The words of Christ as principles of personal and social growth

Front matter

k \ V

BRT21 "

Shelf &ISS

Introduction

Men are peculiarly liable in all profound questions to find their attention so diverted by the accidents and passing moods of any development as to lose sight in part of its underlying principles. This liability is especially great in religion. The truths of the revelation made us in Christ are united with innumerable historical facts, and so give occasion to endless criticism. These facts as facts are beyond positive proof; these criticisms have no ultimate test of correctness. It easily happens, therefore, that the obscure discussions and the unwarrantable suppositions possible in these directions may confuse the primary and much plainer truths involved with them, and so bring the entire subject in our minds into confusion and uncertainty.

It is not the facts of the New Testament in their precise form, it is not the exegetical harmony of its truths in their occasions and in their details, that are the power working salvation among men. These may be settled in one way or in another way, or not settled at all ; they may conform to this opinion or to that opinion, or be amenable to no opinion, — the real redemptive forces of the world are not thereby altered. The redemption of society does not depend on the exact ways in which spiritual truth has been brought to us, but on the truth itself ; It Is not, therefore, materially affected by the range of uncertainty that pertains to the method simply. Redemption must

iii iv INTRODUCTION.

be wrought out, and is being wrought out, by living, present principles, finding their way into the thoughts, hearts, actions of men. Redemption is an organic process, going on at this very time, and is to be judged in its own nature without passing beyond the hour. The question is. What are those emotional truths which are subserving the ends of construction and of life in the social world ? Are these truths those of the Gospels, or are they not ?

The exact facts of the Gospels may escape us ; we may easily cast on them endless doubts, and raise with them endless difficulties. They are shrouded by the gathering mists of many centuries. Not so is it with the truths of the Gospels. These have lost nothing and have gained much by intervening years. They are like light that is light at every point which it reaches, and may be pronounced on without reference to its sources ; they are like the light of the sun, which gains reflection and diffusion by the medium through which it is passing, and the things on which it is falling.

This relation of the teachings of Christ to the events of his life gives the occasion of our present work. Without any light estimate of historic proof, we wish simply to waive it, and to inquire in v/hat relations the words of Christ, as they have actually reached us, stand to the problem of life. We wish to see w^hether the assertion, I am the way, the truth, and the life, can be sustained and verified by the constitution of the human mind and of society, and by the historical development which is in progress under our very eyes. This after all is the ultimate question. No matter what we may establish about facts which have now passed Into the oblivion of nineteen centuries, we must still ask. What are the controlling in-

INTRODUCTION. V

centives of the present hour? No matter what we fail to prove concerning these facts, we may still hold fast a spiritual faith, wholly defensible by virtue of the living and potent principles present with us from that place and that period which define the life of Christ.

It may be rationally hoped that this consideration of the words of Christ, as an expression of the unchangeable forces and laws of the spiritual world, may help minds entangled in criticism, and losing belief by looking away from the light instead of in the very direction of the light. We may also be able, feeling how assured our real treasures are, and how much in hand we have them, to discuss with more quietness, fairness, and consideration, the obscure circumstances under which this bequest of truth has fallen to us. Having the spiritual personality of Christ distinctly before our eyes, it of itself will help us to explain very many things in his life, and will also help us to crowd outward to the horizon those things we cannot explain. This is our entire purpose : to turn attention directly to the words of Christ, as holding the theory and the only sufficient theory of spiritual growth, the forces and the only sufficient forces wherewith to secure that growth. Whatever else may be doubtful, it is not doubtful that the spirit of the Gospels is the regenerative powder of the world. The kingdom of heaven is being brought forward in this very way, and in this w^ay only can it be completed. In the measure in which this is seen to be true, will all doubts and difficulties take a secondary and remote position ; will the path of life and the promises of life lie plainly before us.

