today as they were in the days of Jesus and his disciples, who made the
healing of sick bodies a part of their ministration. It is but fair to
presume from the accounts that we have that in the early Church of the
Disciples, and for well on to two hundred years after Jesus' time, the
healing of the sick and the afflicted went hand in hand with the
preaching and the teaching of the Kingdom. There are those who believe
that it never should have been abandoned. As a well-known writer has
said: "Healing is the outward and practical attestation of the power and
genuineness of spiritual religion, and ought not to have dropped out of
the Church." Recent sincere efforts to re-establish it in church
practice, following thereby the Master's injunction, is indicative of
the thought that is alive in connection with the matter today.[A] From
the accounts that we have Jesus seems to have engaged in works of
healing more during his early than during his later ministry. He may
have used it as a means to an end. On account of his great love and
sympathy for the physical sufferer as well as for the moral sufferer, it
is but reasonable to suppose that it was an integral part of his
announced purpose--the saving of the life, of the entire life, for
usefulness, for service, for happiness.
And so we have this young Galilean prophet, coming from an hitherto
unknown Jewish family in the obscure little village of Nazareth, giving
obedience in common with his four brothers and his sisters to his father
and his mother; but by virtue of a supreme aptitude for and an
irresistible call to the things of the spirit--made irresistible through
his overwhelming love for the things of the spirit--he is early absorbed
by the realisation of the truth that God is his father and that all men
are brothers.
The thought that God is his father and that he bears a unique and filial
relationship to God so possesses him that he is filled, permeated with
the burning desire to make this newborn message of truth and thereby of
righteousness known to the world.
His own native religion, once vibrating through the souls of the
prophets as the voice of God, has become so obscured, so hedged about,
so killed by dogma, by ceremony, by outward observances, that it has
become a mean and pitiable thing, and produces mean and pitiable
conditions in the lives of his people. The institution has become so
overgrown that the spirit has gone. But God finds another prophet,
clearly and supremely open to His spirit, and Jesus comes as the
Messiah, the Divine Son of God, the Divine Son of Man, bringing to the
earth a new Dispensation. It is the message of the Divine Fatherhood of
God, God whose controlling character is love, and with it the Divine
sonship of man. An integral part of it is--all men are brothers.
He comes as the teacher of a new, a higher righteousness. He brings the
message and he expounds the message of the Kingdom of God. All men he
teaches must repent and turn from their sins, and must henceforth live
in this Kingdom. It is an inner kingdom. Men shall not say: Behold it is
here or it is there; for, behold, it is within you. God is your father
and God longs for your acknowledgment of Him as your father; He longs
for your love even as He loves you. You are children of God, but you
are not true Sons of God until through desire the Divine rule and life
becomes supreme in your minds and hearts. It is thus that you will find
the Kingdom of God. When you do, then your every act will show forth in
accordance with this Divine ideal and guide, and the supreme law of
conduct in your lives will be love for your neighbour, for all mankind.
Through this there will then in time become actualised the Kingdom of
Heaven on the earth.
He comes in no special garb, no millinery, no brass bands, no formulas,
no dogmas, no organisation other than the Kingdom, to uphold and become
a slave to, and in turn be absorbed by, as was the organisation that he
found strangling all religion in the lives of his people and which he so
bitterly condemned. What he brought was something infinitely
transcending this--the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, to which
all men were heirs--equal heirs--and thereby redemption from their sins,
therefore salvation, the saving of their lives, would be the inevitable
result of their acknowledgment of and allegiance to the Divine rule.
How he embraced all--such human sympathy--coming not to destroy but to
fulfil; not to judge the world but to save the world. How he loved the
children! How he loved to have them about him! How he loved their
simplicity, and native integrity of mind and heart! Hear him as he says:
"Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God
as a little child, he shall not enter therein"; and again: "Suffer the
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the
Kingdom of God." The makers of dogma, in evolving some three hundred
years later on the dogma of the inherent sinfulness and degradation of
the human life and soul, could certainly find not the slightest trace of
any basis for it again in these words and acts of Jesus.
We find him sympathising with and mingling with and seeking to draw unto
the way of his own life the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the same as
the well-to-do and those of station and influence--seeking to draw all
through love and knowledge to the Father.
There is a sense of justice and righteousness in his soul, however, that
balks at oppression, injustice, and hypocrisy. He therefore condemns and
in scathing terms those and only those who would seek to place any
barrier between the free soul of any man and his God, who would bind
either the mind or the conscience of man to any prescribed formulas or
dogmas. Honouring, therefore the forms that his intelligence and his
conscience allowed him to honour, he disregarded those that they did
not.
