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Excerpts
from: Jesus and Ourselves
A Sequel to The Transforming Friendship
By Leslie D. Weatherhead, M.A.
Jesus's Respect for our Personality
Jesus's Answer to our Unsolved Problems
The World and the Way of Jesus
JESUS'S RESPECT FOR OUR PERSONALITY
THERE are at least four ways in which one man can impose his will on another. The first and crudest is by the use of physical force, supposing one man is stronger than the other. The second is by what we call a powerful personality. With this one man can often override another's objection and opposition by the sheer force of his magnetic, energetic personality. We all know people whom it is hard to resist for this reason. The third method is by a kind of intellectual superiority. We know people who overwhelm us with arguments why we should do what they wish, pressing reasons upon us one after another, till our mind, unable, on the spur of the moment, to examine them, acquiesces through the sheer weight of evidence produced. The fourth way is by an appeal to the emotions of the person we wish to influence. It may be the emotion of their admiration for ourselves — as when a person says, "I'll do anything for you" — or by an appeal to fear or pity. ... Let us see how Christ regarded these four methods.
First of all, think of physical power. Jesus must have been in touch with resources of physical power which no one else could tap. The lure of the third temptation reveals that it was possible that He might have used that power to dethrone Caesar, set up a new government, new rule, new order. The power of the temptation lay in the contemplation of what force might be made to achieve. He could end oppression, He could give men justice; and it might be argued that, if His aim were good, the use of this force would have been legitimate. Yet the striking thing is that, out of respect for men's personality, Jesus will not try to win even a righteous cause by force. Even in His own personal life, hunted from place to place, with nowhere to lay His head, hampered everywhere by His enemies, defeated by men's lack of faith and their hard, cold hearts, He still will not use force. The disciples plead that fire should be sent from heaven, but the Master would have nothing to do with that method. Towards the end, Peter draws his sword with the impulsive thought that the cause is righteous and worth fighting for. Tenderly, I think, Jesus spoke to this lovable, rash, impulsive man, "Put back thy sword!" There is a deep hint in His words, as though He says, "If I had been going to adopt the method of physical force I should not have waited till now." We remember how St. Matthew's version proceeds after that incident. It goes on to say what appeals strongly to one's imagination, and sounds an even greater depth of respect for man's personality: "Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech My Father, and He shall, even now, send Me more than twelve legions of angels?" Dr. Rendel Harris, one of the foremost living scholars of the New Testament, tells us in his book, As Pants the Hart, that "for a moment it is clear that Jesus was looking into a world which He knew even better than this one. Here were twelve men with Him, eleven of them runaways, and one a traitor. Supposing each man were replaced by a whole legion of angels. How the kings of the earth would hide themselves in caves, and in the holes of the rocks, before the glory of the Lord!" But it was only for a moment. "Put up thy sword!" It might have been the word to those waiting hosts, eager to burst through, as well as the word to Peter. One imagines their silent departure in wonder and awe; all the mighty hosts of heaven held back in order that man's personality might not be overwhelmed and coerced by a sheer exhibition of force.
Turn, secondly, to the method we call personal psychic force. Think to what a degree Jesus possessed this! A man will leave his work, his home, his friends, at two words from the Master: "Follow Me." He turns on a crowd hustling Him toward a precipice, down which they intend to cast Him, and, because of the light in His eye and the majesty of His bearing, His persecutors fall back on either side, not one of them daring to touch Him. Are we surprised to hear one man say to Him, "I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest"? We are not surprised at that, but it is with tremendous appreciation that one notices the way in which Jesus deliberately stands away from men, as it were, in order that they may not be persuaded merely by the magnetism of His personality, hypnotized into decision. He takes precaution lest the tremendous impact of His personality should throw them off their balance. He wants their decision to be their own. So to His impulsive follower He says, "Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." As though He would say, "Go home and think about it. Don't make your decision just because I want you to do it." And one wonders whether that same kind of respect for man's personality does not lie behind His words. It is expedient for you that I go away. We must not let our conceptions of the "Gentle Jesus," beautiful and true as these are, blind us to the fact that when He was on earth, and His personality was manifested in a human body which made it easily apprehended, the impact of that personality on others was all but overwhelming. By that I do not mean that men were all attracted. There happened with Jesus what always happens where you have a powerful personality. There were few neutrals. Men were for or against. And they were swayed, not by examining the issue in all its bearings and making a personal choice which recognized all the implications, but were swept into one or other camp by those almost electrical currents of psychic energy which streamed from Him. So crowds surged round Him, and would have died for Him. Others withdrew to weave their corporate suspicion, hate, and fear into a net strong enough to drag Him to death. Jesus knew this would happen. As He said, He came not to bring the peace of smug, self-satisfied complacency, but the sword of division that severs sometimes the most close-knit intimacies of life., Knowledge of these facts, and respect for man's personality, made Him stand away from men in a way that sometimes appears to us crushing or cold. In reality, He is making reverent room for the sanctities of human life and the freedom of human choice.
Turn, thirdly, to the method of mental superiority. How easy it would have been for Jesus to take an attitude expressed in the words of those who say to us, "Well, I know better than you do." Might He not have brought to bear on His followers such an enormous weight of evidence that they would have been mentally unable to acquiesce in anything else but His will, or in any other way but His way? It is most impressive to notice that Jesus never crushed men's minds by the sheer weight of argument, which they had no trained faculty to disentangle or coordinate with the rest of their mental background. He led them quietly step by step, so that the mind could always took back and see the steps it had taken. It is the difference between being whirled into a new experience by an escalator and walking quietly upstairs. As Dr. Maltby has pointed out, Jesus would not override perplexity or accept a loyal heart at the expense of a disabled mind. He would rather leave many things unexplained, and leave them with their mental integrity undamaged, even though He had to say to them at the end, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." His way is perfectly revealed in the journey to Emmaus, when, refraining from any overwhelming revelation at first, He led their inquiring minds step by step from familiar beginnings, in which their minds were at home with Moses and the Prophets, till He could "interpret to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."
Consider, fourthly, the method of appealing to emotion. Emotion is a much misunderstood thing. To some people it is a thing to be dreaded and distrusted. Do not let us despise it. No venture of the soul is made without it. A man cannot fall in love with Christ (which is what being a Christian means) without emotion, any more than he can fall in love with his beloved without emotion. Jesus used emotion again and again. Surely one cannot read His words without being stirred to the very depths. It seems to me that the point is that He never asked a man to make a decision while his personality was swept by emotional force. If, in cooler moments, intellect and will confirmed emotional desire, then a man was won; but if a man is only won emotionally, then only a third of his personality is captured, arid when his emotion cools, his allegiance will die with it. That is why Jesus sent that impulsive disciple home to think about his desire to follow, and that is why it seems to me a mistake, if when men's emotions are roused, they are swept into some inquiry-room and required, then and there, to make some great decision. Would it not be better to wait until intellect and will confirm emotional desire and the whole man were won for God, even if the number of decision-cards signed were less? I have been deeply impressed by the way in which Jesus might have won the young ruler by an appeal on the emotional side — Jesus's arm through his, and such a word as, "Don't turn away like that," and the thing was done. When Judas shuffled across the floor of the Upper Room to do his dreadful deed, Jesus, by a single sentence appealing to the emotion of pity, might have saved both Himself and Judas, but in both cases Jesus let men go. He used emotion — for instance, He spoke words which kindled fear as no other words can kindle that emotion — but, out of a divine respect for human personality, He never pressed for decision while emotion was at its height, nor coerced a submission by an appeal to admiration, or pity, or fear.
All this has, as I suggested, a twofold meaning. First, the very nature of God is revealed, for "he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." God might use physical force. He might bring His angels and sweep through our cities until every man was beaten to his knees. God could use psychic force. We who have prayed that we might see His face should remember that one of these day's He might conceivably answer our prayer, and, in the splendour of that tremendous Presence, what would be left of our faculty for judgement, and decision, and choice? We should be swept into allegiance. God could use mental force. He could bring evidence of His reality and power which would break down the mind by the weight of its truth. One of the most amazing signs of His respect for our personality lies in the fact that He has put us in a world in which the evidence against Him is far more obvious than the evidence in His favour. God might use emotional power. If a modem evangelist can herd people by the hundred into an inquiry-room, could not God Himself sweep our being with the fires of an emotion that would break down all our resistance? But, let us note, secondly, that we must not call God cold and distant; we must not complain that He does not vindicate Himself sufficiently, when His restraint is a sign of His very respect for our personality. He has eschewed all ways of force pressed to excess, in. order that our choice of His way may be wholly our own.
I have seen a picture called "Victory" which shows a hill-top, a standard floating proudly from a flag-staff, a captain standing with uplifted sword among the remnant of his followers, and the bodies of the beaten enemy lying around. Many would like to picture in their minds the victory of God like that. They think of Him with all His enemies under His feet. I doubt if ever they will be. For in the heaven of heavens they will be standing by His side with you and me, captured, bound, broken down by a willing response to love. His victory is seen on another hill-top, on which is erected no proud standard floating in the breeze, but just a wooden cross. There is no captain standing with uplifted weapon. The Captain of our salvation hangs nailed thereon, and a weapon has been driven into His side. Even here He does not hang thus to win a mere emotional pity, but He reveals the long, quiet, suffering, patient ways of God. The fact that humbles me to the dust and overwhelms me with shame is that there stands on the threshold of the human life the eternal Christ, the Prince of Glory, and in His hand are all the forces I have described. Between Him and the object of His passionate longing is only the frail barrier of the human will. If He lifted so much as a little finger, our paltry defences would go down in ruins, but, because of this tremendous respect for our personality, which reveals the eternal restraint of God, this great Lover of the soul will never be its burglar, but will wait on the threshold until we ourselves rise and let Him in. "Behold," He says, "I stand at the door and knock." What a respect for personality! What a divine restraint! What a majestic love! I listen down the corridor of the years for any sound of the dread trumpet of an angel summoning men to repentance. I only hear the voice of a Baby crying in a manger, and a whisper from lips tortured by pain, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
JESUS AND OUR CONFLICTING HUNGERS
IT is the way of some people to assert that men cannot be happy without God. When the solemn pietist sees the fascinating, jolly, and lovable pagans of today, apparently enjoying themselves to the full, he is wont to say to himself that they cannot be really happy, and to imagine that the gaiety is rather put on to stifle a deeper hunger for God, in whom alone true happiness is to be found. This diagnosis of the situation, I think, is rather biased by a desire that it should be true; and some who have denied themselves what they would now call the worldly pleasures cover up their continued hunger for them by pretending darkly that other people do not enjoy them.
I think it is absurd to suggest that a man cannot be happy without God. He is often as happy as he knows how to be. It may be that he doesn't know how to be very happy, that his capacity for happiness is small. But many a worldling is as happy as he can be, and cannot conceive a greater happiness. In a way this is a tragedy, and amongst such people the man of religion is as unpopular as was the man who had sight in Mr. H. G. Wells's The Country of the Blind, and for the same reason. If you're as happy as you know how to be, you feel mocked and outraged and annoyed by some one who says to you, "Your happiness is nothing to be compared with the joy that might be yours if your eyes were once opened."
It is one of the mysterious facts of life that concentration on the material makes you less conscious of the spiritual. One might imagine that God would have so made man that if he concentrated on material things he would become more and more hungry for God, until at last he was just flung back on God and couldn't bear to be kept from Him any longer. The facts are the opposite. It is a yet further sign of God's respect for human personality ... that religion is not an instinct — a thing that will not be denied — but a faculty which needs cultivation. The longer a man is content with happiness on a low level the less sensitive does he become to the existence of happiness on any higher level. The inexorable law of nature by which it is ordained that an unused faculty becomes incapable of use, works its terrible nemesis on this high plane, and a faculty for enjoying the spiritual, if unused, becomes incapable of being used; and while a man is still happy, as happy as he is able to be, yet he is oblivious to the fact that his "power to be able" is becoming less and less. For the difference between an instinct and a faculty can be seen in the desires which spring from them. In the case of the former, the less you have the more you want. In the case of the latter, the less you have the less you want.
It is really amazing how a man can get on without God. If trouble comes he worries through, wretched and miserable, but still not believing there are any higher resources with which to meet that trouble. Often he is brought to the dust by disaster in a way that hurts any one who is trying to help him. Still he seems to have no power to call to his aid spiritual resources; and sometimes, when death faces him, it is pitiful to feel that one cannot bring the aid one would like to bring because there seems to be no faculty functioning within the sufferer capable of responding to that aid.
Happiness, then, is relative to our capacity to be happy. The worldly man is as happy as he is able to be, but he is not able to be very happy. His happiness is circumscribed by his capacity, and his capacity is made up from material elements. So many a man, especially in middle age, settles down to shut himself up in his own little world — for example, the world of his business. He will be respectable, no one can criticize his way of life, his business will occupy most of his hours, and his pleasure the rest. Like a shellfish, he manufactures his own shell, thinks it is the world, and settles down. He is happy, no one could deny it.
Fortunately for him, God has not forgotten him. God eagerly desires to revivify those dying faculties. God made him for something else, and God has influences at work which can break up that shell just as one might break a shell of a shellfish, and leave it on the shore of a boundless ocean. The self-enclosed life that felt itself so safe and so happy is awakened to the fact that there is another world; and, thank God, no one is ever quite safe from this revealing of God. A certain mood creeps over a man, perhaps after a Sunday evening service; or something far simpler breaks the shell of his prison — an evening star in a bed of daffodil sky, the sound of the sea heard in the distance at night, a woman's eyes, the hand of a little child, a nocturne of Chopin, one flash of memory — and a man knows that he belongs to the Infinite and that the finite can never mean complete happiness.
You notice that this invasion is marked with a sense of unhappiness. The other world in which we have lived is broken up, and for a little while we are between two worlds, and for a time there will be a succession of conflicts within the soul. It will be impossible to go back and find happiness in merely material things, and yet most of us do not enter the spiritual world completely at first. We have tastes, and hungers, and appetites which belong to the world of the seen. For some of us it will take a long time to resolve these conflicts by the very nature of the life we live. For instance, we have to make our living, and do our business in a material world where the world of the spiritual counts for so little. On Sunday night idealism seems attainable; on Monday morning realism confronts us, and there seems a kind of conflict between the two. On Sunday night we really do honestly and sincerely desire God; by Monday night the lure of lower things fills all our world.
And that is why some people come to think of religion as not real at all, but as an emotional fringe on life. That is also why, I think, so many religious people are miserable. They haven't resolved their conflicts. They are trying to make the best of two worlds instead of seeing them as one. They are aware of the spiritual world, but also aware of the material world, and they are not quite satisfied that the spiritual world can bring them more happiness than the material world. So they try to enjoy God on Sunday, and they try to enjoy worldly things on Monday, setting up an awful conflict in the soul; and, though they are honestly desirous of becoming spiritual in mind and heart, there are so many lookings-back, and so many fears lest, after all, worldly people are having a better time of it, that they become irritated and jarred, neither feeling at home in the spiritual world nor feeling that the pleasures of the material world are legitimate. In a way, they are not even as happy as the worldling, because the worldling, at any rate, has an undivided mind and is enjoying his pleasure to the full. Mrs. Bindle had enough religion to keep her from being entirely worldly, yet she had not enough to make her happy wherever she was. She was neither saint nor sinner, but just miserable.