Contents

CHAPTER

I. Personality in the Words of Christ

II. Rationality in the Words of Christ

CHAPTER I. Personality in the Words of Christ

Development is the idea which has received more emphasis than any other in the past century. It gathers up and combines in one comprehensive movement those special facts and theories — the correlation of forces, the geologic stages, the origin of species, the growth of moral law — that have so profoundly quickened the human mind. Though this idea of development has been held but crudely, and been apphed but coarsely to the facts of the world, and so wrought some mischief, it is none the less the frame-work along which a great expansion of spiritual life is taking place. The moment any limitations begin to settle down on our idea of God, the moment any one element in his character — of necessity too narrowly conceived in all its elements — begins to assume fixedness, the spiritual life of the soul is straitened, and may easily be, strangled. The one conception of God which the mind always passes through, and leaves behind it only too slowly, is that of an outside agent or will taking its way with gigantic strides among physical things, and

I bringing them into subjection and order by a force put upon them. Evolution necessarily corrects this conception, and compels us to seek anew for God as an absolutely pervasive presence, walking in the silence of power and clothed upon with all the visible facts of the world.

This idea of development in the physical world should be supplemented in the spiritual world by that of growth, which finds its first expression in life, and its full expression in conscious life. Development is the slow concurrence of all constructive parts in the formation of one whole. The whole is the simple product of the parts. The parts furnish in their own nature both the material of the work and the lines of its dependence. The whole discloses nothing which is not in its constituents. Growth is more than this. A power of some sort, working toward a definite product, uses material for a constructive purpose not embraced in its own physical properties. Thus each living species is anomalous in the world. The world elsewhere and otherwise shows no such power. We may explain all the world besides, and we have not explained the rose, the butterfly, the man.

What the spiritual world has to do with primarily is conscious growth, the unfolding of a life known to itself and pushing more or less distinctly toward the conditions of progress. In treating and discussing this life, we need to bear with us the ideas which belong to growth rather than those which pertain to development.

If we undertake wisely and somewhat extendedly to secure growth in society, we shall be increasingly impressed with the fact, that the difficulties in our way are chiefly those which pertain to the strictly personal elements. Though there are exceptional facts, the position of a person in society is usually defined by the spiritual terms which he brings to it. Close observation generally discloses personal grounds for personal difficulties. Though one may be depressed by his circumstances, the removal of this outside pressure is rarely a radical solution of the problem. Some other difficulty is immediately disclosed which still blocks the path of progress. Still less does an outside lift meet the ends of growth. Unless it stands in close relation to an inside power pushing in the desired direction, the breaking down or overleaping of barriers may readily act like the bursting of the skin of the grape, letting in agents of destructive fermentation. In all living things there are buds, constructive points and constructive powers, and outside influences that are not addressed to these are more likely to be injurious than beneficial.

The one truth that experience and history impress upon us is that the problem of growth is primarily an interior one, and that social progress, therefore, is always gathered up and expressed in personal progress. Nothing will reach that which does not reach this, and nothing which reaches this will fail to extend to that also. The spiritual world is what its spiritual occupants make it to be, and the Kingdom of Heaven can only come as it comes in the hearts of individuals. And so it becomes a problem of immense labor to carry the individual forward through all the slow stages of growth in concert with other individuals to the point in which strength and wisdom and peace abide in each singly and in all collectively.

The long stages of growth which lie behind us and lie before us become painfully evident, and we are tempted, changing the idea of growth for that of development, to feel that nothing can either be accelerated or retarded by us ; that, phrasing it philosophically, we have only to keep pace with events ; or, phrasing it religiously, to wait on God. This feeling is at bottom unfaithfulness to the central idea of conscious growth as a power which proposes its own ends and pushes for them.

If we look a little more closely at the secret of our own lives, we shall see how the case stands. Men at first, full of enthusiasm, have a tendency to rush into each other's arms in friendship. They think that at least one or more points of reciprocal interplay and absolute harmony can be found. They try it, and in proportion as their natures are deep and sonorous with one result. The instruments are not attuned ; the movements are not in time. Deficiency here and excess there bring a sense of disappointment. They slowly separate, like two molecules whose beat is not the same, that each may get room enough for its own unrhythmical movement. Conditions of close spiritual relationship hardly exist as yet between any two men. The soul is rather startled in its progress by its own growing solitude. When oppressed with such an experience, the wise man does not feel that he has grounds of complaint ; that the key-note of life is with him, and that others make the discord. He is rather impressed with the fact of how extended, difficult, and complicated a combination is a true spiritual symphony. How many things in one's self must be increased, diminished, modified, eliminated, before he can successfully take part in it ; while the same is true of those about him who are best fitted to unite their experience with his experience. How little right has any one to find fault with these discords ; or, if he assumes the right, how thereby is he carried still farther off from the desired harmony.

