Part 8

It is essential to remember that we are in possession of knowledge, that we are face to face with conditions that are different from any in the previous history of Christendom. The Christian church must be sure that it moves fast enough so as not to alienate, but to draw into it that great body of intellectually alive, intellectually honest young men and women who have the Christ spirit of service and who are mastered by a great purpose of accomplishment. Remember that these young men and women are now merely standing where the entire church will stand in a few years. Remember that any man or woman who has the true spirit of service has the spirit of Christ--and more, has the religion of the Christ.

Remember that Jesus formulated no organisation. His message of the Kingdom was so far-reaching that no organisation could ever possibly encompass it, though an organisation may be, and has been, a great aid in actualising it here on earth. He never made any conditions as to through whom, or what, his truth should be spread, and he would condemn today any instrumentality that would abrogate to itself any monopoly of his truth, just as he condemned those ecclesiastical authorities of his day who presumed to do the same in connection with the truth of God's earlier prophets.

And so I would say to the Church--beware and be wise. Make your conditions so that you can gain the allegiance and gain the help of this splendid body of young men and young women. Many of them are made of the stock that Jesus would choose as his own apostles. Among the young men will be our greatest teachers, our great financiers, our best legislators, our most valuable workers and organisers in various fields of social service, our most widely read authors, eminent and influential editorial and magazine writers as well as managers.

Many of these young women will have high and responsible positions as educators. Some will be heads and others will be active workers in our widely extended and valuable women's clubs. Some will have a hand in political action, in lifting politics out of its many-times low condition into its rightful state in being an agent for the accomplishment of the people's best purposes and their highest good. Some will be editors of widely circulating and influential women's magazines. Some will be mothers, true mothers of the children of others, denied their rights and their privileges. Make it possible for them, nay, make it incumbent upon them to come in, to work within the great Church organisation.

It cannot afford that they stay out. It is suicidal to keep them out. Any other type of organisation that did not look constantly to commanding the services of the most capable and expert in its line would fall in a very few months into the ranks of the ineffectives. A business or a financial organisation that did not do the same would go into financial bankruptcy in even a shorter length of time. By attracting this class of men and women into its ranks it need fear neither moral nor financial bankruptcy.

But remember, many men and women of large calibre are so busy doing God's work in the world that they have no time and no inclination to be attracted by anything that does not claim their intellectual as well as their moral assent. The Church must speak fully and unequivocally in terms of present-day thought and present-day knowledge, to win the allegiance or even to attract the attention of this type of men and women.

And may I say here this word to those outside, and especially to this class of young men and young women outside of our churches? Changes, and therefore advances in matters of this kind come slowly. This is true from the very nature of human nature. Inherited beliefs, especially when it comes to matters of religion, take the deepest hold and are the slowest to change. Not in all cases, but this is the general rule.

Those who hold on to the old are earnest, honest. They believe that these things are too sacred to be meddled with, or even sometimes, to be questioned. The ordinary mind is slow to distinguish between tradition and truth--especially where the two have been so fully and so adroitly mixed. Many are not in possession of the newer, the more advanced knowledge in various fields that you are in possession of. But remember this--in even a dozen years a mighty change has taken place--except in a church whose very foundation and whose sole purpose is dogma.

In most of our churches, however, the great bulk of our ministers are just as forward-looking, just as earnest as you, and are deeply desirous of following and presenting the highest truth in so far as it lies within their power to do so. It is a splendid body of men, willing to welcome you on your own grounds, longing for your help. It is a mighty engine for good. Go into it. Work with it. Work through it. The best men in the Church are longing for your help. They need it more than they need anything else. I can assure you of this--I have talked with many.

They feel their handicaps. They are moving as rapidly as they find it possible to move. On the whole, they are doing splendid work and with a big, fine spirit of which you know but little. You will find a wonderful spirit of self-sacrifice, also. You will find a stimulating and precious comradeship on the part of many. You will find that you will get great good, even as you are able to give great good.