Such people remind one of the story told me recently of the Scotsman who went to London, and, on returning to the north, was asked by his friend what he thought of the great metropolis. His reply was, "London is a wonderful place, but I do wish that, under the providence of God, I could have had a fortnight in it before I was converted." The story really illustrates a great truth. A man can be happy without God, but, if he is, he might well pull himself together and ask himself whether he is happy because he is blind, whether he is missing nothing, and incidentally whether the next world, where there is no happiness but God, bears thinking about. But, when once a man has seen God and realized that there is a world of spiritual values and delights, he will never be happy again until he possesses God and is possessed by Him. And while he stands between these two worlds he will be miserable, unable wholly to enjoy either.
The solution is not to see two worlds, but one. To seek the spiritual interpretation of every part of life and seek God Himself in everything we touch. Professor Drummond used to say that if you are going to seek the Kingdom of God you must seek it first, otherwise you had better leave it alone. It means putting the Kingdom first in every way: thinking of your business in terms of the Kingdom, of your pleasures in terms of the Kingdom, of your friends in terms of the Kingdom. Then the whole of existence for you is an existence completely in a spiritual world, in which you will have no regrets, no lookings-back, and in which you will find perfect self-realization, the resolving of all conflicts, and the harmony of a complete life. God means us to attain this or He would not have put this faculty within us, and, as I say, even a sunset may stir it into functioning. "He hath set eternity in their hearts".
May I summarize in three sentences, and then give two brief illustrations ? (i) You can be happy without God by shutting God out; but remember it is the happiness of a man who chooses to be blind when the world is a pageant of beauty. (2) Once wake up to Him and you will be unhappy until you serve Him wholly and possess Him and are possessed by Him. (3) We are made in His image, and when we once awake to our true nature we shall only be satisfied with His likeness.
Now two stories, the first from Fiona Macleod. One of the gods who ruled in the depths of the sea dearly wanted a human child for his own; and one day, as he watched, he saw a boat, carrying a child, going from one island to another of the Hebrides. The god chased the boat; but, ere he reached it, it grated on the shingle and the child was carried to land. Yet, so the legend runs, the god was just in time to throw a wavelet into the child's heart, and then the god sank down to his palace beneath the waves. "But," he said, "the boy will come back to me, for the sea is in his heart." One day the villagers saw a young man pull out in a boat towards the spot where there was no land. They said, "Why is he pulling in that direction? There is no land there." Then they saw him stand up, throw up his arms, and dive into the sea. He had obeyed the urge of the sea that was in his heart.
Let me conclude with one little experience of my own. In Mesopotamia during the war, when I was on staff duty, visiting on horseback various Arab sheiks, one of them presented me with an Arab horse. It was a splendid, high-spirited animal who loved nothing better in this world than a wild gallop across the desert. When my duties were completed I returned to the base at Basra. There for some months I was engaged in the humdrum duties of my regiment, and the horse became strangely subdued, and so docile that one could ride up on inspection duty between two ranks of men without any fear of his being violent. Then one day I took him out beyond the tents and huts and outposts till he saw the desert. With one tremendous snort of happiness, he raced away for the horizon, intoxicated, mad with joy. Fortunately I had only to sit still and hang on. There were no hedges or ditches or walls to fear, but we were out of sight of Basra before his strength was exhausted. The desert was in his heart. He just revelled in it.
God hath set eternity in our hearts, and, once we wake up to that fact, we shall never be happy till we possess Him and are possessed by Him, and death will but free us from this world's limitations and allow us to revel in that abundant life which is God's eternal purpose:
When that which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home.
JESUS'S ANSWER TO OUR UNSOLVED PROBLEMS
ONE of the great values of the pulpit and the religious Press is to throw light on the problems that confront thinking men and women as they face life, and, in Milton's phrase, "To justify the ways of God to men." It will be obvious to us all, however, that there are some problems which, at present, are insoluble. Man is continually asking questions which have no satisfactory answer. For instance, think of man's relation to nature. He feels in a sense that he is superior to nature, yet natural catastrophies are continually bringing suffering upon men. Man tries to think his way to the cause of these disasters, and gets a certain way. For instance, when an earthquake sweeps thousands of Japanese people into eternity the Christian man is appalled; but he at once begins to try to think his way through the situation, and feels some relief in remembering that the laws of the world which make the earthquake possible are necessary laws, and that man must learn to accommodate himself to them, and, for instance, not build heavy architectural structures on ground which he knows to be unsafe. But, no sooner has he got some kind of comfort for that, than a great tornado rushes across some of the States in America, bringing ruin, desolation, calamity, and death, and man's mind seems stunned and baffled. Long ago, if he is a thoughtful man, he has put away the thought that this is God's vengeance, or judgement, or punishment. He supposes that the existence of the winds is a necessity, and yet man seems unable to protect himself against the onslaught of such a storm. It seems beyond his capacity to cope with the situation, and the calamity seems to achieve nothing; not even to teach him lessons about the natural forces, for who can escape from a cyclone? Matthew Arnold's lines cause him something approaching distress:
Earthquakes do not scorn
The just man to entomb,
Nor lightnings turn aside
To find his virtues room.
If God is a loving Father, why does He allow these things to happen? Or does He allow them because He cannot help it? It was this kind of unsolved problem that led John Stuart Mill to propound his dilemma: "Either God is not omnipotent, or He is not good." And, though such catastrophies as I have indicated are fortunately rare, yet, if they happen but once, the problem is raised; and on a lesser scale that kind of problem is being faced every day. Here is the farmer who has just rejoiced to see some crop pushing its way through the soil, and a frost which he could not possibly have foreseen blights it for ever. Or he sees the corn standing golden in the fields, and rain and wind make thousands of acres useless. No one can condemn the Christian farmer for asking the question, "Why?" Or take a natural catastrophe of another kind. We are all familiar with the famous picture The Hopeless Dawn, in which a fisherman's wife has thrown herself at her mother's knees in an agony of distress. The pair have watched all night for the return of the beloved, and now it is breaking upon them that the storm has claimed him. There is not one of us who does not feel sympathy for that young wife in the picture, and the more thoughtful of us cannot help asking why the storm did rise at that moment. Could that storm achieve more in the purposes of God than the lives of fishermen? This is the kind of unsolved problem that a thoughtful man continually puts to himself.
Those who have given much thought to the problem of pain will recognize quite frankly that there is a central problem in that mystery which is insoluble as far as reason goes. We may throw light on many of the problems of pain. We can see pain as a warning. We can understand why the innocent suffer, because the world is made on the family basis and not on an individual basis, and, receiving the assets of the family, some of us must bear its liabilities. We can see that a good deal of suffering is brought about through ignorance, folly, and sin, for which God is not directly and completely responsible, since He is always striving to replace ignorance with knowledge, folly with wisdom, and sin with holiness. We can see that God suffers with us. We can count up all the assets which come to us through pain; heroism, sympathy, and pity. And yet there are questions that in our lifetime will never be solved. Why did God make a world in which cancer is even a possibility? Why did God make our bodies capable of experiencing such agony? As we see men and women, and even little children, suffer, why could He not achieve His purpose without such dreadful agony? These are amongst the unsolved problems of life.
Every one of us could give examples of them either from his own experience or from his own observation. I think of a missionary friend, a brilliant graduate of a northern University, who went out to India, learned the language, was an immediate success amongst Indian students, could preach and speak in the language, acquired a sound knowledge of that sacred literature which is the background of the Indian student mind. He married a cultured lady, founded a perfect Christian home, and had two little girls. Then one day, bathing in a shallow backwater, which I know well and in which I have bathed a score of times, he was attacked by cramp and taken from the water dead. The question one is bound to ask is, "What was gained in comparison with what was lost?" We may say that death is only an incident, that his life goes on; and there is both truth and comfort in that; but, humanly speaking, all that long, laborious preparation to qualify himself to do that one job seems lost. On a recent Sunday night we sent the flowers from my pulpit to a young mother still in her early twenties, with a baby five weeks old. There the mother lay in the throes of galloping consumption, with apparently only a few weeks to live. As I sat on the edge of her bed, with her thin, wasted hand in mine, she said, "God won't let me die, will he? There is so much to live for now." But she passed over while these pages were in the Press.
I must not add illustrations like this together, because the effect is depressing to some readers, and we have so many of these illustrations locked up in our own hearts, that one does not wonder that men throw up against the brassy heavens their anguished cry, "Why?"
Let us turn now to the brighter question, "What is Jesus's attitude to these unsolved problems ?" First of all, I think that we may safely say that Jesus, that fearless thinker, would, as it were, lead His men as far as He could through any problem. For instance, as you watch Him tackle the problem of pain, He will not believe that the Tower of Siloam fell on a certain number of men because those men were sinners. He is slow to regard catastrophe as a divine judgement. "Think ye," He said, "that these men were sinners above all them that dweit in Jerusalem? I tell you, 'No.' " And when men asked Him, saying, "Lord, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither did this man sin nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him we must work the works of Him that sent Me."
He would recognize that disaster is not to be thought of as the will of God any more than sin is the will of God, though its possibility is the will of God, as is that of sin. He would recognize, I think, that, like a human father, God would save His children from disaster if such saving did not interfere with the principles on which He was educating His other children, making religion a kind of insurance; or, by holding up the laws of the universe, make it unreliable, unknowable, and more terrifying — since one could never learn its ways — than it is now.
Jesus's mind, moreover, was made of stern stuff, so that He would not regard the price paid for our education as children in God's family as too high. We think it too high because commonly we make two mistakes.
(1) We think of death as the ultimate calamity, whereas it probably interferes as little with the purposes of God as a man's removal from one town to another. We cannot hope to realize that now, but we shall realize it when, standing in the eternal world, the brevity of this life and the scope of the life after death fall into their proper proportions. It is impossible to believe that the purposes of God through all eternity can be ultimately defeated by, say, a few germs, or a falling brick, or a pit explosion, or a bullet. A man must die some day, and, though our hearts ache at the death of a child and we do well to do all in our power to save life, yet the difference between six and sixty in the perspective of eternity is less than between this minute and the next.
(2) God would not put us into a world where what we call disaster was even possible unless, by the right reaction to such disaster, we could, in cooperation with Him, win a permanent good greater in measure than the evil of the disaster. When you see the agony of an incurable cancer you must say, "The measure of that agony is less than the measure of good which, in cooperation with the sufferer, God will win for him." This is the only faith which justifies the possibility of pain. It cannot be too often said that the measure of the world's suffering must be the measure of our faith, since both are less than the measure of God's purposes. The Cross is never the last word. There is always Easter morning. And the measure of the glory of the second is greater than the measure of the agony of the first.
Jesus, it seems to me, had one final anchorage for His mind amid all the buffeting waves of doubt. He found a solution in the character of God. It is not, a solution arrived at by the reason, or the problem would not be insoluble. It is a solution of faith, but a faith supported by reason. Instead of Mill's dilemma, I would suggest to you another. Either God is a fiend who has somehow climbed on to the throne of the universe and works malicious, evil, and revolting deeds, or He is a loving Father. If you start out by believing the first, there are hundreds of facts which will fit, but you had better sing a Nunc dimittis — "Lord, lettest now Thy servant depart in tears, for mine eyes have seen hell." If that view of God is true, then all our strivings are mockery, and there cannot be any such thing as morality. Or we may believe that God is a Father whose name is Infinite Love, and that we are in a world which is His school for His children — not a world that is perfect yet, but a world in the making, and not a Father who achieves His ends by irresistible power, but by the power of Love which suffers many a set-back, which involves His children in suffering, which breaks His own heart, which makes it possible for a sinless Man to die on a cross, but which in the end is the only way of achieving a divine purpose in a divine way.
So you may ask yourself which makes the most sense; and that, after all, is a scientific way of looking at things. Where there are two theories, the scientists accept the one which best accounts for the observed phenomena. But there is one factor which powerfully suggests that we are on right lines when we think of God as Father, and that is that Jesus thought so; and, whatever we may believe about His person, almost everybody will agree that no one has ever seen farther into the nature of the being of God than Jesus. Here, then, you have, putting it at its lowest, a great teacher on his own subject. We would not quarrel with Einstein about relativity, or with any acknowledged expert on his own subject. Jesus, whom all agree to be the world's greatest religious teacher, has spoken to us on His own subject, the nature of God. Can we do other than sit at His feet? And He has not only spoken, but put His views to the test, tried them out in His life and death. And that life is so radiant, victorious, and glorious, and the influence of that death so compelling, that the unbiased mind finds it harder to think Him wrong than to think Him right. For to suppose Him wrong is to suppose an ultimate indecency at the heart of things, and be driven in vain to find some other adequate explanation of the appeal of His words and character.
So, when I see Him nailed to a cross and yet looking up into the face of God and calling God "Father," I find myself saying over and over again that there are things I cannot understand, there are things which would seem to contradict the loving nature of God; but, if Jesus says that God is a Father, and if Jesus can leave His life in the Father's hands and be certain, by faith, that all will work out well in the end, I can leave my life to Him, and I can commit to His capable hands the lives of others, and get them, even in the hour of darkness, to hold on in the dark. The faith of Jesus in God is the lamp which I press to my breast, and its light never goes out.
If I stoop
Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendour, soon or late
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day.
For the God who, on Easter morning, vindicated the faith of Jesus will vindicate those who bet their lives, and risk everything for the belief that He is what Jesus said He was, even though they find what Jesus found, that Gethsemane and Calvary lie between.
EVERY lover of the Church of Christ in this country must be troubled as he considers those things which have been deemed of greatest importance during the last few years. Two things especially have been given great prominence in ecclesiastical discussions and assemblies: the Prayer Book, with a special regard to the validity of sacraments, and the relation between modem science and Christian belief, with special reference to evolution.