One, who, breaking out of the bower of his own enthusiastic thoughts, makes this discovery on the barren glebe of Hfe, either sinks back into despondency, and so loses himself without gaining another, or, more wisely, he takes up as a mere tyro the laws of growth with his fellow-men, fits himself coarsely to general relations, feels his way slowly to closer adjustments, expects much from himself, demands little from others, catches quickly at all harmonies, and without ever losing the light of his own life, opens a casement-door, east or west, to all the light that may enter from abroad. He understands that the general must keep pace with the particular, and that no two men can heartily embrace each other, till they are ready also to embrace all true men.

Some may feel that the things now said pertain to poetry rather than to religion ; are an affair of sentiment quite as much as of faith. Such a conclusion is greatly to be regretted, for religion is the harmony of life with life, and so the fulness of all life. The problem we have every one to do with is, what are the successive steps of this inner and this outer concord which is to be reached only by an immense amount of personal change ?

Plainly the Kingdom of Heaven, as one of spiritual peace and composure, has much to do and most directly to do with this reconciliation of life with life, this sympathetic enlargement of life toward life on the highest plane of action and feeling. Poetry and religion are not separable from each other, when they touch the highest subjects in the highest way. While the one great thing in religion hitherto is the love it has begotten, the one curious thing is the hatred it has occasioned.

Some think that social progress — and there is no social progress that is not spiritual progress — suffers most from outside obstructions, and that these removed, growth will be rapid. A few sporadic facts may be so explained, but this is far from being an appreciative statement. When the personal conditions necessary for advancement exist, but exist under the repressing force of unfavorable circumstances, growth will be very manifest when these restraints are removed. Progress, following instantly on relief, will be vividly associated with that relief, and exclusively referred to it. It will always be easy, therefore, to maintain a striking argument tending to establish the dependence of social growth on the circumstances that define social conditions. Social science demands exceedingly broad and exceedingly thorough inquiry, and must long suffer from the ease with which opinions of a superficial order can be defended. The mind can dart about on the surface of social facts, like a water-fly, just dimpling with its motion the current beneath it.

Spiritual progress may be greatly burdened and greatly lightened by social conditions, but the controlling fact is none the less the spiritual forces with which we have to do. It is in reference to these alone that any institutions are either aids or hindrances. Places, times, and circumstances derive their significance from the persons who occupy them. This fact is disclosed almost as clearly in the idea of evolution as in that of growth. If we look to physical forces for germs of life, it is not to physical forces in their ordinary action, but in some peculiar action which a small portion of them take on at remote intervals and on rare occasions. Moreover, each living thing, as representing a species, is the result of a very protracted and very peculiar development, and by so much and by so long, has been separating itself from the simple staple of physical forces, and accumulating powers of supreme moment in the construction of all that is to follow. An assertion of an equality, therefore, between the external and internal conditions of life is in the highest degree unphilosophical, since it is the overthrow of this equality of values that the world has been about from the very beginning of time until now. When we add to this general consideration, the consideration that in human life we are dealing with the most complex and peculiar of all powers, one separated in development by the largest space from the action of simple forces, when we remember that development itself has little or no light to cast on the first differentiations which constitute a germ, and very little to cast upon that steady increase of power by which the germ in its progressive specialization becomes the plant, the animal, the man of to-day, we shall scarcely be led, even for an instant or in a single case, to turn our backs on this entire history of the world, by levelling down in spiritual unfolding internal with external causes, and so opening the problem of life anew, as if nothing had already been done. To say that a solution is historical, is to say that a vast amount of difference has already appeared and been established and confirmed in the agencies now involved, and that our units are no longer equal units of force, but most unequal units with variable and prodigious accumulations of power. If we confront this view, which is rooted in reason, with the facts of the social world broadly considered, we shall see that the two correspond ; that no climate, no soil, no geographical features, are uniformly associated with human progress, or separated from it ; and that no external conditions, except as they themselves are the expression of spiritual power or are making way before it, bring any solution to human life.

It follows from this fact, that the personal poivers are the supreme powers to be considered, watched over, and unfolded in human history, and that any effort which directs itself primarily to the amelioration or modification of outward conditions simply, can only be very partially successful at any one time, and, in continuous effort, must utterly fail. The problem of hum.an well-being will yield only to personal powers, and the fruit of ultimate labor in all grades of life must be in behoof of these poAvers.

