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 GOD'S EDUCATION OF MAN. i6mo, $1.25. 
 JESUS' WAY. i6mo, $1.00, net. Postage 
 extra. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 Boston and New York. 
 
JESUS' WAY 
 
 ^n Appreciation of t^e tJlntUn^ 
 in t\it ^pnoptic (Basj^tls 
 
 BY / 
 
 WILLIAM DeWITtWdE 
 
 PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN COLLEGK 
 
 But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the 
 disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of 
 him letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found 
 any that were of the Way, whether men or women, he might 
 bring them bound to Jerusalem. — Acts ix. i, 2. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1902 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October, igo2 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Before Paul had cast it into a theology, 
 or " John " had developed it into a philo- 
 sophy ; before the Catholic had organized 
 it into an institution, or the Protestant had 
 stereotyped it into a creed, primitive Chris- 
 tianity was known simply as the Way. 
 Jesus Hved his life originally, successfully ; 
 in love to God and man. In living this 
 gentle, generous, joyous life, he struck out 
 a Way he wanted every one to know and 
 share. A Way of life, like the trade of a 
 carpenter or the art of a musician, has cer- 
 tain principles and laws, discovered by ex- 
 perience, and as precepts capable of being 
 taught. These precepts are not arbitrary 
 impositions to be enforced by pains and 
 penalties. Nothing was farther from Jesus' 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 purpose than to be such a taskmaster over 
 the consciences of men. Because his Way 
 could not be had apart from the principles 
 on which it rests, Jesus gave himself, 
 eagerly and enthusiastically, to the work of 
 teaching and preaching them. 
 
 These principles of the Way were to 
 him what the laws of navigation are to the 
 sailor, and the laws of perspective to the 
 artist : helps in doing the thing he most 
 delighted to do. Though to the outsider 
 these principles may seem like a yoke and 
 a burden, yet, viewed as essential condi- 
 tions of living the noblest and happiest 
 life, even the yoke becomes, to all who 
 wear it rightly, easy ; and the burden light 
 to all who catch the spirit of his Way. 
 
 The most obvious advantage of a return 
 to the primitive view of Christianity as a 
 Way of life, rather than an ecclesiastical 
 institution or a system of theological or 
 philosophic doctrine, is the experimental 
 
PREFACE V 
 
 basis it gives to the Christian life. In all 
 matters of experience proof follows, does 
 not precede, the test. A man, for instance, 
 cavils at golf. The golf enthusiast is 
 dumb, if he be wise. He knows it is of 
 no use to argue with his critic. His only 
 chance is to entice him on to the links, 
 put the driver in his hand, and then, if 
 the caviler makes one good drive, the 
 chances are ten to one that he will become 
 a devotee of the sport, which, in advance 
 of personal experience, he boastfully de- 
 spised. Proof founded on experience can- 
 not be refuted or denied. Yet since expe- 
 rience comes first and proof second in all 
 practical matters, industrial, artistic, intel- 
 lectual, moral, spiritual, we must take our 
 initial experience as the golfer takes his 
 first drive, as the swimmer takes his first 
 stroke, in advance of demonstration, on the 
 recommendation of others who have had 
 the experience ; or, as Jesus, Paul, Augus- 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 tine, Luther; and Paulsen, Harnack, Sa- 
 batier, and James in our day, tell us, on 
 faith. 
 
 Jesus' Way is simply one of many possi- 
 ble ways in which a man may live. Ten 
 thousand times ten thousand, and thousands 
 of thousands of people have tried it and 
 found it superior to any other way of life 
 they have experienced or can conceive. 
 Their experience and testimony create a 
 strong presumption in its favor. One's 
 own lack of experience is no argument 
 against it. The responsibility rests en- 
 tirely^ on the will of the individual. If a 
 man does not skate, the fault is not with 
 the laws of motion or the properties, of ice. 
 It is because he does not believe it is worth 
 while to put on the skates, and take a few 
 incidental falls. Precisely so, if a man is 
 not a Christian, he cannot?, in these days 
 of the supremacy of the empirical method, 
 throw the blame on to anything so respecta- 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 ble as intellectual difficulties, or conscien- 
 tious scruples, or theological doubts. That 
 pretext was in good repute twenty or thirty- 
 years ago ; but with the shifting of empha- 
 sis from doctrine to life, from adventitious 
 signs and evidences, against which Jesus 
 warned his disciples, to the individual and 
 personal experience to which he always ap- 
 pealed, the intellectual grounds for neglect 
 of the Christian Way of life have been 
 removed. If a man is not a Christian, 
 living according to the principles which 
 Jesus taught, it is simply because he does 
 not rightly understand Jesus' Way; or 
 else because he has found some other 
 way of life which he likes, or pretends to 
 like, better. There is no valid intellectual 
 objection to essential Christianity. For 
 Christianity is a Way of life, an experi- 
 ence, like music and painting, like golf and 
 tennis, like hunting and fishing. The fact 
 that all men who have had deep experience 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 of it like it, and that 'it works out satisfac- 
 tory results in character, conduct, peace, 
 and happiness, is the great argument for it. 
 That a great many people have never 
 tried it, and do not care to try it, is no 
 more of an argument against it than color- 
 blind people are an argument against paint- 
 ing, or deafness is a refutation of music's 
 claims and charms. 
 
 The prevalent confusion on this point 
 has come from mixing up scientific and 
 historical with strictly moral and spiritual 
 matters. Men who are utterly devoid of 
 intellectual seriousness, who have never 
 touched so much as the tips of their intel- 
 lectual fingers to the heavy burdens of 
 scientific and historical scholarship, stoutly 
 profess their " faith," as they miscall it, in 
 discredited scientific theories and disproved 
 historical assumptions : and then call those 
 who run not with them in this excess of 
 intellectual riot infidels and unbelievers. 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 True faith is a very different thing from 
 this stupid, stultifying profession that one 
 believes what is traditional, or respectable, 
 or profitable to believe about the way the 
 world was created, or the Bible was com- 
 posed, or this or that particular event hap- 
 pened two or three thousand years ago. 
 Faith is the trust of an inexperienced pupil 
 in his expert teacher ; the response of the 
 apprentice to the word of the master. Re- 
 ligious faith is the outgoing of a good im- 
 pulse within us toward accomplished good- 
 ness in God and good men in the world 
 outside. 
 
 A good life, like that of Jesus, is the 
 only adequate expression of his Way. For 
 the life is the Way in successful oper- 
 ation. The teaching of the principles of 
 the Way, apart from the life in which they 
 are embodied, is comparatively dry and 
 fruitless. Jesus fused the teaching and the 
 life in his wondrous personality. His gath- 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 ered sayings constitute the most precious 
 literary treasures of the world. Yet they 
 derive their value to-day from the inter- 
 pretation given to them by the lives of his 
 faithful followers. 
 
 This little book takes ofF from the slen- 
 der biographical thread on which they are 
 loosely strung, out of the alloy of picture 
 and parable in which they are artistically 
 coined, apart from the gilded margin of 
 miracle in which they are elaborately 
 framed, the two hundred or more precepts 
 of which the teaching of Jesus, as recorded 
 in the Synoptic Gospels, is composed ; and 
 groups them together, freely translated, 
 under a dozen heads, according to their logi- 
 cal relations and common-sense proportions. 
 The task is simple : for these sayings lie 
 plain upon the surface, where he who runs 
 may read. Yet as a dozen artists make as 
 many different pictures of the same land- 
 scape, in a work like this emphasis, per- 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 spective, point of view, count for so much 
 that no two persons who might attempt it 
 would get the same result. Hence I have 
 called the outcome an appreciation ; a term 
 intended to cover whatever sins of omission 
 or commission the personal equation may 
 have introduced. 
 
 Teaching spiritual things through the 
 printed page is so difficult and unpromising, 
 not to say impossible, a task, that I must 
 ask the reader to interpret each statement 
 in the light of his own experience, in case 
 he has experience on the subject treated ; 
 and in case he has not, in terms of the 
 experience of the best Christian he ever 
 knew, — father, mother, teacher, friend ; 
 living or dead. For the real Bible, and the 
 only illuminating commentary upon it, is 
 the life of men and women in whom Jesus' 
 Way is reproduced. Even the Sacred 
 Scriptures are but the reflection of such 
 lives ; and of course a book like this, at its 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 best, is only the reflection of a reflection ; 
 a mere guide-post pointing in the direction 
 of the Life which is the Way. 
 
 WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE. 
 
 BowDoiN College, Brunswick, Maine. 
 September 23,1902. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE FATHER : THE PRINCIPLE OF THE 
 
 WAY I 
 
 II. THE SON : THE INCARNATION OF THE 
 
 WAY 17 
 
 III. THE KINGDOM : THE SPIRIT OF THE WAY 3 I 
 rV. FAITH : THE GRASP OF THE WAY . . 39 
 V. REPENTANCE I THE ENTRANCE TO THE 
 
 WAY 55 
 
 VI. FORGIVENESS : THE RESTORATION TO THE 
 
 WAY 73 
 
 VII. LOVE : THE LAW OF THE WAY ... 85 
 
 VIII. LOYALTY : THE WITNESS TO THE WAY . IO5 
 
 IX. SACRIFICE : THE COST OF THE WAY . II 5 
 X. REVELATION : THE JUDGMENT OF THE 
 
 WAY 143 
 
 XI. BLESSEDNESS : THE REWARD OF THE WAY I 55 
 XII. UNIVERSALITY : THE TRIUMPH OF THE 
 
 WAY . . . 185 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FATHER : THE PRINCIPLE OF 
 THE WAY 
 
"At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, 
 O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide 
 these things from the wise and understanding, and didst 
 reveal them unto babes : yea. Father, for so it was well- 
 pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto 
 me of my Father : and no one knoweth the Son, save the 
 Father 5 neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, 
 and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." 
 Matthew xi. 25-27. 
 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." 
 Matthew v. 8. 
 
 " Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute 
 you ; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in hea- 
 ven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. Ye 
 therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." 
 Matthew V. 44, 45, 48. 
 
 "If ye then, being evU, know how to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall your Father which 
 is in heaven give good things to them that ask him ? " Mat- 
 thew vii. II. 
 
 ** Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, 
 neither do they reap, nor gather into barns j and your hea- 
 venly Father feedeth them." Matthew vi. 26. 
 
 " But the father said to his servants. Bring forth quickly 
 the best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his 
 hand, and shoes on his feet : and bring the fatted calf, and 
 kiU it, and let us eat, and make merry : for this my son was 
 dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found." Luke 
 XV. 22-24. 
 
 * ' And the servants of the householder came and said unto 
 him. Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field ? whence 
 then hath it tares ? And he said unto them, An enemy 
 hath done this." Matthew xiii. 27, 28. 
 
JESUS' WAY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE father: the principle of the 
 
 WAY 
 
 There are two ways to live. One 
 may seek first, last, and all the time, 
 to gratify his appetites, indulge his 
 passions, and gain his selfish ends; 
 heedless of the bitter privation, injury, 
 and anguish his greed and pride and 
 lust wreak on those who cross his cruel 
 path or fall into his hard and heartless 
 hands. Until a very fewgenerations ago, 
 our human forefathers, and of course 
 
4 JESUS' WAY 
 
 all our dnimal ancestors before them, 
 lived for the most part this life of sim- 
 ple sensuous selfishness. Even in the 
 highly evolved circle of twentieth 
 century respectability to which it is 
 our boast to belong, there is enough 
 of this way of life left over to, rein- 
 force our innate tendencies in this 
 direction by abundant suggestion from 
 without; and to give some show of 
 excuse to those slanderers of the race, 
 the theologians, who, dwelling too 
 exclusively on this aspect of our racial 
 inheritance, have developed the doc- 
 trines of total depravity and original 
 sin. 
 
 So long as the race lived in this 
 way, so far as any man lives in this 
 way to-day, neither man nor God can 
 be seen aright. For the selfish, sen- 
 
THE FATHER 5 
 
 sual man, since he recognizes no will, 
 respects no rights, appreciates no in- 
 terests other than his own, thereby ig- 
 nores and denies, so far as it is possible 
 to do so, all personality in the world 
 except the tiny spark of it he feels 
 within himself Nature to such a 
 man is a mere shop full of tools acci- 
 dentally adapted to serve his selfish 
 ends. Among these tools, the most 
 cunningly constructed and serviceable 
 of them all, he finds, to be sure, beings 
 whose external resemblance to himself 
 leads him to call men and women. 
 Yet, inasmuch as they are treated as 
 mere means to his selfish ends, he does 
 not recognize them as brothers and 
 sisters, with feelings as real and wills 
 as valid as his own. Still less can 
 he find, either in nature or in human 
 
6 JESUS' WAY 
 
 history and human institutions, any 
 trace of a heavenly Father. So far 
 as his impure and selfish heart is able 
 to discover, he is perfectly right in 
 saying, what every such fool must say 
 if he is true to his own experience, 
 " There is no God." With this in- 
 ability to see God, there usually, but 
 not always, goes one or more of the 
 many forms of the murderer's ques- 
 tion, " Am I my brother's keeper ? " 
 
 Now Jesus never wasted breath in 
 trying to prove to such men the exist- 
 ence of God. On the contrary, he 
 plainly told them that it is absolutely 
 impossible to see God from that point 
 of view; or find their heavenly Fa- 
 ther in such an experience as that. 
 For this is the meaning of the saying, 
 " Neither doth any know the Father, 
 
THE FATHER 7 
 
 save the Son, and he to whomsoever 
 the Son willeth to reveal him." In 
 other words, it is in the filial experi- 
 ence that the Father must be found. 
 
 What, then, is the filial experience? 
 How does the Son reveal the Father ? 
 Where shall God be found? The 
 answer to these questions is "Jesus' 
 Way." 
 
 Instead of regarding other men and 
 women as mere tools for one's own 
 gratification, as mere means to one's 
 selfish ends, which is the essence of 
 sin, one may recognize that they are 
 alive with the same warm affections, 
 eager interests, and alternating joys 
 and sorrows which he experiences in 
 himself One may make his neigh- 
 bors' joys and sorrows as real to him 
 as his own ; work for their interests ; 
 
8 JESUS* WAY 
 
 find joy in their successes, pain in their 
 reverses, even as he has felt them on 
 a smaller scale within his individual 
 heart. This is love ; the beginning of 
 righteousness ; the essence of the spir- 
 itual life. 
 
 This enlarging sympathy, however, 
 once started, does not stop with our 
 fellow men. To a heart once opened 
 to sympathetic appreciation of other 
 human. lives, animals, plants, even the 
 mountains and seas, the fields and 
 streams, the processes of growth and 
 decay, the revolutions of the heavenly 
 bodies and the evolution of the forms 
 of life upon our little planet, all re- 
 veal, if not a consciousness like ours, 
 at least a life and purpose akin to 
 those subconscious strivings after life 
 which form the deep foundation on 
 
THE FATHER 9 
 
 which our own self-consciousness is 
 reared. Sun, star, and stone ; water, 
 air, and earth ; plant, fish, and beast, 
 are all parts of one continuous pro- 
 cess which culminates in man ; from 
 which the conscious life of man is in- 
 separable, and on which he depends 
 for the satisfaction of the hopes and 
 aspirations with which he is endowed. 
 Furthermore, this process is on the 
 whole beneficent. The survival of 
 the fittest is its law; which is only 
 another way of saying that good, not 
 evil, is its impulse and its goal. Now 
 a process with an impulse, a law, and 
 a goal, moulding matter into forms of 
 beauty, controlling force for good ends 
 and crowning it all with living beings 
 capable of appreciating and furthering 
 the process itself, is more than mate- 
 
10 JESUS' WAY 
 
 rial. It is personal. Its proper name 
 is God ; our Father ; our Infinite Com- 
 panion ; our Eternal Friend. 
 
 Jesus, though by no means the 
 first to recognize the personality of 
 the God whom the cosmic process as 
 a whole reveals to every sensitive and 
 sympathetic heart, was original in the 
 clearness and fullness with which he 
 made this central spiritual insight the 
 principle of the Way of life in which 
 he walked himself, and which he 
 commended to his followers and 
 friends. In the beauty of the lilies, 
 the color of the grass, the feeding of 
 the sparrows, the rain and sunshine 
 falling on just and unjust alike, the 
 providence that watches over the un- 
 thankful and the evil, the faithful 
 shepherd caring for his sheep, the 
 
THE FATHER ii 
 
 good Samaritan nursing the wounded 
 traveler, the kind father giving good 
 gifts to his children, and welcoming 
 with robe and ring and feast and dance 
 the returning prodigal, Jesus recog- 
 nized and adored, working out on the 
 universal scale of nature and human- 
 ity, the same Spirit of beauty, kind- 
 ness, and beneficence, which he felt 
 welling up within his own soul. 
 
 This simple experience of a love in 
 his own soul responsive to the beauty 
 of the world and the claims of human 
 hearts, hid, indeed, as it is from the 
 wise and understanding, yet transpar- 
 ent in every pure and childlike heart, 
 inexplicable on any other hypothesis 
 than that of a single Principle, infinite 
 as nature, loving as man at his best, 
 was Jesus' sole, all-sufficient evidence 
 
12 JESUS' WAY 
 
 of the being of God. He was him- 
 self the revelation of the Father ; and 
 the only way he could reveal Him to 
 others was by making them admire 
 the beauty of nature and serve the 
 needs of man. For admiration of 
 nature is participation in the Creator's 
 joy ; service of men is experience of 
 the Father's love. And participation 
 is the only evidence, experience is 
 the only proof, which Jesus admitted 
 for himself or commended to his 
 disciples. 
 
 This evidence of God involved in 
 the filial experience of adoration of 
 nature and sympathy with men, hid 
 from ecclesiasticism and scholasticism 
 for centuries, is thus well fitted to be- 
 come the light of life to our modern 
 world. For it appeals from tradition, 
 
THE FATHER 13 
 
 and authority, and argumentation to 
 the soHd rock of experience. If you 
 love nature and humanity, you thereby 
 enter into and reproduce the creative 
 love of the Father. You live a life 
 which you did not create, but which 
 you know is good, and infinite in range. 
 Nature has no metes and bounds ; the 
 claims of our fellow men, embodied 
 in the moral ideal, have no limits. 
 The career open to love is infinite. It 
 is the life of the Father, which each 
 conscious child of his is privileged to 
 share. No proof less than the actual 
 experience of this life of love could 
 reveal God to any man. Yet every 
 man who has this experience is as sure 
 of a divine life in the world as he is of 
 his own existence. The filial experi- 
 ence has made the Father manifest. 
 