The Church, as everything else, needs to keep its machinery in continual repair. Help take out the worn-out parts--but not too suddenly. The Church is not a depository, but an instrument and engine of truth and righteousness. Some of the older men do not realise this; but they will die off. Respect their beliefs. Honest men have honest respect for differences of opinion, for honest differences in thought. Sympathy is a great harmoniser. "Differences of opinion, intellectual distinctions, these must ever be--separation of mind, but unity of heart."

I like these words of Lyman Abbott. You will like them. They are spoken out of a full life of rich experience and splendid service. They have, moreover, a sort of unifying effect. They are more than a tonic: "Of all characters in history none so gathers into himself and reflects from himself all the varied virtues of a complete manhood as does Jesus of Nazareth. And the world is recognising it.... If you go back to the olden time and the old conflicts, the question was, 'What is the relation of Jesus Christ to the Eternal?' Wars have been fought over the question, 'Was he of one substance with the Father?' I do not know; I do not know of what substance the Father is; I do not know of what substance Jesus Christ is. What I do know is this--that when I look into the actual life that I know about, the men and women that are about me, the men and women in all the history of the past, of all the living beings that ever lived and walked the earth, there is no one that so fills my heart with reverence, with affection, with loyal love, with sincere desire to follow, as doth Jesus Christ....

"I do not need to decide whether he was born of a virgin. I do not need to decide whether he rose from the dead. I do not need to decide whether he made water into wine, or fed five thousand with two loaves and five small fishes. Take all that away, and still he stands the one transcendent figure toward whom the world has been steadily growing, and whom the world has not yet overtaken even in his teachings.... I do not need to know what is his metaphysical relation to the Infinite. I say it reverently--I do not care. I know for me he is the great Teacher; I know for me he is the great Leader whose work I want to do; and I know for me he is the great Personality, whom I want to be like. That I know. Theology did not give that to me, and theology cannot get it away from me."

And what a basis as a test of character is this twofold injunction--this great fundamental of Jesus! All religion that is genuine flowers in character. It was Benjamin Jowett who said, and most truly: "The value of a religion is in the ethical dividend that it pays." When the heart is right towards God we have the basis, the essence of religion--the consciousness of God in the soul of man. We have truth in the inward parts. When the heart is right towards the fellow-man we have the essential basis of ethics; for again we have truth in the inward parts.

Out of the heart are the issues of life. When the heart is right all outward acts and relations are right. Love draws one to the very heart of God; and love attunes one to all the highest and most valued relationships in our human life.

Fear can never be a basis of either religion or ethics. The one who is moved by fear makes his chief concern the avoidance of detection on the one hand, or the escape of punishment on the other. Men of large calibre have an unusual sagacity in sifting the unessential from the essential as also the false from the true. Lincoln, when replying to the question as to why he did not unite himself with some church organisation, said: "When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification of membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself, that church shall I join with all my heart and soul."

He was looked upon by many in his day as a non-Christian--by some as an infidel. His whole life had a profound religious basis, so deep and so all-absorbing that it gave him those wonderful elements of personality that were instantly and instinctively noticed by, and that moved all men who came in touch with him; and that sustained him so wonderfully, according to his own confession, through those long, dark periods of the great crisis, The fact that in yesterday's New York paper--Sunday paper--I saw the notice of a sermon in one of our Presbyterian pulpits--Lincoln, the Christian--shows that we have moved up a round and are approaching more and more to an essential Christianity.

Similar to this statement or rather belief was that of Emerson, Jefferson, Franklin, and a host of other men among us whose lives have been lives of accomplishment and service for their fellow-men. Emerson, who said: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." Emerson, who also said: "I believe in the still, small voice, and that voice is the Christ within me." It was he of whom the famous Father Taylor in Boston said: "It may be that Emerson is going to hell, but of one thing I am certain: he will change the climate there and emigration will set that way."

