Part 4 (1/2)
But the moment we do begin to live, however inefficiently, as Jesus lived, the sublime reality of His religion is revealed to us. We do actually find that in the postponement of our own desires for the sake of others; in the abandonment of our own apparently legitimate ambitions for the service of the poor; in the patient endurance of affront and injury; in the forgiveness of those whose wrong seems inexpiable; in the daily exercise of love that ”seeketh not itself to please,” but hopeth all things, and believeth all things,--there is a joy beyond joy, and an exceeding great reward. We do actually find that to forgive our brother freely is better both for him and us than to judge him harshly, and the wisdom of Jesus is thus justified in its moral and social efficacy. We do actually find that in ceasing to live by worldly maxims and by living instead according to the maxims of Jesus, we have attained a form of happiness so incredibly sweet and pure that the world holds nothing that resembles it, and nothing that we would exchange for it. For this is now our great reward, that peace attends our footsteps, and that our hearts are no longer vexed with the perturbations of vanity and self-love, of envy and revenge. We find human nature answering to our touch even as it answered to the touch of Jesus, and revealing to us all its best and purest treasure. We find the very natures we thought intractable and dest.i.tute of all affinity with ours, brought near our own; the very men and women we thought wholly alien to us suddenly made lovable, and full of qualities that claim our love. And as we thus humbly follow in the steps of Jesus, trying to live each day as He lived, we know that sublimest joy of all--we feel Jesus acting once more through our actions, and we see in the eyes that meet our own the same look that Jesus saw in the eyes of those whom He had cured of misery and redeemed from sin.
A CONFESSION
_THE n.o.bLEST GRACE_
_'Tis something, when the day draws to its close, To say, ”Tho' I have borne a burdened mind, Have tasted neither pleasure nor repose, Yet this remains--to all men, friends or foes, I have been kind.”_
_'Tis something, when I hear Death's awful tread Upon the stair, that his swift eye shall find Upon my heart old wounds that often bled For others, but no heart I injured-- I have been kind._
_Praise will not comfort me when I am dead; Yet should one come, by tenderness inclined, My heart would know if he stooped o'er my bed And kissed my lips for memory, and said ”This man was kind.”_
_O Lord, when from Thy throne Thou judgest me, Remember, tho' I was perverse and blind, My heart went out to men in misery, I gave what little store I had to Thee, My life was kind._
X
A CONFESSION
In speaking thus I do but speak of those things which have been revealed to me in my own experience. For many years I preached the truths of Christianity with a real sincerity, but with a fluctuating sense of their authority and value. Sometimes their authority seemed supreme, and then I trod on bright clouds high above the world; at other times they appeared to crumble at my touch, and then I walked in darkness. One thing I saw at intervals, and at last with complete and agonized distinctness, that however I preached these truths, they had little visible effect upon the lives of others. Those to whom I preached lived after all much as other people lived. I did not find them more magnanimous than the ordinary men and women of the world, nor less liable to take offense, to utter harsh words, to indulge in resentments, and to retaliate on those who injured them. I did not find that they loved humanity any better than their fellows; like all mankind they loved those who loved them, and had domestic virtues and affections, but little more. It was impossible to say that Christianity had produced in them any type of character wholly and radically different from that which might be found in mult.i.tudes of men and women who made no pretense of Christian sentiment. Christianity had no doubt imposed upon them many valuable restraints, so that without it they might have been worse men and women, but this was a merely negative result. Where was the spectacle of a character composed of new qualities, a life wholly governed by novel impulses and principles? I could not find such a life; nor ought I to have been surprised; for I could not find it in myself. I also lived much as other people did, except that I had a higher theory of conduct. Put to the test, I also showed resentment and was moved with the spirit of retaliation towards those who wronged me. Nor, save as a matter of theory and sentiment, did I love my fellows any better than the average of mankind. I sought those who were congenial to me, and had no pleasure in the company of the common and the ignorant. I liked clever people. I gave them my best, but I had nothing to bestow upon the dull and stupid. How many times have I borne the society of inferior people with ungracious tolerance, and hastened from them with undisguised relief? How often when dealing with the poor and ignorant in the exercise of conventional philanthropy, have I been careful to preserve the sense of a great gulf that yawned between me and them? And what was my daily life after all but a life existing for its own purposes, as most other men's lives were; and what credit could I take for the fact that the nature of those purposes was a trifle more consonant with what the world calls high ideals than theirs?
So the years went on, and the sense of unreality in my teaching grew steadily more intense and intolerable. I saw myself continually expending all the forces of my mind on theories which left me and my hearers alike unchanged in the essential characteristics of our lives.