14 JESUS' WAY 
 
 The principle of Jesus' Way is, 
 therefore, that there is one God, the- 
 Creator of the world and the Father 
 of our spirits ; of whom all natural 
 beauty is the outward expression, and 
 all moral duty the inward voice. To 
 live in grateful adoration of all the 
 beauty and beneficence the outer 
 world contains, in sensitive obedience 
 to every claim of human sympathy, 
 is to walk in Jesus' Way. This is 
 the one central principle which runs 
 through Jesus' scattered teachings, 
 the bond' which binds them all to- 
 gether in the unity of a Way which 
 is original, unique, supreme, divine. 
 
 That there are tares as well as 
 wheat in the field of the world ; that 
 there are falling towers that crush and 
 cruel men who kill, Jesus did not 
 
THE FATHER 15 
 
 deny. Yet, because there was no 
 trace of hate or malice in his own pure 
 heart, he refused to believe that these 
 accidents and crimes were evidence 
 of any malice in what we should call 
 the Father's motive; however they 
 might be permitted as incidental in a 
 universe where individuals were to 
 be intrusted with the perilous prerog- 
 atives of self-consciousness and free 
 will. In all this wanton wickedness 
 he saw the working of a hostile prin- 
 ciple. " An enemy hath done this." 
 Yet the enemy was one which it was 
 his mission to conquer and dislodge. 
 Indeed, through cheerful acceptance 
 of the burdens which human sin brings 
 upon the world, Jesus revealed in him- 
 self, and communicated to his follow- 
 ers, that element of sacrifice which is 
 
i6 JESUS' WAY 
 
 the deepest and tenderest quality of 
 the Father's nature; and in the lives 
 of Jesus and his true followers is the 
 most complete and adequate revela- 
 tion of the Father's heart. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SON : THE INCARNATION OF 
 THE WAY 
 
" Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house ?" 
 Luke ii. 49. 
 
 *' Thou art my beloved Son ; in thee I am well pleased." 
 Luke iii. ^^. 
 
 *' And the devil said unto him, To thee will I give all 
 this authority, and the glory of them : for it hath been de- 
 livered unto me ; and to whomsoever I wUl I give it. If 
 thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all be thine. 
 And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, Thou 
 shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou 
 serve." Luke iv. 6-8. 
 
 * ' And all bare him witness, and wondered at the words 
 of grace which proceeded out of his mouth : and they said, 
 Is not this Joseph's son ? " Luke iv. 22. 
 
 *' And they go into Capernaum ; and straightway on the 
 Sabbath day he entered into the synagogue and taught. And 
 they were astonished at his teaching : for he taught them 
 as having authority, and not as the scribes. ' ' Mark i. 21,22. 
 
 " And he saith unto them, Let us go elsewhere into the 
 next towns, that I may preach there also ; for to this end came 
 I forth. And he went into their synagogues throughout all 
 Galilee, preaching and casting out devils." Mark i. 38, 39, 
 
 '* And Jesus saith unto him. The foxes have holes, and 
 the birds of the heaven have nests ; but the Son of man 
 hath not where to lay his head." Matthew viii. 20. 
 
 *' And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good .■* 
 none is good save one, even God." Mark x. 18. 
 
 " Howbeit I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow and 
 the day following : for it cannot be that a prophet perish out 
 of Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the 
 prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her ! how 
 often would I have gathered thy children together, even as 
 a hen gathereth her own brood under her wings, and ye 
 would not ! " Luke xiii. 33, 34. 
 
 " And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, 
 and said. Behold, my mother and my brethren ! For whoso- 
 ever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, he 
 is my brother, and sister, and mother." Matthew xii. 49, 50. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SON : THE INCARNATION OF THE 
 WAY 
 
 To disentangle the Father's love of 
 all his children from the conflicting 
 evidence of human perversity and 
 natural accident, as Jesus did by the 
 spiritual genius of his soul, is a task 
 which not every one is able to per- 
 form for himself In most of us the 
 mixture of good and evil which we 
 see without is reflected in a similar 
 mingling of good and bad within. 
 Hence we neither get by purity of 
 heart clear assurance of God for our- 
 selves, nor do we reveal Him to 
 
20 JESUS* WAY 
 
 others by purity of life. Having found 
 God in his own soul, Jesus' great 
 mission was to reveal Him to others, 
 and introduce them to his Way of 
 life, in which they would find God for 
 themselves. 
 
 Born of a mother whose pure soul 
 had been deeply imbued with the 
 spirit of Hebrew prophecy and psalm, 
 yet whose gentle human heart found 
 its natural expression in becoming the 
 mother of a large family of boys and 
 girls, Jesus, while yet a boy, on his 
 first contact with the Temple teach- 
 ers, felt that he must be about his 
 Father's business of showing men the 
 Way. 
 
 Yet, at the very beginning of his 
 work, he found the popular expecta- 
 tions of a Messiah who should recover 
 
THE SON 21 
 
 the national independence by the use 
 of force, and head a popular revolt, 
 standing directly across his path. He 
 felt a growing sense that, through his 
 sonship to the Father who loves us 
 all, he was the true Messiah, foretold 
 as the one anointed of the Lord to 
 preach good tidings to the poor, to 
 proclaim release to the captives, re- 
 covering of sight to the blind, liberty 
 to the bruised, and the acceptable year 
 of the Lord. All that he felt prepared 
 to do. But this appeal to force, this 
 leadership of revolt, this compromise 
 with popular conceptions, was abhor- 
 rent to him. Yet how could he ac- 
 complish anything alone ? How could 
 he do his work without the only sup- 
 port which seemed available? At 
 first the temptation to resort to phy- 
 
22 JESUS' WAY 
 
 sical, political, and popular devices 
 for the establishment of his Way was 
 very strong ; and only after a bitter 
 and protracted struggle did he put it 
 behind him, and take up the homeless 
 life of an itinerant teacher. 
 
 He gathered about himself twelve 
 intimate disciples ; for the most part 
 plain men drawn from the humblest 
 walks of life. At times he drew after 
 him considerable crowds from Galilee, 
 and Decapolis, and Jerusalem, and 
 Judea, and from beyond Jordan; 
 most of whom, however, were loosely 
 and superficially attached to him, and 
 easily discouraged. At one time he 
 was able to send out as many as 
 seventy whom he deemed competent 
 and trustworthy teachers of his Way. 
 
 Through the faith which he in- 
 
THE SON 23 
 
 spired, and by virtue of psychical 
 powers which he possessed, he healed 
 diseases, cured certain forms of insan- 
 ity, and did other wonderful things, 
 which, far more than his teaching, 
 spread his fame throughout all Syria. 
 These acts of kindness and mercy 
 were expressions of that love to all 
 which he felt to be the nature of his 
 Father, and of the Way in which all 
 true sons of the Father should walk. 
 Yet Jesus frequently deprecated as an 
 obstacle to the inner apprehension of 
 his Way, the wonder-loving, sight-see- 
 ing throngs which the fame of these 
 signs attracted. 
 
 Though occasionally curious to 
 know what people were saying about 
 him, Jesus said comparatively little 
 about himself His favorite title was 
 
24 JESUS' WAY 
 
 The Son of Man ; though he did not 
 disclaim the title Son of God. He 
 did disclaim, however, any unique 
 and ultimate goodness, ascribing that 
 to God alone. Yet so perfect was 
 his obedience that his life revealed 
 the Father's goodness, and his words 
 declared the Father's holy will. Je- 
 sus translated into terms of human 
 personality the very lineaments of 
 the Father's nature. Since Jesus has 
 lived, we need no longer to discover, 
 each for himself, the scattered evi- 
 dences of the divine love in nature, 
 in other men, and in our own souls. 
 Jesus has brought these scattered rays 
 of the divine love to a focus in his 
 own character and life ; and we most 
 easily and most completely gain our 
 knowledge of the Father through his 
 
THE SON 25 
 
 reflection in the Son. For in the Son 
 the Father stands revealed. 
 
 As this ethical sonship is different 
 from the metaphysical, theological 
 sonship of the ecclesiastical creeds, 
 the evidence on which it rests is of an 
 entirely different character. It is sim- 
 ply a question of the adequacy and 
 supremacy of his Way. If his Way 
 proves to be a mere collection and 
 compilation of preceding precepts ; 
 if he teaches like the scribes, then no 
 attestation of miracles and marvels can 
 make us revere him as the unique 
 Son of God. If, on the other hand, 
 his doctrine is altogether novel, a code 
 dropped supernaturally from the sky, 
 or even invented by his own ingenu- 
 ity, he thereby forfeits his claim to be 
 the Son of the Father who had been 
 
26 JESUS' WAY 
 
 revealing himself to all his thought- 
 ful and reverent children, and declar- 
 ing his will in the legislation and 
 institutions of all the nations of the 
 earth. 
 
 Now Jesus' Way was neither old 
 alone, nor new alone ; but like the 
 treasure of the householder, both old 
 and new. All that was permanently 
 valuable, to the last jot and tittle, in 
 what the moral experience of the race 
 had laboriously wrought out and 
 enacted into custom and command- 
 ment, he reverently conserved. In 
 the details of his teaching there is 
 nothing that other men before him 
 had not discovered, approved, and 
 proclaimed. It could not be other- 
 wise. For there can be but one best 
 Way of life. All seeking after right- 
 
THE SON 27 
 
 eousness is an approximation to this 
 one best Way. And when this best 
 Way is fully revealed, it is simply the 
 presentation in one single insight, as a 
 comprehensive whole, of all the vir- 
 tues, duties, laws, institutions, and 
 ideals which human experience has 
 discovered, enacted, sanctioned, and 
 adored. The proof of the perfection 
 of his Way, and of his own Sonship 
 to God as the incarnation of that per- 
 fect Way, therefore, is purely experi- 
 mental. If a man or a race, either 
 before or after Jesus' advent, has suc- 
 ceeded in striking out a Way essen- 
 tially different from Jesus' Way, 
 which is at the same time superior to 
 it, then this moral discoverer, this eth- 
 ically superior race, not Jesus and the 
 Jews, must be accredited with the 
 
28 JESUS' WAY 
 
 title of Son of God, and bearer of 
 his revelation. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the vast major- 
 ity of individuals, all indeed who have 
 had the requisite experience of it, and 
 all the leading races to whom his Way 
 has been adequately taught, agree that 
 his Way is the summing up of all 
 that is best in the efforts of men and 
 nations after righteousness; and that, 
 although it is capable of infinite ex- 
 pansion, and application to details 
 of which Jesus never dreamed, yet 
 beyond or above its essential princi- 
 ples it is impossible for experiment to 
 advance, or imagination to soar. In 
 its range of application it is infinite 
 and universal: yet in its reduction of 
 this infinite variety of applications to 
 the single principle of love to the God 
 
THE SON 29 
 
 who loves his whole creation, and 
 every human child according to his 
 needs, it is unique, final, unimprov- 
 able, and absolute. 
 
 The ethical supremacy of his Way 
 is the evidence that Jesus is the well- 
 beloved Son of God. Consequently 
 the only adequate confession of him 
 is, as he tells us, implicit obedience 
 to his words, and faithful following of 
 his Way. Because his own Sonship 
 is ethical and spiritual, rather than 
 metaphysical and theological, it there- 
 fore follows that every one who rever- 
 ently walks in his Way, and lovingly 
 does his Father's will, becomes thereby 
 his brother and sister and mother. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE KINGDOM: THE SPIRIT OF 
 THE WAY 
 
*• Thy kingdom come." Matthew vi. lo. 
 
 ** But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness ; 
 and all these things shall be added unto you," Matthew 
 vi. 33- . 
 
 " And being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom 
 of God Cometh, he answered them and said. The kingdom of 
 God Cometh not with observation : neither shall they say, 
 Lo, here ! or. There ! for lo, the kingdom of God is within 
 you." Luke xvii. 20, 21. 
 
 **The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a 
 woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was 
 all leavened." Matthew xiii. 33. 
 
 *' The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard 
 seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field : which 
 indeed is less than all seeds ; but when it is grown, it is 
 greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the 
 birds of the heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof." 
 Matthew xiii, 31, 32. 
 
 ** And Jesus, fiill of the Holy Spirit, returned from the 
 Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty 
 days, being tempted of the devil." Luke iv. i, 2, 
 
 *' In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit," 
 Luke X. 21. 
 
 "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly 
 Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ? ' ' 
 Luke xi. 13. 
 
 " And when they bring you before the synagogues, and the 
 rulers, and the authorities, be not anxious how or what ye 
 shall answer, or what ye shall say : for the Holy Spirit shall 
 teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say." Luke 
 xii. II, 12. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE KINGDOM : THE SPIRIT OF THE 
 WAY 
 
 To discover God in the harmony be- 
 tween the good in the world outside 
 and the good in his own soul ; even 
 to reveal the good God in purity 
 of life so plainly that all might see 
 the nature of the Father incarnate in 
 the Son, was but the beginning of the 
 work which Jesus came to do. Had 
 he done nothing more than this, he 
 would have left his Way very im- 
 perfectly revealed: hanging in the 
 air ; hovering as a mere ideal before 
 the minds of a select few. He sought 
 
34 JESUS' WAY 
 
 to make the Way of the Father the 
 Way of the Son, also the Way of 
 multitudes of common men and wo- 
 men in whom it should live as the 
 Spirit of their individual and corpo- 
 rate life. In accomplishing this, Jesus 
 performed the greatest feat of teach- 
 ing, and achieved the grandest success 
 in organization and administration, 
 the world has ever seen. Yet Jesus 
 took no credit for it to himself The 
 kingdom, and the power, and the 
 glory, he ascribed to God. In other 
 words, it was not because he proclaimed 
 it so clearly and persuasively; it was 
 because God had constituted human 
 nature so that the Way of love to 
 God and man is the true Way of life, 
 that the community of those who 
 adopted and proclaimed this Way 
 
THE KINGDOM 35 
 
 were able to become the mightiest 
 social and spiritual force the world has 
 ever seen. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is the 
 community of those who walk in 
 Jesus' Way. In Jesus' teaching the 
 kingdom is sometimes represented in 
 the Messianic terminology of the 
 times; sometimes projected into the 
 world to come. But the fundamen- 
 tal conception, whether it be regarded 
 as local or universal, present or future, 
 is that of a community of persons, 
 bound to the Father, and to the Son, 
 and to each other by a common 
 Spirit, which is begotten in them by 
 walking together in the Way which 
 Jesus exemplified and taught. 
 
 What manifests itself outwardly as 
 a Way of life, when thought of in- 
 
36 JESUS* WAY 
 
 wardly and subjectively is the Spirit 
 that animates and inspires this Way 
 of life. Thus Jesus was led by the 
 Spirit into the wilderness to meet his 
 temptation. He rejoiced in the Spirit, 
 when he thanked his Father that He 
 had been pleased to make his reve- 
 lation of himself to babes. The 
 Holy Spirit is the best gift which the 
 Father is sure to give to all those who 
 earnestly ask and seek and knock. 
 In times of peril, when arrested and 
 brought to trial, the Holy Spirit shall 
 teach the disciples in that very hour 
 what they ought to say. 
 
 If we think of the Holy Spirit as 
 the life and will of the Father, repro- 
 duced in the Son, and shared by all 
 the members of the community who 
 follow the Son in the doing of the 
 
THE KINGDOM 37 
 
 Father's will, all these passages be- 
 come clear and luminous. It is the 
 most natural thing in the world that 
 Jesus should be led by this Spirit to 
 meet his temptation ; and that in this 
 Spirit he should rejoice. It is also 
 inevitable that God should give this 
 Holy Spirit to those who earnestly 
 and prayerfully seek to do his will ; 
 and that this same Holy Spirit should 
 teach them what to say much better 
 than their own devices. 
 
 The Synoptic Gospels teach that 
 the will of the Father has been repro- 
 duced and revealed in the Son: and 
 also that the life of both Father and 
 Son has been imparted to a commu- 
 nity or kingdom of true sons of God 
 and followers of Jesus, in which it 
 dwells as the Holy Spirit of a divine 
 
38 JESUS' WAY 
 
 life, of the same nature as the life of 
 the Father and the Son from whom it 
 is derived, yet distinctly and properly 
 their own. The Holy Spirit is the 
 inner aspect of that life of God in the 
 hearts of men of which the kingdom 
 of God, or the kingdom of heaven, is 
 the outward expression and visible 
 embodiment. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FAITH; THE GRASP OF THE WAY 
 
" He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that re- 
 ceiveth me receiveth him that sent me. He that receiveth 
 a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's 
 reward j and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name 
 of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward." 
 Matthew x. 40, 41. 
 
 '* And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites : 
 for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the 
 comers of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily 
 I say unto you, They have received their reward. But 
 thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, 
 and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in 
 secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recom- 
 pense thee. And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the 
 Gentiles do : for they think that they shall be heard for 
 their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them : for 
 your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before 
 ye ask him." Matthew vi. 5-8. 
 
 ** Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
 knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that 
 asketh receiveth j and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him 
 that knocketh it shall be opened." Lukexi. 9, 10. 
 
 *' And shall not God avenge his elect, which cry to him 
 day and night, and he is longsufFering over them ? I say 
 unto you, that he will avenge them speedily. Howbeit 
 when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the 
 earth ? " Luke xviii. 7, 8. 
 
 ** If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say 
 unto this mountain. Remove hence to yonder place ; and 
 it shall remove j and nothing shall be impossible unto you." 
 Matthew xvii. 20. 
 
 " Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." Luke 
 xxii. 42. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FAITH : THE GRASP OF THE WAY 
 
 Psychology is telling us that all our 
 interpretation of personal life is either 
 ejective or projective ; either explain- 
 ing the ways of others in terms of 
 our own experience, or imitatively 
 reproducing the ways of others in 
 experiments of our own. The latter 
 process is by far the more fundamen- 
 tal and instructive, and is precisely 
 what Jesus meant by faith. Faith is 
 the recognition of a goodness outside 
 us, in the Father, in the Son, or in 
 the spiritual life of Christian men and 
 women whom we know, unattained 
 
42 JESUS' WAY 
 
 by us, yet adorable, imitable, and 
 through adoration and imitation pro- 
 gressively attainable. The ejective 
 attitude of the big boy showing off 
 his accomplishments, and perfectly 
 comprehending the little brother as 
 an inferior reproduction of his own 
 superior attainments, is arrogant, con- 
 ceited, and followed exclusively would 
 make one a brute and a bully. The 
 projective attitude, on the contrary, 
 or the attitude of faith, is preeminently 
 meek, modest, humble, teachable, 
 childlike ; ready to believe that there 
 is a Way of life better than one's 
 natural reactions, quick to admire and 
 reverence that better Way in others, 
 and willing to try whatever imitative 
 experiments give promise of making 
 that better Way one's own. He who 
 
FAITH 43 
 
 will throw himself out toward another 
 in adoration and imitation must be 
 modest about his own attainments. 
 That is why Jesus insisted on hu- 
 mility as the condition of the appre- 
 hension of his Way. For without 
 humility, faith, or the imitative repro- 
 duction of another's experience, is 
 unattainable. And without such self- 
 projection into the superior experience 
 of another, spiritual growth and life is 
 obviously impossible. 
 
 While the ultimate object of Faith 
 is the Father, and the perfect work- 
 ing of his holy will, yet, since Jesus 
 has translated that perfect will into 
 the limitations of our human lives, it 
 is much easier for us to project our- 
 selves into his experience than to aim 
 directly at the vast, and to our feeble 
 
44 JESUS* WAY 
 
 imaginations vague experience of 
 God. Since Jesus was the true Son, 
 faith in him, the aspiration to be Hke 
 him, comes to the same thing as aspi- 
 ration to be Hke God, or faith in God. 
 " He that receiveth me," he says, " re- 
 ceiveth him that sent me." 
 
 This truth, in words at least, the 
 church has generally accepted as an 
 obvious corollary of its acceptance 
 of Jesus as the Son of God. There 
 is another truth which goes with it, 
 and is an equally obvious corollary 
 of any rational and worthy doctrine 
 of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus states 
 with equal explicitness, but which his 
 followers too often have forgotten or 
 explained away. 
 
 Admiration and imitative appropria- 
 tion of a good man or woman, for the 
 
FAITH 45 
 
 sake of the goodness they embody, 
 is appreciation and appropriation of 
 Jesus, and of the heavenly Father. 
 For if it be genuine goodness in the 
 friend whom I admire and strive to 
 be Hke, that goodness of his is not 
 something different from the goodness 
 of Jesus and the goodness of God. 
 Goodness is one, whether in the Fa- 
 ther, in the Son, or in the Holy Spirit 
 which animates the lives of Chris- 
 tian men and women. Hence, a godly 
 father, a sainted mother, a devoted 
 teacher, a faithful Christian friend, 
 is the most obvious and immediate 
 object of our faith: through admir- 
 ing imitation of the Way in them, 
 we approach the perfect expression 
 of the Way in Jesus, and as Plato 
 in a famous passage teaches, ascend 
 
46 JESUS' WAY 
 
 on this ladder of created souls to the 
 ultimate goodness as it is in God. 
 
 Startling as this teaching sounds in 
 our modern ears, it was the power 
 by which the early church conquered 
 the world. Sacramentalism and sacer- 
 dotalism are poor, pale counterfeits, 
 almost caricatures, of this tremendous 
 truth, that the goodness of good men 
 and women is off the same piece as 
 the goodness of Jesus, and is a genu- 
 ine aspect of the goodness of God ; 
 and therefore a legitimate and valid 
 object for the faith or projective ap- 
 propriation of other men to lay hold 
 of, and grow into, and make the step- 
 ping-stone of their salvation. To con- 
 ceal this truth under some rite, or 
 confine it to some official, is to rob 
 the modern church of the chief source 
 
FAITH 47 
 
 of the primitive Christian commu- 
 nity's persuasiveness and power. For- 
 tunately, however, this truth is so 
 great that the ingenuous perversity of 
 men cannot hide it ; and under what- 
 ever forms, ceremonies, and doctrines 
 the various ecclesiastical organizations 
 have adopted, the saving grace of God, 
 in which plain men and women have 
 believed to their salvation, has always 
 been interpreted by the sweet and 
 simple Christian lives of upright men 
 and gentle women, devout priests and 
 faithful pastors, sincere teachers and 
 generous friends, in and through whom 
 Jesus' Way has found its local, tem- 
 poral, and individual expression. 
 
 Once started through some human 
 agency, faith tends more and more to 
 lay hold directly of the perfect char- 
 
48 JESUS' WAY 
 
 acter of Jesus, and the ultimate good- 
 ness of God. For, strange as it seems 
 to the uninitiated, God is more acces- 
 sible to the approach of faith than is 
 our nearest and dearest friend. The 
 expression of this approach of faith to 
 the Father is prayer. 
 
 Prayer is the aspiration to be like 
 God; the expression of willingness 
 that God should make one like him- 
 self Its first and foremost petition 
 is that the Father's perfect goodness 
 may be a hallowed and hallowing 
 presence in the soul. Next comes the 
 desire that the community' of those 
 who know and love Him may be 
 extended in the world ; and that his 
 goodwill may be done on earth even 
 as it is where his love reigns supreme. 
 With this goes the willingness to 
 
FAITH 49 
 
 gratefully accept the satisfaction of our 
 daily needs as a gift from his benefi- 
 cence. Petitions for forgiveness of our 
 sins, restraint from temptation, and 
 deliverance from evil follow to com- 
 plete the expression of the faithful 
 soul's desires. 
 
 Prayer which is thus born of faith, 
 and is simply the child's grasp of the 
 Father's hand for guidance and sup- 
 port, is an entirely different thing 
 from that mechanical and ostentatious 
 saying of prayers which seeks to curry 
 favor with God, or gain a reputation 
 for piety with men, by performing 
 prayer, like fasting or almsgiving, as a 
 meritorious act. Such prayers merely 
 blind and harden and stultify the soul 
 that resorts to them. Proceeding on 
 a false idea of God, as a Being to 
 
50 JESUS' WAY 
 
 be conciliated and won over by meri- 
 torious performances, they miss that 
 union of what is best in us with the 
 Father who is its source, which is the 
 true reward and answer to prayer. The 
 less a man says about his prayers, the 
 less conscious he is of doing anything 
 specially meritorious in his worship : 
 the more spontaneous and secret and 
 natural and unconventional it is, the 
 better. 
 
 While Jesus warns us against all 
 formalism, ostentation, and insincerity 
 in prayer, yet he enjoins constancy 
 and even importunity in prayer as 
 the very secret of the soul's life and 
 growth. No great work can be done 
 without it. For prayer keeps ideal 
 and motor process in vital contact; 
 member and kingdom in living touch; 
 
FAITH 51 
 
 child and Father in close companion- 
 ship. Like faith, of which it is the 
 emotional and personal expression, 
 prayer keeps the love and will of the 
 Father, as interpreted by Jesus and 
 embodied in the Spirit of the commu- 
 nity, in the position of a controlling 
 ideal and motive of conduct. Conse- 
 quently, the man who truly lives a 
 life of prayer comes to partake of the 
 divine omnipotence ; and a group of 
 persons bound together by such a 
 common recognition of the Father's 
 love and will become, for the accom- 
 plishment of any purpose that is in 
 accordance with his will, practically 
 irresistible. 
 
 Though one's natural desires, as for 
 daily bread, and for deliverance from 
 trial and temptation, may rightly enter 
 
52 JESUS' WAY 
 
 into one's communion with the Father, 
 yet we do not get the complete union 
 of ourselves with Him, which is the 
 end and essence of prayer, until all these 
 partial, transitory desires of ours are 
 overruled by the crowning desire, ex- 
 pressed in Jesus' prayer in the Garden 
 of Gethsemane : " Nevertheless, not 
 my will, but thine be done." In short, 
 prayer is not a device for getting God 
 to do our will, in so far as our will dif- 
 fers from his ; but it is an indispen- 
 sable and invaluable means of getting 
 his will done in and through us, when 
 our wills desire to be one with his 
 will, but are all too weak and unsteady 
 to accomplish alone what He can 
 make them strong to do. An ideal 
 allowed to drift out of consciousness 
 is as impotent as an electric car cut 
 
FAITH 53 
 
 off from the power station. An ideal 
 present in consciousness is as potent 
 over life, and the world which human 
 life affects, as is a dynamo over the 
 movements of a connected car. Prayer 
 is the making and maintaining of 
 spiritual connections between the in- 
 dividual soul and the great motive 
 power of the goodness and love of 
 God. That its answer comes chiefly 
 through the medium of one's own 
 steadiness and strength of purpose, and 
 the cooperation of other human wills, 
 is no more a denial of its reality and 
 worth than is the intervention of a 
 wire a denial of the direct and com- 
 plete dependence of the car upon the 
 power station for its motion. Word- 
 less prayer, on the other hand, is as 
 genuine a reality as wireless telegraphy. 
 
54 JESUS' WAY 
 
 All this, however, Jesus no more rea- 
 soned out than he did the existence 
 of God. He simply practiced it; and 
 found, as everybody does, that with 
 this constant communion with the 
 Father's loving will one can do any- 
 thing in the world he then desires to 
 do ; and that without such commu- 
 nion one's spiritual aspirations fade 
 away, and one's spiritual achievements 
 come to naught. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 REPENTANCE : THE ENTRANCE TO 
 THE WAY 
 
" And one saki unto him, Lord, are they few that be 
 saved ? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in by the 
 narrow door : for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter 
 in, and shall notbe able." Luke xiii. 23, 24. 
 
 *' Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as 
 Ettle children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven." Matthew xviii. 3. 
 
 " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the 
 wiE of my Father which is in heaven." Matthew viL 21. 
 
 ** Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
 and I win 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." Matthew xi. 28-30. 
 
 <' No man, having put his hand to the plough, and look- 
 ing back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Luke ii. 62. 
 
 *• Whosoever would become great among you shall be 
 your minijayr j and whosoever would be first among you 
 shall be your servant : even as the Son of man came not to 
 be mini^ered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a 
 ransom for many." Matthew rr. 26—28. 
 
 " Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's 
 ere, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? '* 
 M^thew vii. 3. 
 
 *' Take heed, and keep yourselves from all covetousness : 
 for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth." Luke xii. 15. 
 
 ** If thy hand or thy foot causeth thee to stumble, cut it 
 off^ and cast it from thee : it b good for thee to enter into 
 life maimed or halt, rather than having two hands or two 
 feet to be cast into the eternal fire." Matthew xviii. 8. 
 
 " Then saith he to his servants. The wedding is ready, 
 but they that were bidden were not worthy. For many are 
 called, but few chosen." Matthew xxii. 8, 14. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 REPENTANCE : THE ENTRANCE TO THE 
 WAY 
 
 When once seen by the pure eye of 
 faith, Jesus' Way of love to all, even 
 as the Father loves, in a community 
 of mutual service like that which Jesus 
 himself manifested and inspired in his 
 immediate followers, is something so 
 different from the natural way of self- 
 seeking, so superior to what we all do 
 when we act out our animal appetites 
 and passions, and seek our selfish ends 
 and aims, that no one can enter this 
 Way without a radical change. A 
 new Way of life involves as a matter 
 
58 JESUS' WAY 
 
 of course a new attitude of mind and 
 heart. The invitation is to all : to the 
 merchant in spite of the importance 
 of his business ; to the sinner, because 
 of his greater need ; to those who are 
 dissatisfied with themselves, because 
 of the assured satisfaction the kingdom 
 will afford; to the weary and heavy- 
 laden, because the burden of service 
 and the yoke of love which Jesus puts 
 on all who enter the kingdom is 
 lighter far than the burdens of social 
 ambition and the yokes of selfish ends; 
 and this lighter and easier task of sim- 
 ply doing one's best in the loving ser- 
 vice of all will bring to these weary and 
 heavy-laden souls the rest they crave. 
 Yet of the many called compara- 
 tively few are chosen. For the Way 
 of love is narrow, and few there be 
 
REPENTANCE 59 
 
 that find it. Children, on whom the 
 heart-hardening processes of self-seek- 
 ing have not yet laid hold, and sin- 
 ners conscious of their guilt and ill 
 desert find the entrance to the Way 
 most readily. For humility is nat- 
 ural to the child, and others' con- 
 demnation has brought the flagrant 
 sinner to a point where his need of 
 forgiveness and a new start is obvious. 
 There is no room in the kingdom, 
 no place in the Way, for pride, sensu- 
 ality, selfishness, meanness, cowardice, 
 hypocrisy. Whoever tries to carry 
 any of these things in the Way sim- 
 ply shuts himself out of it. It is too 
 narrow to admit one swollen out and 
 loaded down with these excrescences 
 and incumbrances. The man who 
 thinks himself better than others 
 
6o JESUS' WAY 
 
 thereby shows his own fundamental 
 lack of the Spirit of universal kindU- 
 ness and gentleness which is the es- 
 sence of the Way. He who is first in 
 his own conceit is last in genuine appre- 
 ciation and love for others, and there- 
 fore last in the Way. He who seeks 
 distinction and preeminence rather 
 than usefulness and service thereby 
 confesses his fitness for only the lowest 
 seat, if indeed he be fit for any seat at 
 all at the feast of the Lord of love. 
 He that exalteth himself by that very 
 act decrees his own abasement. The 
 intensity of one's devotion is limited. 
 The more he bestows on himself, the 
 less he has left for the Father and his 
 fellows. By the latter, not the former, 
 he gets his station in the Way, his 
 rating in the kingdom of heaven. 
 
REPENTANCE 6i 
 
 The desire to be waited on and 
 served, unless it be merely incidental 
 to a larger service of one's own, is a 
 mark of unfitness for admission to the 
 Way. All attempts to live at other 
 people's expense, by fraud or dishon- 
 esty, by influence or favor, by riches 
 or power, are a denial of the Spirit of 
 the Way, and involve, as a matter of 
 course, exclusion from it. Here lies 
 the peril of wealth. If it makes a man 
 centre his affection on what he can get 
 rather than what he can give; on 
 being served rather than serving ; on 
 material enjoyment rather than spirit- 
 ual exercise ; on the lust of the flesh 
 instead of the love of the spirit, — then 
 his riches, because they take the love 
 out of his heart, take the man out of 
 Jesus' Way and exclude him from 
 
62 JESUS' WAY 
 
 the kingdom of heaven. Yet riches 
 are not an insuperable obstacle to one's 
 entrance to the Way. Indeed, they 
 may be a help. If used as an instru- 
 ment of service and an expression of 
 love to the Father, and to his children 
 according to their need, the steward- 
 ship of v^ealth, whether in effective in- 
 dustrial management, or in judicious 
 charities, may become, as indeed it is 
 in multitudes of Christian men to-day, 
 one of the highest and noblest mani- 
 festations of that loving service of 
 God and all his children in which the 
 Way consists. 
 
 What is true of wealth is true of 
 station, reputation, power, influence, 
 ability. Sought as ends in themselves 
 they draw one's affections away from 
 that love of God and our fellow men 
 
REPENTANCE 63 
 
 which is Jesus' Way. Used for the 
 service of the kingdom, they add 
 enormously to one's efficiency in the 
 Way; so that the neglect to develop 
 and use them to their full capacity 
 would, as also in the case of wealth, 
 be an evidence of lack of love, and 
 a just ground of exclusion from the 
 kingdom. 
 
 Censoriousness, harsh judgment of 
 others, a disposition to get something 
 for one's self which the less deserving 
 cannot share, since these are not the 
 manifestations of love, are sure marks 
 of one's own exclusion from the king- 
 dom of heaven. People, like the elder 
 brother, who measure their own right- 
 eousness by the standard of their bro- 
 ther's failings, have in reality very 
 little righteousness to measure any 
 
64 JESUS' WAY 
 
 way. For the root of righteousness is 
 love; and where love, even to the 
 outcast and the prodigal, the sinner 
 and the criminal, is wanting, it is but 
 a hard, dry shell of legality, not the 
 warm heart of genuine righteousness 
 that remains. Out of such selfish, 
 censorious, cold, conceited creatures as 
 this elder brother and his whole tribe 
 of Pharisees and self-styled saints, even 
 the Almighty could not make a warm, 
 genial, generous, happy heaven if He 
 tried. 
 
 Sensuality on the same principle 
 excludes one from the Way; not on 
 the false ascetic ground that sensuous 
 pleasure is bad; but simply because 
 one cannot serve two masters ; because 
 sensuous pleasure often conflicts with 
 that true regard for one's own welfare 
 
REPENTANCE 65 
 
 and the welfare of others which is the 
 substance of the Way. Jesus never 
 condemned sensuous pleasure as such. 
 In all his warnings there is the saying, 
 " If thine eye offend, pluck it out." 
 He never says that a maimed life is 
 good in itself, or preferable to a whole 
 life, in which every appetite and pas- 
 sion has its appropriate action and 
 fruition. He simply says, what every 
 sound ethical system from Plato and 
 Aristotle to the present day affirms, 
 that when the part conflicts with the 
 whole, when the member interferes 
 with the organism, when the passing 
 indulgence is fatal to the permanent 
 interest of the self as a whole, then 
 the appetite or passion must be re- 
 pressed. The strait gate of love to 
 others excludes many an indulgence 
 
66 JESUS' WAY 
 
 which selfish passion prompts. That 
 is why the readiness to pluck out the 
 eye or cut off the hand is a condition 
 of admission to the Way. Such tem- 
 perance is the price love has to pay for 
 being consistent with itself, and true to 
 those who are its objects. To gratify 
 each appetite, so far as is consistent 
 with that universal love which is the 
 spirit of the Way, is the Christian 
 ideal. But to leave this or that par- 
 ticular desire ungratified is far better 
 than, through sacrificing some other 
 person's welfare or happiness to a self- 
 ish passion, to fail to truly love that 
 person, and so fall altogether out of 
 Jesus' Way. 
 