So thought Jefferson, who said: "I have sworn eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the minds of men." And as he, great prophet, with his own hand penned that immortal document--the Declaration of American Independence--one can almost imagine the Galilean prophet standing at his shoulder and saying: Thomas, I think it well to write it so. Both had a burning indignation for that species of self-seeking either on the part of an individual or an organisation that would seek to enchain the minds and thereby the lives of men and women, and even lay claim to their children. Yet Jefferson in his time was frequently called an atheist--and merely because men in those days did not distinguish as clearly as we do today between ecclesiasticism and religion, between formulated and essential Christianity.

So we are brought back each time to Jesus' two fundamentals--and these come out every time foursquare with the best thought of our time. The religion of Jesus is thereby prevented from being a mere tribal religion. It is prevented from being merely an organisation that could possibly have his sanction as such--that is, an organisation that would be able to say: This is his, and this only. It makes it have a world-wide and eternal content. The Kingdom that Jesus taught is infinitely broader in its scope and its inclusiveness than any organisation can be, or that all organisations combined can be.

IX

HIS PURPOSE OF LIFTING UP, ENERGISING, BEAUTIFYING, AND SAVING THE ENTIRE LIFE: THE SAVING OF THE SOUL IS SECONDARY; BUT FOLLOWS

We have made the statement that Jesus did unusual things, but that he did them on account of, or rather by virtue of, his unusual insight into and understanding of the laws whereby they could be done. His understanding of the powers of the mind and spirit was intuitive and very great. As an evidence of this were his numerous cases of healing the sick and the afflicted.

Intuitively he perceived the existence and the nature of the subjective mind, and in connection with it the tremendous powers of suggestion. Intuitively he was able to read, to diagnose the particular ailment and the cause of the ailment before him. His thought was so poised that it was energised by a subtle and peculiar spiritual power. Such confidence did his personality and his power inspire in others that he was able to an unusual degree to reach and to arouse the slumbering subconscious mind of the sufferer and to arouse into action its own slumbering powers whereby the life force of the body could transcend and remould its error-ridden and error-stamped condition.

In all these cases he worked through the operation of law--it is exactly what we know of the laws of suggestion today. The remarkable cases of healing that are being accomplished here and there among us today are done unquestionably through the understanding and use of the same laws that Jesus was the supreme master of.

By virtue of his superior insight--his understanding of the laws of the mind and spirit--he was able to use them so fully and so effectively that he did in many cases eliminate the element of time in his healing ministrations. But even he was dependent in practically all cases, upon the mental cooperation of the one who would be healed. Where this was full and complete he succeeded; where it was not he failed. Such at least again and again is the statement in the accounts that we have of these facts in connection with his life and work. There were places where we are told he could do none of his mighty works on account of their unbelief, and he departed from these places and went elsewhere. Many times his question was: "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" Then: "According to your faith be it unto you," and the healing was accomplished.

The laws of mental and spiritual therapeutics are identically the same today as they were in the days of Jesus and his disciples, who made the healing of sick bodies a part of their ministration. It is but fair to presume from the accounts that we have that in the early Church of the Disciples, and for well on to two hundred years after Jesus' time, the healing of the sick and the afflicted went hand in hand with the preaching and the teaching of the Kingdom. There are those who believe that it never should have been abandoned. As a well-known writer has said: "Healing is the outward and practical attestation of the power and genuineness of spiritual religion, and ought not to have dropped out of the Church." Recent sincere efforts to re-establish it in church practice, following thereby the Master's injunction, is indicative of the thought that is alive in connection with the matter today.[A] From the accounts that we have Jesus seems to have engaged in works of healing more during his early than during his later ministry. He may have used it as a means to an end. On account of his great love and sympathy for the physical sufferer as well as for the moral sufferer, it is but reasonable to suppose that it was an integral part of his announced purpose--the saving of the life, of the entire life, for usefulness, for service, for happiness.

And so we have this young Galilean prophet, coming from an hitherto unknown Jewish family in the obscure little village of Nazareth, giving obedience in common with his four brothers and his sisters to his father and his mother; but by virtue of a supreme aptitude for and an irresistible call to the things of the spirit--made irresistible through his overwhelming love for the things of the spirit--he is early absorbed by the realisation of the truth that God is his father and that all men are brothers.

The thought that God is his father and that he bears a unique and filial relationship to God so possesses him that he is filled, permeated with the burning desire to make this newborn message of truth and thereby of righteousness known to the world.

His own native religion, once vibrating through the souls of the prophets as the voice of God, has become so obscured, so hedged about, so killed by dogma, by ceremony, by outward observances, that it has become a mean and pitiable thing, and produces mean and pitiable conditions in the lives of his people. The institution has become so overgrown that the spirit has gone. But God finds another prophet, clearly and supremely open to His spirit, and Jesus comes as the Messiah, the Divine Son of God, the Divine Son of Man, bringing to the earth a new Dispensation. It is the message of the Divine Fatherhood of God, God whose controlling character is love, and with it the Divine sonship of man. An integral part of it is--all men are brothers.

He comes as the teacher of a new, a higher righteousness. He brings the message and he expounds the message of the Kingdom of God. All men he teaches must repent and turn from their sins, and must henceforth live in this Kingdom. It is an inner kingdom. Men shall not say: Behold it is here or it is there; for, behold, it is within you. God is your father and God longs for your acknowledgment of Him as your father; He longs for your love even as He loves you. You are children of God, but you are not true Sons of God until through desire the Divine rule and life becomes supreme in your minds and hearts. It is thus that you will find the Kingdom of God. When you do, then your every act will show forth in accordance with this Divine ideal and guide, and the supreme law of conduct in your lives will be love for your neighbour, for all mankind. Through this there will then in time become actualised the Kingdom of Heaven on the earth.

He comes in no special garb, no millinery, no brass bands, no formulas, no dogmas, no organisation other than the Kingdom, to uphold and become a slave to, and in turn be absorbed by, as was the organisation that he found strangling all religion in the lives of his people and which he so bitterly condemned. What he brought was something infinitely transcending this--the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, to which all men were heirs--equal heirs--and thereby redemption from their sins, therefore salvation, the saving of their lives, would be the inevitable result of their acknowledgment of and allegiance to the Divine rule.

How he embraced all--such human sympathy--coming not to destroy but to fulfil; not to judge the world but to save the world. How he loved the children! How he loved to have them about him! How he loved their simplicity, and native integrity of mind and heart! Hear him as he says: "Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein"; and again: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of God." The makers of dogma, in evolving some three hundred years later on the dogma of the inherent sinfulness and degradation of the human life and soul, could certainly find not the slightest trace of any basis for it again in these words and acts of Jesus.

We find him sympathising with and mingling with and seeking to draw unto the way of his own life the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the same as the well-to-do and those of station and influence--seeking to draw all through love and knowledge to the Father.

There is a sense of justice and righteousness in his soul, however, that balks at oppression, injustice, and hypocrisy. He therefore condemns and in scathing terms those and only those who would seek to place any barrier between the free soul of any man and his God, who would bind either the mind or the conscience of man to any prescribed formulas or dogmas. Honouring, therefore the forms that his intelligence and his conscience allowed him to honour, he disregarded those that they did not.

Like other good Jewish rabbis, for he was looked upon during his ministry and often addressed as Rabbi, he taught in the synagogues of his people; but oftener out on the hillsides and by the lake-side, under the blue sky and the stars of heaven. Giving due reverence to the Law and the Prophets--the religion of his people and his own early religion--but in spirit and in discriminating thought so far transcending them, that the people marvelled at his teachings and said--surely this a prophet come from God; no man ever spoke to us as he speaks. By the ineffable beauty of his life and the love and the winsomeness of his personality, and by the power of the truths that he taught, he won the hearts of the common people. They followed him and his following continually increased.

Through it all, however, he incurred the increasing hostility and the increasing hatred of the leaders, the hierarchy of the existing religious organisation. They were animated by a double motive, that of protecting themselves, and that of protecting their established religion. But in their slavery to the organisation, and because unable to see that it was the spirit of true religion that he brought and taught, they cruelly put him to death--the same as the organisation established later on in his name, put numbers of God's true prophets, Jesus' truest disciples to death, and essentially for the same reasons.