I felt myself, like St. Augustine, but a ”seller of rhetoric.” I was inculcating a method of life which I myself did not obey, or obeyed only in those respects that caused me neither sacrifice nor inconvenience. In order to continue such labours at all various forms of excuse and self-deception were required. Thus I flattered myself that I was at least maintaining the authority of morals. I did not perceive that morals are of no value to the world until vitalized by emotion. At other times I preached with strenuous zeal the superiority of the Christian religion, and dilated on its early triumphs. This pleased my hearers, for it always flatters men to find themselves upon the winning side. What I wonder at now is that they did not perceive that my zeal to prove Christianity true was exactly proportioned to my fear that it was false. Men do not seek to prove that of which they are a.s.sured. Jesus never sought to prove the existence of a G.o.d because He was a.s.sured of it; He simply a.s.serted and commanded. In my heart of hearts I knew that I was not sure. But I did not easily discover the reason of my uncertainty. I supposed the source to be the destructive criticism of the Gospels which had reduced Jesus Himself to a probability. In my private thoughts I argued that it was no longer possible to feel the intense reality of Christ. Francis might feel it, Catherine might feel it, because they lived in an atmosphere of poetry, unchilled by criticism. I could never feel as they felt because I could not transport myself into their atmosphere. Yet as often as I turned to these great lives, something thrilled within me, some living responsive fibre, so that I knew that I was not after all quite alien to them. Could it be that there was that in me that made me, or could make me, of their company? But how could I attain to their faith?
What could give back to a modern man, tortured by a thousand perplexities of knowledge of which they never dreamed, the reality of Christ which they possessed? And then the answer came--not suddenly, but as a still small voice slowly growing louder, more positive, more intense--_Live the Life_. Try to do some at least of the things that Jesus did. Seek through experience what can never come through ratiocination. _Be_ a Francis; then it may be thou shalt think like him, and know Jesus as he knew Him. Live the life--there is no other way.
Simple and far from novel as the answer seems yet it came to me with the authority of a revelation. It illumined the entire circ.u.mference of life. I could no longer hesitate: Jesus had never spoken from the Syrian heavens more surely to the heart of Saul of Tarsus than He had to me. And in the moment that He spoke, I also, like Saul, found all my feelings altered, altered incredibly, miraculously, so that I scarcely recognized myself. I no longer stood aloof from men, and found pleasure in intellectual superiority; I was willing to ”become a fool for Christ's sake” if by any means I might save some. I issued a card of invitation to the services of my Church with this motto of St.
Paul's upon it, which I now felt was mine. I had had for years feelings of resentment towards one who I thought had wronged me; those feelings were now dead. In another case I had been harsh and unforgiving under great provocation; but when I met after a long interval of time, the one who had injured me, my heart had only love and pity for him. I sought out the drunkard and the harlot, and, when I found them, all repulsion perished in the flow of infinite compa.s.sion which I felt. I prayed with fallen women, sought them in their miserable abodes, fought with them for their own souls, and O exquisite moment!--I saw the soul awake in them, I saw in their tear-filled eyes the look that Jesus saw in the eyes of Magdalene. On my last Sabbath in London before leaving for America, one of these rescued girls, now as pure of look and manner as those most sweetly nurtured, called at my house to give my daughter a little present bought with the first money she had earned by honest toil in many years. On the day we sailed another said a special ma.s.s for us, and held the day sacred for prayer, in the convent where her bruised life had been nursed back to moral beauty. Love had triumphed in them, and I had brought them that love.
I had lived the life, I had tried to do something that Jesus did, and behold Jesus had come back to me, and I knew His presence with me even as Francis knew it when he washed the leper's sores, and Catherine when she gathered to her bosom the murderer's guilty head, drew from him the confession of his sin, and whispered to him softly of the Lamb of G.o.d.
There is no sense of unreality in religion now for me. There are no weary uncertainties, no melancholy sense of beating the air in what I teach. He who will try to live the life of Jesus for a single day, and in such few particulars as may lie within his scope, will at once realize the presence of Jesus with him. In the practice of love comes the manifestation of the Lover, the drawing of the soul into the bosom of that Christ who was the very love of G.o.d, and the exchange of our poor proud carnal heart for the tender heart that yearned over Magdalene, was moved with compa.s.sion for the people, and broke upon the Cross.
A LOVER OF MEN
_THE CRADLE CROSS_
_”What shall I ask for Thee, my child?”
Said Mary Mother, stooping dawn Above the Babe all undefiled.
”O let Him wear a kingly crown.”_
_From wise men's gifts she wrought the crown, The robe inwove with many a gem, Beside the Babe she laid them down.
He wept, and would have none of them._
_”What shall I get for Thee, my Child?”
Unto the door she slowly went, And wove a crown of thorn-boughs wild, He took it up, and was content._