 There is no asceticism about Jesus' 
 Way. To be sure, all lesser goods 
 must be remorselessly cut off when 
 
REPENTANCE 67 
 
 they conflict with the supreme claim 
 of love : and this often gives the Way 
 an ascetic aspect in the eyes of those 
 who see the lesser good denied, and 
 cannot see or appreciate the larger 
 love affirmed. Jesus never asks us to 
 cut off any natural appetites unless 
 they offend : unless, that is, they put us 
 in false and harmful relations to oth- 
 ers. For every physical pleasure fore- 
 gone, the follower of his Way cannot 
 fail to secure a greater spiritual good. 
 Healthy natural appetites are not bad ; 
 nor are they to be brooded over in 
 morbid introspection and self-condem- 
 nation. They all have uses essential 
 to the individual and the race. They 
 become bad only when they lead us 
 to treat others as we would not be 
 willing to be treated if we were in their 
 
68 JESUS' WAY 
 
 place, — as we would not wish one 
 dear to us to be treated by another. 
 Lack of love in this plain, practical 
 sense of the word is the only sin ; and 
 natural appetites and passions become 
 sinful only when they lead us to sac- 
 rifice ourselves or others to merely 
 transient and sensual ends, at cost of 
 permanent purity and peace. To be 
 sure, Jesus does mention incidentally 
 the truth, which physiology knows 
 well, that intense and protracted devo- 
 tion to such ideal interests as those to 
 which his Way leads ultimately tends 
 with years and maturity to abate, if 
 not to extinguish, the fires of even 
 harmless and innocent physical appe- 
 tites ; on the principle that the heart 
 follows its treasure. But this is a 
 counsel of perfection expressly directed 
 
REPENTANCE 69 
 
 to those who are able to bear it ; and 
 on no account to be made a pretext 
 for morbid worrying about the natural 
 appetites and passions with which the 
 good Creator has liberally endowed 
 all healthy persons. 
 
 No one who hears and understands 
 the invitation to this Way can safely 
 postpone acceptance. To postpone ac- 
 ceptance is virtually to decline. For 
 one who can feel the Father's love 
 for him and for all, and admire that 
 love in the life of Jesus and his fol- 
 lowers, and still can look back long- 
 ingly to the old life of selfishness, 
 or count his domestic affairs or his 
 merchandise of more consequence, 
 is incapable of that high loyalty, that 
 perfect self-devotion, which the Way 
 demands. He is not fit for the king- 
 
70 JESUS' WAY 
 
 dom of heaven. Even while he de- 
 liberates, his heart is hardening, and 
 erelong it will be fest closed against 
 the appeal of the love he has thus pre- 
 sumed to slight and stifle. Obstinate 
 jefusal to cooperate with others in such 
 expression of the life of love to God 
 and man as the times and circum- 
 stances have established may indicate 
 such a self-centred hardness of heart 
 as rightly to exclude from the feast 
 one who deliberately refuses to grace 
 it with a wedding garment. Yet the 
 garment itself, whether it be rite or 
 ceremony, creed or profession, is worse 
 than worthless if it be used as a cloak 
 to cover any lack of that love to all 
 which is God's life in us, and therefore 
 the true and only Way. Of all the 
 leaven men have mixed, that of hy- 
 
REPENTANCE 71 
 
 pocrisy is the least consistent with the 
 Way. Except one's righteousness go 
 deeper than creed or ritual or profes- 
 sion, to the love which should inspire 
 them all, he shall in no wise enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FORGIVENESS : THE RESTORATION 
 TO THE WAY 
 
'* And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have 
 aught against any one ; that your Father also which is in 
 heaven may forgive you your trespasses." Mark xi. 25. 
 
 *' Then came Peter, and said to him. Lord, how oft shall 
 my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? until seven 
 times ? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until 
 seven times j but, Until seventy times seven." Matthew 
 xviii, 21, 22, 
 
 " Then his lord called him unto him, and saith to him, 
 Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because 
 thou besoughtest me : shouldest not thou also have had 
 mercy on thy fellow-servant, even as I had mercy on thee ? 
 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, 
 till he should pay all that was due. So shall also my hea- 
 venly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his 
 brother from your hearts. " Matthew xviii. 32-35. 
 
 *< And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that 
 he was eating with the sinners and publicans, said unto his 
 disciples. He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners. 
 And when Jesus heard it, he saith unto them. They that are 
 whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick : 
 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Mark ii. 
 16, 17. 
 
 ' ' And Jesus said. Father, forgive them j for they know 
 not what they do." Luke xxiii. 34. 
 
 " And turning to the woman, he said unto Simon, Seest 
 thou this woman ? I entered into thine house, thou gavest 
 me no water for my feet : but she hath wetted my feet 
 with her tears, and wiped them with her hair. Thou gavest 
 me no kiss : but she, since the time I came in, hath not 
 ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not 
 anoint : but she hath anointed my feet with ointment. 
 Wherefore I say unto thee. Her sins, which are many, are 
 forgiven ; for she loved much : but to whom little is forgiven, 
 the same loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins 
 are forgiven." Luke vii. 44-48. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 forgiveness: the restoration to 
 
 THE WAY 
 
 Once admitted to the Way, once 
 knowing the joy of letting the Father's 
 love for all our fellows flow through 
 our own hearts and lives, nothing, not 
 even our own sins and lapses, if we 
 promptly repent of them, can ever 
 keep us out of it. For whoever has 
 once entered the Way knows that so 
 long as he was in it, so long, that is, 
 as he lived the life of love, he never 
 felt aught but pity for those who were 
 outside of it ; never could help forgiv- 
 ing an offending brother the moment 
 
76 JESUS' WAY 
 
 he repented and asked to be forgiven. 
 Now that forgiveness which we show 
 to our brother, Jesus says is the sure, 
 experimental proof which every Chris- 
 tian has that the Father forgives his 
 sins whenever he goes astray and 
 returns in genuine penitence. This 
 proof is sufficient. There can be no 
 other proof A Christian who did not 
 forgive his brother would not be a 
 Christian. And even if such a Chris- 
 tianity were possible, it would have 
 no assurance of the Father's forgive- 
 ness. It is the glory of Christianity 
 that it tells us we know just so much 
 of God as we reproduce in ourselves, 
 or trust in others who, like Jesus, have 
 reproduced his nature and done his 
 Will. It is a revealed religion. It is 
 an incarnation. All of which means 
 
FORGIVENESS 77 
 
 that we interpret and appreciate God 
 by what is best in our fellows and our- 
 selves. If we have risen to the height 
 of th^ love that forgives the penitent, 
 we have not thereby risen above God. 
 If we forgive others, He can do no 
 less than forgive us. If we have not 
 risen to that height, we have no assur- 
 ance that He will forgive us. Un- 
 willingness to forgive others, therefore, 
 is a denial in ourselves, and in our 
 own experience, of the very quality 
 which in God is the only ground on 
 which we could hope to be forgiven. 
 
 One who does not love cannot 
 know what it is to be loved ; one who 
 does not forgive cannot know what it 
 is to be forgiven. The gift at the 
 altar, the church service of song and 
 prayer and sermon, is utterly profitless 
 
78 JESUS' WAY 
 
 and useless; it cannot bring forgive- 
 ness of sin or knowledge of the Father 
 to any man who hath aught of un- 
 kindness or uncharitableness toward 
 his brother hidden in his heart. For 
 the God of grace and mercy remains 
 an untranslated word in the ear of 
 every man who cherishes hardness and 
 hate in his heart. 
 
 This forgiveness, like love, of which 
 it is a special phase, can have no nu- 
 merical limits. It must be repeated 
 until seventy times seven. How true 
 that is in the more intimate human 
 relations. Parent and child, even wife 
 and husband, all persons whose lives 
 touch each other at numerous and sen- 
 sitive points, can walk together in the 
 Way of love on no cheaper terms than 
 this of forgiveness until seventy times 
 
FORGIVENESS 79 
 
 seven. He who would walk in this 
 Way must care more for his brother 
 as he is in himself than for what his 
 brother does to him, or what he can 
 get out of his brother. All our irre- 
 concilable difficulties and differences 
 come from this lack of love ; this put- 
 ting what others do or fail to do to 
 us before and above what they are, 
 and what we can do and be to them. 
 Selfishness cannot forgive. Love can- 
 not help forgiving. That is why the 
 readiness to forgive until seventy 
 times seven is one of Jesus' favorite 
 tests of membership in his kingdom. 
 
 Forgiveness, however, is, like all 
 spiritual relations, reciprocal. With- 
 out penitence on the part of the of- 
 fender, there can be readiness to for- 
 give, but not forgiveness, on the part 
 
8o JESUS' WAY 
 
 of the offended. Neither God nor 
 man can forgive the impenitent ; sim- 
 ply because forgiving one who should 
 still cling to his fault would be par- 
 ticipation in the fault. Such a mush 
 of sentimental indulgence would un- 
 dermine the foundations of all right- 
 eousness. It is our duty to tell a 
 brother his fault frankly : first to him 
 alone ; then to bring to bear on him 
 the influence of two or three mutual 
 friends; and finally, if need be, the 
 moral force of the whole circle to 
 which he belongs. If he defies all 
 these personal influences, and persists 
 in his perversity in spite of all these 
 personal appeals, he thereby denies 
 his membership in the kingdom, re- 
 nounces the Way of Jesus, and be- 
 comes to us as a Gentile and a publi- 
 
FORGIVENESS 8i 
 
 can ; — a man, that is, toward whom 
 we still cherish kind feelings, for 
 whom we wish the best material pros- 
 perity, and for whose spiritual good 
 we never cease to labor and watch and 
 pray ; but one toward whom we need 
 not, because we cannot, manifest that 
 intimacy and complacency which ob- 
 tains between persons who are mutu- 
 ally conscious of their union with the 
 same Father, and are striving to walk 
 together in his Way. 
 
 This forgiveness which Jesus 
 teaches he practiced himself The 
 diseased man, broken down by dissi- 
 pation ; the outcast woman, disheart- 
 ened by the cold scorn of the very 
 society that tolerates and abets her 
 ruin ; the penitent thief upon the 
 cross; even his own murderers, are the 
 
82 JESUS' WAY 
 
 objects of his pity, hjs forgiveness, his 
 promises and prayers. Authority to 
 forgive sins Jesus confers as a matter 
 of course on every one who has 
 known the Father's forgiveness of his 
 own sins, and feels prompted by the 
 same forgiving Spirit to forgive others. 
 No one, not even he who reviles 
 the name of Christian, and blasphemes 
 against the Son of Man, should be be- 
 yond the pale of our forgiveness. For 
 he does these things, as the murderers 
 of Jesus did their cruel deeds, not 
 knowing what he does; blinded by 
 prejudice and ignorance. Even ava- 
 ricious, lustful, cruel men, who have 
 wrecked and ruined our lives, or the 
 lives of those dear to us, bitterly as 
 we may denounce their deeds, heartily 
 as we must hate their vices and sins, 
 
FORGIVENESS 83 
 
 if they repent, must be forgiven by 
 us, as they are by the Father. For the 
 man is more than his deeds. He can 
 rise above his baseness. And who are 
 we, when he is trying to rise, to pre- 
 sume to thrust him down ? Certainly 
 not sons of the Father; not followers 
 of Jesus' Way. With the single ex- 
 ception of those who know what love 
 is and scorn it, so that the offer of 
 love to them would be casting pearls 
 before swine and giving that which 
 is holy unto dogs; with this single 
 exception, our love and forgiveness 
 must have no bounds, no limits. And 
 this single limit is one which the hard- 
 ness of the offender's heart puts upon 
 us; not one which we of ourselves 
 erect. 
 
 Finally, Jesus tells us that these 
 
84 JESUS' WAY 
 
 people whom we find it hardest to 
 forgive, those who have done most 
 wrong and feel deepest guilt, are the 
 ones who appreciate forgiveness most, 
 and consequently love most. The 
 pardoned penitent makes the best 
 disciple ; for he appreciates, as the 
 ninety and nine just persons too often 
 do not, the infinite difference between 
 the warm life of mutual sympathy 
 and love within the kingdom and the 
 coldness and isolation and bitterness 
 of the sinful, selfish life outside. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 LOVE : THE LAW OF THE WAY 
 
** And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, 
 tempting him, Master, which is the great commandment in 
 the law ? And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
 and with all thy mind. This is the great and first com- 
 mandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments 
 hangeth the whole law, and the prophets." Matthew xxii. 
 
 35-40- 
 
 " Ye have heard that it was said. An eye for an eye, and 
 a tooth for a tooth : but I say unto you. Resist not him 
 that is evil : but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, 
 turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to 
 law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy 
 cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one 
 mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and 
 from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 
 
 ** Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor, and hate thine enemy : but I say unto you. Love 
 your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you ; that 
 ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven : for he 
 maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and send- 
 eth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that 
 love you, what reward have ye ? do not even the publicans 
 the same ? " Matthew v. 38-46. 
 
 " All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them : for this 
 is the law and the prophets." Matthew vii. 12. 
 
 " And he entered into the temple, and began to cast out 
 them that sold and them that bought in the temple, and 
 overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats 
 of them that sold the doves ; and he would not suffer that 
 any man should carry a vessel through the temple. And he 
 taught, and said unto them. Is it not written, My house 
 shall be called a house of prayer for aU the nations ? but ye 
 have made it a den of robbers. " Mark xi. 15-17. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 LOVE : THE LAW OF THE WAY 
 
 Every rational plan of life must have 
 its principle, or law. The law of 
 Jesus' Way is love : love to the Fa- 
 ther who loves us all ; love to all our 
 fellow men, who are as dear to the 
 Father as are we ourselves. All spe- 
 cific rules and regulations, all ancient 
 traditions and contemporary customs, 
 all current maxims and conventional 
 standards, are to be kept to the last 
 jot or tittle, in so far as they express 
 the conditions of man's well-being; 
 but when they are set up as ends in 
 themselves, as though man were merely 
 
88 JESUS' WAY 
 
 made for them ; when they become 
 obstructions to human welfare, then 
 they are to be disregarded in loyalty 
 to that love which is their origin and 
 only justification. He who through 
 lack of love should break the least of 
 these commandments would be the 
 least in the kingdom of heaven. Yet 
 he who should not dare to break a 
 tradition, which had been exaggerated 
 or perverted into an excuse for neglect 
 of some duty which love demands, 
 would thereby exclude himself from 
 the kingdom altogether. To break 
 the traditional Sabbath for the sake of 
 doing good is the only way to preserve 
 and fulfill its essential spirit. Institu- 
 tions and laws are made for man, and 
 express the love of the Father who 
 seeks the impartial good of all. 
 
LOVE 89 
 
 Love is at once the source and the 
 fulfillment of all law. Love defines 
 our neighbor as the man whom we can 
 help, and measures our duty to him 
 by what we would wish for ourselves. 
 Love swears by no oath, for those 
 whom love binds need no extraneous 
 bond. Love is not covetous; for it 
 would scorn to profit by another's loss. 
 Love excludes lust; for lust would 
 make another a mere means to selfish 
 ends. Love will not commit adultery ; 
 for the destruction of pure family life 
 for others is too costly and cruel a 
 price for love to pay for a passing 
 pleasure. 
 
 Love will not kill, either suddenly 
 with a sword, or slowly by unkind- 
 ness; for love gives and enhances 
 life. Love will not steal, either goods 
 
90 JESUS' WAY 
 
 from the counter, money from the 
 purse, value from stock, or time from an 
 employer ; for the interests and rights 
 of others and of one's self are one to 
 him who shares the Father's love for 
 all. Love will not be proud ; for the 
 weakness of another, with whom one's 
 own strength is contrasted, is, to him 
 who loves, a sorrow as keen as though 
 that weakness were his own. Love 
 will not hate even the sinner and the 
 man who does wrong ; for this wrong- 
 doer's fault, and the low spiritual estate 
 which it implies, will call forth so 
 much pity that, in comparison, the 
 wrong it inflicts upon us will seem 
 slight. Even our enemies and our 
 persecutors we will pray for, and 
 stand ready, at the first opportunity, 
 to forgive and help; since love can 
 
LOVE 91 
 
 do no less. Love would soften the 
 hard heart of an unloving husband or 
 wife, rather than indulge its hardness 
 by easy divorce. It would expand 
 the selfish nature of an ungrateful 
 child, rather than find in pious ob- 
 servances a pretext for neglect of filial 
 obligations. 
 
 Even legitimate self-assertion should 
 be waived, when by parting with coat 
 or cloak, or going the double distance 
 with an exacting brother, or letting an 
 unreasonable person have his own way 
 on unessential matters, we can main- 
 tain a friendly relation, which keeping 
 the coat, or declining the long walk, 
 or insisting on what we deem the 
 wiser way would strain and break. 
 Even the whims, moods, and morbid 
 apprehensions of sensitive, nervous 
 
92 JESUS' WAY 
 
 people, even when we see clearly their 
 utter absurdity, must be treated with 
 all seriousness and consideration, if 
 we would really love them in all their 
 disabilities. For the personal is worth 
 more than the material. The love 
 without the cloak is worth more than 
 the cloak without the love. A long 
 walk with sympathy is better than a 
 short walk ending in bitterness and 
 alienation. It is often better to be on 
 good terms with a person by letting 
 him have his own way, even though 
 we do not like it, than to be on bad 
 terms with him as a result of insisting 
 on what we consider a better way of 
 our own. He who has not had abun- 
 dant occasion to recognize this princi- 
 ple cannot have had much experience 
 of close contact with many men of 
 
LOVE 93 
 
 many moods and minds. Without 
 this principle constantly applied, most 
 homes would be unendurable; most 
 friendships would be short-Hved; the 
 kingdom of heaven in any of its more 
 intimate aspects would be impossible. 
 That people generally have found this 
 counsel of Jesus a hard saying is sim- 
 ply an indication of the general hard- 
 ness of the human heart ; a revelation 
 of how blind the world still is to the 
 most obvious and elementary princi- 
 ples of the spiritual life. For without 
 the constant application of this princi- 
 ple, no man who is more than a recluse, 
 no man who is a member of a family, 
 or does a complicated business, or 
 takes his part in politics, or combines 
 with other people in any enterprise, 
 can maintain those pleasant personal 
 
94 JESUS' WAY 
 
 relations which are the most essential 
 marks of Jesus' Way. 
 
