Part 6 (1/2)

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 a.s.sociations 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 G.o.d to man, and by revealing this, to instil in the minds and hearts of men love for G.o.d, and a knowledge of and following of the ways of G.o.d.

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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d, whereby the Divine rule in the mind and heart a.s.sumes 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 subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d-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, G.o.d-illumined words spoken by free G.o.d-illumined men, had, in the hands of those not G.o.d-illumined, later on become inst.i.tutionalised, made into a system, a code. The people were taught that only the priests had access to G.o.d. They were the custodians of G.o.d's favour and only through the inst.i.tution could any man, or any woman, have access to G.o.d. This became the sacred thing, and as the years had pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, are his unmistakable and explicit directions in regard to prayer.

It is so easy to subst.i.tute 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 was.h.i.+ng 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-was.h.i.+ng symbolises the att.i.tude 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 p.r.o.ne to drag down his meanings by their purely material interpretations, we should be saved from this.