Far be it from me to deny that these subjects and their implications have a deep interest and a real value. I am sure Jesus would have had an interest in them. He could not but be interested in men's efforts to compile a book of prayers which could adequately serve all the members of a truly great Church. I think He would be interested in men's efforts to interpret, in the fullest manner possible, the simple Supper which He is said to have asked His followers to celebrate in remembrance of Himself. And, in regard to evolution, His own passion for truth would make Him sympathetic with every quest of the human mind. But when one remembers the words that have been written and spoken passionately on these subjects, and the controversies concerning them between eminent Church leaders, one's mind is troubled, because one feels that we are regarding as of preeminent importance matters which, to Jesus, would have been secondary; and thus we are diverting spiritual energies away from their true endeavour. Jesus would have been interested in the matters named, but He would have been not interested but passionately concerned that, for instance, at the time I write, there are starving miners in the Rhondda Valley. He had a great concern about bread, was tempted to preach a purely social gospel, was concerned that crowds had bread to eat, and inserted in the model prayer the petition, "Give us daily our bread for the coming day." He would have been concerned with the question of unemployment. It seemed to trouble Him, even in His day — a day so simple compared with our complex civilization — that there were men standing idle in the market-place. He would have been passionately concerned with an evil like the White Slave Traffic. He had such a deep respect for womanhood. He would have been passionately concerned about our slums. He said a very interesting thing about housing. He held that every home should "have one room to which members of the family could withdraw and be quiet and pray to their Father in secret." It would have been intolerable to Him that the Church should be so complacent when five families lived in one house and people were herded together like animals. He would be much concerned about those who sit afar off in India, China, and Africa, and who have never heard of His transforming power. He could never lift His eyes to the world's wide horizons without being moved with compassion for the multitude; without urging His followers to pray that more labourers might be thrust out to gather in the whitening harvest. He would have had a deep concern about war. War is a greater disbelief than any refusal to accept humanly formulated dogmas. As our mind runs over some of the things we need to put right as a great united Church, the instrument of His purposes on the earth, it seems to some of us that we are spending our energy in being concerned about things which to Jesus would have been merely matters of interest, and only interested in matters for which Jesus had the deepest concern.
The gospel of Jesus, as you read St. Mark, seems such a lovely, romantic, adventurous, simple thing. Not simple to follow out in life — indeed, an adventure requiring all the grit, courage, and self-renunciation of which man is capable — but easy to understand and tremendously appealing. It proclaimed the glorious good news that a man's true life consisted in a twofold attitude. He could look up into the face of God and say, "My Father," and he could stretch out his hand to every one of his fellows, of whatever nation, or kindred, or tribe, or tongue, and say, "My brother." It was a glorious message. There was something big about it. It had the tang of the sea in it, and the strength of mountains, and the loveliness of Galilean flowers. It was a thing which captured the imagination, set the mind wondering, and yet issued in magnificent activity and service.
We can hardly deny that it has suffered at the hands of ecclesiastics, popes, bishops, creed-makers, doctrine-mongers, and committee maniacs. It has become for some bewildering, confusing, wearisome, and complicated. It is as though a lovely sea-bird, meant to mount on strong wings through the tempest, or under clear blue skies, a thing of beauty and strength, meant to gladden all hearts, should be imprisoned in — some foul, mouldering, brass cage, where its feathers would drop off, its eyes grow dim, and where its true purpose could not be achieved. As an instance of this we may note what has often been pointed out: that all children love Jesus, and thrill with the wonder of child delight when their imagination is allowed to realize the stories of what Jesus was and did. Yet few children like going to church. There is a vast significant difference between our cry, "Bring the children to the Church," and Jesus's cry, "Don't hinder them from coming to Me." They wanted to come to Him.
I often ask myself what Peter — that fine, adventurous, heroic spirit — would say if he visited one of our churches for a few weeks. Probably he would be shown into the free seats because his clothes would smell of fish! What would he make of our queer, cumbrous machinery and our innumerable meetings? What would he think as he tried to twist his mind round our elaborate theories and doctrines; as he stood in church and watched people whose souls are smothered with money, singing hymns written by mystics who hadn't any; as he watched men and women who love ease and comfort and selfishness, and to be thought well of by others better than anything else, listening to words read from the Scriptures in our sometimes droning, somnolent voices — words which originally had the sting of heroic challenge throbbing through them? What would he say to our conventional respectability, our complacency, our desire to be on favourable terms with God and get ourselves to heaven?
There are many splendid things in modern Christianity, and I know that the mind must weave itself theories, and work must be organized to be done efficiently; but look broadly at some aspects of modern Christianity, and ask yourself whether we are conveying to people the simple, good news of Jesus. Here is one man who says, as he smites the cover of the Bible, "I believe in this infallible book from cover to cover. Every semicolon is inspired, and there isn't a single mistake in science, history, or fact, though one recalls that it was written by scores of different writers, over a period of more than a thousand years." Here is another man who says: "I belong to an infallible Church which during a chequered existence has, through its Pope, never made any mistake either in theology or morality." Here is another man who says: "Unless you are baptized by total immersion in water you have no right to be considered a Christian." Here is another who claims that a true follower of Christ must attend a particular service which, as Dr. Barnes points out, is said to have extraordinary value for piety and virtue if it is held at eight o'clock in the morning, but which, if held at eight o'clock in the evening, is without authority or value, though the origin of this service was a rite instituted at the close of an evening meal, when Jesus, as it seems to some of us, gave men bread and wine much as we might give others a photograph of ourselves, saying, "Let this remind you of me." Here is another man who would refuse to partake of this sacramental meal if the bread were passed to him by some saintly lady. He would only accept it from the hands of a man who put forward the claim, which has never been intelligently substantiated, that he was in apostolic succession to St. Peter. (And I would like to hear St. Peter on that point!) Here is another man who places the emphasis on an intellectual creed which only a person with a special theological training could even understand, let alone subscribe to. Here is another man who will seriously tell you that when a certain wafer is blessed by the priest it will change its substance and become the actual body of Jesus. Others, again, put a great deal of emphasis on their contention that we are the lost ten tribes of Israel. Others, again, have driven undertakers to hold meetings to protect themselves, since the cry of a new sect is "Millions now living will never die."
I shall be accused of exaggerating in drawing up this catalogue — and I plead guilty. At the same time, violent discussions have raged on all these points, and my justification for putting them together is to set them over against the actual teaching of Jesus. What did He say about the nature of these various emphases, many of which are regarded as central and essential by those who make them?
The answer is that He said nothing. Our accretions to His teaching have become substitutes for it. The greatest commandment, He says, is to love God and love your neighbour.
He stands among us tied up in our formalism, our creeds, and our superstitions, and He says: "Follow Me." He shows us a way of life, not a system of belief, not intricate organization, and not a series of ceremonial observances. When we have discussed all these points our findings are about as uncertain as they can be. Jesus was certain of His message; in Him we have power to become the sons of God. We must live as such and enter into that heritage of power, of radiant, throbbing life, and of deep and durable peace.
We shall win the world, not by clever thinking, intricate machinery, or ornate ritual, but by getting over to men Jesus' secret of a power that can transform life. The world will ultimately choose as the true Church of Christ that Church which produces most observably the life that was in Him. One imagines that in the final denomination — which might well have for its motto the slogan "Back to Jesus" — a condition of membership will be that people must read St. Mark's Gospel, and, having heard what Jesus said, they shall express a desire to follow His way of life wherever it leads, and be prepared to discipline their lives accordingly. If I were asked what I thought they would have to believe, I would suggest that, as in the davs of His flesh, men should believe nothing except those truths which grow up by themselves in the mind through sheer communion with Jesus, communion that becomes real through making personal adventures in prayer. In that final denomination, also, machinery would be kept very simple, and be mainly concerned with cases of actual need and with the supreme aim of getting men into direct touch with Jesus. The trouble with our present ecclesiastical machinery is that we have not enough current to drive it, and it is a poor game pushing wheels round with your hands when they ought to be revolving speedily and silently in response to a new power. We have got away from this source of power, which is, frankly, personal communion and friendship with Jesus; and, instead of getting back to it, we build more and more machinery. It is pathetic to notice the "stunts" adopted to get people to church, to hear of appeals to people to take office "to keep the thing going," to mark the innumerable meetings held during one winter in any one church compared with the effort to touch the outsider, to see the eagerness to enlarge the social life of the Church compared with the eagerness to apply to the world the social implications of the Church's message. Yet we are content thus to push the machine along, since it is easier to organize a meeting and attend it, to sing "Rimington" and "Duke St." and imagine oneself keen, to go home and criticize it, than to go out under the stars, find one's way into the presence of Jesus, be rebaptized by His spirit, reenergized with His power, and say in the spirit of utter consecration, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
In the first century, men and women of small means and education, with simple organization and little concern with the social life of the Church, were so vibrant and alive with the spirit of their Master, so amazingly happy, so exuberantly certain that they had a secret which would transform men's lives, so passionately eager to pass it on, that Christianity spread, not by advertisement and stunt and piteous invitation, but Eke a glorious infection. Nor did men doubt the source of this new power that was flooding the world with light and energy, for "when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus."
The way will be the same for us. The need of the world is Jesus. The hunger of the world is for Jesus. The hope of the world is Jesus. The healing of the world is in Jesus, and the Church must put the emphasis where Jesus put it — namely, on Himself. We are not to ask what Jesus would do, but "What would Jesus have me do in the circumstances in which I find myself?" There is no greater need in the Church than a deeper personal spiritual experience of Christ on the part of the individual member. He who goes back to Jesus and follows His way of life in all its simplicity and daring will be neither rich nor popular, but he will find a durable satisfaction. Life will be full of power, meaning, purpose, and beauty. Jesus fills it with the sunshine of His glory, the radiance of His abiding presence, and the strength of His ineffable peace.
"EASY?" says my businessman friend; and he says the word as though to ask the question at the head of this chapter were grievously to misunderstand the nature of modern business life. One can hear the tones of real sincerity in his voice as he explains that, with every desire to apply his Christian principles to his business, sometimes the Sermon on the Mount seems utterly unrelated to life as he faces it, and that, caught up as he is in the modern competitive system, it is one of the hardest things in the world to be a Christian.
I turn to my young girl friend and I say, "Do you find it easy to be a Christian?" and she explains that the Christian way has always seemed so hard that she has never seriously begun to follow it. "Why! Easy?" she says. "Look at the things I should have to give up! I am only young once, and I mean to have a jolly good time; whereas if I am going to be a Christian you would want me to teach in the Sunday school or get about among the poor, or perhaps go as a missionary. It is too hard."
I turn to a clerk in an office and ask him the same question, and he answers in the same way. "Why," he says, "if I showed my colours for a single moment the fellows would call me by the name goody-goody, the typists would giggle, and the other fellows would rag me to death. It is hard enough to play the game; to be a real Christian is too hard."
I turn to a middle-aged spinster whose life is more secluded and I ask her the same question. "Why," she says, "it is the hardest thing in the world! Every day I try not to lose my temper. Every night I register a failure. I go to church and class meetings and read books and go to Communion. But somehow to take Christianity seriously is the hardest thing in the world."
I turn to a young mother with a growing family and no maid. "Do you find it easy to be a Christian?" But she speaks of dishes to wash, clothes to mend, rooms to clean out, food to cook, and all this to do on money that won't go far enough. She is up early in the morning and in bed late at night. And she says, "I suppose if I were a real follower of Jesus I should have family prayers, talk to the children about God, and live before them as Christ would have one live; but I get so tired and life is so full that it is the hardest thing in the world; so hard that, quite frankly, I have given it up."
What these imaginary five people say, I suppose, would be said by hundreds in mills, factories, offices, universities, schools, and homes throughout the land, and I find it hard to answer them, although I know the answer to all of them.
I know that the answer to the business man is that, if he could only see life steadily and see it whole, then to follow the way of Christ would bring such a sense of inward peace and radiant well-being, that in the long run it would be an easier way than to follow what seems easy, but which brings constant recriminations and long-drawn-out conflict; but I know also that in the meantime he would lose money and prestige and be called a fool, and I should feel a hypocrite to tell him that the way of Christ is easy.
It would be the same with the young girl. I know that life will not work her way, for she imagines that a full life is a life full of cinemas and dances and excitement and what she calls thrill, and that very soon, as she will say herself, she will be "fed up." None of us can tell ourselves often enough that life will only work one way, and that is God's way, and that in the end self-realization can only be found in the way Christ showed; in a word, that His way is easier than any other. But then, I am middle-aged and married, and the days when I wanted to whirl about from one diversion to another have gone, and it seems a hypocrite's game to denounce people for doing things when one has no temptation to do them oneself.
It is so in the case of the clerk in the office. I feel that if he followed Christ quite bravely, without caring what people thought or said, life would gain permanent enrichment. Perhaps God does not want anything in that clerk's office so much as He wants a man brave enough to show his colours and, by showing them, to make it easier for other people to be good. Youngsters, who are far too shy to stand up for the things that in their hearts they love, would be ready enough to do so if some one of stronger personality made it easier. But then, since I left the Army I have never been sneered at for my religion, and therefore how can I ask some one else to make a stand which I have not to make myself?
So with the spinster and mother. It is easy enough to talk to them, but they have the right to feel that talking is easier than doing, and, though I cannot give them their answer, I believe that Christ can, if they will listen to His voice, a voice that, in spite of our protests that His way is too hard, comes to us down the ages, saying quite clearly and definitely, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
If anybody else said this we should not believe him. To talk of leaving father and mother for His sake, of leaving wealth and position and taking up a cross, and of counting the world well lost if He be gained, and then to say that His yoke is easy, sounds like the word of one who cannot understand life as we have to live it. If any one else had said these words we should have been tempted to call him a fool — but Jesus said them, and He has never deceived men: and therefore we must listen to Him and try to understand what He means. One of the reasons why we think following Jesus is so hard is perhaps that we have never clearly realized what the essential thing in Christianity is. In my view it is a transforming friendship with Jesus. But there are thousands of wistful, lovable people in our Churches who have never realized that, and if one may say so, they have a "try" religion instead of a "Power" religion. They are familiar with creeds and phrases; they have heard sermons and lectures ; they have read books and pamphlets ; they have been to Keswick and Swanwick; and their faces as they walk up the aisle to the Communion table remind me of one of the saddest lines in English poetry, that line of Hardy's in The Oxen,
"Hoping it might be so."
They have listened and read and studied and worried. Others who seem to be full of a radiant happiness have talked to them about their experience. They have tried to get it; they are always "hoping it might be so," but it never is, and the reason is that they are trying to get something which can only be received as a gift. For years they have fought God to get it, hammered on a door that is open, and sought with burning eyes and weary feet for a treasure that all the time has been within their reach.
Perhaps the point can be got over like this. If you went to India you would find almost every Indian extremely interested in the problems of personal religion. India had a settled religion when we were uncultured savages. If an Indian asked you in a sentence what was your religious quest, would you say, "Trying to be good," or "Trying to be like Jesus"; or would you say, "Seeking a deeper experience of fellowship with Christ"? I think hundreds of people would say the first, and quite clearly that is not a gospel at all. A gospel means "good news." No missionary would ever be justified in going to India or China and saying, "Now we must try to be good" or "Try to be like Jesus." That is an added burden instead of an added power, and the Indian knew the importance of effort before the birth of Christianity. It is just here that so many people's religion fails and shows itself to be a difficult thing, because of course it is difficult, as Dr. Maltby would say, if we insist on "carrying the thing that ought to be carrying us," for, as Samuel Rutherford said, "Religion ought to be the kind of burden that sails are to a ship, that wings are to a bird," an added power rather than an added burden. Many sermons fail because they insist on some obligation people must fulfil more than they emphasize a power which enables them to fulfil all their obligations and have energy left to be quiet of heart and radiant of soul.