Like other good Jewish rabbis, for he was looked upon during his
ministry and often addressed as Rabbi, he taught in the synagogues of
his people; but oftener out on the hillsides and by the lake-side, under
the blue sky and the stars of heaven. Giving due reverence to the Law
and the Prophets--the religion of his people and his own early
religion--but in spirit and in discriminating thought so far
transcending them, that the people marvelled at his teachings and
said--surely this a prophet come from God; no man ever spoke to us as he
speaks. By the ineffable beauty of his life and the love and the
winsomeness of his personality, and by the power of the truths that he
taught, he won the hearts of the common people. They followed him and
his following continually increased.
Through it all, however, he incurred the increasing hostility and the
increasing hatred of the leaders, the hierarchy of the existing
religious organisation. They were animated by a double motive, that of
protecting themselves, and that of protecting their established
religion. But in their slavery to the organisation, and because unable
to see that it was the spirit of true religion that he brought and
taught, they cruelly put him to death--the same as the organisation
established later on in his name, put numbers of God's true prophets,
Jesus' truest disciples to death, and essentially for the same reasons.
Jesus' quick and almost unerring perception enabled him to foresee this.
It did not deter him from going forward with his message, standing
resolutely and superbly by his revelation, and at the last almost
courting death--feeling undoubtedly that the sealing of his revelation
and message with his very life blood would but serve to give it its
greatest power and endurance. Heroically he met the fate that he
perceived was conspiring to end his career, to wreck his teachings and
his influence. He went forth to die clear-sighted and unafraid.
He died for the sake of the truth of the message that he lived and so
diligently and heroically laboured for--the message of the ineffable
love of God for all His children and the bringing of them into the
Father's Kingdom. And we must believe from his whole life's teaching,
not to save their souls from some future punishment; not through any
demand of satisfaction on the part of God; not as any substitutionary
sacrifice to appease the demands of an angry God--for it was the exact
opposite of this that his whole life teaching endeavoured to make
known. It was supremely the love of the Father and His longing for the
love and allegiance, therefore the complete life and service of His
children. It was the beauty of holiness--the beauty of wholeness--the
wholeness of life, the saving of the whole life from the sin and
sordidness of self and thereby giving supreme satisfaction to God. It
was love, not fear. If not, then almost in a moment he changed the
entire purpose and content, the entire intent of all his previous life
work. This is unthinkable.
In his last act he did not abrogate his own expressed statement, that
the very essence of his message was expressed, as love to God and love
to one's neighbour. He did not abrogate his continually repeated
declaration that it was the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, which
brings man's life into right relations with God and into right relations
with his fellow-men, that it was his purpose to reveal and to draw all
men to, thereby aiding God's eternal purpose--to establish in this world
a state which he designated the Kingdom of Heaven wherein a social order
of brotherliness and justice, wrought and maintained through the potency
of love, would prevail. In doing this he revealed the character of God
by being himself an embodiment of it.
It was the power of a truth that was to save the life that he was
always concerned with. Therefore his statement that the Son of Man has
come that men might have life and might have it more abundantly--to save
men from sin and from failure, and secondarily from their consequences;
to make them true Sons of God and fit subjects and fit workers in His
Kingdom. Conversion according to Jesus is the fact of this Divine rule
in the mind and heart whereby the life is saved--the saving of the soul
follows. It is the direct concomitant of the saved life.
In his death he sealed his own statement: "The law and the prophets were
until John; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached, and every
man presseth into it." Through his death he sealed the message of his
life when putting it in another form he said: "Verily, verily, I say
unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation: but is passed
from death unto life."
In this majestic life divinity and humanity meet. Here is the
incarnation. The first of the race consciously, vividly, and fully to
realise that God incarnates Himself and has His abode in the hearts and
the lives of men, the first therefore to realise his Divine Sonship and
become able thereby to reveal and to teach the Divine Fatherhood of God
and the Divine Sonship of Man.
In this majestic life is the atonement, the realisation of the
at-one-ment of the Divine in the human, made manifest in his own life
and in the way that he taught, sealed then by his own blood.
In this majestic life we have the mediator, the medium or connector of
the Divine and the human. In it we have the Saviour, the very
incarnation of the truth that he taught, and that lifts the minds and
thereby the lives of men up to their Divine ideal and pattern, that
redeems their lives from the sordidness and selfishness and sin of the
hitherto purely material self, and that being thereby saved, makes them
fit subjects for the Father's Kingdom.