The method of Christ conforms to this principle in a Avonderfully complete and thorough way. All the extraneous things to which the eye of man is speedily directed in seeking progress, or in convincing himself, in a more or less illusory way, of its attainment, are wholly set aside. This is not done by any formal statement, or with any explicit denial of the service of secondary things, but by turning the attention exclusively to primary things, and shielding the eye from the confusion of cross-lights. Wealth and rank are the ostensible signs of progress, and are most universally associated with it in the popular mind. They do not appear at all as means of influence or marks of growth in the instructions of Christ. They are, in theory, quietly passed by as accidents in life, while, in practice, they were left one side as blinding and confusing the human mind, at the very best unaccustomed to single vision. The eye was not only to be filled with light, but first filled with light of a spiritual order. This method was united in Christ with no asceticism, which is the opposite error, but was a concomitant of purely personal power addressing itself to like powers. Wealth and honor take part in the teaching of Christ neither as attractions nor as repulsions; they are simply indifferent to it.

When we approach knowledge, - we have to do with something much closer to the Inner Hfe, yet capable of a cold separation from it. The Jewish world was oppressed in the time of Christ as very few communities ever have been with the usurped functions of formal knowledge. The precepts of the Rabbis were omnipresent, and burdensome in the last degree. They were destructive of independent thought, personal responsibility, and every condition of individual life. They kindled and fed a consuming fanaticism, which no conditions of progress could assuage or mollify. Christ, though naturally falling into this class, completely separated himself from it in method, and, lest the difference should be overlooked, drew attention to it in the plainest way. He Instructs his disciples : Be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your master even Christ, and all ye are brethren. Call no man your father upon earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven. Yet, when he himself is called Rabbi, he does not return in an irritable way to the injunction, and so make of it a formal and minute rule. There is no more vigorous and searching rebuke in language than that contained in his censure of the spirit of proselytism, the winning of disciples to the forms of faith. Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte ; and when he is made ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. The whole force of Christ's w^ords was to break down authority as external tyranny, and to build it again as liberty in men's thoughts. They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

What wonderful caution — wonderful carelessness some would think It — does Christ show in reference to organizing his discipks. At his death, organization, immediate and prospective, was at its lowest terms. The narrow spirit of his disciples in this respect had been constantly repressed. It could get hold of no distinctions, much as it sought them. When Christ was crucified they were simply eleven men without leadership and without instructions, save that they were to teach all nations. Many facts must have concurred, but this fact was doubtless a reason among others why Judas fell away. There was nothing which his narrow, selfish, prudent, and practical mind could grasp, in wealth, in rank, in organization, or in welldefined work even. What could such a mind do ? It could not root in this light soil. Christ also, in the whole course of his ministry, seems to have made no distinction between men and women, or to have implied any inferiority in women.

This proof of the personal element in Christ's instructions should, in illustration, be carried one step farther. There were two things closely associated with his work that might easily have overborne its fine intellectual force : his miraculous power, and the presentations he should make of the character of God. If there is any one thing observable in the miracles of Christ, it is their sobriety and restraint. Who shall give law to miracles, and how rarely in the world's history have alleged miracles been kept within the bounds of any wholesome purpose ? It is plain that Christ, in every portion of his ministry, Avas thoroughly aware of the stimulating and overpowering character of this sense of the Divine Presence which he bore with him, and constantly guarded himself and his disciples against it. As a consequence of this personal sobriety, all excitement was extinguished at once, and attention was exclusively directed to strictly spiritual truths and their spiritual enforcement. The unbelief neither of

PERSONALITY IN THE ^VORDS OF CHRIST. II

the popular nor of the Rabbinical mind was encountered by power. When the disciples were exultant at their earliest participation in this gift, they received the caution : Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven. Moreover, these supernatural manifestations were never disassociated either in Christ or his disciples with the rational, in some sense natural, conditions of faith — a state of mind concurrent with the facts. Some share of faith, both in giving and receiving, was the ground of the gift. If faith, the purely personal element, waned in the disciples, the power fell away with it. We find, therefore, the disciples of Christ well-nigh as circumspect in the use of this spiritual power as their Master, and never yielding themselves up to its intoxication.