Let me try to get the point over like this. It is possible to imagine two people in a boat which is a motorboat, though they do not know this fact. Therefore they are rowing it. It is all right in the morning when the sun is shining, when spirits are high, muscles untired, and tempers unruffled. But at length the night comes down, and spirits flag, tempers are irritable, muscles are tired. The rowers cannot understand why it is that other people pass them, apparently in boats that speed over the foam, others whose faces have a laugh in them and who seemingly enjoy the tang of the sea and the salt on their faces, until one of the rowers notices a tin of petrol under a seat, and the other notices an engine in the stern of the boat, and a few minutes afterwards they too are speeding over the sea. What was effort has become power. I am not disparaging in any sense the will. The rowers will still have to steer their vessel, but they have discovered an inward power that carries them along; and there is all the difference between rowing and steering, as every boating man knows, and it is the difference between having a try religion and a power religion.
Some people will say to me, "But does not St. Paul say that the Christian life is a battle? Is not his word 'fight the good fight'? No! His exhortation is "Fight the good fight of faith." The only battle is with your doubt that there is a power to be received, a life to be laid hold on; and in the first century the writers of the New Testament could hardly understand why people insisted on making life such a hard thing, in struggling to make both ends meet, like those stricken down with poverty, when within their reach there were the unsearchable riches of Christ. The position is as though God had put a million pounds into a man's account and because of his doubts he would not believe it; and he would not risk drawing one miserable little cheque lest it should not be honoured, complaining meanwhile how hard he found it to make ends meet.
When Peter met Jesus, he did not say to himself, "Now I must try to be a good man," the thing that we say every watchnight, every Communion, every birthday, when life comes into our home or passes out of it. This is a singularly futile thing to say, and our sins openly laugh at our good resolutions. What Peter did was to yield himself to the friendship of Jesus, knowing that, not by trying, but by living in the presence of Jesus, he would be enabled to do that which effort would never make him do. The love of Christ strengtheneth where the will to do fails. And Jesus Himself must more than once have pointed out that the lily became beautiful, not by the effort of trying, but by growth brought about by yielding to the friendship of the sun, the wind, and the rain.
If the point is not clear, think of a Madras coolie trying to be Eke a Gurkha who lives in the Himalaya mountains. In the case of the latter the granite precipices are in his face, the depths of the forests in his eyes, the cool snows are in his nerves, the strength of the hills is in his body as well as in his will. Is it any good the coolie saying to the Gurkha, "I am going to try to be like you"? The Gurkha — keen, alert, with that physique of steel — might truly say, "It is no good trying to be like me. You must go and live with the mountains." And for one man to say to another, "You must try to be like Christ" is not a gospel. You must go and live with Him. That is His gospel, and the greatest transforming power in the world.
Look at another reason why Christianity seems hard. It seems hard because we are not looking at the whole of life; but I maintain that to follow Christ is easier in the long run than any other path. It is the way of the transgressor that is hard. Imagine a man standing where two roads fork. Before him in the distance is a single peak, to the top of which we will imagine he must ascend. The road on his right goes up; the road on his left goes down. It is hard to go up; it is easy to go down. But is it? Is it easy to go down if at the end of that down track there is a precipice up which one must climb? I think we must be quite certain of this, that every man's destiny is only completed at that mountain summit of pure white radiance. It means fitness for communion with God; and all through the New Testament it seems to me that there runs the thought that every man must at last come face to face with God. No one ever escapes that ultimate destiny. If it takes you three million years, you must at last climb to the top of that peak. If one soul were lost along that journey it would be a divine failure, which, of course, is unthinkable. If we are thinking it easy to go along the downward track, we may ask whether we shall ever be able to climb up the precipice at the end, a thought which reminds us of Matthew Arnold's line:
Mounting, and that hardly, to eternal life.
And if that last precipice is too much for us, it will do us good to remember that we shall have to go back along that road, which is uphill now. When I see the successful sinner, or the man whose soul is wrapped in a shroud of wealth, or whose success in life has made him indifferent to the needs of spirit; or the man who thinks religion is all right for elderly ladies, but not for virile youth; and when I see myself becoming careless and prayerless and slipping down the road that seems easy, I say to myself and to my fellows: "You have got all that way to go back, for life will only work one way, and that is God's way."
On the other hand, to take the upper track is hard, but not so hard as the journey in store for the one who first goes downhill; and I wish I could call youth to take that upward track just because it is upward; not to taste the pleasures of sin and then, when they turn to dust and ashes in the mouth, turn back, but with all sin's allurement in sight, to climb the heights, to take that upper road, and, please God, to arrive at the summit of human life, not broken, dishevelled, bloodstained, beaten, and breathless, but with every spiritual nerve and muscle throbbing with the fullness of spiritual health, able to enter without shame into the destiny of man, which is to look upon the face of God. Nor is that journey, which seems hard, nearly so lengthy as the journey down, for to those who take the high road there is a Guide.
We have a Guide and in His steps
When travellers have trod,
Whether beneath was flinty rock
Or yielding grassy sod
They cared not, but with force unspent,
Unmoved by pain they onward went,
Unstayed by pleasure still they bent
Their zealous course to God.
Look at it in yet another way. It is held to be easy to sin, hard to do right; but if we could look at life as a whole, we should realize at once that to sin makes life much harder than being virtuous. Do you remember the first time that you did some beastly thing? No one knew anything about it. You told no one and no one found out, no one condemned you. But how your face flushed, your blood raced, your heart beat against your ribs! It may be perspiration broke out on your brow as though — what is really true — your whole bodily nature was saying, "It is hard to do wrong." It is against nature. Life won't work this way. You went to bed that night, you tied a bandage round the eyes of your soul, you built a little shelter in which to hide, you tried to sleep, but no sleep came. You said to yourself, "Other people do it," or "I had to do it," or "No one else can ever find it out." But there were hands from the unseen world that came through the darkness and tore the bandage from the eyes of the soul, and smashed down the little shelter you had made for your cowering spirit, and a Voice came through the darkness that said to you, "Man, man, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goad." You think sin is easy. Do you call that easy? Can any one think life is easy when a man is plunged into that black depression of the soul that is far from God, in a darkness deeper than a night in hell?
On the other hand, you remember that occasion when, instead of following the lure of the downward track, you kept up with your shoulders back, your eyes shining, your face to the mountains. You deliberately chose good and snatched it in the face of evil. Then what a sense of well-being came, what a peace stole over the heart, what a triumphant sense of victory, a calm of mind and health of body; because it is easy to do right, hard to do wrong, if you only look far enough ahead.
I remember a man in Manchester, who became a friend, telling me that he had done five years' penal servitude for forgery; and after our friendship had deepened he explained to me how hard it was at first to sin. It was not only the difficulty of copying the signature. It was that the heart raced and the pulse throbbed and the nerves were unsteady to do this awful deed. And I was reminded of Scott's story in The Talisman, where Coeur de Lion takes the wrist of his own physician between his fingers, feels the pulse for some moments, and then says, "Ah, that is not the pulse of a poisoner of princes"; knowing that sin is so hard that the body rebels against it by quickening the pulse. Sin shatters the nerves, tears the mind asunder, undermines the health, leaves a man sleepless as well as hating himself. "It is hard to kick against the goad."
...
The cure is Spartan, though not difficult when once the secret cellar is found. We may not only have to open the trap door, but blow a wall out of the castle to let in the sunshine and wind of God's health-giving love and forgiveness. We must send the soldiers back to their proper tasks. To leave the figure, the man may have to pay, and pay dearly, for his sin, but, at any rate, his health can be restored. If he maintained his repression long enough, the conflict is capable of tearing his mind in two, and even of leading to a condition hardly distinguishable from insanity. No psychologist will ever agree to the statement that the ways of sin are easier than the ways of virtue. Look, finally, at the picture behind those words of Jesus which the world loves better than any other words He ever spoke. Here is a wise Eastern fanner. He has two bulls. One is strong-shouldered with enormous muscles, and with the patient eyes of strength. Here, on the other hand, is a smaller, weaker animal, not very much good, not able to pull anything by himself however he might try, much less a plough through that hard, inhospitable soil. Yet the little one must be trained, must play his part, does not want to be useless, wants to be the best he can be. The farmer yokes them together; the strong animal carries the heavy end of the yoke, is put on the furrow, and takes responsibility for the direction. The little one must just pull his weight, and over the field they go together. The little one is doing what he never could have done; the impossible task, which would have burst his lungs, is done in a companionship with strength. There is effort, but it is effort without strain. The power to achieve what is impossible comes from his yoke-fellow, and you are watching an example of the strength that comes to weakness when weakness is joined in fellowship with strength.
Let us leave the figure. There is a Presence with you now. Give up struggling by yourself and enter it, live in it, work in it, laugh in it, set your feet to the high road in the strength of it, revel in it, and you will hear Him say, "My Presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest. Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
WHEN the older type of evangelist makes his appeal that people should "come to Jesus," or that they should "open the door of their hearts to Him," one sometimes feels as though our relation to Jesus is being misrepresented. People are sometimes urged in such a way that the emotion of pity is aroused. The evangelist, preaching perhaps from the text, or pretext, "There was no room for them in the inn," asks with real pathos, "Will you not let Him in?" — and man's real reaction is that of pity for One who has not where to lay His head. Surely this is to do despite to the majesty and the character of Christ? We must remind ourselves that He who patiently knocks is the King of Kings, the judge of all the earth, the Lover of Souls, but a Lover whose love has relentless, inexorable qualities in it besides those of the "Gentle Jesus." And the phrase "Come to Jesus," which, rightly understood and carrying all its implications, is, in three words, the whole gospel message, is sometimes used in a context which suggests that to come to the great Physician is to be healed by a touch and brought at once to perfect spiritual health. I am in such danger myself of overemphasizing the tender and winsome qualities of the Master that I want in this chapter to point out that He is not only a Physician who can use a tender touch, but a Surgeon who can, and may have to use cold steel.
To come to Jesus would be a wonderful experience; cleansing, purifying, renewing. At the same time, it would be foolish to imagine that that experience would be anything else but surgical. One often hears people say how delightful it must have been to have talked with Jesus and companioned with Him; but I think there would be, in most of our hearts, the same kind of conflict which swept over Peter when, deeply desirous of Jesus, he could not keep back the exclamation, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord." To go into His presence in the days of His flesh would not be all honey and sweetness.
Sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
But not until some surgery had been done on our souls. Jesus would not merely give us His peace and His blessing, or put His hand on our head, and, in regard to our sins, say, "Oh, well, never mind. We won't talk about that." Within three minutes of meeting Him we should have given ourselves completely away. Our secret hypocrisies and sins and selfishness and shames would be exposed at once to that kindly but relentless eye. The self-excusings under which we hide, the pitiful shelters we make for ourselves, the lies with which we stifle our consciences, would avail nothing. First of all, any experience of coming into contact with Him would be a spiritual operation, and Christ would be a Surgeon whose love would be relentless till the keen edge of His knife had got underneath our moral cancer.
Some one has said that a man is like an island. Sometimes one has to row all round it before one finds a place to land. Most of us land where we think we shall be most welcomed. Jesus landed where He was most needed. He rowed round a life till He saw its real problem ; that is to say, until He saw the place where He was needed most; and just because His love is relentless He landed there. He rowed round the life of the rich young ruler. It was a fair island, and He loved it, but the place on which He landed was the money question. He rowed round the island life of Nicodemus, a fine old man, yet parts of his life were dead through rabbinical custom and tyrannous attention to ceremonial details. Jesus landed there and demanded rebirth. With Zacchaeus, He landed on the question of his exactions from the poor. And in the case of the woman of Samaria He wouldn't be put off, though she did her best to put Him off. He relentlessly insisted on the moral problem of her life.
All of us have in our minds a picture of Jesus a very beautiful picture; and we do right to make much of His love, His gentleness, His winsome attractiveness, His quiet happiness, His unbroken peace. It is inspiring to think about Him thus. We must not, however, put away from our minds the realization that there has never been anybody on the earth half so searching to face. Many people think of Him, in a modern phrase, as always being "nice to people," or charming. He wouldn't be nice to people at the expense of laying bare the evil in their lives. His thirst for reality, and the relentless nature of His love, must have made Him seem rude to some people. Women of sentiment sought to flatter Him. "Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the breasts which Thou didst suck." But His answer came back like cold grey steel thrust through a bunch of flowers: "Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it." All that has been written about His gentleness is true, but all that has been written about His love is truer; for the quality of love is not flabby and weak ... but stern and strong and relentless. He wasn't particularly "charming" to the Pharisees. He has blasted their name for ever. "Ye generation of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" That is not being nice to people. "I will follow Thee withersoever Thou goest," says an impulsive follower; but through the bunch of flowers came the grey of cold steel: "Very well, but remember that the foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." "Be it far from Thee, Lord," says Peter, eager to make the way of life easy for the Master, and hating the thought of suffering for Him. Listen to Christ's answer to one of His best friends: "Get thee behind Me, Satan," "I came to cast fire upon the world," He says. "I came not to bring peace, but the sword of division; to set father against son, mother against daughter, to make foes within a man's own household, and to demand the bearing of a cross, and uttermost sacrifice." A love, but a relentless love that won't be satisfied with less than reality. So violent is Jesus sometimes, so stern, so austere, so surgical, so insistent on reality, so relentless, so inexorable, that I sometimes wonder whether, when He said, "I am meek and lowly in heart" — a strange thing to say — it was because He had definitely to tell them that this was His real nature, lest men should gather a wrong impression from the vehemence of some of His words.
Jesus was relentless with Himself, and is relentless with others. He will have no friendship with us on the basis of a sham. With many of our friends the basis of friendship is mutual admiration. "You be nice to me and I'll be nice to you." Think how many friends you've got to whom you could point out an obvious flaw in their character, even in the kindest and gentlest way, without there being for ever after a flaw in the friendship. In many cases, if the faintest breath of criticism were passed, the friendship would break down, at any rate for a time. It is futile to suppose that any friendship with Jesus can be on these terms.
Jesus could have had a very easy time if He had not pressed His own ethical demands and been content to give the world His new view of God as the great Father, and of all men as brothers, without relentlessly pushing into the implications of such a gospel. But His love is relentless. The very first time He preached a sermon He preached on a text in Isaiah, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bound, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And almost before the sermon was finished the whole synagogue was in an uproar, and His very neighbours were intent on thrusting Him to the edge of the village cliff to cast Him down. He cut right through the conventions and formalities of popular religion, through all the cant and unreality and hypocrisy, to the real thing.