 Yet even love has liniits in the 
 limited capacity of others. While all 
 men are to be loved, love will express 
 itself toward the Gentile and the pub- 
 lican, who cannot understand it and 
 might mistake courteous concession 
 for weakness, in a different way from 
 that in which it will express itself 
 toward brethren who are also sharers 
 in the Way of love, and know how to 
 interpret its acts of kindness and for- 
 bearance out of their own experience. 
 Affections that are holy are not to be 
 given to those who will misinterpret 
 them in terms of selfishness or sensual- 
 ity. The pearls of self-denying love 
 are not to be cast before swine who 
 will take all they can get, and then 
 
LOVE 95 
 
 give all the credit to their own shrewd- 
 ness or hardness in extorting it. Love 
 has its stern side. It will put the per- 
 sonal above the material every time. 
 It will turn the other cheek to the 
 smiter, when that method promises 
 better personal relations than resistance. 
 But when the whip of small cords 
 promises to be more effective in bring- 
 ing hard and heartless men to their 
 moral senses, love will use that as the 
 Master did. To show a bad man the 
 pain his badness brings to others, by 
 making him feel the sting of its pain 
 and shame in his own smarting body 
 and stinging conscience, is often the 
 very best favor we can confer upon 
 him. If we were as blind to moral 
 issues as he is, it would be good for 
 us to have our eyes opened in just that 
 
96 JESUS' WAY 
 
 painful way. Indignation, reproofj 
 rebuke, denunciation, punishment, are 
 all perfectly consistent with love ; all 
 are abundantly represented in the re- 
 corded utterances and actions of the 
 Master ; all are required of the parent, 
 the teacher, the judge, the ruler, the 
 manager of men and affairs, who seeks 
 first the kingdom of God and his right- 
 eousness in these practical concerns. 
 Whether a man is a disciple of Jesus 
 or not does not depend on whether he 
 follows Jesus' precept of non-resistance 
 or his practice of resistance, in any 
 particular case. If he were to fol- 
 low either line exclusively, he would 
 thereby fail to be a follower of the 
 Master who inculcated and practiced 
 both. Jesus' Way simply requires 
 that both our resistance and our non- 
 
LOVE 97 
 
 resistance shall spring from love for 
 the person concerned. Non-resistance 
 through weakness, or cowardice, or in- 
 difference, or negligence is just as 
 foreign to Jesus' Way as is resistance 
 through wrath, spite, hate, or revenge. 
 To remember that the unreasonable, 
 unjust, cruel, treacherous man is a man 
 for all that ; to show him the good- 
 ness of the better Way by gentleness, 
 if I may; to show him the meanness 
 of his own way by harshness, if I must; 
 but whether I take the one course or 
 the other, to have his best interests 
 all the time at heart, — that is Jesus' 
 Way. 
 
 Since the basis of love for one's 
 neighbor is the appreciation of one's 
 own interests and claims, the Way of 
 Jesus does not discourage but rather 
 
98 JESUS' WAY 
 
 enjoins shrewdness in the maintenance 
 of one's rights, in warding off cap- 
 tious critics, and in repulsing imperti- 
 nent intruders. The wisdom of the 
 serpent is by no means incompatible 
 with the harmlessness of the dove. 
 Presence of mind, such as the unscru- 
 pulous exercise in the practice of in- 
 justice, may well be drafted into the 
 defense and service of the Way. 
 
 Neither is the disciple of the Way 
 called upon to wear himself out under 
 a load of borrowed troubles or morbid 
 conscientiousness. When one is tired, 
 it is at once his duty and his privilege 
 to rest. To lose the sense of quiet 
 cheerfulness in the presence of the 
 Lord by elaborate housekeeping, or 
 multiplied charities, or promiscuous 
 philanthropies, or assumed responsi- 
 
LOVE 99 
 
 bilities, is to sacrifice, for unprofitable 
 superfluities, the one thing needful. 
 While all powers are to be used to 
 the utmost, the waste of overwork and 
 the worse wastes of fret and worry 
 are to be shunned no less than the 
 rust that follows disuse. The riches 
 of the spiritual life are to be guarded 
 as carefully as a sensible householder 
 guards his worldly goods. For he 
 who will serve others best must keep 
 himself in prime condition. It is a 
 poor, short-sighted generosity to leave 
 our lamps incapable of shedding light, 
 and to exclude ourselves from the 
 feast, in order to give away our oil to 
 people who are too shiftless to pro- 
 vide it for themselves. Spiritual thrift, 
 which guards the springs of nervous 
 energy, and keeps the fountains of 
 
100 JESUS' WAY 
 
 cheerfulness and health full and over- 
 flowing, is an essential condition of 
 walking joyfully in the Way our- 
 selves and winning others to it. 
 
 The only thing we need be con- 
 cerned about is the purity of our mo- 
 tives. If these are right, if the tree is 
 good, the fruit will follow in due time. 
 For outward results, into which many 
 factors enter, we have no responsibil- 
 ity beyond this fundamental one, to 
 be sure that what we do is done in 
 love to all whom it affects. Nothing 
 external can harm us; for it cannot 
 decrease our love to God and man. 
 What goes out from a man in word 
 and deed, that defiles him if it proceed 
 not out of a heart full of love. Evil 
 thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornica- 
 tions, thefts, false witness, railings, be- 
 
LOVE loi 
 
 cause all these express a selfish and 
 sensual heart in which no true and 
 tender consideration for others dwells, 
 — these defile a man. But disregard 
 of rites and slight esteem of ceremo- 
 nies do not defile a man, unless they 
 imply a lack of consideration for the 
 people who use and value them. 
 
 The love which is the open secret 
 of Jesus' Way is no mere soft senti- 
 ment luxuriating in the sense of its 
 own sweetness. Nor is the expression 
 of this sweet experience in words 
 enough. Many will say, "Lord, Lord," 
 in all the ardor of emotional ecstasy, 
 to whom he will reply, " I never knew 
 you; depart from me, ye that work 
 iniquity." Nor yet is the doing of 
 good deeds a sure sign of belonging 
 to the Way. For good deeds, like 
 
102 JESUS' WAY 
 
 prayers and fasting and alms, may be 
 done in pride and ostentation. Good 
 deeds done in the spirit of love, how- 
 ever, like the care of the wounded 
 traveler by the Samaritan, are the 
 sure signs of the Way. For this 
 Samaritan did not merely relieve his 
 own sensibilities by relieving the un- 
 fortunate man's immediate sufferings. 
 He bound up his wounds, pouring 
 on them oil and wine ; and he set 
 him on his own beast, and brought 
 him to an inn, and took care of him. 
 And on the morrow he took out two 
 pence, and gave them to the host and 
 said, " Take care of him ; and what- 
 soever thou spendest more, I, when I 
 come back again, will repay thee." 
 That is, he made the wounded man's 
 condition his own, and saw the case 
 
LOVE 103 
 
 through, as faithful when absent as he 
 had been when present. That is the 
 test which marks off true Christian 
 love from sentimental charity. Do 
 our works revolve about ourselves, 
 our own activities, our own sensibili- 
 ties^ Then we are philanthropists, 
 workers, anything you please ; only 
 we are not Christians ; we are not in 
 Jesus' Way. For true love shares the 
 whole personal problem of its object, 
 and strengthens the will of him whom 
 it serves by sympathy even while it 
 helps him bear his burden. A very 
 little of this sympathetic sharing of 
 life's whole problem with a few indi- 
 viduals will take one farther along 
 Jesus' Way, and do more genuine and 
 lasting good, than a hundred times the 
 amount of money and strength spent 
 
104 JESUS' WAY 
 
 in promiscuous and merely institu- 
 tional charity; though, in our com- 
 plex modern life, generous contribu- 
 tions of time, money, and strength to 
 great organized philanthropies and 
 charities are indispensable means of 
 expressing the Father's love, and our 
 own, to the great masses of our fellows 
 who are beyond our personal reach. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LOYALTY: THE WITNESS TO THE 
 WAY 
 
" Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have lost 
 its savor, vvrherewith shall it be salted ? it is thenceforth 
 good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot 
 of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a 
 hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp, and put it 
 under the bushel, but on the stand ; and it shineth unto all 
 that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before 
 men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your 
 Father which is in heaven." Matthew v. 13-16, 
 
 * * Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, 
 to be seen of them : else ye have no reward with your 
 Father which is in heaven." Matthew vi. i. 
 
 ** And he that received the five talents came and brought 
 other five talents, saying. Lord, thou deliveredst unto me 
 five talents. His lord said unto him. Well done, good and 
 faithful servant : thou hast been faithful over a few things, 
 I will set thee over many things : enter thou into the joy of 
 thy lord. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and 
 he shall have abundance : but from him that hath not, even 
 that which he hath shall be taken away. And cast ye out 
 the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness : there shall 
 be the weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew xxv. 20, 
 21, 29, 30. _ 
 
 * ' What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light : 
 and what ye hear in the ear, proclaim upon the housetops." 
 Matthew X. 27. 
 
 *' The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. 
 Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth 
 laborers into his harvest." Matthew ix. 37, 38. 
 
 ** Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, 
 him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven. 
 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him wUl I also 
 deny before my Father which is in heaven." Matthew x. 
 32, 33- 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LOYALTY : THE WITNESS TO THE WAY 
 
 The first duty of those who have 
 learned the blessed secret of Jesus' 
 Way of love to God and man is to 
 be loyal to it and spread the good 
 news abroad. The Way is itself spir- 
 itual, invisible. It can be seen only 
 in the persons and lives of those who 
 walk therein. Hence the disciples 
 are the salt of the earth, and must 
 keep the savor of this new life sweet 
 and strong in their own souls ; they 
 are the light of the world, and must 
 let their good deeds shine far and 
 wide to reveal to those who sit in the 
 
io8 JESUS' WAY 
 
 darkness of natural selfishness the 
 beauty of this better Way. Yet this 
 letting one's good deeds shine to the 
 glory of the Father and the honor of 
 the Way is in no wise inconsistent 
 with the complementary duty to mod- 
 estly conceal one's own individual 
 merit in the work he does, letting not 
 the left hand know what the right 
 hand doeth, and giving all the glory 
 to God who is the inspirer of it all. 
 Not to show off one's good deeds in 
 personal vanity, nor to conceal them 
 from timidity, but in self-forge tfulness 
 to let God's goodness shine through 
 us, is the mark of perfect loyalty. 
 
 The Way must be everything or 
 nothing to us. Our eye must be sin- 
 gle. We cannot serve two masters : 
 God and mammon ; love and selfish- 
 
LOYALTY 109 
 
 ness. Every deed, every transaction, 
 every vote, every idle word, either re- 
 veals or obscures the Way ; is either 
 for Christ or against him. Each man 
 who has found the Way is bound to 
 become a fisher of men to draw them 
 into it ; a worker in the busy vineyard 
 of society, a laborer in the ripe har- 
 vest of humanity. As the Master 
 went from town to town preaching the 
 Gospel of the kingdom, the disciple, 
 whether he goes abroad or attends to 
 his affairs at home, is bound to make 
 himself a living witness and embodi- 
 ment of the Way, so that men may 
 see at least its outward fruits in all he 
 says and does. Ultimately this Gos- 
 pel must be brought, both by precept 
 and example, to all the nations of the 
 earth. By word and deed, by influ- 
 
no JESUS* WAY 
 
 ence and support, by action and en- 
 durance, each disciple is called upon to 
 prove to the world that the kingdom 
 of goodwill, the Way of love, is at 
 hand. For the lives of those who walk 
 in the Way, in kindness, mercy, gen- 
 tleness, and sincerity, are the only wit- 
 nesses of its reality. Supernatural 
 agencies, were they available, would 
 be useless. Men must be drawn to 
 the Way by men who are already in 
 it, and who embody and manifest its 
 spirit and life. Hence each disciple 
 is responsible for the full use of his 
 powers. The more one does, the more 
 will he be able to do. Fidelity in 
 little things is the indispensable train- 
 ing for larger usefulness. 
 
 Though fruit is demanded of all, 
 and the unfruitful tree is doomed, yet 
 
LOYALTY Hi 
 
 the Lord is patient, and will give even 
 the fruitless tree fresh digging and 
 dressing year after year before He cuts 
 it down. Outward profession of loy- 
 alty to the Way, which says, "Lord, 
 Lord," is of less consequence than that 
 inner loyalty of spirit which does the 
 Lord's goodwill in daily life. The 
 best fruits are mercy, not sacrifice; 
 righteousness, not ritualism ; perform- 
 ance, not profession. No slightest 
 deed shall pass unnoticed, or fall into 
 forgetfulness. The value of the out- 
 ward act is to be measured exclusively 
 by the inward spirit that prompts it ; 
 so that the mite of the poor widow 
 may be the greatest gift of all. 
 
 Witness to Jesus and his Way is 
 of two kinds. The more conspicuous 
 witness, which consists in " taking 
 
112 JESUS' WAY 
 
 part in meeting," attending church, 
 teaching in Sunday-school, contribut- 
 ing to organized Christian missions 
 and charities, is highly important. No 
 one can be thoroughly loyal to Jesus 
 without taking his part in some one or 
 other of these organized expressions 
 of his Way; provided he sees and 
 feels that they are worthy embodi- 
 ments of it. But of still more impor- 
 tance, though less conspicuous and less 
 easily enforced, are "the little, name- 
 less, unremembered acts of kindness 
 and of love " which are the " best por- 
 tion of a good man's life." These 
 are manifestations of the Way itself; 
 while the other sort of witness is at 
 best an identification with some of 
 its outward agencies and expressions. 
 The just, kind, generous, pubhc- 
 
LOYALTY 113 
 
 spirited, cheerful, helpful life is the 
 very essence of the Way ; and, while 
 it is desirable both to say, " I go, sir," 
 and to actually work in the vineyard, 
 if it is a choice between the two, the 
 latter is preferable. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SACRIFICE: THE COST OF THE 
 WAY 
 
** The Son of man is come eating and drinking 5 and ye 
 say, Behold, a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of 
 publicans and sinners ! And wisdom is justified of all her chil- 
 dren." Luke vii. 34, 35. 
 
 ** And he took again the twelve, and began to tell them 
 the things that were to happen unto him, saying. Behold, we 
 go up to Jerusalem ; and the Son of man shall be delivered 
 unto the chief priests and the scribes ; and they shall condemn 
 him to death, and shall deliver him unto the Gentiles : and 
 they shall mock him, and shall spit upon him, and shall 
 scourge him, and shall kill him." Mark x. 32-34. 
 
 *<In like manner also the chief priests mocking him, 
 with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others j himself 
 he cannot save." Matthew xxvii. 41, 42. 
 
 *' He that loveth father or mother more than me is not 
 worthy of me 5 and he that loveth son or daughter more 
 than me is not worthy of me. And he that doth not take his 
 cross and foUow after me, is not worthy of me. He that 
 findeth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my 
 sake shall find it." Matthew x. 37-39. 
 
 " No man can serve two masters : for either he will hate 
 the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to one, and 
 depise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." 
 Matthew vi. 24. 
 
 * ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, 
 where moth and rust doth consume, and where thieves break 
 through and steal : but lay up for yourselves treasures in hea- 
 ven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where 
 thieves do not break through nor steal : for where thy treasure 
 is, there will thy heart be also." Matthew vi. 19—21. 
 
 " And Jesus said unto his disciples. Verily I say unto you, 
 It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of hea- 
 ven. And when the disciples heard it, they were astonished 
 exceedingly, sajdng. Who then can be saved ? And Jesus 
 looking upon them said to them. With men this is impossi- 
 ble 5 but with God all things are possible." Matthew xix. 
 23, 25, 26. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SACRIFICE : THE COST OF THE WAY 
 
 Every interpretation of Jesus' Way- 
 has insisted on the cross as its essential 
 symbol. Yet the reasons which have 
 been offered for this necessity of sac- 
 rifice on the part of Jesus and all his 
 followers have for the most part been 
 wide of the mark. Starting with the 
 erroneous conception of a God of 
 wrath and vengeance to be appeased, 
 they have missed, as a matter of course, 
 the necessity of sacrifice as the expres- 
 sion and revelation of a Father of love. 
 Yet love calls for sacrifices of which 
 wrath and vengeance never dream. 
 
ii8 JESUS' WAY 
 
 The greater the love, the greater must 
 be the sacrifice. The Father who loves 
 all his children must bear the sins and 
 sorrows of all upon his suffering heart. 
 And the Son who reveals the Father, 
 all sons who share his nature and re- 
 ceive his Spirit, must suffer in exact 
 proportion to the degree in which they 
 enter into the Father's purpose and 
 do his loving will. 
 
 To bring this out, however, requires 
 a clear view of the origin and nature 
 of sin. And this in turn calls for a 
 thorough analysis of human nature. 
 
 Men by nature seek their own self- 
 ish good. Their appetites and pas- 
 sions, their ambitions and aspirations, 
 their instincts and impulses, are the 
 conditions of their self-preservation 
 and the perpetuation of the race. As 
 
SACRIFICE 119 
 
 such, they are innocent and good. No 
 blame attaches to the Creator who 
 gave them to us; nor to ourselves, so 
 long as we act them out in blind re- 
 sponse to their immediate suggestions. 
 The perfect picture of this natural 
 innocence we see in normal animals. 
 Their wants, like the means of grati- 
 fying them, are immediate and finite. 
 And though there is struggle and 
 strife and war and death when animal 
 wants come into competition, yet there 
 is no deliberate selfishness, and there- 
 fore no sin and conscious guilt. The 
 animal, keenly intent upon its own 
 gratification, is incapable of represent- 
 ing to itself the misery it incidentally 
 inflicts on its competitor and victim. 
 We indeed can look on the act in a 
 light which makes it seem bad. But 
 
120 JESUS' WAY 
 
 the animal lacks that light, and so 
 escapes the condemnation such light 
 would bring. Now the natural, unen- 
 lightened man sins in much the same 
 innocent way that an animal sins. In 
 a rude, primitive society, the robber 
 band seldom stop to think of the hard- 
 ship they inflict on the poor villagers 
 from whom they wrest their herds and 
 crops. The prostitute falls in the first in- 
 stance, as a rule, through the tenderest, 
 sweetest, holiest impulse of her sex. 
 The man who patronizes houses of 
 prostitution does not realize that in so 
 doing he is a partner in the most whole- 
 sale system of murder and degradation 
 civilized society continues to permit. 
 The saloon keeper is usually a man 
 of genial, kindly heart, utterly oblivi- 
 ous of the domestic misery which is the 
 
SACRIFICE 121 
 
 counterpart of his easily gotten profits 
 out of weak men's appetites. The pro- 
 moter of unsound enterprises and the 
 wrecker of sound ones, the manipulator 
 of other people's property intrusted to 
 his official care, scarcely appreciate 
 the widespread want and woe result- 
 ing from their unscrupulous transac- 
 tions. Indeed, these men and women 
 who fall lowest in our moral scale 
 often do so in consequence of an 
 excess of those very traits on which 
 the welfare and perpetuation of the 
 race depends. The saloon keeper has 
 often a great deal more of the milk 
 of human kindness in his heart, and is 
 a much better fellow to spend the long 
 winter evenings with, than the temper- 
 ance reformer who swears out the 
 warrant against him. The harlot on 
 
122 JESUS' WAY 
 
 the street often retains more of gener- 
 ous womanliness than the querulous, 
 censorious matron in her luxurious 
 drawing-room, robed in outwardly 
 spotless respectability, but inwardly 
 full of vanity and pride and exclu- 
 siveness and uncharitableness. The 
 men who drive hard bargains and 
 grind down their employees are often 
 at heart quite as well meaning as the 
 pale, impractical moralists and social- 
 ists who rail at them, but have not the 
 energy or enterprise to earn a decent 
 living for their own families. The 
 wild college boy who breaks all rules 
 and regulations, academic, moral, civil, 
 often has in him elements of strength 
 and winsomeness and charm which 
 his irreproachable and studious class- 
 mate sadly lacks. 
 
