Part 1 (2/2)
What are you doing, asks the preacher.
I am laboring for my daily bread.
Indeed! Have you not heard that Jesus said: ”Labor not for the meat that perisheth?”
And what are _you_ doing?
We are building a city.
What! Do you not know that it is written in the Word of G.o.d that, ”Here we have no abiding City?”
And _you_--
I have married and have decided to share my life with the woman I love.
And have you not read in St. Paul's Epistles, says the preacher again, that they who are married neglect the things of the Lord?
And _you_?
We are laboring to improve the world we live in--to make it a little cleaner and sweeter.
But do you not know, asks the man of G.o.d, that the world will soon pa.s.s away,--that, as Jesus has foretold, the sun will turn black, the stars will fall, and the elements will be consumed in a general conflagration?
The effect of the teaching of both Judaism and Christianity is to incapacitate man for earnest work now and here. And what do these religions offer in place of the home, the love, the world, which they take away from us? Let us ask the priest:
Where then _is_ our home?
Yonder!--and he points into s.p.a.ce with his finger.
Where? In the clouds?
Higher.
In the stars?
Higher still.
In the ether?
No, higher yet, far, far away. You can not see it. You have to take my word for it.
And, unfortunately, so many of us _take his word for it_. And upon what terms will the priest condescend to pilot us to our invisible and aerial mansions? We must turn over to him now, our all,--mind, body and lands.
The doctrine of a world hastening to destruction, while it has demoralized the people, it has enriched the churches. During the middle ages, and earlier, and also in more recent times, more than once the credulous public has been scared out of its possessions by the preachers of calamity. Jesus can not very well clear himself of responsibility for this, because, it was he who tried to hurry the people out of a world soon to be set on fire. When a young man asked Jesus' permission to go and bury his father, he was told to ”Let the dead bury their dead.” This was extraordinary advice to a son who wished to do his father a last service. But Jesus was consistent. The world was catching fire and there was no time to lose. The morality of Jesus was the morality of panic. He would not give people the time to think of anything else but their own salvation from the impending doom. This was Bunyan's interpretation of the spirit of Christianity, for he made _Christian_, the hero of his story, to flee at once from the city of destruction, leaving his wife and children, his neighbors and his country behind. The morality of panic!
That this superst.i.tion that the world was about to be destroyed influenced the whole teaching of Jesus, as well as depressed his spirits, will be seen by an examination of his famous Sermon on the Mount. Matthew and Luke give somewhat different reports of it. It is likely that Luke's is the less embellished, and therefore more representative of Jesus' real att.i.tude toward life. In the third Gospel, Jesus says, ”Blessed are the poor.” Matthew gives it as, ”Blessed are the poor in spirit.” If the first doc.u.ment had the latter form, it is not likely that a later copyist would drop the ”in spirit,” but if the earlier simply read, ”Blessed are the poor,” a later writer might find it convenient and necessary even, to soften it by adding the words ”in spirit.” In Luke there is nothing said about hungering after righteousness, it is merely, ”Blessed are ye, that hunger now: for ye shall be filled.” The drift of the Sermon as given by Luke, which in all probability is nearer the original than that given by Matthew, and which is at any rate equally inspired, is to wean men from a world which is but a snare and a delusion, and to get them to cultivate other-worldliness. Let me quote a few of the beat.i.tudes:
”_Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of G.o.d. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh_--
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