In our concern with things that do not matter vitally we may realize that Jesus in His day was surrounded by controversies — whether Gerizim. or Jerusalem was the proper place to worship; how ceremonially to clean the pots and pans; whether oaths on the Temple were really binding or whether one must mention the gold on the Temple; whether, supposing one had a sacred obligation to support one's parents, one could say "Corban," and be relieved of the obligation; whether, if one passed through a cornfield and pulled two or three ears of corn, it was desecration of the Sabbath; and so on. How Jesus broke through these conventional rules and unmeaning details! With what passionate utterance He condemned those Pharisees who pretended to be the religious elect, and tithed mint, anise, and cummin, and for a pretence made long prayers, enlarged the borders of their garments, and yet laid burdens grievous to be borne upon His beloved people, devoured widows' houses, and were like whited sepulchres, fair to the outwaxd eye, but inside full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. The hymn beginning,
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
expresses a great trutth, but so does Charles Wesley's hymn,
Thou Son of God, whose flaming eyes
Our inmost thoughts perceive.
And we may also remember that St. John, to whose memories of Jesus which have come through to us in the fourth Gospel we owe some of our own tenderest pictures of the Master, also wrote these words: "His eyes were as a flame of fire, His voice as the voice of many waters; out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was as the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw Him I fell at His feet as one dead."
So if this relentless Lover of our souls walked through our streets and saw the conditions of poverty, ill-health, and misery such as very few of us realize; if He could meet the landlords of some of the holes where poor people dwell; if He could pass some public-houses on a Saturday night and see the white faces of little children playing on the steps, or sitting in prams while their mothers and fathers drink within; if He could go to our greyhound tracks and see boys and girls recklessly gambling away their wages for an hour's alleged sport, foolish victims of the lust for money on the part of bookmakers rather than wicked sinners; if He could visit some houses where that lovely thing called innocent womanhood is counted very cheap; if He could walk through some of our mills, factories, mines, offices, slums, markets — yes, even churches — and we could see His face, we should not be reminded of the "Gentle Jesus," but of the "Son of God whose flaming eyes our inmost thoughts perceive." "To call Jesus 'Lord' is orthodoxy, and to call Him 'Lord, Lord,' is piety, but to call Jesus 'Lord, Lord,' and do not the things that He says, is blasphemy." And few of us would escape the censure of those eyes; for to find time for business, dress, bridge, golf, dancing, theatres, and our own selfish enjoyment, trying to squeeze the last drop of pleasure out of life, always obsessed by what we can get out of the community and never what we can put into the community, putting self first, and having a good time, repudiating all obligation, and hating all self-discipline, never sacrificially thinking of our brothers living in an earthly hell, or of children robbed of childhood's heritage, is a greater blasphemy than to deny the existence of God; and, while our consciences sleep about the things that curse God's lovely world, we are guilty of sharing in them.
So I would leave you face to face with Jesus. But don't think of love, at least His love, as something soft and kindly and tolerant. Your friendship with Him, which I think is the centre of all Christian experience, will only be on His terms, and He is a relentless, inexorable, violent Lover who loves us relentlessly so as to save us from the hard heart and the impenitent spirit, and that awful death of the soul which makes us unconscious that we are doing wrong. His love smashes through our smug complacency, our petty, conventional respectability, and our vulgar selfishness and insistence on having a good time. We may say that all the penalties men bring upon themselves in God's lawbound world are expressions of His violent, relentless love saving them from something worse.
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide.
Take not Thy thunder from us.
But take away our pricie. . . .
Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exaltation,
Aflame with faith, and free.
Lift up a living nation
A single sword to Thee.
From the English Hymnal: By permission of the Oxford University Press.
THE WORLD AND THE WAY OF JESUS
Is the world changing its mind about the way of Jesus? As we ask this question, there are many things to enhearten as well as many things to depress. There is still a real danger of the possibility of a pagan England. Yet there are many things which lead us to believe that a gradual change of mind is taking possession of the world. We still have many evils rampant in our midst, but this at least may be said: they are becoming the concern of more and more people, and, most significantly, of more and more leaders of the people both inside and outside the Church.
The attitude of the Church to these evils is not our purpose in this chapter. It must become more passionate in its concern, and must direct against these evils energies which are now absorbed in its domestic affairs. But I wish to suggest here that the leaders of men's thoughts outside the Churches are much more inclining to see in the way of Jesus a solution of their problems than was ever the case before.
That change has not come as we hoped, as a glad acceptance on the part of those who acknowledge Him as Lord. It is being reluctantly tried as the remedy of the desperate. Men are choosing this Man rather than Barabbas, not because they believe in the way of Jesus as such, but because Barabbas, for all his violent power and vulgar wealth, is a dismal failure. Frankly, the old way of running the world has proved itself utterly bankrupt, simply because God made human life, and He made it so that it will only work His way, which is the way of Jesus. In his preface to Androcles and the Lion, Mr. Bernard Shaw says, "I am ready to admit that, after contemplating the world and human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world's misery but the way which would have been found by Christ's will if He had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman." And, though we are grateful that St. Paul did not take sixty years before he was ready to admit that the way of Christ is the way out of all our dilemmas, yet we are grateful also for this word of a great thinker.
The view of life which supposes that the world that is seen is the only world that matters, that the only things that count are those that can be counted, that religion is a sentimental fringe which may be attended to when there is no more serious business on hand, and that the truly serious things are wealth, power, empire, and social prestige, is going. There is a change of mind due to a recognition that the materialistic attitude to life simply does not work.
For instance, in industry, the spirit of grab on either side only ends in strikes on the one side and lock-outs on the other, and bitterness on both. In a word, it does not work. The nations, it is being realized, are drawing nearer and nearer through the shrinkage brought about by modem communications, and, while you can get on with a man in the next street, whatever he is like, you cannot get on with him if he lives with you. India, for instance, lived, as it were, in the next street. But already, what with wireless, fast steamers, and faster aeroplanes, it may be said that she lives next door. The nations have got to find some way of living together. Some spirit of brotherhood is going to be an international necessity. Leaders of nations and parties are gradually stumbling on the fact that we live in a moral universe, and that, apart from the value of idealism as a spiritual asset, the world cannot be understood, and certainly cannot be run, without that spirit which we identify with Christ.
One of the saddest facts of life today is that so many people who are groping to find a way out of difficulties, national, social, and individual, do not consciously and immediately turn to Jesus. They come to His way when all other ways have failed, and then, even, do not often give the credit of the solution to Him. The ingenuity of those who have tried to solve problems that we all want solving, and who yet have contrived to leave out God, is amazing. And in a measure this is a failure which strikes home to all of us individually. It is as though a number of people are trying to find the way to open a locked door while we walk about amongst them with the key in our pocket. From time to time we offer them the key, but they look at us with a queer kind of wistful smile and feel sure that we cannot do much to help them.
When I ask myself why they do not eagerly accept our word that we have the key to every situation, I find the answer may be in some measure their own cowardice and unreadiness in applying it. We could fight cancer if we would give up drink; for what might have been achieved if the money spent on drink had been used for medical research! We could do many Christlike things if we dared. But I feel sure there is a deeper reason which is our concern here. It is that we make great claims, use great words, without convincing the world that a great experience lies behind them. We preach, and are said to believe in a transforming friendship; yet we are not transformed. We belong to a faith which turned the world upside down, yet the world now ignores us to an extent which surely must make us think. Jesus's last bequest was the gift of peace to His followers; but squabbling, dissension, and personal animosity are not unknown even within the Church. We are like those objectionable people who talk much of money that has been left them and yet who never treat another to as much as an ice cream. We function so far below our resources that people who want to find the way out for industry, the way out for social problems, the way out for national problems, and, most of all, the way out for the problems of their own disabled lives, look at us a little wistfully and pass on. The power we claim to possess is not apparent enough to make them believe in it. We make claims which leave the poets far behind, yet, as Dr. Maltby once said, "The poet could say '0 wind!' with far more meaning than we say '0 God!' " We make vast claims, but we do not seem able to convince the world that we are in touch with the resources advertised.
It is, therefore, not much use the Church boasting, "We'll show you." It seems to me that the greatest contribution we can make to our age is to show forth the power of God in our own life in such a way that, as the leaven spreads, those who lead in industry and State will gradually begin to believe in the efficacy of spiritual power; a power greater than any released by devices made only by the intellect. They won't believe in it till they see it controlling our lives. The Kingdom cannot come without to the many until it has come within to those who claim to be members of it. If we cannot master, control, and empower our own life by getting back to those resources which are ours in Christ, is it to be wondered at that the world does not hit on Christ's way out when it is confronted by the vast problems which now oppress it? If the kingdom of my own life is full of strikes and lock-outs, of rebellion and unrest and strife, because it has not yet succumbed to the spirit of Christ, can I expect that the leaders of industry and politics, with so much to lose, will believe in and try the Christ spirit?
When, as individuals, we catch fire and really live the life of radiance, adequacy, and strength which is possible to us, the Christian Church will impress the world again with a sense of power, as it did in the first century. You will remember the thrill you had when first you read the book of Acts, and contemplated the lives of ordinary men and women who infected everybody with the sense that they were in touch with resources that the worldling knew nothing about. They convinced the world that they could go into any set of circumstances certain of victory, and their message spread like a glorious infection to the far borders of the known world.
What is the way for us? That is really the question for the individual. If you go and realize Christ's presence in some quiet place, He will tell you what is His way for you. Some self-love, perhaps, or self-pity stands in the way; some secret sin, or some inhibiting fear. When that is rooted out, power will come, and you will go out and translate the spirit of Christ into terms of your job. As Paul Harris, the founder of Rotary, said recently, "It would be a short cut to the millennium if every one regarded his vocation as his best contribution to society." That is our contribution to the world's problems. That would be the finest revival the world has ever known.
There is one vivid picture from my life in India which I should like to paint here. One Sunday night a young Indian graduate, on whose forehead were painted the symbols of a heathen god, came to tell me that he had decided to become a Christian. As we talked in the moonlight in my garden at Madras, it came out that he was a keen student of the Gospels, and had been captivated by Christ. I discovered that for some time he had been gathering little outcaste children on to his verandah and teaching them their letters. When I asked him why he did this, since it involved the breaking of his caste rules, his reply was as simple as it was sublime: "I thought it was the kind of thing Jesus Christ would do." I discovered also that in an important examination, when pens would not go round and a man next to him was writing in pencil, with the risk of having his papers disqualified, this man lent him his fountain pen and himself took the pencil. His reason was the same: "I thought it was the kind of thing Jesus Christ would have done." I asked him the question any one would have asked — " If you have studied the Gospels, and been so attracted to Christ and so caught His spirit, why did you not become a Christian before?" I shall never forget his answer. "I am attracted," he said, "but Christ demands the carrying of a cross and absolute surrender, and I would not become a Christian before because I wasn't prepared to go all the way. Now I am prepared to go all the way." We stood there in the garden, I with the collar that symbolizes the Christian ministry, and he with his forehead painted with the marks of a heathen god, but I knew who was the better Christian of the two, and it wasn't I.
When we can bring ourselves to that point of dedication, things will soon begin to happen. When all Christ's followers do that, the world will know that we really have the secret of life, and a way out of every problem. Perhaps Jesus is bending over many of us at this moment with that great tenderness which you see in a mother as she draws a wilfull child to her breast, when the child's disobedience has brought him, hot, flushed, angry, exasperated, frightened at his helplessness, to some impasse from which he can see no way out. And perhaps the Master of Life is saying what such a mother might say, '"Why didn't you come to Me before?"
ONE of the glorious things about the thinking of this generation is that we are getting into our minds a more complete picture of Jesus. One of the most important things in the Christian life is that at the back of our experience we should have a picture of Christ which is as true as we know how to make it. Christian experience may be said to be a reflection of the inner picture of Christ which a person cherishes. Because this is true the bad name the Christian has got for himself as a person of long face and solemn demeanour partly derives from a picture of Christ which depicted Him merely as the Man of Sorrows. We might try this little experiment with ourselves. We might shut our eyes and see what kind of picture of Jesus leaps most readily on to the screen of the mind. Is it a Man on a cross or staggering under it? Is it a Man wearing the crown of thorns? Most of us would, I think, find that that picture was preeminently sad, and that picture is not to be lightly set aside when we remember that, after all, it is the Cross which is set in the midst as the symbol of Christianity. At the same time, I want us to see that Jesus Christ was and is the most radiant personality in history.
Painters and poets are partly to blame for the false emphasis. Pictures of the Man of Sorrows are far more numerous than pictures of the Man of joys, and among the poets we find Goethe saying that "Christianity is the religion of sorrow," and Swinburne, in his "Hymn to Proserpine," penning his famous line:
Thou Hast conquered, 0 pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from Thy breath.
The criticism one can hardly help making is that, in the main, both poet and painter fail to realize that great sorrow does not inhibit radiance of spirit, and is not a denial of it. Both in picture and in poem we have a Christ whose eyes are just deep melancholy or anguish; whereas we have all met people who in the very depths of trouble are still radiant in spirit, and whose eyes, swimming it may be in tears, yet shine out at you with a quiet, glad serenity which means that in the secret place there is a radiance which no sorrow in this world can ever dispel. And these are the people, one feels, who are most like Christ. After all, the men who have done the most radiant work in the world have not been the men most free from sorrow.
Probably we shall have to emphasize almost to the point of exaggeration the gayer sides of Christ's character before we can correct the picture of Him which is in most people's minds. Many people, for instance, are still quite shocked at the thought that Jesus ever made jokes or was deliberately humorous. Yet how else can one interpret some of His sayings? He tells a story of a man grumbling at the speck in his brother's eye when a great "plank" — for this is the meaning of the word translated "beam" — is sticking out of his own. He pictures a Pharisee drinking. It may have been soup. He does not say. But he carefully strains out a gnat, and gulps down a whole camel. Whether the Pharisees laughed at that I don't know, but I am sure the little boys sitting round his feet and playing on the edge of the crowd did. Does a man light a lamp, He asks in one of His addresses, and put it under the bed? Do you think that question could have been asked seriously ? Take the story of the friend at midnight asking for three loaves. The response is a sleepy "Go away! I am with my children in bed." I believe that is an obvious touch of humour. Then, you remember, the friend goes on pestering him till at last the man rises, "not because the other is his friend, but because of his importunity, and gives him whatsoever he desires." In other words, he does not want to be troubled, but the other makes such a noise that at last the father says that if only he will stop making that noise, which may wake the baby at any moment, he will give him the whole house. Jesus paints another picture of Pharisees invited to a feast. One of them excuses himself on the ground that he has bought two oxen, another that he has bought a field, another that he has married a wife. Fancy a corpulent old Pharisee missing a free meal because he had to try his oxen or look at a muddy field, or, we should say, hold his wife's hand! Surely there is the ring of real humour in His voice and a sparkle in His eyes! I think also that the radiant humour of Jesus probably explains many passages that he sound harsh. Unfortunately we cannot recapture the flash in His eye, or the tone of voice on which the character of many of His replies depends. For instance, you will remember the story of the Syrophoenician woman who comes to Him, and to whom He says a thing that sounds cruel and hard, even rude: "I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. . . . It is not meet to take the children's food and cast it to the dogs." What an awful thing to say! But you cannot see His eyes. You know He was joking from the woman's answer. She would never have dared to answer a rabbi as she did unless she had seen in His eyes that He was only teasing her. "No," she said, "but even the puppies (she uses a different word from His word for dogs) eat the crumbs under the table." And then He did what she had asked Him to do. Sometimes, when I hear these matchless stories read in church by some solemn, pompous person, I imagine Peter and John sitting together in the back pew, and the former nudging the latter and saying, "He wouldn't read it like that if he had been there, and heard Jesus say it."