SACRIFICE 123 
 
 Now Jesus saw all this with perfect 
 clearness ; and in consequence he liked 
 these impulsive, spontaneous, exces- 
 sive men and women, and became 
 the recognized friend of publicans and 
 sinners. Of course that shocked be- 
 yond all bounds the sensibilities of the 
 consciously virtuous and respectable, 
 the scribes and Pharisees, and brought 
 on him their enmity and hate. Yet 
 Jesus could do no less. The Father 
 loved these publicans and sinners; 
 pitied their blindness; understood the 
 strength of their sensuous impulses 
 and uncontrolled desires. The Phar- 
 isees and scribes did not love them ; 
 did not understand them; despised 
 and hated them. Jesus had his choice 
 to side with his Father and the prod- 
 igals, outcasts, and harlots whom the 
 
124 JESUS' WAY 
 
 Father loved; or to side with the 
 supercilious Pharisees, who loved no- 
 body but their precious selves, and 
 so fall out of the Father's love alto- 
 gether. Jesus deliberately accepted 
 the envy and malice of the Pharisees 
 and chief priests ; and they, aided by 
 the avarice of the stupid Judas, the 
 slander of the frivolous rabble, and the 
 servility of the stolid Pilate, nailed him 
 to the cross. 
 
 More than that, Jesus made ene- 
 mies of many of the very men whom 
 he befriended. For with all his liking 
 for these blinded and impulsive sin- 
 ners, he abhorred their sins. He lost 
 no opportunity to show the extortioner 
 how mean was his devouring of wid- 
 ows' houses; the libertine how cruel 
 was his lust ; the harlot how shameful 
 
SACRIFICE 125 
 
 was her life of degradation; the devotee 
 of riches how unworthy was his idola- 
 try; the proud man or woman how 
 loveless and repulsive were their hard 
 and hollow and sepulchral hearts. 
 Hence many who were at first at- 
 tracted to him, when they saw them- 
 selves as he saw them, were angry, 
 walked with him no more, and were 
 ready to turn against him at the first 
 opportunity. 
 
 The better a man is, the more bit- 
 terly will all evil men hate him : 
 partly because of the rebuke he brings 
 to their sin; partly because of the 
 resistance he offers to the successful 
 execution of their sinful schemes. On 
 both grounds the chief priests and 
 Pharisees had abundant occasion to 
 hate Jesus. The obsequious reverence 
 
126 JESUS' WAY 
 
 which the multitude had bestowed on 
 them was in danger of being trans- 
 ferred to this more genial, friendly, 
 sympathetic teacher of the new Way. 
 Hypocrisy, extortion, adultery, pre- 
 tentious piety, hollow legality, over- 
 elaborated ritualism, at once became 
 in the eyes of the multitude the mani- 
 fest contradictions and obscurations of 
 the Father's will which they were in 
 the pure eyes of Jesus. To save them- 
 selves and their respectability, they 
 had to crucify Jesus. His death was 
 the penalty he had to pay for being 
 the faithful Son of a loving Father 
 and the generous friend of sinful men 
 and outcast women, in a world where 
 organized pride, pretense, heartless- 
 ness, and hate were enthroned in re- 
 ligious, social, and political affairs. 
 
SACRIFICE 127 
 
 There is an element of truth in calling 
 it a ransom he had to pay to the evil 
 principle dominant in the world, as 
 for centuries the early Christians did. 
 But we are nearer the simple facts of 
 the primitive Gospel if we regard it 
 as the price love had to pay for being 
 true to itself in a world where pride 
 and hate were in possession of the 
 religious system, the social prestige, 
 and the political power. Jesus could 
 have revealed the Father's love in the 
 world as he found it in the Palestine 
 of his day, on no easier or cheaper 
 terms than winning the envy and 
 malice of the men who were in influ- 
 ence and power, and losing his life in 
 consequence. To be a friend of sin- 
 ners and a foe to sin, as Jesus was ; to 
 love the lowest in their blindness, yet 
 
128 JESUS' WAY 
 
 to drag the sins of the loftiest into the 
 searching light his Father's love shed 
 upon them, was a work no man could 
 hope to accomplish who held his own 
 life dear. Jesus saw clearly that his 
 Way would lead him to "suffer many 
 things of the elders and chief priests 
 and scribes, and be killed ; " but to 
 the suggestion that he turn aside from 
 his chosen Way he replied, "Get 
 thee behind me, Satan: thou art a 
 stumbling-block unto me : for thou 
 mindest not the things of God, but the 
 things of men." 
 
 What Jesus experienced himself 
 he expected and foretold would be 
 the lot of his disciples. " Then Jesus 
 said unto his disciples, If any man 
 would come after me, let him deny 
 himself, and take up his cross, and fol- 
 low me." 
 
SACRIFICE 129 
 
 The Way of Jesus is no exception 
 to the universal rule that we cannot 
 have one thing without giving up a 
 host of competing things for the sake 
 of it. Life is shot through and through 
 with tragedy. " All action is guilt," 
 as Hegel says. We must murder one 
 or more alternatives in every difficult 
 choice we make. One course of con- 
 duct adopted means a hundred other 
 possible courses sacrificed. How much 
 the scholar must give up of outdoor 
 life, for which nevertheless the appe- 
 tite is not wanting ! How much of 
 rest and tranquillity the ambitious 
 statesman must forego ! How sacrifi- 
 cial of almost everything else worth 
 having is the life of the man who 
 makes haste to get rich ! How ready 
 to give up all else for the one woman 
 
130 JESUS' WAY 
 
 of his choice is every faithful lover ! 
 Sacrifice therefore is unescapable. Yet 
 there are two radically different ways 
 of making the sacrifice. One may 
 save himself and his immediate selfish 
 interests by sacrificing the interests 
 and happiness of others. That is the 
 essence of all meanness and sin. Over 
 the camp of all the cowards and crim- 
 inals, all the thieves and liars, all the 
 libertines and debauchees, is written 
 the inscription, " They tried to save 
 themselves; others they would not 
 save." All sin is parasitic. It saves 
 itself by sucking the life out of some- 
 thing better than itself Every sinner 
 of every stripe belongs to the genus 
 parasite. Evil has not the strength to 
 stand alone. It must always fasten 
 on to something better than itself to 
 
SACRIFICE 131 
 
 hold it up. The sinner is a sponge, a 
 dead beat, getting his life out of some- 
 body's death; buying his mean and 
 miserable pleasure at cost of another's 
 cruel pain; making his despicable 
 gain out of another's pitiable loss. No 
 man could be enough of a fool to wish 
 any form of sin to become the gen- 
 eral rule. He can only wish it as a 
 mean exception in favor of himself 
 A few examples will make this clear. 
 A student cheats in an examination. 
 He may gain a petty advantage by 
 his sneaking act. But suppose every- 
 body cheated ; and the school or col- 
 lege winked at it. Then even the 
 cheater would gain no advantage ; for 
 neither to him nor to anybody else 
 would the diploma of such an institu- 
 tion, gained on such terms, be worth 
 
132 JESUS' WAY 
 
 the parchment on which it was in- 
 scribed. 
 
 A lie, put under the moral micro- 
 scope, reveals the same parasitic char- 
 acter. Whatever vitality and useful- 
 ness, even for the liar's sordid ends, 
 a lie contains, is sucked out of the 
 universal respect for truth which 
 generations of truth-telling men have 
 laboriously built up. If everybody 
 were a liar, lies would not be worth 
 the telling. They are available only 
 as exceptions to a general truthful- 
 ness which they are doing all in their 
 power to break down. 
 
 Dishonesty likewise, whether it be 
 pilfering, or housebreaking, or fraudu- 
 lent book-keeping, or the promotion 
 of unsound enterprises, or accepting 
 secret rebates and commissions for 
 
SACRIFICE 133 
 
 contracts executed in a representative 
 capacity, or securing personal and 
 family favors through political pull, 
 or drawing a salary in a position for 
 which one is incompetent or in which 
 no substantial service is rendered, when 
 placed under the moral microscope, 
 reveals this same trait of sacrificing 
 other people for one's own advantage. 
 The dishonest man is a parasite, sad- 
 dled on to the back of honest labor, 
 from which he gets his living, to which 
 he gives little or nothing in return. 
 
 Gambling is parasitic : for the value 
 of the chips or wagers the young clerk 
 or student plays for is all borrowed 
 from the honest toil of an upright 
 employer or honest father, whose pro- 
 ductive industry creates the substan- 
 tial values these stakes represent. A 
 
134 JESUS' WAY 
 
 society in which gambhng was the 
 rule and industry the exception would 
 be as badly off as the fabled island of 
 the sea, in which all the inhabitants 
 supported themselves by taking in 
 one another's washing. 
 
 Drunkenness is another notoriously 
 parasitic sin ; in which the dissipation 
 of one is bought at the expense of 
 others, by saddling on them the gall- 
 ing burden of a perfectly wanton and 
 needless poverty and want. It is the 
 gigantic social and economic parasite 
 of the modern world. 
 
 Yet the crudest and meanest para- 
 sitism of all is licentiousness. All that 
 is sweetest and dearest in our own 
 lives we owe to the 
 
 " Relations dear and all the charities 
 Of father, son, and brother.** 
 
SACRIFICE 135 
 
 No one of us would wish to have 
 been born as the product of the pass- 
 ing passion of some heartless creature, 
 too mean to own either mother or 
 child. No one of us would wish to 
 rear our own daughters for the brief, 
 bitter life of the brothel. Every in- 
 stinct within us recoils from the merest 
 suggestion of the homeless, heartless, 
 loveless life into which we should all 
 be plunged were licentiousness to be- 
 come universal. Licentiousness is a 
 shameless parasite, feeding on and de- 
 stroying the precious institutions and 
 relations which generations of pure 
 and chaste souls have slowly devel- 
 oped. Of all the forms of parasitism 
 and meanness and sin, this, which with 
 one hand clings to the family life, to 
 which we owe all that is best in our- 
 
136 JESUS' WAY 
 
 selves, on which hangs all our hope 
 for our children, and with the other 
 does all in our power to rob some 
 other person, or a whole class of per- 
 sons, of all the sweetness and sanctity 
 which family and home mean to us 
 and to our children, — this is the foul- 
 est, the crudest, the most odious to 
 the Father, the most intolerable to 
 Jesus, and the most inconsistent with 
 his Way. 
 
 Now Christian sacrifice is the exact 
 opposite of all this. It is saving other 
 people at sacrifice of all of self that 
 is inconsistent with their welfare and 
 happiness. As the motto stamped on 
 all sin is, "He saved something for 
 himself at the expense of others," the 
 motto of every true Christian is that 
 jeeringly yet accurately ascribed to 
 
SACRIFICE 137 
 
 Jesus on the cross, " He saved others ; 
 himself he cannot save." The honest 
 student sacrifices the petty gain in 
 rank dishonesty would bring him, and 
 thereby saves the honor of the school 
 and the worth of its diplomas. The 
 truthful man foregoes many a paltry 
 advantage a lie might bring, and 
 thereby saves for himself, and society 
 with him, the social confidence on 
 which civilization rests. The upright 
 business man time and again must 
 sacrifice the chance to make a fortune 
 for himself out of widespread disaster 
 brought on innocent investors, trust- 
 ing employers, or defrauded employ- 
 ees ; but he saves the property and 
 welfare of thousands, together with 
 his own modest competence. These 
 honest men are in the great majority. 
 
138 JESUS' WAY 
 
 Gigantic as are the parasites of dis- 
 honesty which fasten on our complex 
 business system, yet their very bulk 
 and number are so much added evi- 
 dence to the essential soundness of 
 the industrial system which can sup- 
 port them. 
 
 The same is true of drunkenness 
 and licentiousness. There are obvi- 
 ously a great many things one cannot 
 do who walks in Jesus' Way of a 
 considerate love to all whom his acts 
 affect, and who would save for others 
 the pure, happy home life he so much 
 values for himself If you call that 
 sacrifice, why then the Christian life 
 is sacrificial at these points; for it is 
 on the renunciation of these cruel 
 and costly pleasures that all domestic 
 and social life worth living rests as on 
 
SACRIFICE 139 
 
 a rock. The pure lives and happy 
 homes which such self-control and 
 self-sacrifice have made possible are 
 the crowning example of what those 
 who walk in Jesus' Way have done 
 to save others with themselves, and 
 promote the glory of the Father and 
 the welfare of the world. 
 
 The principle of sacrifice, in some 
 form or other, is, as we have seen, in- 
 herent in human finitude. The cross 
 of Christ simply brings this principle 
 to its ultimate application, as a choice 
 between the sacrifice of others for our 
 own mean, sensual, and selfish ends, and 
 the sacrifice of what is selfish, sensual, 
 and mean in ourselves for the glory 
 of the loving Father and the highest 
 good of all. Sacrifice we must as 
 often as we act. Jesus bids us sacri- 
 
140 JESUS^ WAY 
 
 fice the low for the high, the sensuous 
 so far as it conflicts with the spiritual, 
 the little and transient for the infinite 
 and the eternal, the partial aspect for 
 the organic whole. 
 
 This principle, therefore, once for 
 all divides the world into two oppos- 
 ing camps. On the one hand is the 
 camp of those who save themselves 
 by greed, at cost of others' privation ; 
 by corruption, at cost of others' op- 
 pression ; by lust, at cost of others' 
 anguish; by dissipation, at cost of 
 others' misery; by falsehood, at cost 
 of others' distrust ; by cruelty, at cost 
 of others' suffering ; by unkindness, at 
 cost of others' tears. 
 
 Over against all this, rightly intelli- 
 gible only in sharp contrast with it, 
 is Jesus' Way. This is the camp of 
 
SACRIFICE 141 
 
 those who save the interests of others 
 by scorning to shirk, or cheat, or he, or 
 hold back unpopular truth ; by fidel- 
 ity that gets no immediate apprecia- 
 tion ; by perseverance that receives no 
 outward encouragement ; by endur- 
 ance that attracts no public notice ; 
 by ten thousand nameless, unnoticed 
 acts of unsuspected daily self-sacrifice 
 for others' happiness, and for social 
 order, domestic peace, and public 
 good ; by suffering on behalf of oth- 
 ers' sins which remains a sacred secret 
 locked within the silent sufferer's heart. 
 These men and women who, in the 
 arduous toil of great official responsi- 
 bility or in the obscure drudgery of 
 humble homes, in the joy of mutual 
 affection or in cheerful renunciation 
 of the tenderest happiness that has 
 
142 JESUS' WAY 
 
 touched their lonely hearts, in great 
 wealth enjoyed without selfishness or 
 effeminacy or in grinding poverty en- 
 dured without envy or hardening of 
 heart, bear cheerfully the cross of lov- 
 ing service to the people the Father 
 has placed in their care and faithful 
 performance of the duty that He lays 
 upon them, — these are the salt of 
 the earth and the light of the world; 
 these, like their Master, are the re- 
 deemers of society and the saviors of 
 mankind. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 REVELATION : THE JUDGMENT OF 
 THE WAY 
 
" But there is nothing covered up, that shall not be re- 
 vealed : and hid, that shall not be known," Luke xii. 2. 
 
 " Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, 
 Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
 pared for you from the foundation of the world : for I was an 
 hungered, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave 
 me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in j naked, 
 and ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was 
 in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous 
 answer him, saying. Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and 
 fed thee ? or athirst, and gave thee drink ? And when saw 
 we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked, and clothed 
 thee ? And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came 
 unto thee ? And the King shaU answer and say unto them. 
 Verily I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of 
 these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me." 
 Matthew XXV. 34-40. 
 
 *' Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not 
 every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the wUl of my 
 Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that 
 day. Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name, and by 
 thy name cast out devUs, and by thy name do many mighty 
 •works ? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew 
 you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Matthew 
 vii. 20-23. 
 