In this majestic life is the full embodiment of the beauty of
holiness--whose words have gone forth and whose spirit is ceaselessly at
work in the world, drawing men and women up to their divine ideal, and
that will continue so to draw all in proportion as his words of truth
and his life are lifted up throughout the world.
X
SOME METHODS OF ATTAINMENT
After this study of the teachings of the Divine Master let us know this.
It is the material that is the transient, the temporary; and the mental
and spiritual that is the real and the eternal. We must not become
slaves to habit. The material alone can never bring happiness--much less
satisfaction. These lie deeper. That conversation between Jesus and the
rich young man is full of significance for us all, especially in this
ambitious, striving, restless age.
Abundance of life is determined not alone by one's material possessions,
but primarily by one's riches of mind and spirit. A world of truth is
contained in these words: "Life is what we are alive to. It is not a
length, but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, mere luxury
or idleness, pride or money-making, and not to goodness and kindness,
purity and love, history, poetry, and music, flowers, God and eternal
hopes, is to be all but dead."
Why be so eager to gain possession of the hundred thousand or the
half-million acres, of so many millions of dollars? Soon, and it may be
before you realise it, all must be left. It is as if a man made it his
ambition to accumulate a thousand or a hundred thousand automobiles. All
soon will become junk. But so it is with all material things beyond what
we can actually and profitably use for our good and the good of
others--and that we actually do so use.
A man can eat just so many meals during the year or during life. If he
tries to eat more he suffers thereby. He can wear only so many suits of
clothing; if he tries to wear more, he merely wears himself out taking
off and putting on. Again it is as Jesus said: "For what shall it profit
a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own life?" And right
there is the crux of the whole matter. All the time spent in
accumulating these things beyond the reasonable amount, is so much taken
from the life--from the things of the mind and the spirit. It is in the
development and the pursuit of these that all true satisfaction lies.
Elemental law has so decreed.
We have made wonderful progress, or rather have developed wonderful
skill in connection with things. We need now to go back and catch up the
thread and develop like skill in making the life.
Little wonder that brains are addled, that nerves are depleted, that
nervous dyspepsia, that chronic weariness, are not the exception but
rather the rule. Little wonder that sanitariums are always full; that
asylums are full and overflowing--and still more to be built. No wonder
that so many men, so many good men break and go to pieces, and so many
lose the life here at from fifty to sixty years, when they should be in
the very prime of life, in the full vigour of manhood; at the very age
when they are capable of enjoying life the most and are most capable of
rendering the greatest service to their fellows, to their community,
because of greater growth, experience, means, and therefore leisure.
Jesus was right--What doth it profit? And think of the real riches that
in the meantime are missed.
It is like an addled-brain driver in making a trip across the continent.
He is possessed, obsessed with the insane desire of making a record. He
plunges on and on night and day, good weather and foul--and all the time
he is missing all the beauties, all the benefits to health and spirit
along the way. He has none of these when he arrives--he has missed them
all. He has only the fact that he has made a record drive--or nearly
made one. And those with him he has not only robbed of the beauties
along the way; but he has subjected them to all the discomforts along
the way. And what really underlies the making of a record? It is
primarily the spirit of vanity.
When the mental beauties of life, when the spiritual verities are
sacrificed by self-surrender to and domination by the material, one of
the heavy penalties that inexorable law imposes is the drying up, so to
speak, of the finer human perceptions--the very faculties of enjoyment.
It presents to the world many times, and all unconscious to himself, a
stunted, shrivelled human being--that eternal type that the Master had
in mind when he said: "Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required
of thee." He whose sole employment or even whose primary employment
becomes the building of bigger and still bigger barns to take care of
his accumulated grain, becomes incapable of realising that life and the
things that pertain to it are of infinitely more value than barns, or
houses, or acres, or stocks, or bonds, or railroad ties. These all have
their place, all are of value; but they can never be made the life. A
recent poem by James Oppenheim presents a type that is known to nearly
every one:[B]
I heard the preacher preaching at the funeral:
He moved the relatives to tears telling them of
the father, husband, and friend that was dead:
Of the sweet memories left behind him:
Of a life that was good and kind.
I happened to know the man,
And I wondered whether the relatives would
have wept if the preacher had told the truth:
Let us say like this:
"The only good thing this man ever did in his life,
Was day before yesterday:
_He died_....
But he didn't even do that of his own volition....
He was the meanest man in business on Manhattan Island,
The most treacherous friend, the crudest and stingiest husband,
And a father so hard that his children left home as soon as they were
old enough....
Of course he had divinity: everything human has:
But he kept it so carefully hidden away that he might just as well not
have had it....
"Wife! good cheer! now you can go your own way and live your own life!