I am not trying to prove that Jesus was a humorist, but trying to correct the picture most of us have of the Man of Sorrows, by emphasizing the other side, in order that we may see running through every part of His life manifestations of a radiant spirit, of which a sense of humour is one of the signs.
The records of His life, moreover, are constantly letting things slip out, some of them almost accidentally, which show what a radiant man He must have been, and therefore is. "The common people heard Him gladly." Not a doleful, sorrowful person, then I "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." We read that He loved children and that they loved Him. They made their way to Him with a child's persistence and instinct for a friend. They refused to be driven away from Him. That is sure proof of a radiant personality. Then think of that phrase: "a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." Dr. Glover has called that "the most precious bit of slander that ever slipped from slimy lips." It is, for it could never have arisen unless there had been a radiant attractiveness and friendliness about Jesus for all kinds of people. Take the offended cry of those who said, "The disciples of John fast often, but Thy disciples fast not." Jesus has a very clever answer. "Can the children of the bridechamber fast when the bridegroom is with them?" I say "clever" because, according to Jewish law, a bridal party was always exempt from fasting, and He is saying that to be with Him is always radiant happiness. ...
It was the Master's purpose that we should enter into His radiance. "These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be fulfilled." Do we possess this radiant Christianity of Jesus? Let me set down, by way of contrast to all this, one of the dreariest passages in English literature. It is a quotation from The Revolution in Tanner's Lane, by Mark Rutherford. "Spiritual teaching, spiritual guidance these poor peasants had none, and when the Monday came they went to their work in the marshes and elsewhere, and lived their blind lives under grey skies, with nothing left in them of the Sunday save the recollection of a certain routine performed which might one day save them from some disaster with which flames and brimstone had something to do. It was not, however, a reality to them. The wheelwright and his wife, and the six labourers with their wives, listened as oxen might listen, wandered home along the lanes heavy-footed like oxen, with heads towards the ground, and went heavily to bed."
I do not know any passage in literature which so cleverly expresses the very opposite of what I mean by radiant Christianity as that passage does. It leaves in the mind a picture of religion which is something dreary and depressing beyond all words. It reminds you of a sodden dawn on a Lincolnshire wold, under a sky of unbroken grey, when mist hangs heavy over the coarse, tawny grass, and when the only sound is the sullen booming of North Sea breakers rolling up the desolate sanddunes on a lonely shore.
To turn to the New Testament is like passing suddenly into a sunny valley where streams laugh their way down the hillside, where birds sing, and flowers bloom, and trees toss joyous messages to one another in the breeze, and where, arched over all, is "the tender sky of blue." There is only one word for the Christianity of the New Testament. It is radiant.
You remember how fast it spread. That speaks for its radiance. It spread like a glorious infection, not so much taught as caught. It was called a "gospel," which means "good news," and it spread with the infectious power good news always has. The men who exemplified it in their lives were radiant men. They revelled in the new life which that good news had brought them. They were alive as others were not alive; and, what is more these others could see that at once. They had an enabling secret. They had resources, with which they seemed in constant touch, which other people had never so much as guessed. Life could never be the same again. Life was thrilling with new meaning. Life was throbbing with new power. All things had become new. They were radiant men teaching a radiant religion.
Yet it was not because outward circumstance were easy. Some people, when they hear that others are radiant, leap to the conclusion, "Well, they can't have as much to put up with as I have."
It was after Peter and John had been cruelly beaten that we read "they departed from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the Name." It was after Paul had been five times flogged, stoned, and three times shipwrecked, that, with one ankle chained to a ring in the wall of his cell, and one wrist chained to a Roman sentry, he wrote from a Roman prison, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice." And this spirit has continued through the ages, so that we might fill many pages recalling case after case of radiance. One of Wesley's helpers, John Nelson, was thrown into a dungeon underneath a slaughter-house. He tells us "it stank worse than a hog-sty by reason of the blood and filth that flowed into it from above." Then he adds, "My soul was so filled with the love of God that it was a paradise to me." And we could add our own testimony. I think of a high-caste Indian student studying to be a barrister, whom I baptized into the Name above every name, and who was turned from his home, his studies brought to an abrupt conclusion, his career ruined. To his relatives for ever he is dead. And as he went away to be a clerk in a little village five hundred miles from Madras, hounded out of the place by hate and prejudice, he gripped my hand and said, "But it is worth it."
Have you got this brand of Christianity? This is the only genuine brand, with its smiling label on every face. Insist on seeing the label! Do people kindle at your radiating personality? Do they warm their starved souls at the glow of your spirit? I find I have collected two stories of Phillips Brooks, the great American preacher. On one occassion he was coming down the aisle after preaching one of his wonderful sermons, and one working man nudged another and said, "I say, Bill, it makes you feel good just to look at him." And on another occasion a certain Boston newspaper printed this item: "It was a dull, rainy day, when things looked dark and lowering, but Phillips Brooks came down through Newspaper Row and all was bright." Do we make our good news catching like that? Do we remind men of Jesus? Do they say, "I'd give anything to be like that"?
Many onlookers — and there are many — don't quite know what to make of us as we go about wearing the label "Christian." We claim so much for our religion, and yet we seem so little different from those who profess nothing. There is no radiance about us, no sparkle. Shelley and Wordsworth got more out of sunsets and clouds and flowers than some of us get from Christ. We are so eager to get men to Christ, and such poor advertisements of Him. We try every stunt on this earth to get people to church except that of being such radiant Christians that they would follow us anywhere to get the radiance in our very voices, and eyes, and handclasp. We adopt an attitude which says — "Come and be like us." And when they see the way we go about, and the way we conduct our business, so very little different from the worldling, and the miserable way we react to the smallest set-back and least sign of trouble, they breath an inward prayer, "From ever being anything like you, good Lord deliver me." When I was lying in hospital in Mesopotamia, I used to be visited with painful conscientiousness by a padre whose denomination I won't give away. It wasn't mine. He seemed to come every day. He used to come and stand at the end of my bed and just look at me out of the most melancholy eyes I have ever seen in a long face,'till I wanted to throw things at him. Then he would say, "Well, Captain Weatherhead?" And I would say "Well?" and for a time that was the extent of our conversation. And then he would make a desperate effort to drag the conversation round to religion, until after a time as soon as I saw him come into the ward I used to pretend to be asleep, and I expect he was as relieved as I was not to have to talk to me. There was a little V.A.D. in the ward who though she said an occasional "damn" when she dropped a thermometer, wore, at any rate, a cheerful face, even when the thermometer was a hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade. The officer in the next bed to myself used to discuss a thrilling situation with me. Did I think that the cheerful little V.A.D. would go to hell and the mournful parson go to heaven; because for himself he would rather go to hell with the V.A.D. than to heaven with the padre? In this I fully agreed with him. Neither was much like Jesus, but of the two the nurse had it easily. The padre's visit was about as cheerful as that of a man who went to see his sick friend in an attic bedroom, and began the conversation with, "Well, George, they'll have a job getting your coffin down them stairs."
Jesus derived His radiance from three sources. (1) He had no sense of sin. (2) He was doing God's will. (3) He was certain of God. You are saying, "How can I be radiant? I am always falling into sin; I am miserable at the memory of it." Yes, my dear brother, but Jesus is saying to every man who is penitent, "Your sins, which are many, are all forgiven." And that means they are put behind His back, forgiven, forgotten, to be remembered no more for ever. So begin again without a sense of sin and you will be radiant. If God has put your sins behind His back you must put them behind yours.
Jesus was doing God's will. You must do it. And you must see God's will in the job you are doing every day. If it cannot be reconciled with God's will, you must get out of it. But, if it can, you must see God's will in it and God's meanings in it. You mustn't think of doing God's will only when you are taking a Sunday-school class, for instance, or doing what we call Christian work, for otherwise ninety-nine per cent of life will be secular, when all ought to be sacred. Your work is service to the community, and, if well done, is service to God, and you ought to do it radiantly, with all your personality. And, let me add, not with one eye on the clock, as one who lives for closing time! If you are a cobbler, be the very best cobbler you can be. Remember that by putting leather on shoes instead of brown paper you are helping God to answer the prayers of His people for health in wet weather. You are doing His will as much as a minister or a doctor. A friend of mine told me recently of a tombstone which bears this inscription, "Here lies the body of Peter Garth, who by the grace of God was cobbler in this village for forty years."
Jesus was certain of God. So must we be. Not that all is His will, but that all lies within the circle of His redeeming activity. If pain comes, well, let me fight it and win if I can; if not let me try to wrest from it something splendid, some growth of character. Let me cooperate with God in it so that it shall be forced to work out to His glory and my spiritual gain. If disaster comes, let me be sure that God always says the final word, and that in His own way He will bring me through. I may lose money, position. I may lose all that life holds dear; but let me still be certain, obstinately certain of God, since Jesus, who trod my way, lost all, even life itself, and died, certain of God. Even through your tears you may become more certain of God; for you will have noticed that you can often see the bills better when there is moisture before your eyes.
You cannot have radiance without these three sources of it, any more than you can have the lake, lying radiant and quiet in the sunlight, without the secret streams that come down somewhere — though you may not see where — from the hills of God. You can have a certain kind of happiness without these sources, but it is not deep enough to stand any of the tests of life or to carry you through the deep places of pain. Happiness may spring from the heels, but radiance only springs from the heart, a heart quiet and steady, deep and strong, unselfish and disciplined, like some deep mountain tarn unruffled by every breeze that blows, upheld forever by the strength of the hills in whose bosom it lies, and reflecting the glory of heaven.
I know there are times when radiance seems to desert you. The wine of life runs out. Only the waters of depression and despair are left. The only thing to do is to make your way to Him, till the waters, which threatened to quench your spiritual life, seem like the wine which renews it; until your shamed, tear-stained face lights up again with radiance. "They looked unto Him and were radiant, and their faces were not ashamed."
IT is a valuable exercise to take some of the wellworn phrases about religion and ask oneself fearlessly what they mean. How many of us pray, "Be with me, Lord, today"? What do we mean? At the beginning of a day of worship we pray, "Manifest Thy Presence among us," or "Show us Thy face." What do we expect to happen?
These questions are important, for nothing kills reality in religion so much as to repeat phrases which have become meaningless, or prayers one has little expectation of being answered, or concerning the mode of answer of which one has only the vaguest kind of idea.
What do we mean by the Presence of Jesus? Let us think the matter out as well as we may, beginning at the Resurrection.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead has been called the most incredible and yet the most convincing fact in history. Some regard it as an intervention of God in the interests of "His only begotten Son, begotten of His Father before all worlds," an act of vindication or justification of the alleged claims of Jesus to be the Son of God. Others regard it as effected by a power of mind over body within the normal activity of any man who lived a perfect human life such as, it is claimed, Jesus lived, and whose divinity was won or achieved rather than bestowed; won by His perfect reaction to God on the one hand and to sin on the other. Some think the body of Jesus never left the tomb, but in some way, as yet unknown, evanesced. A consideration of the clothes in the tomb and the clothed figure seen in the garden lends some support to this view, and certainly belief in a physical resurrection is not necessary to faith in the living presence of Jesus now. His physical body matters no more than His clothes. Others think that the body rose from the tomb and disintegrated at the Ascension. It may safely be said that there is no known theory of the Resurrection which solves all our difficulties. Our knowledge has not advanced sufficiently far for any theory to be put forward which accounts for all the phenomena.
Yet one great triumphant fact emerges. It is that Jesus survived death, convinced His followers of His survival, and convinced them through their senses. We speak of the unseen presence of Jesus at our worship, but this would never have been sufficient for them. They would have imagined themselves deluded. Therefore, whether in the body or in the spirit, or in some substance for which, as yet, we have no name, they saw One whom they came to know was Himself, and were convinced that He had conquered death and was alive forever. Humanity would have felt it almost a cruelty on the part of God if that radiant personality, the reality of all our dreams, the consummation of manhood, human life as God dreamt it and not as we know it, had moved once over the stage of history and then passed for ever out of the sight of men. But there was more than a memory. There was a Presence.
Between the Resurrection and the Ascension we find Jesus doing a very wonderful thing. His constant appearings and disappearings have a profound significance. Mary sees some one coming towards her who appears to be a gardener. We can catch the pathos in her voice as, according to St. John, she pleads, "If thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him and I will take Him away." Jesus says, "Mary," and through the tone of His voice as He utters her name she recognizes Him. Through her senses she is made sure. Then come the strange words, so strange that they could not have been invented, "Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended unto My Father." Why this cruel prohibition? Because He is trying to plant His fellowship in the unseen. Having "got through" to her through one of her senses, He doesn't want her to use more, for He is trying to carry her beyond the need of any. He is saying, in other words, "You mustn't believe in My presence only when you can touch Me. I want to lead you on to a faith which perceives Me in terms of unseen values. I want to lead you on beyond the need of ear and eye and hand. Don't touch Me, for you will understand this present ministry of Mine when, at My Ascension, I have completed it."
So in one of the most beautiful stories in the world we can see two down-hearted people returning to their village home at Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. A stranger joins them and enters into their conversation. His respect for their personality leads Him not to reveal Himself at the outset. To do this would have smashed the argument they were working out when He joined them, with another and an overwhelming kind of evidence. Rather than thus disable their minds, He enters into their argument. Beginning where they are with facts familiar to themselves, He leads them on step by step from Moses and the Prophets in an argument which they could perfectly follow. Then, when they were ripe for it, He accepts their invitation to supper, and they know Him not even then until by a familiar gesture He reveals Himself. Some of our own friends we would know by some familiar gesture half a mile away. Jesus had a queer way of breaking a loaf when He said grace, and they recognized Him at once. "He became known to them in the breaking of the loaf."
Then, as soon as they knew Him, He vanished out of their sight. Why? Because He had achieved His purpose for the moment in proving His survival, and now they were ready to be led further. They hurry back to Jerusalem, gather with the eleven, and the doors are shut. There is a presence, the Presence that had meant everything to them, a face, the Face they loved best in the world, a voice more lovely than music, speaking the word they had heard so often, "Peace be unto you." It was Himself.