 *' But if that servant shall say in his heart. My lord de- 
 layeth his coming ; and shall begin to beat the menservants 
 and the maidservants, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken j 
 the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he expect- 
 eth not, and in an hour when he knojveth not, and shall 
 cut him asunder, and appoint his portion with the unfaithful. 
 And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and made not 
 ready, nor did according to his wiU, shall be beaten with 
 many stripes ; but he that knew not, and did things worthy 
 of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. ' ' Luke xii, 45- 
 48, 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 revelation: the judgment of the 
 
 WAY 
 
 The judgment of Jesus is simply 
 showing a man what he is, in the 
 light of what he ought to bfc. This 
 revelation of a man to himself steals 
 upon one unawares, like a thief in the 
 night. The needs of some lowly and 
 suffering fellow man, the secret decision 
 between some costly right act which 
 will pass unobserved and some profit- 
 able wrong act which will escape de- 
 tection, are the times that try men's 
 souls and bring out whether or not 
 they be in the Way. The Judge 
 
146 JESUS' WAY 
 
 comes to us in the disguise of the 
 lowliest of our fellows that claims our 
 courtesy, our kindness, and our con- 
 sideration. As we treat the least of 
 the Lord's brothers, precisely so we 
 treat the Lord himself Hence judg- 
 ment is inevitable. It is being passed 
 upon us all the time. There will be 
 no question on the final examination 
 paper that has not been asked us again 
 and again in the daily intercourse 6{ 
 life. Our answers are all written in 
 advance, according as we have done 
 or failed to do what love requires 
 toward these brethren of ours, who 
 are so dear to the Lord that service 
 to them is the only service to him- 
 self for which he greatly cares. This 
 judgment simply reveals outwardly, 
 so that we and all who behold us shall 
 
REVELATION 147 
 
 see precisely how much or how little 
 of God's love for men is really in our 
 hearts. If love be there, it will shine 
 forth as the stars, forever and ever. 
 If pride, lust, selfishness, unkindness, 
 avarice, are there, they cannot be con- 
 cealed ; but in contrast to the pure 
 white light of love that shines in the 
 heavenly Way, they will stand out in 
 undreamed-of hideousness and shame. 
 Yet this judgment will be propor- 
 tioned to light and opportunity. He 
 who was mean and sensual because he 
 knew no better will feel less guilt 
 and shame than one who had seen the 
 pure light of love in the face of Jesus 
 Christ or some of his faithful follow- 
 ers, and then, in spite of that, had 
 been base and cruel. The stripes will 
 be few or many according as the light 
 
148 JESUS' WAY 
 
 against which one sinned was dim or 
 bright. Judgment simply sends a 
 man, as it did Judas, to his own place ; 
 puts him where he belongs, — in the 
 kingdom of heaven, if he lives a life 
 of love ; in the outer darkness, where 
 there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, 
 if he lives a life of selfishness and hate. 
 This transparency of character which 
 results from setting a man where the 
 light of love falls on him, as it does 
 on all who come in contact with 
 Jesus' Way, involves a radical rever- 
 sal of all human judgments which are 
 based solely on rank, wealth, reputa- 
 tion, and profession ; making the last 
 in the world's estimation the first in 
 the kingdom of heaven, and making 
 those who are first in their own esteem 
 last in the favor of God; showing 
 
REVELATION 149 
 
 that the poor, if they are in the Way, 
 are rich and happy, while the rich, if 
 they are out of it, are poor and miser- 
 able. 
 
 This judgment is obviously auto- 
 matic. There is nothing arbitrary 
 about it. He who walks in the Way 
 enters the kingdom as a matter of 
 course. He who loves shares God's 
 life, which is love. He who declines 
 to walk in the Way of course never 
 reaches the heaven to which it is the 
 only entrance, strait and narrow at 
 that. He would be more miserable 
 if he got in than he is outside ; for 
 the brighter the light of love that 
 should shine upon his sordid and sen- 
 sual soul, the greater would its shame 
 and ugliness appear. 
 
 There will be no more chance to 
 
150 JESUS' WAY 
 
 complain of one's fate than for bad 
 fish to resent their exclusion from the 
 basket of good fish, or the goat its not 
 being classed as a sheep, or chaff and 
 tares for not being stored in the barn 
 with the wheat. Judgment simply 
 brings to light what the man has been 
 doing to himself all the time. There 
 is no favoritism. Inherent] excellence 
 gets its full premium, and the lack 
 of it has to pay the last farthing of 
 inexorable penalty. Not profession, 
 not achievement, but effort, and the 
 motive underneath the effort, is the 
 basis of award; for that reveals the 
 spring and core of character. Out- 
 ward results enter into the judgment 
 indirectly, as revealing the genuine- 
 ness and thoroughness of the inner 
 motive; for the earnest purpose in. 
 
REVELATION 151 
 
 the end always manages to make it- 
 self outwardly effective. Every honest 
 effort counts in the final score, though 
 it may be represented negatively by 
 making a bad situation less bad than 
 it otherwise would have been, instead 
 of making it positively and perfectly 
 good. 
 
 As we have seen already, one who 
 should see the beauty of Jesus' Way, 
 and then should deny him, would 
 thereby reveal his unworthihess to be 
 his disciple, and exclude himself from 
 the kingdom. Yet many who never 
 heard or thought of Jesus as an object 
 of personal devotion, by sharing un- 
 consciously in his spirit of love and 
 service to the persons with whom they 
 chance to be thrown, find out for 
 themselves the same Way which Jesus 
 
152 JESUS' WAY 
 
 revealed to the world. All such are 
 in Jesus' Way, although they recog- 
 nize him not ; and theirs is the king- 
 dom of heaven. He that is not against 
 Jesus is for him. Those who do the 
 works of his Way are his unconscious 
 disciples. 
 
 On the other hand, all the indolent 
 and insincere, the corrupt and cruel, 
 the proud and hard-hearted, whether 
 they be clergymen or laymen, church- 
 men or infidels, magistrates or crimi- 
 nals, employers or employees, in spite 
 of their professions and their respect- 
 ability, will be banished to the place 
 to which their inherent lovelessness 
 dooms them in the words, " I never 
 knew you ; depart from me, ye that 
 work iniquity." The outer darkness 
 is the shadow love casts when one 
 
REVELATION 153 
 
 refuses to let it shine through him; 
 and the greatness of that darkness is 
 due to the fact that God lighted the 
 capacity of love in his soul, and he 
 has let it go out for lack of the oil of 
 disinterested service, or else has delib- 
 erately put it out by the extinguisher 
 of self-indulgence. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 BLESSEDNESS : THE REWARD OF 
 THE WAY 
 
" But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness ; 
 and all these things shall be added unto you." Matthew 
 vi. 33. 
 
 ** Then answered Peter and said unto him, Lo, we have 
 left all, and followed thee ; what then shall we have ? And 
 Jesus said unto them, Every one that hath left houses, or 
 brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or 
 lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and 
 shall inherit eternal life. But many shall be last that are 
 first; and first that are last." Matthew xix. 27, 29, 30. 
 
 *' A certain woman out of the multitude lifted up her 
 voice, and said unto him. Blessed is the womb that bare 
 thee, and the breasts which thou didst suck. But he said. 
 Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, 
 and keep it." Luke xi. 27, 28. 
 
 " And turning to the disciples, he said privately. Blessed 
 are the eyes which see the things that ye see : for I say unto 
 you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things 
 which ye see, and saw them not." Luke x. 23, 24. 
 
 " Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom 
 of heaven . 
 
 ' * Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall be com- 
 forted. 
 
 ** Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth. 
 
 ' ' Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness : for they shall be filled. 
 
 * ' Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. 
 
 ** Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. 
 
 '* Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called 
 sons of God. 
 
 " Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteous- 
 ness' sake : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 " Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and perse- 
 cute you, and say aU manner of evil against you falsely, for 
 my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad : for great is your 
 reward in heaven : for so persecuted they the prophets which 
 were before you." Matthew v. 3-12. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 blessedness: the reward of the 
 
 WAY 
 
 Jesus' Way is no exception to the 
 hedonistic paradox that pleasure eludes 
 those who seek for it directly, and 
 that immediate concern for rewards, 
 honors, and emoluments, because it 
 withdraws one from the singleness of 
 devotion to one's work and service, at 
 the same time robs one of the rewards 
 which single-eyed service and self-for- 
 getful work alone deserve and insure. 
 To be in the Way, to have one's name 
 written in the book of this heavenly 
 life, is its own sufficient great reward. 
 
158 JESUS' WAY 
 
 Therein the true disciple will rejoice ; 
 not in the high seat he gains, not 
 even in the amount of work he is 
 able to accomplish. So vast is the 
 work to be done, so little is the con- 
 tribution the best of us can make, that 
 having done all, we shall count our- 
 selves unprofitable servants. We shall 
 rest our expectations not on our own 
 merits, but on the goodness of the 
 Lord, who weighs the motive rather 
 than the achievement, and gives to 
 first and last alike the equal compen- 
 sation of knowing and feeling that 
 they are accepted and approved work- 
 men in his vineyard, heirs of all his 
 goodness and love they are able to 
 appropriate. 
 
 To demand or expect any other 
 precedence than preeminence of use- 
 
BLESSEDNESS 159 
 
 fulness is to miss the Spirit of Jesus 
 altogether, and hence to be not first 
 but last in his Way. The only great- 
 ness Jesus recognizes is greatness of 
 service ; and the chief joy he experi- 
 enced himself and recommended to 
 others was the joy of bringing lost 
 sheep out of their cold, loveless lives 
 into the warm light and life of his 
 fold. 
 
 If, however, seeking rewards, here 
 or hereafter, is the sure way to miss 
 them, it is equally sure that he who 
 seeks first the kingdom of God and 
 his righteousness will incidentally get 
 all the good things that he needs. 
 Single-eyed devotion to the service 
 of God and one's fellow men brings 
 this about in two ways. Through 
 withdrawing one's mind from him- 
 
i6o JESUS' WAY 
 
 self and his individual' appetites and 
 ambitions, it diminishes enormously 
 his demand on the world, or what Car- 
 lyle calls the denominator of life; and 
 by increasing his efficiency and at- 
 tractiveness to others, it brings in spir- 
 itual, social, and ultimately material 
 returns which unscrupulous, heartless 
 self-seeking never could gain, and so 
 increases the numerator of life. While 
 it is doubtless true that people who 
 call themselves Christians are deprived 
 of many things which they deem es- 
 sential to their happiness ; while acci- 
 dent, bereavement, misfortune, loss, 
 deprivation, and the injurious conse- 
 quences of others' sicknesses and sins 
 fall on saint and sinner alike; while 
 well-meaning people who look anx- 
 iously ahead and take the whole bur- 
 
BLESSEDNESS i6i 
 
 den of the remainder of their Hfetime 
 on the shoulders of each successive 
 hour are unquestionably able to pile 
 up mountains of misery for them- 
 selves and all who are so unfortunate 
 as to be their relatives and friends ; — 
 nevertheless, the poorest man, the most 
 maltreated woman, who begins each 
 day with the eager desire to fill that 
 day with loving service to God, and 
 those whom He has placed under this 
 person's influence and care, will find, 
 in looking back at evening on the 
 finished day, that it has not been with- 
 out the opportunity for such service 
 and the means for its effective execu- 
 tion ; and if these opportunities and 
 means have been improved, that no 
 such day, even the darkest, has been 
 altogether destitute of the brightness 
 
i62 JESUS' WAY 
 
 of nature, the love of man, and the 
 peace and blessing of God. 
 
 Jesus' words on this point are often 
 considered extravagant, unpractical, 
 Utopian. So indeed they are, if ap- 
 plied to the natural man, whether 
 nominal Christian or not, in a merely- 
 natural society, where self-seeking is 
 the only impulse and competition is 
 the only law. As proclaimed by Je- 
 sus, however, these warnings against 
 anxiety, these assurances of spiritual, 
 social, and material goods, are ad- 
 dressed to those who are his genuine 
 disciples, in a community composed 
 of disciples as genuine and generous 
 as themselves. Considered in this 
 their proper setting, these sayings of 
 Jesus, so far from being paradoxical, 
 are axiomatic. Suppose a town or 
 
BLESSEDNESS 163 
 
 ward of five thousand people, all of 
 whom begin each day with a grateful, 
 loving, earnest desire to use their 
 talents, powers, influence, and wealth 
 for God's greatest glory and man's 
 highest good : would any one of 
 them have the slightest cause to 
 worry, or would the most feeble and 
 unfortunate member of such a com- 
 munity, even if it were outwardly or- 
 ganized on our present competitive 
 industrial basis, ever come to material 
 want, or social neglect, or spiritual 
 despair*? It would be impossible. 
 Some fellow Christian would be the 
 kindly medium through whom the 
 unfortunate man's need of these things 
 would find relief and satisfaction. If 
 a half, or a fourth, or even a tenth 
 of such a community were bound 
 
i64 JESUS' WAY 
 
 together in such a spirit, this remnant 
 would be able to cope with the worst 
 consequences of the sin and selfishness 
 of the other half, or three quarters, or 
 nine tenths. Where God's kingdom 
 really comes, there comes salvation, — 
 for its members first, and for all others 
 in proportion to their receptivity and 
 the community's resources. If Jesus' 
 promises regarding these things are 
 not fulfilled in any particular town or 
 city, it is because the kingdom in that 
 town or city is not yet fully come. 
 We don't quite believe that very 
 many other people are really living 
 in Jesus' Way ; and too often the rea- 
 son for this distrust of the essential 
 Christlikeness of the lives of others is 
 because we are not entirely devoted 
 to Jesus' Way ourselves. Here as 
 
BLESSEDNESS 165 
 
 everywhere we need to remember 
 that the judgment we pass, even un- 
 consciously, on our brethren is the 
 condemnation of ourselves. If we 
 were altogether absorbed in Jesus' 
 Way ourselves, we should detect by 
 subtle sympathy the indications of the 
 same blessed Way in hosts of our 
 fellows whom we now set down 
 as " worldly " men and women, or at 
 best mere nominal Christians, having 
 the form of godliness, but without its 
 real power. 
 
 That the Way does not insure the 
 blessings Jesus attached to it, where 
 it is not present, or where men do 
 not believe in it, or where they dis- 
 trust each other, is not surprising, and 
 is no valid objection to his claims for 
 it. Democracy does not confer all 
 
i66 JESUS' WAY 
 
 the benefits claimed for that form of 
 poUtical government on every ward 
 of every American city. But the 
 blame rests not with the democratic 
 form of government, but with the men 
 who for selfish ends subvert its prin- 
 ciples. Democracy worked by men 
 who are fit for it, and who live up to 
 its high requirements of public spirit 
 and civic devotion, will do all that 
 the most enthusiastic advocate ever 
 claimed for it. Precisely so, Jesus' 
 Way of life will give to every mem- 
 ber of his community all the bless- 
 ings he ever promised, provided it be 
 a genuine community of those who 
 make the love of God and the kindly 
 care of one another their prime con- 
 cern. Anything less than that is less 
 than Jesus' Way, and must not be 
 
BLESSEDNESS 167 
 
 accepted as a test of the truthfulness 
 of his account of what his Way will 
 do for those who earnestly and hon- 
 estly accept it. 
 
 The beatitudes are obvious corolla- 
 ries from the principles of the Way. 
 Since love is the life of the Way, and 
 since the opportunities for love are 
 infinite and omnipresent, no true dis- 
 ciple of the Way can possibly miss 
 his blessedness. The more of love in 
 the heart, the more of blessedness will 
 there be in the soul. 
 
 The poor in spirit are blessed, be- 
 cause their lowly hearts have room in 
 them for that outgoing love to others 
 which is the life of the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 Even the mourner, if his love is 
 deep and wide and universal, cannot, 
 
i68 JESUS' WAY 
 
 even by personal bereavement or in- 
 dividual disappointment, be shut out 
 from the great life of love, and the 
 comfort love always contrives to find 
 in making others happy, even while 
 its own heart aches in the sadness of 
 irreparable loss. 
 
 The vain and conceited, just because 
 they centre their interests and affec- 
 tions on their little petty selves, and 
 what they are or fancy themselves to 
 be, obviously live a poor, cramped, 
 stunted, shriveled, impoverished life. 
 But the meek, who think little of 
 themselves, and turn admiring and 
 affectionate eyes on others, thereby 
 gain a boundless career for their de- 
 votion, and have the whole earth for 
 their inheritance. 
 
 Those who hunger and thirst for 
 
BLESSEDNESS 169 
 
 the finite material objects of human 
 competition will naturally have re- 
 peated occasion to lament the small- 
 ness of the share of these goods they 
 get. But there is no finitude in right- 
 eousness, no competition for the spir- 
 itual gifts of kindness and goodwill. 
 Any man can have all these he asks for. 
 He has but to knock, and the door 
 that leads to these treasures is thrown 
 wide open. This hunger and thirst are 
 in constant process of fulfillment for 
 every one who walks in Jesus' Way. 
 
 The merciless, of course, can expect 
 no mercy. But the merciful, like mag- 
 nets, draw mercy to themselves. 
 
 The impure heart can no more see 
 God than darkness can comprehend 
 the light. The pure heart, on the 
 other hand, sees God as the infinite 
 
lyo JESUS' WAY 
 
 Source and Inspirer of every pure 
 experience in itself, and in the puri- 
 fied souls of others. 
 
 The man who stirs up strife, picks 
 quarrels with his neighbors, and carries 
 a chip upon his shoulder everywhere, 
 naturally will know little of the peace 
 of God which passeth understanding. 
 On the contrary, the peacemakers, in 
 turning away wrath by the soft answer, 
 in forgiving until seventy times seven, 
 in patient endurance of the slights and 
 wounds and bruises incidental to close 
 contact in domestic, social, business, 
 and political life, will have the very 
 joy of the Father in seeing kindness 
 take the place of cruelty, love cast out 
 hate, and happiness come in where 
 wretchedness goes out ; and will real- 
 ize therein their own sonship to God. 
 
BLESSEDNESS 171 
 
 Even persecution for the sake of the 
 Master and his Way will not rob the 
 disciple of his blessedness ; for even 
 through such suffering, serenely ac- 
 cepted and cheerfully endured, he will 
 be drawn into sympathy with the 
 prophets and martyrs of all ages, and 
 share the deepest experience of the 
 crucified Master himself To be even 
 as his Master, in this as in all respects, 
 will be not the dread but the desire 
 of every true disciple. 
 
 What blessedness is, as Jesus un- 
 derstood it, we can best understand 
 by approaching it through the lower 
 steps of pleasure and happiness. 
 
 Pleasure is the gratification of 
 chance desire. The getting of any- 
 thing we want brings pleasure; and 
 the way to secure pleasures is to de- 
 
172 JESUS' WAY 
 
 velop a great variety of eager, active 
 interests : in work and play ; in study 
 and art ; in business and society. The 
 more desires we have, provided we 
 are able to gratify them, the more 
 pleasures we enjoy. 
 
 Happiness depends on the progres- 
 sive, systematic gratification of desires 
 which have been reduced to unity 
 through some central principle. Since 
 doing good is an interest in which we 
 have to fight no competitors, and in 
 which God, the forces of the universe, 
 and the goodwill of all right-minded 
 men are on our side, the desire to do 
 good is the active interest most capa- 
 ble of continuous, progressive, syste- 
 matic satisfaction, and consequently 
 brings most happiness. 
 
