
reverently--I do not care. I know for me he is the great Teacher; I know
for me he is the great Leader whose work I want to do; and I know for me
he is the great Personality, whom I want to be like. That I know.
Theology did not give that to me, and theology cannot get it away from
me."
And what a basis as a test of character is this twofold injunction--this
great fundamental of Jesus! All religion that is genuine flowers in
character. It was Benjamin Jowett who said, and most truly: "The value
of a religion is in the ethical dividend that it pays." When the heart
is right towards God we have the basis, the essence of religion--the
consciousness of God in the soul of man. We have truth in the inward
parts. When the heart is right towards the fellow-man we have the
essential basis of ethics; for again we have truth in the inward parts.
Out of the heart are the issues of life. When the heart is right all
outward acts and relations are right. Love draws one to the very heart
of God; and love attunes one to all the highest and most valued
relationships in our human life.
Fear can never be a basis of either religion or ethics. The one who is
moved by fear makes his chief concern the avoidance of detection on the
one hand, or the escape of punishment on the other. Men of large calibre
have an unusual sagacity in sifting the unessential from the essential
as also the false from the true. Lincoln, when replying to the question
as to why he did not unite himself with some church organisation, said:
"When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification
of membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of
both law and gospel: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour
as thyself, that church shall I join with all my heart and soul."
He was looked upon by many in his day as a non-Christian--by some as an
infidel. His whole life had a profound religious basis, so deep and so
all-absorbing that it gave him those wonderful elements of personality
that were instantly and instinctively noticed by, and that moved all men
who came in touch with him; and that sustained him so wonderfully,
according to his own confession, through those long, dark periods of the
great crisis, The fact that in yesterday's New York paper--Sunday
paper--I saw the notice of a sermon in one of our Presbyterian
pulpits--Lincoln, the Christian--shows that we have moved up a round
and are approaching more and more to an essential Christianity.
Similar to this statement or rather belief was that of Emerson,
Jefferson, Franklin, and a host of other men among us whose lives have
been lives of accomplishment and service for their fellow-men. Emerson,
who said: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light
which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognise our own
rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty." Emerson, who also said: "I believe in the still, small voice,
and that voice is the Christ within me." It was he of whom the famous
Father Taylor in Boston said: "It may be that Emerson is going to hell,
but of one thing I am certain: he will change the climate there and
emigration will set that way."
So thought Jefferson, who said: "I have sworn eternal hostility to every
form of tyranny over the minds of men." And as he, great prophet, with
his own hand penned that immortal document--the Declaration of American
Independence--one can almost imagine the Galilean prophet standing at
his shoulder and saying: Thomas, I think it well to write it so. Both
had a burning indignation for that species of self-seeking either on the
part of an individual or an organisation that would seek to enchain the
minds and thereby the lives of men and women, and even lay claim to
their children. Yet Jefferson in his time was frequently called an
atheist--and merely because men in those days did not distinguish as
clearly as we do today between ecclesiasticism and religion, between
formulated and essential Christianity.
So we are brought back each time to Jesus' two fundamentals--and these
come out every time foursquare with the best thought of our time. The
religion of Jesus is thereby prevented from being a mere tribal
religion. It is prevented from being merely an organisation that could
possibly have his sanction as such--that is, an organisation that would
be able to say: This is his, and this only. It makes it have a
world-wide and eternal content. The Kingdom that Jesus taught is
infinitely broader in its scope and its inclusiveness than any
organisation can be, or that all organisations combined can be.
IX
HIS PURPOSE OF LIFTING UP, ENERGISING, BEAUTIFYING, AND SAVING THE
ENTIRE LIFE: THE SAVING OF THE SOUL IS SECONDARY; BUT FOLLOWS
We have made the statement that Jesus did unusual things, but that he
did them on account of, or rather by virtue of, his unusual insight into
and understanding of the laws whereby they could be done. His
understanding of the powers of the mind and spirit was intuitive and
very great. As an evidence of this were his numerous cases of healing
the sick and the afflicted.
Intuitively he perceived the existence and the nature of the subjective
mind, and in connection with it the tremendous powers of suggestion.
Intuitively he was able to read, to diagnose the particular ailment and
the cause of the ailment before him. His thought was so poised that it
was energised by a subtle and peculiar spiritual power. Such confidence
did his personality and his power inspire in others that he was able to
an unusual degree to reach and to arouse the slumbering subconscious
mind of the sufferer and to arouse into action its own slumbering
powers whereby the life force of the body could transcend and remould
its error-ridden and error-stamped condition.
In all these cases he worked through the operation of law--it is exactly
what we know of the laws of suggestion today. The remarkable cases of
healing that are being accomplished here and there among us today are
done unquestionably through the understanding and use of the same laws
that Jesus was the supreme master of.
By virtue of his superior insight--his understanding of the laws of the
mind and spirit--he was able to use them so fully and so effectively
that he did in many cases eliminate the element of time in his healing
ministrations. But even he was dependent in practically all cases, upon
the mental cooperation of the one who would be healed. Where this was
full and complete he succeeded; where it was not he failed. Such at
least again and again is the statement in the accounts that we have of
these facts in connection with his life and work. There were places
where we are told he could do none of his mighty works on account of
their unbelief, and he departed from these places and went elsewhere.
Many times his question was: "Believe ye that I am able to do this?"
Then: "According to your faith be it unto you," and the healing was
accomplished.