Supposing before your eyes at this moment the form of Jesus should appear, speak, disappear. Supposing you went off for a meal and He appeared again, joined in the conversation, and disappeared. Suppose He joined you when you were speaking to a friend, and then disappeared. What would happen? If your Western nerves could stand it, then what would happen would be that you would never know when He wasn't there. You would be watchful for any moment when He might break through. You would never speak to any person or go into any set of circumstances without thinking that He might be there even if you could not see Him. Your world would be full of Him. You would feel with the poet:
Whenever the sun shines brightly I rise and say, "Surely it is the shining of His face," And when a shadow falls across the window Of my room Where I am working my appointed task,
I lift my head to watch the door, and ask if He is come.
And this is what happened to them. Peter would never again walk by Galilee's lake without Jesus, without being consciously sure and certain that Jesus was there. Mary would never go and sit quietly in that garden or any garden without meeting her "Rabboni." They would set a place for Him always, I think, at the table at Emmaus, and find every meal sanctified and adorned by His presence. Certainly Cleopas would never break a loaf without thought of Him. And that Upper Room which contained His couch, His cushion, His cup, would forever bring to them a vivid sense of His reality, and for them the whole earth became full of His glory.
If this were not all true, then the Ascension would have been one of the saddest events of His ministry. We should read that they watched the Beloved Form disappear, and then turned back with tearfilled eyes, saying to one another, "Well, it was very beautiful while it lasted, but now we must get on as well as we can without Him." There was nothing of this kind at all. "No flowers by request." Jesus is perhaps the only great man who ever lived concerning whom no one ever wrote any memorial verses. So far from being sad at seeing Him no longer, we may note what the evangelists actually record. Matthew says, "Lo, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age." ... Luke says, "They worshipped Him, and returned with great joy to Jerusalem." Where are the signs of that grief which is inseparable from "Good-bye"? There are none. One glorious fact emerges amid all our mental wanderings. He survived death. He proved His survival to His followers through their senses. He then established His continued presence in the world with them without the need of the senses. And they were certain that He was with them to the end. Now emerges the question which has a great bearing on our life today.
After the Ascension, when He had taken them beyond the need of vision and voice, how did He manifest His presence to them? I know that on occasion visions and voices have been granted to the saints since the Ascension. But no universal religion could have as the test of its authenticity a vision, because to see a vision demands a certain kind of psychical make-up which few Westerners possess. Moreover, to many natures such evidences are uncanny and disturbing, and one of the first demands in religious experience is that its experiences shall build up the personality, not tend to disintegrate it or scare it.
How, then, was His presence manifested to them after He had carried them beyond the need of vision and voice? I suggest that it was manifested in four ways: an inward reinforcement of the personality, a transcendent happiness, a deep serenity, and an outgoing love; and that these things are still the marks of the Presence. Let us consider them.
(1) An inward reinforcement of the personality. I mean by this an inward strengthening which made a man feel that he could face any situation that might arise, certain of coming out on top, certain that nothing could happen which had any power to down his spirit. It was in no sense an escape from the things other people had to face, but a new power to face them; not consciously two to face them, but rather one in whom a new and superrational force had been released, so that one great soul cried out, "I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me."
(2) A transcendent happiness; a kind of infectious gaiety of spirit which others caught from those who knew His presence in their hearts. They were alive as others were not alive. To look round the faces of men and women, even in Christian congregations, sometimes gives one the impression that nothing could be caught from them except the dumps! Surely one of the marks of the man who knows Christ's presence is the possession of a great joy that shines through the eyes and radiates from the entire personality, advertising the nature of religion better than any words.
Not merely in the words you say,
Not only in your deeds confessed.
But in the most unconscious way
Is Christ expressed.
Is it a beatific smile ?
A holy light upon your brow ?
Oh, no if I felt His presence while
You laughed just now.
For me 'twas not the truth you taught,
To you so clear, to me so dim,
But when you came to me you brought
A sense of Him.
And from your eyes He beckons me,
And from your heart His love is shed
Till I lose sight of you — and see
The Christ instead.
(3) A deep serenity of spirit. What is more
needed in these days of hectic rush than that inward peace, the only thing
Christ left in His will, I and which is one of the marks of the Presence?
It did not and does not mean that a man's diary is not full. It means that
though his diary is full his heart is quiet. There is an inward serenity which
nothing can break, an inward hush that nothing disturbs. Some folk have this
secret. They do not appear to be busy and they are never rushed. They go to
each task quietly and steadily and refuse to be hectic or worried. They preserve
a space of silence round the soul.
In the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky,
And flinging the clouds and the towers by,
Is a place of central calm.
So here in the rush of earthly things,
There is a place where the spirit sings,
In the hollow of God's palm.
(4) An outgoing love. The presence of Jesus meant, and means, a love that goes
out to all men, to our critics and enemies, not merely loving the lovable,
not only seeing what is lovable, but, seeking no reward, a love which is
creative enough to make something lovable in all men; a love which changes
coldness, bitterness, and cynicism into warmth and sweetness and radiance.
So, in the first century, were men thus possessed by Jesus, living always in His presence. They were masters of life, captains of their souls. They made an impression of power and serenity on all who came near. They seemed free from worry, from fear, from meanness and pettiness. They had exchanged poverty of life for all the riches of Jesus Christ. Compared with them other lives seemed poor, bewildered, frightened, hectic, bleak, and dead. Yet the reason was apparent to those who watched. "They had been with Jesus."
It was not, I think, that His presence meant to them escape from those ills which assail all men. It was rather an inward strength and fortitude which led them to keep a quiet heart and clear eye, and an unbroken trust that God could bring them through to victory, and make even the temporary triumphs of evil to serve both Him and them. Thus the things which assail others assailed them, but because of their inner resources the result of those evils upon their natures and characters was altered. Not by escape from these things, but in all these things they were more than conquerors through Him that loved them and indwelt them.
This is the lesson many of us have still to learn. From the Old Testament we have taken over what is quite frankly a false picture of God. The Psalmists were wonderful poets to whom the whole world will be in debt forever; but they had not seen God in Jesus, and therefore some of their pictures of God are not true. They spoke and wrote and thought much of God as a high tower, a rock, a fortress, a refuge, a defence, a shield. They tried to shelter under the shadow of His wings and in the secret place of the Most High.
Of course, there is much in this aspect of God that is true. God is a Father, and if He can save His children from what we call calamity He will do so, but not at the price of their education, and not if it conflicts with eternal principles, and not if the well-being of His other children is affected. I knew a dear old saint in Aldershot in the early days of the war. His son was fighting in France. At our prayer meetings he would earnestly pray that God would hide that soldier son beneath His wings. He added with deep tenderness, "The bullet was never made that can pierce Thy wings." But the boy was killed all the same.
Now Jesus never said or implied that religion was an insurance from catastrophe. If it were, we should be bribed to be good. Life would lose its power to educate us. Jesus never said or implied to His followers that His presence would mean immunity from disaster, nor does He promise this to us. He does not say, "My presence means that your life will be spared till old age; that whoever starves, you will not; that though disease brings suffering to the dear ones of others, yours will always be safe; that though death carries off men and women on your right and left, it will leave your loved ones untouched." Indeed, He rather implies the opposite. To His own men He said that not only would ordinary dangers assail them, but that other horrors would be added just because they were His. "Men will hand you over to suffer affliction and they will kill you; you will be hated by all the Gentiles on account of My name" (Matt. xxiv. 9). "Men will hand you over to Sanhedrins and you will be flogged in synagogues, and brought before governors and kings for My name's sake" (Mark xiii. 9). It was to be persecution, even from city to city. It was to be dissension in the very family (Matt. x. 35). It might be the horrors of violent death. Apparently, even in heaven He never implied that His presence would save them from tears. Many tears may be shed before we are purged sufficiently to look into the face of God. Can a mother in heaven be free from sorrow if her son is in hell on earth? What John, who knew his Master, does say we shall one day know to be an infinitely greater truth. What John implies about the tears of heaven is that God will wipe them away. And what Jesus surely teaches about the woes of earth is that there will be two to bear them, and so transmute them, change their nature and their effect on personality, and make them sacramental. Jesus does not say, "I will deliver you from the waters," but something infinitely greater — "When you pass through the waters I shall be there too."
One could not but be moved by the story of the soldier who asked his officer if he might go out into the "No man's land" between the trenches to bring in one of his comrades who lay grievously wounded. "You can go," said the officer, "but it's not worth it. Your friend is probably killed, and you will throw your own life away." But the man went. Somehow he managed to get to his friend, hoist him on to his shoulder, and bring him back to the trenches. The two of them tumbled together and lay in the trenchbottom. The officer looked very tenderly on the would-be rescuer, and then he said, "I told you it wouldn't be worth it. Your friend is dead and you are mortally wounded." "It was worth it though, sir." "How do you mean, 'worth it'? I tell you, your friend is dead." "Yes, sir," the boy answered, "but it was worth it, because when I got to him he said, 'I knew you'd come.' "
Immunity from disaster is not the greatest thing in life, as one day we shall understand. The greatest thing is to wring triumph from disaster. What happens to us does not really matter; what matters is our reaction to the things that befall us. The presence of Jesus means an alchemy that changes the nature and effects of disaster till even a disaster becomes a sacrament; and a cross of bloodstained wood, the symbol of uttermost catastrophe and shame, not intentioned by God but by the evil wills of men, becomes the cross of shining gold, the symbol of triumph and hope that brings a new light into the sorrowing eyes and hearts of all the world.
We shall find, then, that the presence of Jesus is the answer to all our prayers. In loneliness we shall find the Friend of Friends with us. In temptation we shall be made strong. In sorrow His presence is comfort. In joy it is sanctification. His presence can make even pain into a sacrament. In bewilderment it is an anchorage. In darkness it is all the light, we need. When we have lost all hope, all belief in ourselves ... and when what is called the last distress of man assails us, when our last heartbeats tap at the door of eternity, then the other world shines out in a radiant loveliness because above all it means His presence, and in His presence is the fullness of joy.
Yet it would not do for us to seek His presence only in the hour of trouble. We should feel ashamed to do so. "I haven't prayed since I was a kid," said a soldier at the Front. "I'm not going to pray now just because I'm in a funk." But shame is not the only thing that would hold us back. The presence of Jesus is not a thing to be entered into, with any great sense of reality, without practice. And, if we have walked without conscious communion with Him for long stretches of life, we shall not only be shy of seeking Him just because we are in trouble, but it will not be too easy to fulfil the conditions or to realize the marks of the Presence.
Indeed, we should do well to listen to the critic who says to us, "Do you realize what you are claiming when you talk of the presence of Jesus? How can you prove to me that He is findable at all?" And we must not answer the question too glibly, for we are claiming an immense thing. The claims of the Spiritualist, for instance, are nothing compared with our claim. The Spiritualist will tell us that, if we go quietly into a dark room with, perhaps, a red light burning, we may, through a medium, get into touch with a medium on the other side, and that that medium may get into touch with someone who died fairly recently, and so we may get through. One hardly wonders that, with so many exchanges to get through, the message often seems confused! But what does the Christian claim? He claims that he, John Smith, can, in broad daylight, directly, and on normal levels of the mind, get into immediate communion with the Eternal Christ who walked and talked, laughed and wept, worked and slept in Galilee two thousand years ago. It is a stupendous claim. No wonder that the faith even of the Christian sometimes fails. No wonder he sometimes asks, "Can He really speak to me? Is it really Himself?" For the gulf between our hurrying, hectic streets and the Voice that spoke in the woods and fields of Galilee so long ago seems sometimes greater than faith can span, greater than desire can bear.
I should like, therefore, to try and answer the questions "Is He findable?" and "How do you know that a certain experience has no other explanation? How do you know it is He?"
Once men accept the fact of the Resurrection — that Jesus survived death and manifested His presence to His disciples — there seems no logical reason why He should not go on manifesting His presence all through the world's remaining history. And surely we need not spend much time in proving the Resurrection, since the existence of the Church at all can only be accounted for by supposing that Christ proved His survival after death. The Resurrection, however we try to explain it, turned abject terror into flaming courage, and cowards into heroes and martyrs. It drove cringing men to go shouting a message to audiences as derisive as ourselves, a message punished with stripes, crosses and red-jowled beasts, yet persisting indomitable on and on down the echoing centuries, until the pagan world was conquered by a handful of Jewish fishermen and a great Church raised its pinnacles to heaven to enshrine that message flung to the wind on the first Pentecost — "a dead man has become alive."
We have seen now that Jesus manifested His presence at first through the senses, and later without the need of sense-impressions, and that He did this so completely that after the Ascension they were just as certain of Him as when they "saw" Him. At what point, then, in history did He cease so to manifest Himself? There is no answer. The claim that He is not findable has no basis in history and makes nonsense of the claimed experience of some of the greatest souls the world has ever seen.
But how do we know this is Himself? I think the only answer is that we know it is He just because none other has the same effect on our personality. The nearness of Jesus means that men hate sin with a new hatted; that, so far from being critical, they want to kneel; that, hating what is base within themselves, they are not driven into inferiority, as they are in the case of the imagined presence of any other great historical figure. They are delivered from the kingdom of self into a new kingdom of creative values, in which, just because they forget themselves entirely, they really express themselves perfectly. Men are even delivered from their principles and resolutions and pledges. They no longer need the railings they have put up at the side of the road to keep themselves on it. They find themselves pushing the railings over. They are on the moors, laughing, running, throwing up their hats. Life has suddenly become free and intoxicating. They know the glory of the liberty of the sons of God. They know what Augustine meant when he said, "Love God and do what you like." They are delivered from all the country of selfhood into the country of otherness, and they are as impatient of railings as a man who is in love with his wife would be impatient of written promises and pledges that he would stand by her for ever.
It is strange that the presence of Jesus has such a different effect on men from that of the presence of others. St. Paul would make men feel cowards. Grenfell and Schweitzer would make most of us feel babies. Wordsworth makes one feel coarse and dull. Lincoln makes one feel impatient and tactless. The real scholar makes one feel an ignoramus. The real saint makes one feel a sinner. But the presence of Jesus makes one feel utterly humbled and yet utterly exalted. He makes one feel one could do and be anything.
I suppose it is all the difference between a human personality outside myself, with whom I compare myself to my own disadvantage, and a Divine Personality capable of dwelling within and expressing Himself through me. I wonder if that is not why Pentecost, as Dr. Stanley Jones has suggested, meant even more to the disciples than Easter. At Easter He was a Companion by their side. At Pentecost He was an indwelling Power.
The questions, then: "Is He findable?" and "How do we know it is He?" give place to a more insistent one: "How are we to realize that Presence?"
Many people have given up praying, not because they are spiritually dead, but because they are, above all things, sincere, and praying seems a barren business. As one man put it to me lately, "It seems like talking to nothing, like arguing with yourself on your knees." So at last they have given it up because it seems a farce. They feel there is no one there.
Let us try to help by asking them what they really expect to happen. Many half expect a vision or a voice, or, at any rate, an emotion. They expect to feel what I call "Sunday nightish," a surging wave of emotion. For most there is the curse of wandering thoughts. They are no sooner on their knees beginning to pray, than their mind is off on a fresh track. "I mustn't forget to write to so and so," or, "I think I'll wear pink at the garden-party"; and their prayertime is taken up with hauling their mind back to the business in hand, until, tired of this fruitless business, they accept the powerful suggestion of the bed, at which probably they kneel, and climb into it.
There are ways of outwitting the mind in this matter. One is to hold ourselves in the silence and think of some definite element in the character of God, working out for and in ourselves all its implications. Another is to steady the mind by praying the prayers of others (not merely reading appreciatively), or by writing out one's prayers, by dropping into a church for ten minutes on the way home from business, by imagining oneself present at the recorded acts of Jesus in the Gospels, or by reading aloud slowly some of the great hymns.
But I am convinced that one reason we fail to appreciate the presence of Jesus is that we do not recognize the marks of the Presence. Let us think for a moment of the poet. He speaks sometimes of wooing the Muse, of trying to apprehend and be possessed by the presence of that spirit of poetry which alone makes possible the inspired poem. Yet no poet who has ever lived could go into a room and say, "Go to, I will now write an inspired poem." What does he do? He writes something that is not quite poetry. He reads poetry. He studies his masters. He meditates on this theme and on that. Yet it is probably true to say that by these means he is really becoming the true poet more than in those moments of insight when he is nearly carried off his feet by the sweep of inspiration through every fibre of his brain, through every nerve of his body.
So I would not pretend that you can go to your room or church, least of all hurl yourself at the side of your bed at a moment when body and mind are both tired, and then "realize the presence of Jesus." What are you to do? You are resolutely to push back the tumultuous demands of the things you have to do, and, using one of the methods I have mentioned, you can at least spread the sail for the wind that bloweth where it listeth. And what if the wind does not blow? It is my view that the presence of Jesus is nevertheless working within you — not dissimilarly from the way I have imagined the Muse working on the poet's mind at uninspired moments — but working at such a depth of your personality that you cannot distinguish between Himself and yourself; yet most assuredly working, and changing your reactions to life, so that tomorrow that irritable customer, that difficult situation, that crushing calamity, that sudden demand, that fit of depression, that temptation to sulk or to act meanly or to think impurely, will be faced and met in an entirely different manner from what would have been possible if you had not practised the presence of Him who alters our reactions to all things. In a word, there will be an inward reinforcement of the personality, a gaiety of spirit, a serenity of heart, and an outgoing love which are manifestations of the presence of Jesus.
As Gerald Gould sings:
He found my house upon the hill,
I made the bed and swept the floor.
And laboured solitary, till
He entered at the open door.
He sat with me to break my fast,
He blessed the bread and poured the wine,
And spoke such friendly words, at last
I knew not were they His or mine;
But only, when He rose and went
And left the twilight in the door,
I found my hands were more content
To make a bed and sweep the floor.
Most people in these days of popular psychology realize that the human personality
is made up of thought, feeling, and will. If after our discipline we find
next day that a thought comes to us that is high and lofty, or a feeling — not
an emotional storm only — but a feeling of love and affection for men
and women, which includes our critics and enemies, or a new strength to the
will which
makes us put self second, let us recognize these things as the marks of His
presence, for these they surely are. No one can do these mighty things within
us but He. Perhaps this is what Paul meant when, unable quite to distinguish
between what was Paul and what was Jesus within him, he could say, "I live,
and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." ...
In Jesus's mind all mental paths led to God. Every idea was connected up with an associative system with God as centre. When His eye fell on yoke or plough or candle or leaven or birds or lilies or mustard seed or a coin from a necklace or a sheep or a father with his boys, He thought at once of God and God's dealings with men. Ordinary things opened mental pathways which led to the presence of God. Our mind, left alone, runs away from God. His mind ran to God. All mental processes in Him were Godward.
One supposes that for Christ's followers the same thing would happen. Would any of them wash his feet again without being reminded of the presence of Jesus? Would any of them light a lamp again, mend a garment, sow a field, or put wine in a bottle without being mentally wakened to a sense of His presence?
We, who have found this in bread and wine and in the symbol of the Cross, must enlarge our number of symbols that remind us of Him; when you drink water, of His life; when you eat bread, of the Bread of Life; when you bathe, of His cleansing grace and forgiving love. One man told me that he formed the habit of thinking of Christ when he walked down a certain street on the way to work, and now if, contrary to custom, he had any occasion whatever to go down this street, he could not but think of Jesus and walk down the street with Him. Even if he walked down the street with a friend a hush fell upon him and he wanted one conversation to cease and another to begin.
We can make a start with the lovely things of nature the hush of dawn, the splendour of sunset, the silent majesty of the stars, the sleeping strength of the hills, the song of birds, the moan of the sea, can become the voice of Christ, as St. John found when, exiled on Patmos, he listened to the waves murmuring on the beach, and the sound became to him the voice of Jesus calling, calling, calling. You can see John in the gloarning, walking on the beach at Patmos, in devotional meditation and afterwards, with a far-away look in his eyes, writing the sentence, "His voice is like the sound of many waters."
A modem poet, Joseph Mary Plunkett, has given us the same idea in verses, which may seem extravagantly beyond us at present, but may become our blessed experience. For this poet every lovely thing that wakens heart and mind reminds of Jesus and leads to His presence.
I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see His face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but His voice nd carven by His power
Rocks are His written words.
All pathways by His feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.
Gradually, if we will pursue this discipline of the mind, all things will lead
us to His presence, to that sense of inward strengthening, gaiety, serenity
and love which signifies that He dwells within; and we shall be able to say
with Brother Lawrence, "The time of business does not with me differ from the
time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of Pay kitchen, while several
persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in
as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament."
Or like the Indian boy, of whom Mr. Findlay told, we shall be so aware of the
presence of Jesus that nothing can drive that awareness away, and in our very
games we shall know Him near. This little Indian fellow kicked a ball magnificently
down the field towards the enemy's goal, and cried out with a spontaneity that
revealed how well he experienced the presence of Jesus, "Parum, Yesuswarni,
parum!" which is, being interpreted, "Look, Lord Jesus, look!"
Such an experience as the realization of the Presence opens up to us is, of course, the changing of our whole fife, filling its dustiest comer with light and gladness. The monotony of business or what has been called domestic drudgery is entirely changed. And working for the tiresome and tyrannical "boss" is altered, for one is working for Him and for His approval and in His presence.
There is another way of realizing the Presence, for those who have any gift of imagination. Many of us would do well to go back and begin where little children dwell. That lovely little white-robed thing that flings her arms around your neck and says her evening prayer; how does she realize the Presence? She imagines a white-robed Figure, perhaps in Eastern dress, with kind eyes and hand outstretched upon her golden hair. Imagination? Yes, but an imagination that will grow up into faith. Imagination is only the name of one of the doors into the presence of Jesus.
It may be thought by some that to use the imagination to realize the presence of Jesus is unreal and unscientific. It cannot be said too often that the imagination is not only a faculty useful in making a picture of something that isn't there, but also of something or some one that is there, but who cannot be seen. And if it is scientific for me to use the faculty of sight to realize the presence of some one who is seen, why is it unscientific to use the faculty of the imagination, which is just as reputable and reliable a faculty, to realize the presence of some one who is unseen? After all, the test is in experience. If my subsequent experience, gives the lie to my conclusions, then I may say either of sight or imagination that in spite of them I was deceived. In this way science uses imagination every day, and has always done so to formulate her theories and grope towards realities. A man sees an apple fall. He forthwith imagines a theory. He tests the theory in experience. Experience confirms his theory. The hypothesis works. It is called a law, and remains a law until and unless it is modified by subsequently observed or discovered phenomena. Thousands have imagined a Presence, tested it in experience, found that something marvellous and transforming has happened to them, that very same "something" which happened to men who were transformed by the presence of Jesus when He moved and taught in Galilee. Who shall say it is not that same Presence in its essentials? Who shall claim that this is any more unscientific in religion than in science?
So, for instance, one woman told a friend of mine that she imagined a white mist enfolding her, wrapping her round, bringing her a sense of rest and ineffable peace and contentment. This imaginative experience, which seems to have something reminiscent of the Transfiguration about it, had brought to her, times without number, a sense of the Presence almost overwhelming in its awe and solemnity.
Another, with a famous picture in mind, imagined himself in a great cathedral, kneeling in the gloom at the back and Christ laying His hand on his shoulder. It does not matter how you think of Him; but remember that His presence meant just everything to His followers. In the days of His flesh it transformed them. And after He had passed through the body beyond their sight it was the certainty of His presence that sustained them, comforted them, and through every peril of mind and body upheld them. Do not put away the idea of this Presence as meant only for those of a certain temperament. An experience impossible to some on account of their temperament could not be regarded as central in a religion claimed as universal.
Do not, on the other hand, try to press your experience into another's mould, and either deceive yourself or discredit the validity of your own experience because it is not like that of another. Find your own medium, but at all costs practise the presence of Jesus.
One objection must be met. Some men say, Jesus lived nearly two thousand years ago in a faroff land, in an age different from ours and among problems different from ours. There is a gulf of time and distance between us and Him. Isn't it rather fanciful to ask us to realize the presence of One who died two thousand years ago?
Yes, if He were an ordinary person, but the first pages of this chapter suggest that He was not ., that in virtue of the power of God, uniquely manifested through Him, He was able to manifest His presence after death ; and that, unless the greatest saints and noblest minds of history were victims of some neurotic disease, He has manifested Himself to men ever since; and we may ask whether the results He still achieves in human character could be reached apart from the presence of the only One in all history who has so changed the hearts of men.
The impressive thing about Him is that He seems so near to every century, as though life moved in a circle of which He is the centre, or, better, moved along a course at the goal of which He stands. Luther, Augustine, even Wesley, seem to be separated from us by the years; to understand them we need to understand their historic background. But we do not in the same way need to leap out of our century into first-century Palestine in order to understand Jesus. Even when He is preached to those with no cultural background He seems to break through conditions of time and space and be not a first-century, Palestinian Jew, but a present Reality, the Reality of the dreams of men through all ages and on all shores.
And this is because He is not a partial revelation of God, marred by accident of birth or place, but the whole revelation of God with the corresponding divine significance for every age and place, for every man and woman. In Him all the possibilities of all men are harmoniously realized.
And
as to problems, it is significant to notice that, in whatever phase of human
life there is
real
progress toward the solution of problems, it
is progress toward the solution implicit in His life and teaching. The modern
teacher of geometry may draw on his blackboard a very much more complicated
figure than ever Euclid knew. But the solution of the problem which that figure
represents depends on principles which Euclid solved with simpler figures,
and the solution is valid though Euclid lived centuries ago. The problems of
life are more complicated than they were in Jesus's day. This may be conceded.
But their solution depends on principles which Jesus enunciated and tried out
and proved in His simpler days. He solved the problems of life on which the
solution of every problem depends.
And His solution is as valid in His sphere as are those of Euclid in his.
Let me close with one other imaginative picture which has meant much to me since I first read of it. I think it is to be ascribed to the genius of Dr. H. R. L. Sheppard, though I have taken the liberty of altering and enlarging it. Its purpose is to bring you that sense of the presence of Jesus which the writer regards as the central experience of the Christian.
It is evening. The Sea of Galilee lies before your eyes. In the west the splendid scarlets and golds have faded. It is the moment of daffodil and pale green sky. To your left, mountains run down steeply to the sea. Jesus is climbing up a spur of one of these mountains, seeking quietude in the bosom of the hills and in the hush of night; seeking to push back the tumultuous demands of all there is to do, to make a silence in which the soul can breathe, to pray. You can see His figure outlined for a moment against the fading light of that last glow of evening. But, in the east, clouds have gathered; clouds that mean storm. Rank upon rank, battalion upon battalion, they sweep westward. The water of the lake turns from amber to steel. The wind that went to summon the storm returns in front of it, majestically heralding its advent. It strikes chill and cold, menacing almost. Then the swish of the rain. Jesus hears it long before it reaches Him. He sees in front of Him a shepherd's hut on the hillside. He makes for it to avoid the discomfort of a soaking, lights the simple lamp He finds within, and kneels to pray.
Now imagine that you are on the mountain, too The storm is on you. You see light shining from the window of the hut. Panting and dishevelled, you rush up to it, seeking shelter. Glancing through the window, you see who is there, and you turn away. Shelter or no shelter, you feel you cannot intrude on His seclusion. But He has heard you. He rises, flings open the door. For very you there is His smile, His word of welcome. Then the door closes. Just you and Jesus. Jesus and you.
I will not try to imagine what He would say to you. It would be presumptuous to do that. I don't know you. I know, I think, some of the things He would have to say to me. But you know yourself a little bit. And you know some of the things He would say to you. But if He said nothing, His presence would say everything. I think at first you would lift your eyes to His. Then somehow I think you would drop them. It is hard to look into eyes that search the uttermost depths of the heart, eyes that can see that inward rottenness, that furtive secret you have guarded from the world so long.
Yet, if it be hard to look at Him, it is harder not to look at Him. After a while you would look again into those dark, clear, steady, quiet eyes, and find them not only searching but shining; shining, not with any light regard for sin, but with a compassion that goes below the sin to the pure desire beneath. ...
Now the storm has passed. It is long after midnight, night, but you do not care. He sees you a little way on your path homewards. Then He turns back to pray. You have half a thought to go back with Him. The thought of parting seems for a moment more than you can bear. Then you feel that you never can really be parted from Him, though He goes His way and you yours unto the end of the earth. Something marvellous has happened. He is still with you. He hasn't gone back after all. He is dwelling within you. There has been a new birth. He will express Himself through YOU. It is as though your heart has become the hut; as though you had gained Him for ever. Something mystical has happened for which there are no words. You are not just "you" any longer. You have become a self whose highest joy and truest life it will for ever be to express Jesus, and bring to others the wealth and beauty He has brought to you.
The wind is hushed now. A crescent moon sails quietly through the last racks of storm-cloud. Here and there a star.
One long, low, fading belt of light on the distant horizon. You stride back to your job again on feet that scarcely touch the mountain turf; back to a life that can never, never be the same again. For in your heart there is an inward strength, an exultant radiance, a sense of complete well-being, an outgoing love, and an ineffable peace. They do not belong to this world, and nothing in this world can destroy them.
"Ah," you say, "but this is imagination." The hut, the light, the mountain, yes. But not the Presence. Unless the New Testament is a lie then this experience is for you. Perhaps it will mean a discipline, but look and listen and you will see and hear. "Our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." Will you close this book and think quietly of Him? He is nearer to you than any figure of speech can describe. He will receive you. He will understand you. He will know what to do with you. He will tell you where to begin now. And you will go back to a life that has become quite different because you have been with Jesus. You will find Him everywhere, both within and without. And for you the whole earth will be full of His glory.
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