 For righteousness is simply fitness ; 
 
BLESSEDNESS 173 
 
 goodness is what right-minded people 
 want to have done. And the oppor- 
 tunities for doing it are as numerous 
 as the situations in which one is placed. 
 Righteousness takes an infinite variety 
 of forms to meet the varied claims of 
 situations and persons upon us. In 
 the home it is kindness ; in business it 
 is honesty; in society it is courtesy; 
 in politics it is public spirit; in work 
 it is thoroughness; in play it is fair- 
 ness ; toward the fortunate it is con- 
 gratulation; toward the unfortunate 
 it is pity; toward the wicked it is 
 resistance ; toward the righteous it is 
 active support ; toward the weak it 
 is help ; toward the strong it is trust ; 
 •toward the penitent it is forgiveness; 
 toward God it is reverence and love. 
 Now the man whose interest lies in 
 
174 JESUS' WAY 
 
 so many-sided and omnipresent a 
 thing as righteousness finds opportu- 
 nities for satisfaction, and therefore for 
 happiness, every moment of his life. 
 No man who is more than a hermit 
 can pass a single day without many a 
 chance to make a glad heart still more 
 happy or a sad one less lonely; to set 
 a wrong will right or confirm a right 
 will in its strenuous endeavor ; to do 
 some hard task so well that the world 
 shall be the better for it ; to bear some 
 severe trial so bravely that all who see 
 shall be strengthened. Every deed 
 we do, every word we speak, involves 
 a more or less of fitness to the highest 
 possibilities of the situation ; in other 
 words, gives a chance to win the happi- 
 ness that always goes with doing good. 
 To be sure, these chances to do 
 
BLESSEDNESS 175 
 
 good do not stop and wait for us to 
 improve them. They must be taken 
 on the run, or they are gone forever. 
 As the hunter takes his chances of 
 a hit or a miss when he fires, and is 
 sure to lose his game if he hesitates 
 or delays, so he who would do good, 
 whether in business, or politics, or in 
 the more difficult and delicate sphere 
 of personal influence, must say the 
 right word and do the right thing 
 instantly ; without waiting to be sure 
 how it is coming out. A quick esti- 
 mate of probabilities, a flashing intui- 
 tion of difficulty whichever course is 
 taken, the certainty of being criticised 
 in any case, and then the swift, irre- 
 vocable determination to do one's best 
 and leave results with God, — all this, 
 indeed, the righteous man who will 
 
176 JESUS' WAY 
 
 be happy in the doing of righteous- 
 ness must have. Given this element 
 of courage, and promptness to take 
 risks on the strongest probabilities, 
 which are the only guidance granted 
 to us mortals, and every man who 
 means to do right may count on sub- 
 stantial happiness as the sure reward 
 alike of his successful and of his at 
 times mistaken efforts to do right. 
 For, as Stevenson says, " All who have 
 meant good work have done good 
 work, even though they die before 
 they have time to sign it." The hap- 
 piness which comes of meaning to do 
 good work and accomplishing it up 
 to the measure of our powers is within 
 the reach of every man who intently 
 and eagerly improves his chances the 
 moment they appear. 
 
BLESSEDNESS 177 
 
 Still we have not quite reached 
 blessedness. Active interests of all 
 sorts give pleasures. Interests that 
 are generous, universal, non-competi- 
 tive, of which the interest in righteous- 
 ness is the great example, bring the 
 enduring, systematic satisfaction which 
 we call happiness. Yet blessedness is 
 something more. 
 
 What this something more is, we 
 learn, in human relations, alas ! too 
 often only through its loss. When 
 father, mother, wife, husband, matur- 
 ing child, or trusted friend, to whom 
 our aspirations, affections, even our 
 very sins, have been known by subtle 
 sympathy so well as to make verbal 
 confession superfluous, is taken sud- 
 denly away, then we know, through 
 the sense of irreparable loss, the deep, 
 
178 JESUS' WAY 
 
 the infinite difference between the best 
 that either a host of scattered plea- 
 sures, or even the happiness that goes 
 with a Hfe of constant usefulness, can 
 give, and that supreme satisfaction of 
 sympathy with one we love for which 
 we reserve the third and highest name 
 of blessedness. 
 
 This blessedness, of which we get 
 glimpses in hours of intimacy with 
 trusted human friends, and which 
 every one who has experienced it 
 knows to be as far above mere plea- 
 sure unshared, or happiness unreflected 
 in the sympathy of those we love, as 
 the heavens are higher than the earth, 
 — this the devout man finds in com- 
 munion and fellowship with God. 
 This high and precious blessedness, to 
 be sure, does not fall into the lap of 
 
BLESSEDNESS 179 
 
 the spiritually indolent. To get it, one 
 must exercise much of that union of 
 appreciation and appropriation which 
 Jesus calls faith, and which we ex- 
 press in prayer. To retain it, one 
 must make his communion with God 
 solid and real by faithful and, if need 
 be, sacrificial doing of God's righteous 
 will. To increase it year by year, 
 one must cooperate with others in 
 common efforts for social and spirit- 
 ual ends. I grant this cultivation of 
 the friendship and sympathy of God 
 through private prayer and personal 
 work and social endeavor is a hard, 
 slow process, and does not bring its 
 reward of supreme blessedness all at 
 once. 
 
 Yet, to those who seek God in these 
 earnest, practical, social ways, blessed- 
 
i8o JESUS' WAY 
 
 ness as real as that we find in the 
 most intimate human affections does 
 come; it comes to stay; and it in- 
 creases as the years go by. Such a 
 man knows that God is with him, 
 approving what he tries to do. He 
 knows that Jesus' great work, begun 
 nineteen hundred years ago, is being 
 promoted by his efforts, and that 
 through sharing Jesus' work here and 
 now, he enters into fellowship with 
 him forevermore. He knows that in 
 his efforts to make the world the pure, 
 sweet, healthy, happy world God 
 would have it, he has the sympathy 
 and support of all right-minded men 
 and women in whom a kindred spirit 
 dwells. The man who knows these 
 things, and carries them about with 
 him as the great, permanent back- 
 
BLESSEDNESS i8i 
 
 ground on which all his passing suc- 
 cesses and failures, all his lesser joys 
 and sorrows, are thrown, that man 
 has the secret of blessedness in his 
 heart. 
 
 Thus there are these three distinct 
 stages or levels of the desirable. There 
 is the life of pleasure, which is good; 
 and which depends on the cultivation 
 of a wide range of eager, active inter- 
 ests. There is the happy life which is 
 better; this depends on the organ- 
 ization of life into permanent, gener- 
 ous interests, which can be gratified 
 without bringing us into competition 
 with others for goods that are finite 
 and limited. Since the life of right- 
 eousness and kindness and goodwill 
 is boundless in opportunity, and puts 
 us not in competition but in coopera- 
 
i82 JESUS' WAY 
 
 tion with our fellow men, this is pre- 
 eminently the happy life. 
 
 Above pleasure, which is good, 
 higher than happiness, which is far 
 better, comes blessedness, which is 
 best. This springs out of the active 
 interests which form the roots of plea- 
 sure; it is. borne on the stout stalk of 
 a righteous life, which is the support 
 of happiness, but is in its inmost 
 essence the perfect flower that blos- 
 soms out of the crowning assurance 
 that God looks with something like 
 approval on even our feeble and often 
 mistaken efforts to do right; that 
 Christ is with us in the aim and pur- 
 pose of our lives ; that all good men 
 and women who are working out in 
 individual form some private or pub- 
 lic portion of the one great, common 
 
BLESSEDNESS 183 
 
 social good are sharing the same Holy 
 Spirit which is the inspiration of 
 our hearts. This sense of the love of 
 God the Father, the grace of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and the communion and 
 fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the 
 crown of blessedness which, as a per- 
 petual benediction, rests on all who 
 with humility, sincerity, fidelity, and 
 reverence walk in Jesus' Way. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 UNIVERSALITY: THE TRIUMPH OF 
 THE WAY 
 
** And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
 should cast seed upon the earth ; and should sleep and rise 
 night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he 
 knoweth not how. The earth beareth fruit of herself j 
 first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. 
 But when the fruit is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the 
 sickle, because the harvest is come." Mark iv. 26-29. 
 
 *' Every one therefore which heareth these words of 
 mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, 
 which built his house upon the rock : and the rain descended, 
 and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon 
 that house ; and it fell not : for it was founded upon the 
 rock." Matthew vii. 24, 25. 
 
 ** The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they 
 shall gather out of his kingdom aU things that cause stum- 
 bling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into 
 the furnace of fire : there shall be the weeping and gnashing 
 of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in 
 the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears, let him 
 hear." Matthew xiii. 41-43. 
 
 " But know this, that if the master of the house had 
 known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have 
 watched, and would not have suffered his house to be 
 broken through. Therefore be ye also ready : for in an 
 hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh. Who 
 then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath 
 set over his household, to give them their food in due sea- 
 son ? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he com- 
 eth shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, that he will 
 set him over all that he hath." Matthew xxiv. 43-47. 
 
 *' If therefore they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in 
 the wilderness ; go not forth : Behold, he is in the inner cham- 
 bers j believe it not. For as the lightning cometh forth 
 from the east, and is seen even unto the west ; so shall be 
 the coming of the Son of man." Matthew xxiv. 26, 27. 
 
 " In your patience ye shall win your souls." Luke xxi. 
 19. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 UNIVERSALITY : THE TRIUMPH OF THE 
 WAY 
 
 Provided the seed of a sincere and 
 genuine love is planted in the heart, 
 regularly watered by meditation and 
 prayer, and fertilized by active ex- 
 ercise whenever occasion offers, one 
 need not worry in the least about its 
 steady growth and ultimate fruitful- 
 ness. To dig it up in anxious intro- 
 spection is the greatest of mistakes ; 
 implying doubt of the Father, and 
 distrust of the nature He has given us. 
 The growth of Christian character, 
 like all vital processes, begins in com- 
 
i88 JESUS' WAY 
 
 parative obscurity, and requires con- 
 siderable time. First the blade, then 
 the ear, after that the full corn in the 
 ear, is the law of spiritual as of biolo- 
 gical evolution ; and we must be pa- 
 tient, trustful, and serene during the 
 preliminary stages, which are the only 
 ones to which the best of us attain in 
 this brief earthly life. The contrast 
 between what we are and what we 
 hope to be, between ourselves and 
 the perfect Father, is the great ground 
 of our assurance of a blessed immor- 
 tality of growth into the fullness of the 
 stature of our Lord. 
 
 We should have the same serene con- 
 fidence in the triumph of the Way in 
 the world at large, and the final and 
 universal establishment of the king- 
 dom of heaven. Every one who sees 
 
UNIVERSALITY 189 
 
 the Way as it is knows that there can 
 be no other right way of Hfe. It is so 
 much better than the wrong ways that 
 he is sure it must prevail. No signs 
 to the contrary can overthrow this 
 confidence. Though superficial emo- 
 tionalists, and shallow ritualists, and 
 even pretentious hypocrites seem to 
 flourish and wear the very livery of 
 heaven, there is no occasion for alarm. 
 All that is hollow, external, insincere, 
 will in due time come to naught. 
 Every plant which the Heavenly 
 Father hath not planted shall be rooted 
 up. For reality is stronger than pre- 
 tense. Love is sweeter than hate. 
 Good is mightier than evil. 
 
 When the Way is attacked, we 
 need not bestir ourselves to bolster it 
 up by extraneous props and specious 
 
190 JESUS' WAY 
 
 evidences. If we live out its life, 
 speak the words of kindness and truth 
 the Spirit of the Father prompts in 
 our hearts, love its enemies and ours, 
 the superiority of Jesus' Way will 
 shine through by its own light, and 
 demonstrate itself. 
 
 We must not measure the coming 
 of the Way in the outside world, any 
 more than in our own hearts, by im- 
 mediate, visible, tangible results. For 
 the kingdom comes silently, imper- 
 ceptibly, like a thief in the night, like 
 leaven hid in meal, like a tree, small 
 at first, but in the end mighty and 
 magnificent. There is at first no con- 
 spicuous change of form to which 
 one may call attention, and say, Lo 
 here, or Lo there. On the contrary, 
 it takes up the old materials of habit. 
 
UNIVERSALITY 191 
 
 custom, and tradition that lie ready 
 at hand in the race, or community, 
 or individual it enters, and gradually 
 transforms them into expressions of the 
 new Spirit of love which it imparts. 
 
 On the other hand, the old is not in 
 itself more sacred than the new. The 
 kingdom is not all innovation nor all 
 tradition. It brings forth things new 
 and old ; the test in each case being 
 appropriateness to express that love 
 to the Father and to our brothers 
 which is the essence of the Way. To 
 preserve worn-out ritual, outgrown 
 creed, antiquated phraseology, or 
 effete institutions, when the living 
 Spirit of love is prompting newer and 
 better rites, statements, expressions, 
 and usages, is to put stumbling-blocks 
 across Jesus' Way. New occasions 
 
192 JESUS' WAY 
 
 call for new forms of expressing the 
 eternal Spirit of love and goodwill. 
 Yet in all our innovation, no jot or 
 tittle of what the law of love requires 
 shall ever pass away unfulfilled. The 
 man who will express his love of God 
 and men in some new form must 
 keep alive his keen appreciation for 
 this same love as it has expressed 
 itself in forms the world has now out- 
 grown. Above all, no one who in any 
 form has entered into the Spirit of 
 Jesus' Way will willingly shock or 
 grieve even the humblest or narrowest 
 of those who in some other form have 
 entered into the Spirit of the same dear 
 and blessed Way. 
 
 The consummation of the Way is 
 not coming all at once ; or without 
 bitter opposition and cruel conflict. 
 
UNIVERSALITY 193 
 
 Because of the iniquity still in the 
 world, and the inherited hardness of 
 men's hearts, there must first be wars 
 and rumors of wars ; nation shall rise 
 up against nation, and kingdom against 
 kingdom. The hearts of many of the 
 disciples even shall be caught in the 
 toils of political, economic, and social 
 selfishness still widely prevalent, and 
 consequently grow cold. The disci- 
 ples, through weakness and faint-heart- 
 edness, shall be divided, and betray 
 one another. False prophets shall 
 arise, and lead many astray. Tribula- 
 tion, persecution, and hatred shall be 
 the lot of the faithful. 
 
 Yet he that endureth to the end 
 shall be saved. And the Way itself 
 shall be proclaimed throughout the 
 whole world, for a testimony to all 
 
194 JESUS' WAY 
 
 nations, before the end shall come. It 
 is simply impossible that the world, or 
 any portion of it, should go on forever, 
 without having brought home to its 
 conscience the ethical and spiritual 
 supremacy of this Way which Jesus 
 revealed as the true life of man. 
 
 The final triumph of the Way was 
 presented and accepted by the early 
 disciples, in pictorial, oriental imagery, 
 as the coming of the Son of man on 
 the clouds of heaven with power and 
 great glory, sending forth his angels 
 with a great sound of a trumpet to 
 gather together his chosen out of 
 all the earth. Yet in spite of such 
 apocalyptic setting, warnings against 
 localizing this advent, or presuming 
 to predict the day or hour ; warnings 
 concerning its lightning-like surprise 
 
UNIVERSALITY 195 
 
 and its universality, lead the disciple 
 of to-day to see the progressive fulfill- 
 ment of these prophecies, and the 
 gradual coming of God's kingdom, in 
 the multiplication of disciples over 
 the whole earth, in the deepening of the 
 spiritual life, in the transformation of 
 social institutions, and the elevation 
 of moral standards which have been 
 going on ever since the Master parted 
 from the little band of half-worship- 
 ing, half-doubting disciples. These 
 forces and processes are to-day the 
 promise and potency of the complete 
 regeneration of humanity from natural 
 selfishness to the Spirit of love, and 
 the ultimate redemption of the world 
 from sin and all its attendant evils 
 into that blessed state where love shall 
 be the universal law, and blessedness 
 
196 JESUS' WAY 
 
 shall be the inalienable heritage of 
 every child of God ; because all shall 
 walk in Jesus' Way. 
 
 Individual immortality was never 
 the burning question to the devout 
 Jew that it was to the more specu- 
 lative Greek. It is less explicitly 
 treated in the Synoptic Gospels than 
 in the Fourth Gospel and Paul's Epis- 
 tles. Still, even in the Synoptic Gos- 
 pels, eternal life is assured to all who 
 leave houses, or brethren, or sisters, or 
 father, or mother, or children, or lands, 
 for the sake of Jesus' Way. It is 
 strongly implied in the whole tenor 
 of the teaching ; all the more strongly 
 because taken for granted, as a matter 
 of course. 
 
 Though the emphasis of Jesus' 
 teaching was on the kingdom and the 
 
UNIVERSALITY 197 
 
 Way, yet a kingdom is worthless with- 
 out subjects ; a Way is empty with- 
 out souls to walk therein. The su- 
 premacy and eternal triumph of his 
 Way of life, to Jesus' mind, carried 
 with it the immortality of those who 
 share with him that living Way. A 
 lover does not pause in the first glow 
 of passion to ask himself, or discuss 
 with his mistress, how long this thing 
 is going to last. That question indi- 
 cates a later and less ardent, even if 
 more philosophical, state of mind. 
 The sons of the bridechamber cannot 
 concern themselves overmuch about 
 the future, as long as the bridegroom 
 is with them. Questions on this point 
 Jesus answered with a clear assurance 
 of eternal life ; but he did not intro- 
 duce them, nor dwell on them. He 
 
198 JESUS* WAY 
 
 felt within himself a life which, though 
 men might kill his body, could not 
 die; but was strong enough to rise 
 and rule both this world and the world 
 to come. Instead of advancing formal 
 arguments for immortality, he was 
 intent on imparting, to as many as 
 would receive it, this Way of life, 
 which gives to each soul who has it 
 his permanent place in God's good 
 universe ; his individual share in the 
 Father's own eternity. 
 
EUctrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton A' Co, 
 Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. 
 
P^nceton Theological Se 
 
 ,71'nary Libraries 
 
 1 1012 01193 8356 
 

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