Purely personal development is easily lost in religion by false views of the character of God, and of the conditions of divine favor. Such opinions were so prevalent in the time of Christ that religious faith wrought very little change in personal character. The zealot simply intensified, in a more or less troublesome and unfortunate way, certain ill-grounded opinions and actions, and was very likely to avenge himself for the unnatural restraints put upon him in one direction by license in other directions. Thus religion might easily make him a less lovable rather than a more lovable man, one less ready rather than more ready to be taken up into the true harmony of a spiritual kingdom. Christ taught that the merciful should obtain mercy; the pure in heart should see God ; the peace-maker should be called the child of God. The whole force of the Divine Presence, like light and heat, wrought for growth in personal qualities. There was no method of approach to God, and no unity with him, which was not of this personal, spiritual character.

Christ brought his disciples close within the circle of his own personal qualities, gave them truth permeated with feeling, and passing before their very eyes into action. Personal qualities, therefore, found in the disciples rapid unfolding. The presence of Christ was like the sunshine of spring, in which change follows quickly on change. Any thing subject to these stimulating influences must either grow or decay, and that at once. The attractive force of Christ's presence we discover in the eleven ; its repellant power is disclosed in Judas. In a less vigorous atmosphere the buds might not have pushed, and the mildew might not have followed. By this divine schooling of the thoughts and affections toward himself, Christ restored to the disciples a true conception of God, till He became a Pervasive and Benign Presence, whose clearest disclosure was in the Son of God. There was nothing, therefore, in the character of God, as at length apprehended by the disciples, to misdirect or repress their personal life,, but the reverse every way.

But this supreme importance of the personal element is distinctly put by Christ in parables, illustrations, and principles. The shepherd leaves the ninety and nine and goes into the wilderness in search of the lost sheep. The Pharisee, as he stands at prayer in the temple, has no advantage over the publican. The humility of the one, as contrasted with, the pride of the other, makes an easy way for itself to the heart of God. The widow with her two mites bears off the divine approval. The life is more than meat, says Christ, and the body more than raiment. Not that which entereth into the man defileth him, but that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

Thus absolutely, in every direction, and in every particular, did Christ ground his> instruction and his kingdom on the personal element in its perfect freedom. Here is a kingdom that can be borne anywhere by any one, and can gather into itself all everywhere. It is as colorless as white light, and yet it brings out the native color of all things. It is organic, but organic after the model of the highest life ; each molecule is bound by a secret affinity to its own place and its own office, and to every other molecule in its place and its office.

The part which this fact of a purely personal discipline plays in the kingdom of Christ will be more clearly seen if we contrast it with some of the aberrations of this truth that have attended on the history of the Christian church. An initial term in its theology is sin ; most of its doctrines turn on this idea. Fundamental as this fact is in the Christian system, it has easily been distorted, and made to play a false part in life ; and that because it has not been expressed in a personal way on a personal basis.

The sense of sin has been intensified vaguely, as if the mind were to receive on this side its great recoil toward God. It has been spoken of as against a perfect law and an infinite God ; and things not sinful or sinful in a slight degree, mere forms of action, have been made to bear an immense load. The remedies of sin have become correspondingly artificial ; and this strong feeling, obscured and ill-directed, has been used to excite superstitious fears, to push forward devotees in misconceived lines of action, and to make the whole spiritual problem false and painful in its rendering.

Because sin is so certain and so significant a fact, it is the more needful that it be dealt with directly in its individual forms and under its specific remedies. One may be aware of the seeds of disease in his physical constitution ; this is not an occasion for general alarm and random effort, but for careful inquiry and precise action. The problem of sin is not an abstract one, but one eminently concrete, capable only of individual interpretation and correction. In general alarm may be found a force working against needful remedies and aggravating existing evils.

It often happens that those who suffer most from the maladjustments of society, fail to aid in their removal, when the occasion is offered. The evil being misunderstood in its true sources, in the exact distribution of wrongs and so in their real correction, simply maddens the mind, — makes it blind, irritable, and exacting. There is much to be regretted in the relation of labor and capital, yet the laborer, misapprehending the extent and grounds of the difficulty, may easily and often does spoil a promising experiment of cooperation by failing in that spirit of endurance, forbearance, and trust on which its success depends. He covets prosperity, but is not able to supply the personal terms on which it hinges.