Children, give praise! you have his money: the only good thing he ever
gave you....
Friends! you have one less traitor to deal with....
This is indeed a day of rejoicing and exultation!
Thank God this man is dead!"
An unknown enjoyment and profit to him is the world's great field of
literature, the world's great thinkers, the inspirers of so many through
all the ages. That splendid verse by Emily Dickinson means as much to
him as it would to a dumb stolid ox:
He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust,
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust;
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book! What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!
Yes, life and its manifold possibilities of unfoldment and avenues of
enjoyment--life, and the things that pertain to it--is an infinitely
greater thing than the mere accessories of life.
What infinite avenues of enjoyment, what peace of mind, what serenity of
soul may be the possession of all men and all women who are alive to
the inner possibilities of life as portrayed by our own prophet,
Emerson, when he said:
Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and pride of man,
At the Sophist schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
It was he who has exerted such a world-wide influence upon the minds and
lives of men and women who also said: "Great men are they who see that
spirituality is stronger than any material force: that thoughts rule the
world." And this is true not only of the world in general, but it is
true likewise in regard to the individual life.
One of the great secrets of all successful living is unquestionably the
striking of the right balance in life. The material has its place--and a
very important place. Fools indeed were we to ignore or to attempt to
ignore this fact. We cannot, however, except to our detriment, put the
cart before the horse. Things may contribute to happiness, but things
cannot bring happiness--and sad indeed, and crippled and dwarfed and
stunted becomes the life of every one who is not capable of realising
this fact. Eternally true indeed is it that the life is more than meat
and the body more than raiment.
All life is from an inner centre outward. As within, so without. As we
think we become. Which means simply this: our prevailing thoughts and
emotions are never static, but dynamic. Thoughts are forces--like
creates like, and like attracts like. It is therefore for us to choose
whether we shall be interested primarily in the great spiritual forces
and powers of life, or whether we shall be interested solely in the
material things of life.
But there is a wonderful law which we must not lose sight of. It is to
the effect that when we become sufficiently alive to the inner powers
and forces, to the inner springs of life, the material things of life
will not only follow in a natural and healthy sequence, but they will
also assume their right proportions. They will take their right places.
It was the recognition of this great fundamental fact of life that Jesus
had in mind when he said: "But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and
all these things shall be added unto you,"--meaning, as he so distinctly
stated, the kingdom of the mind and spirit made open and translucent to
the leading of the Divine Wisdom inherent in the human soul, when that
leading is sought and when through the right ordering of the mind we
make the conditions whereby it may become operative in the individual
life.
The great value of God as taught by Jesus is that God dwells in us. It
is truly Emmanuel--God with us. The law must be observed--the conditions
must be met. "The Lord is with you while ye be with him; and if ye will
seek him, he will be found of you." "The spirit of the living God
dwelleth in you." "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that
giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given
him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering." That there is a Divine
law underlying prayer that helps to release the inner springs of wisdom,
which in turn leads to power, was well known to Jesus, for his life
abundantly proved it.
His great aptitude for the things of the spirit enabled him intuitively
to realise this, to understand it, to use it. And there was no mystery,
no secret, no subterfuge on the part of Jesus as to the source of his
power. In clear and unmistakable words he made it known--and why should
he not? It was the truth, the truth of this inner kingdom that would
make men free that he came to reveal. "The words that I speak unto you
I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the
works." "My Father worketh hitherto and I work.... For as the Father
hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in
himself.... I can of mine own self do nothing." As he followed the
conditions whereby this higher illumination can come so must we.
The injunction that Jesus gave in regard to prayer is unquestionably the
method that he found so effective and that he himself used. How many
times we are told that he withdrew to the mountain for his quiet period,
for communion with the Father, that the realisation of his oneness with
God might be preserved intact. In this continual realisation--I and my
Father are one--lay his unusual insight and power. And his distinct
statement which he made in speaking of his own powers--as I am ye shall
be--shows clearly the possibilities of human unfoldment and attainment,
since he realised and lived and then revealed the way.
Were not this Divine source of wisdom and power the heritage of every
human soul, distinctly untrue then would be Jesus' saying: "For every
one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him
that knocketh, it shall be opened." Infinitely better is it to know that
one has this inner source of guidance and wisdom which as he opens
himself to it becomes continually more distinct, more clear and more
unerring in its guidance, than to be continually seeking advice from
outside sources, and being confused in regard to the advice given. This
is unquestionably the way of the natural and the normal life, made so
simple and so plain by Jesus, and that was foreshadowed by Isaiah when
he said: "Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard that the everlasting
God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not,
neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no
might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint."