YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1943

THE SIMPLE GOSPEL

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
HEW YORE ¦ BOSTON * CHICAGO ' DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited
LONDON ¦ BOMBAY ¦ CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA. Ltd.
TORONTO

THE
SIMPLE GOSPEL

BY
REV. H. S. BREWSTER

JJeto |?orfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved

Copybioht, 1928,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and printed. Published, March, 1922

¦T-.

p-

,IWW- Bvrr

TO MT MOTHEE,
AKNA POMEROY WILLIAMS BREWSTER,
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS REVERENTLY AND
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

PREFACE
THIS volume does not purport to be a commentary
on all the details of The Sermon on the Mount.
It is principally concerned with the great currents
of thought that run through the entire discourse. It is
little more than an elucidation of the obvious.
But there seems to be a call for just such an elucida
tion; for the great writers on the social gospel have seen
the meaning of Jesus so clearly that many of them have
failed to realize how callous the majority of our minds
have been to that meaning. It is said that some of La
place's "therefores" represent several sheets of calcula
tion for the ordinary mathematician ; and much that was
obvious to Rauschenbusch needs considerable thought from
the rest of us. But the process is very simple, after all,
and resembles nothing else so much as picking out the large
letters on a full map whose small lettering tends to ob
scure the principal words.
In a work of this kind, however, it is always difficult
to eliminate the personal equation, and the writer, when
lecturing on the substance of this book, has been told
that he has allowed his personal prepossessions to color
his understanding of the Gospel. But his personal pre
possessions and early training belong to the intense in
dividualism of a section of New England far remote from
any vital interest in the burning social questions of the
day; and although some of the hook has been written
practically within the sound of the industrial conflict,
there has been a sincere endeavor to hear only the voice

viii PREFACE
of Jesus Christ, under the belief that His voice is clear
in Matthew V, VI, and VII.
To any who will indicate to him the actual points in
which he has misinterpreted the meaning of these chap
ters, the writer, in spite of his inevitable chagrin, will be
profoundly grateful.
I desire, here, to express my thanks to Miss Marie von
Schrenk for invaluable assistance in reading the manu
script, criticizing it helpfully, and rounding it into pre
sentable form.
All detailed interpretations have been made solely with
reference to the most approved Greek texts.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Introductory  3
II The Nature of Blessedness. (Matt.
V: 3-12)  13
III The Approach to the Crowd. (Matt.
V: 13-20)  31
IV The Law of the Heavenly Realm.
(Matt. V: 21-37)  47
V The Doctrine Rejected of Men. (Matt.
V: 38-48)  67
VI The Reward in Heaven. (Matt. VI:
1-18)  85
VII The Light of the Gospel. (Matt. VI:
19-23)  99
VIII God and Mammon. (Matt. VI: 24) . . 115
IX The Practical Result of the Service
of God. (Matt. VI: 25-34) . . .137
X The Christian Attitude Toward Human
Imperfection. (Matt. VII: 1-6) . . 159
XI The Nature of Citizenship in the Heav
enly Realm. (Matt. VII: 7-23) . . 177
XII The Supremacy of the Simple Gospel.
(Matt. VII: 24-29)  191

IX

INTRODUCTORY

AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES, HE WENT UP INTO THE
MOUNTAIN: AND WHEN HE WAS SEATED, HIS DISCIPLES
CAME TO HIM: AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH AND TAUGHT
THEM. (Matthew V: 1-2.)

THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
WHEN a Christian minister inclines to preach
upon special subjects like politics, psychother
apy, child labor, or social justice a considerable
and earnest element in his congregation will be certain
to find fault with such preaching. Many a good mother
in Israel, speaking of her young pastor, says: "We like
Mr.  hut I do wish that he would stick to the plain,
simple Gospel."
The present volume is an earnest endeavor to go to
the heart of the Simple Gospel. It proposes to search
the Sermon on the Mount for its essential truths, and
it intends to set forth only such principles as are neces
sarily inferred from that discourse. It seeks to interpret
literally what the New Testament says is the teaching of
Jesus. This literalism, however, does not imply any antipathy
to advanced scholarship nor any doubt that the most ap
proved modern processes for obtaining truth are essential
to the best quality of religion. It merely sets itself de
liberately against a certain tendency, hard to avoid in
modern Christian thought when the anchor of authorita
tive, ecclesiastical interpretation is cut loose, — the ten
dency to blunt the edge of sharp words and to make the
doctrine which is meant for all time apply solely to the
3

4 INTRODUCTORY
peculiar conditions of the Jewish nation at the moment
when Jesus was preaching. It is the expression of the
conviction that in all the large places of the Sermon on
the Mount, the Master is saying precisely what He means
and meaning exactly what He says.
Nevertheless it can hardly be expected that the out
come of this attitude will be pleasing to the dear, earnest
people who express the greatest yearning to hear the simple
gospel. For these do not, as a rule, belong to the revolu
tionary elements of society while the sermon hurls uncom
promising defiance at the habits of life and thought of
the (so considered) respectable elements. The sharp con
trast between the world and those redeemed from the
world which is one of the main themes of the Fourth
Gospel, is, though expressed in different terms, essential
to the understanding of the First: and, until that con
trast is done away — until the first petition of the great
prayer of the Sermon on the Mount, "Thy Kingdom come
... on earth as it is in Heaven," is fully answered, the
great discourse cries out for radical revolution.
Its very beginning is a series of apparently paradoxical
utterances which maintain that conditions to be delivered
from which is the main object of the average Christian's
life and prayer, are the essence of blessedness. It makes
fundamental an all-embracing love and an unlimited for
giveness to which the average Christian does not, as a
rule, aspire. It demands sacrifices of substance and of
feeling which the average Christian refuses to offer: and
it puts at the heart and center of all effort the advance
of that Kingdom which is only vaguely and dully present
in the average Christian's consciousness even when he is
saying the Lord's Prayer.
That is to say, the ordinary, professing Christian be
liever lacks FAITH. He does not have confidence in

INTRODUCTORY 5
some of the most important principles of his Master's life
and teaching. Usually he is frank enough to confess that
he does not believe in the practicability of a considerable
portion of this teaching.
It is hardly to be wondered at, then, that after nearly
two millenniums of teaching what she has almost never
practiced, the Church finds outside her doors many whose
souls are more akin to Gospel principles than, perhaps,
are those of the majority of her own members. For there
are many, to-day, who have a passionate faith in brotherly
love, who are wholly willing to sacrifice their individual
advantage to the common good, but who find the atmos
phere of the Church stifling. They feel that worldly dis
tinctions hold largely in the Church — that the rich and
powerful are likely to receive, there, the highest offices
and the controlling influence. They ask what they in
tend to be embarrassing questions concerning camels and
needles' eyes. The more radical hold to a very definite
interpretation of Church history to the effect that the
world's economic masters have always consciously made
use of the Church to influence workers to be content with
their unhappiest conditions and to exalt the powers which
maintain those conditions.
The importance of this indifference and opposition can
be, only too easily, underestimated by the Church, al
though the Founder of the Church has said that in as
much as we do anything or leave anything undone to the
least of these, His brethren, we do it or leave it undone
to Him; and although, in the same spirit, her first great
missionary has asked: — "Who is offended (scandalized)
and I burn not?" — utterances which prove not only that
original Christianity was pervaded by a thoroughgoing
democratic idealism but also that original Christianity
squared itself by the law of the development of social

6 INTRODUCTORY
progress. For St. Paul, to be sure, reared as he was in
the higher social strata, it was of the nature of the mirac
ulous that the faith was to live in spite of the fact that,
in his day, "not many wise, mighty, or noble had been
called" but for us it is the recognized rule of history that,
in order to live and grow, ideas must be rooted in the
popular consciousness. The Church lived because it took
firm root in the commonest of the common people of the
decaying Roman Empire: and while Erasmus accom
plished very little by reaching the foremost scholars of his
time, Luther secured a world revolution through his in
fluence on the masses. The only hope of the Church is
in the hearts of the people.
But religion is as necessary to the people as they are
to religion. This would be true even if the wildest ex
aggerations of the Church's social shortcomings were sci
entifically accurate. The agitator who is most rabid on
the subject of the Church's wrongs to the working man
has no reason for his vehemence along that line unless the
Church has been a great force: and, this being the case,
it might not be a bad idea to see if some use of that force
could not be made to advance the social justice which
is close to the heart of every spiritually enlightened man
to-day. A wrong use of the Church no more proves that
the Church itself is wrong than a wrong use of the pro
duction of wealth proves that the production of wealth
is wrong. Religion is so strong in human nature that it
is not unusual for it to overcome the strongest economic
pressure and men without number are willing to endure
poverty and starvation in its behalf. But this unlimited
power of suppression is neither the most striking nor the
most important fact in regard to religion : far more worthy
of note is its infinite power of expression. The faultless
art of Greece is religious art and even attendance at the

INTRODUCTORY 7
theater in that ancient home of beauty was a religious
observance. The supreme poems of human literature, like
the book of Job, are religious poems ; the finest paintings,
like the Sistine Madonna, are religious paintings ; the most
exalted music, like Handel's Messiah, is religious music;
the most immortal literature of any race is in its sacred
books ; and the most sublime architecture is in the temples
and cathedrals. What, then, is more natural than to
suppose that an enduring social democracy will have a
religious basis?
That such is to be the case is the simplest point of
the Simple Gospel. It is the dominant teaching of Jesus
Christ. His heart and mind and soul were full of the
plans and principles of an ideal community; His words
are, in a large measure, an account of the laws and cus
toms of that community ; His parables, usually with defi
nite mention of their purpose, tell what that community
is like. Indeed there would be little left if we removed
from His recorded sayings those that make specific refer
ence to the Kingdom of Heaven.
That Kingdom is the theme of the Sermon on the
Mount. The very first sentence of the sermon asserts
that even poverty is blessedness to those who possess that
State; and the last sentence maintains that the only wise
way to rear the structure of life is to build upon the rock
of the laws and principles of that State. Nothing less
than these principles, as given in the great sermon and
in kindred sayings, ought to be allowed to satisfy the
yearning idealism of those superior souls in our time
who cannot find comfortable breathing space in existing
social conditions. The struggle to improve the general
standards of living must not let up for a moment until
it has won the level of those standards which Jesus Christ
has set for the Kingdom. Revolutions have always either

8 INTRODUCTORY
failed utterly or been very disappointing because they have
set their standards too low and God can be satisfied only
with the highest. The really successful revolution must
be far more radical than any that has yet taken place:
it must make this world give place to the Kingdom of
Heaven. Religion is the only force strong enough to accomplish
this result. For it will never come to pass without the
aid of many unshakable human characters ; and characters
are determined by religion. This fact is either not ac
cepted or lost sight of by, perhaps, the majority of the
more virile minds of the day; and yet the evidence for
it is abundant. We do not depend upon the testimony
of missionaries alone for our knowledge that men reared
in Christian lands and accustomed to the practice of at
least a rudimentary Christian morality have a tendency,
in Heathen lands, after long residence there, to decline
toward Heathen morality. Very few, moreover, of the
men of good morals without religious interest, whose ex
istence all must recognize, do not derive their good in
stincts from religious inheritance. The non-religious,
good man has, almost invariably, religious progenitors.
We may be— indeed every good man must be dismayed
at social conditions in Christian lands : but they are, after
all, far better than in un-Christian lands. The most anti-
Christian, social agitator is not likely to extol the indus
trial conditions of old Japan or China. He must be hope
lessly prejudiced who cannot see that there is some differ
ence to the advantage of those lands where Christianity
is nominally accepted ; and the religious difference, which
is the greatest difference, is something more than a coinci
dence. Religion unquestionably makes character and char
acter at this moment is the supreme need of social progress.
For the modern movement toward social betterment has

INTRODUCTORY 9
a vast amount of more or less worthless excess baggage in
those characterless persons who intellectually have caught
the vision of a more socially just polity, but who are not
willing to do anything about it. "These better conditions
are coming," they say, "but there is no need to be im
patient: the year 1922 is not the year 1972, and you must
not expect the later developments at the earlier time."
But these expected developments cannot arise out of noth
ing, and all progress is accomplished not necessarily by
brutal fighting but never without hard, vigorous striving.
The price of the improved conditions must be paid in
strain and toil and utter sacrifice; and those slackers,
occupying every position from the university professor's
chair to the bookkeeper's stool, who wish the movement
well but offer it no strong support are lukewarm Lao-
diceans, nauseous beyond expression.
But even those who are enthusiastic do not always con
tinue trustworthy, and there never was a time when it
was more commonly believed that every man has his price.
There is no legislature in this country to which great
private interests do not send men or women to corrupt
the professed servants of the public. If the legislator or
office-holder whose corrupted influence is desired wishes
money, it is furnished; if his wife craves social advance
ment, she is advanced; if he can be reached through ad
ministering to his vices and lusts, the evils will be offered
with subtle irresistibility. The whole process, by the way,
is very much facilitated if the person to be corrupted does
all his thinking down on a low, materialistic, crudely
economic plane: because one who conceives of economic
wants as the ultimate wants is the more easily tempted
by economic satisfactions.
Against these very real social dangers there is no surer
prophylactic than a sane, vigorous, religious fervor. That,

10 INTRODUCTORY
if allowed to become effective, will develop men and
women who are without price; and it will give scope
for a social reconstruction on a plane with the great artis
tic, literary and musical expressions of the spiritual genius
of man. The time was never so ripe before as it is to-day
for taking seriously the Simple Gospel.
It is strange that it has not been taken seriously since
the unfortunate experiment of the unsophisticated first
converts to Christianity. With all the unbridled literal
ism in unessentials to which the majority of professing
Christians have always been prone, it is amazing that the
words of Jesus in those matters which were closest to
His heart and which He has put into terms of crystal
clarity should be treated so cavalierly by almost all nomi
nal believers. With all the effort of superb literary and
philosophical genius that has been exerted in imagining
ideal commonwealths, it is inconceivable why human
hearts do not burn at the very mention of the perfectly
ideal and absolutely practicable Commonwealth of God.
Nominal Christian believers, as a rule, it must be ad
mitted, do not believe that it is practicable in this world;
but non-Christian social enthusiasts believe not only that
the more difficult parts of the program for that Common
wealth can be put into actual operation but also that they
must and shall be tried.
Therefore this book pleads that those whose souls are
inspired with an enthusiasm for something very like the
Kingdom of God, come into the fold of Christ ; and that
those, professedly in the fold, who do not burn with a
consuming desire that the Kingdom be established on earth
as it is in Heaven pray that the enlightening Spirit, who
is ever sending messengers with the glad tidings that the
Kingdom is at hand, turn their disobedient hearts to the
wisdom of the just.

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS

BLESSED ARE THE POOR— IN SPIRIT— FOR THEIRS IS THE
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
BLESSED ARE THEY WHO MOURN FOR THEY SHALL BE
COMFORTED. BLESSED ARE THE MEEK FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT
THE EARTH.
BLESSED ARE THEY WHO HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER
RIGHTEOUSNESS 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 THE CHILDREN OF GOD.
BLESSED ARE THEY WHO ARE PERSECUTED FOR RIGHT
EOUSNESS' SAKE FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF
HEAVEN. BLESSED ARE YOU, WHEN MEN SHALL REVILE YOU,
AND PERSECUTE YOU, AND SAY ALL MANNER OF EVIL
AGAINST YOU FALSELY, FOR MY SAKE.
REJOICE, AND EXULT BECAUSE YOUR REWARD IN
HEAVEN IS GREAT; FOR THEY PERSECUTED THE
PROPHETS WHO WERE BEFORE YOU LN THE SAME WAY.
(Matthew V: 3-12.)

CHAPTER II
THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS
ONE could in no way get a better comprehension
of the feeling toward conventional religion main
tained by the more rebellious elements of society
than by listening to some of their songs. He can never
forget it who has once heard a good voice ring out, with
all the venom of intense class hatred, this doggerel : —
"Work aU day;
Live on hay ;
You'll get pie, in the sky, by and by."
To the aroused portion of the proletariat, for the most
part, these words express the whole tenor of the Christian
religion; and while this impression is, no doubt, exagger
ated, it is not made up out of whole cloth. There has
frequently been, and there is to-day, considerable preach
ing, in the name of Christianity, with a view to making
men content under circumstances which shriek to Heaven.
There is more than sufficient reason for supposing that
some industrial Y.M.O.A. establishments receive large
contributions from the dominating local corporations which
expect that these establishments will help to insure in
dustrial contentment on the part of their employees. Hu
man slavery and industrial tyranny have been upheld in
many Christian pulpits. There is a strain, even in the
Sermon on the Mount, which might be tortured into sup
port of this point of view. 13

14 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
Therefore it is very difficult to open a discussion of the
great Sermon without running afoul of this rebellious
attitude. Those to whom the discourse should mean most
are likely to be disaffected at its opening words. For the
Beatitudes with which the sermon begins are full of a
spirit of what might be called other-worldliness, while the
cleanest social consciousness to-day is and ought to be
very much concerned with conditions in this world.
Nevertheless a beginning has to be made and the assur
ance is here given that, however far afield from the cir
cumstances of this present world the discussion may seem
to go, it goes thus far afield primarily with a view to
fetching to this world that which it most sorely lacks.
For that is the whole secret of the dominant thought of
Jesus. He dwelt always in the consciousness of a spiritual
order so infinitely superior to the way of the world that
He frequently called it the Kingdom of Heaven — the
Kingdom above the world: and this is the term which is
used throughout the Sermon on the Mount for the more
common New Testament expression Kingdom of God.
In dwelling upon that Kingdom it is not necessary to
minimize the importance of the future life and the deepest
comforts in the saddest experiences that we are called
upon to endure. But it is very necessary to remember
that the main emphasis of Jesus was upon the need of
bringing the Kingdom of Heaven down to earth. That
is the first object for which He teaches us to pray in His
model prayer, and that is the main purpose for which
He teaches us to live in all His sayings. The great
prophets of His race — His spiritual forbears — were all con
cerned primarily with a social order on this earth in which
the righteousness of the Heavenly King should prevail;
and He speaks even more earnestly to the same effect.
New Testament righteousness begins with a call to re-

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS 15
pentance in preparation for the Kingdom of Heaven which
is close at hand.
So if Jesus had taken a text for His great Sermon,
none would have served better than these constantly reit
erated words of John the Baptist: — "Repent ye, for the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Essentially revolution
ary words, because repentance means a complete change
of heart: and such a change throughout humanity is nec
essary before the justice of God's Kingdom can be estab
lished among us. The world must become radically dif
ferent in order to make the Simple Gospel effective.
Now while the socially discontented, modern minds may
not sympathize thoroughly with the spirit of the Beati
tudes, they at least agree with these opening words of the
Sermon on the Mount in their underlying feeling that the
accepted ways of the world are wrong. Whatever differ
ence there may be between the Gospel and the most ad
vanced, modern, social ideal lies in the fact that the Beati
tudes are more revolutionary than the revolutionists.
Most revolutionary of them all is the first: — "Blessed
are the poor — in spirit — for theirs is the Kingdom of
Heaven." The form in which it is here given is better than the
mere "Blessed are ye poor" of St. Luke's Gospel; and
there is no call to reject it in favor of the Lukan text.
The author of the Third Gospel, as we know from his
treatment of the Second, tended to eliminate qualifying
phrases, and it is more likely that he omitted the words
"in spirit" here than that an early Christian disciple,
in the First Gospel, improved upon the Master's thought.
Mr. Bernard Shaw does not rise above Ibsen — he does
not even comprehend some essentials in Ibsen. No Fran
ciscan ever improved upon St. Francis and no Platonist
ever surpassed Plato. We may safely feel, therefore, that

16 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
no early Christian, in an important matter, improved upon
the words of Christ.
The words "in spirit," then, were in all probability put
into the first Beatitude by Jesus Himself. For blessed
ness does not inhere in the mere fact of being poor. The
poor man who is eating his heart out because he is not
rich is, obviously, not blessed: he is not poor in spirit.
Moreover if there are any rich who are gladly willing to
sacrifice their last cent for the Kingdom (the words of
Jesus do not encourage the belief that there are many),
these are poor in spirit.
For the poor in spirit are those rare, chosen few to
whom material gain is an unimportant consideration.
They have risen above the power of wealth to swerve them
from their ideal course. Just as certain scientists become
so absorbed in the discovery of new truth that sometimes
they have to be dragged to their meals and forced to take
their necessary sleep; or as some artists so lose them
selves in the practice of their art that they are willing
to go half fed and ill clad; so the poor in spirit consider
nothing else important in comparison with the Kingdom
of Heaven. They have the blessedness of an interest so
deep and so consuming that no hardship and no depriva
tion can take away their satisfaction in that interest.
The fact that Jesus calls such devotion blessedness im
plies that He considers the Kingdom well worth all that
can be sacrificed for it: and it is no accident that the
very first sentence of His great sermon makes the King
dom of Heaven all important. For if, having it, the poor
are blessed then this Kingdom is the supreme value in
life. To give it such value is the all controlling purpose
of the teaching of Christ ; and we shall never understand
the Sermon on the Mount at all if we fail to see that this
Kingdom of Heaven which is the first spiritual reality

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS 17
mentioned in it is the central thought of the discourse,
determining the bearing of everything contained in it.
The emphasis here given to this truth could not be
stronger. Possessing the Kingdom of Heaven, even the
poor are blessed. He who has it needs nothing more.
But besides setting forth the paramount importance of
the Kingdom of Heaven, the first Beatitude, in striking
the keynote of the sermon, brings out another extremely
vital point, which is the inestimable worth of human be
ings as such without reference to their social standing,
reputation, or possessions. The opening clause exalts the
poor, calling them blessed. But the poor, having nothing
outside of themselves, must owe their exaltation to their
intrinsic value : and it is in keeping with the entire teach
ing of Jesus that the opening sentence of His supreme
discourse should bring out the infinite worth of the human
soul in itself as well as the exclusive claims of the King
dom of Heaven. The Kingdom is all important because
it is made up of human souls: human souls are priceless
because they are essential parts of the Kingdom.
This truth marks that sharp distinction between the
world and the redeemed which is fundamental in the
Gospel according to St. John. The world does not esteem
the human being above material things: the Kingdom of
God gives to the human soul the highest of all values.
In the courts, in the legislative halls, in Church councils,
material well-being has more weight than human worth:
in the Kingdom of Heaven the really poor are actually
blessed. No more characteristic illustration of this truth can be
given than any of the anti-social decisions of the Supreme
Court of the United States. To mention three typical
cases, there are the Dred Scott decision in favor of chattel
slavery, the decision against the Income Tax, and the one

18 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
against the Federal Child Labor Law. Before that court
the welfare of the ordinary human being is almost certain
to be found secondary to that of vested, financial interests ;
and the reason is simpler than we generally assume. It
is not merely, as the average person who tries to explain
this fact believes, because the court is composed of old
men, hopelessly bound to precedent. That is, of course,
approximately true but the same holds of most of the best
legal opinion. The Supreme Court is very learned and
competent and its decisions are the best that can be given
in America. From the point of view of the Kingdom of
Heaven the difficulty is not with the court which inter
prets the law as it is : the difficulty is with the law itself.
The most characteristic modern law has as a basic prin
ciple the supremacy of property over manhood.
This principle, by the way, is fundamental in all the
conservative political parties of Anglo-Saxon nations. On
the other hand its absence from the polity of the Kingdom,
as set forth in the New Testament, justifies the claim for
the Christian Gospel that it is thoroughly democratic.
That Gospel is radically opposed to all law which sets
things above persons and consequently to all political con
servatism. The flag of the Kingdom of Heaven is red,
symbolizing the common blood of human brotherhood —
the saving Blood, if you will, of our socially outcast Elder
Brother: and human law at its best has no more scathing
critic than the great Apostle of the Faith who said: —
"Because ye are sons God has sent forth the spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father."
This all means that the great distinction between the
world and the Kingdom lies in the exaltation, by the
Kingdom, of spiritual values. Not that the Kingdom of
Heaven does not look toward a just arrangement of
material conditions as essential: but such an arrangement

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS 19
will necessarily take place when spiritual forces reign.
The Gospel conceives of all socially just, material organi
zation as deriving its very life from spiritual sources.
It is in this supremacy of the spiritual that the nature
of blessedness lies. Because of that supremacy all last
ing satisfaction comes in the spiritual realm ; and there is
no deprivation in this world which can destroy this satis
faction. Thus the second Beatitude, to him who believes it,
brings a joy beyond any conceivable material satisfaction.
— "Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be com
forted." Whatever material satisfaction there may be in life
is, at its best, brief and fleeting. The richest life, materi
ally, is soon over: but no good life disappears without
leaving those who mourn. They feel the spiritual values
in him for whom they mourn: and Jesus was confident
that the spiritual values are the abiding values in life.
'Blessed are they that mourn for their hearts yearn for
the assured, permanent realities.'
This confidence in the permanence of spiritual realities
is followed, in the third Beatitude, by an assertion of their
power. Spiritual strength is the ultimate form of strength.
— "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the
earth." Probably there is nothing more difficult than this for
the average man to believe. The Christian Church, as a
whole, has never taken the assertion seriously and eccle
siastical authority is not notable, primarily, for its meek
ness. In this matter, however, as in so many others, the
Church but reflects the attitude of the world: and in the
modern world nothing is so discounted as meekness. It
is no accident that the philosophy of the self-assertive

20 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
Superman is the peculiar philosophy of our time; and
Nietzsche's doctrine is the natural outcome of a civiliza
tion which, whatever its ideals may be, conducts its activ
ities largely on the principle that might makes right. The
ambitions of the house of Hohenzollern were only one
phase of the prevailing mood ; and the typical American
trust magnate is a far better example of the Nietzschean
principle than is any European prince. Even in absolute
monarchy there is always some leaven of noblesse oblige,
but in the typical American commercial and industrial
mastery there is no redeeming grace. Lloyd's "Wealth
and Commonwealth" (Harpers, 1894) is an old book now,
but no one has yet attempted to gainsay its copious docu
mentary proof that in the early development of the Amer
ican business trusts the property, the constitutional rights,
and even the lives of those who stood in the way of that
development were ruthlessly disregarded. But as this
matter must come up again in a later chapter, we need
only note here the remoteness of meekness from power
in our everyday thought. The modern, boastfully exag
gerating business advertisement is the most characteristic
form in which our age expresses itself.
Nevertheless although the ultimate triumph of meek
ness must, from our lack of experience, be now largely a
matter of faith there are certain reasons for believing
that the third Beatitude is true. The British Empire,
for example, is probably the most successful large scale
government that the world has known. To be sure, like
all great empires hitherto, it has used hideous, brutal
force to a large extent in building itself up : but there is
nothing peculiar to the British Empire in that. The
peculiar characteristic in British imperial rule — the prin
ciple that seems to distinguish it from all other imperial
government — is what may be called governmental meek-

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS 21
ness: the real strength of the British Empire is the mar
velous way in which the central authority has allowed
such broad local self-expression without exerting too irri
tating a pressure from outside. This meekness has been,
undoubtedly, the Empire's greatest strength and the im
perial government is weakest where the meekness is least
in evidence.
On the other hand undue self-assertion is weakness.
Violence is always lack of self-control, but self-control is
the acme of power. Violence always wrecks the cause
of the revolutions that resort to it no matter how just
the revolutionary principles may be. It is forever in
compatible with intelligent mastery.
The great scholar in his mastery of a profound subject
is always meek : he does not assume authority : he prefers
to give a modest opinion for which he thinks there is con
siderable evidence. Even the great business men who, in
these days, exert compelling influence over legislatures
and courts are inclined to be soft-spoken, quiet and calm.
The modern gentleman is infinitely stronger because of his
gentleness than was his forbear who drew pistol or sword
at the slightest insult.
But if this be true there is a suggestion in this strength
of meekness for the successful accomplishment of those
revolutionary ideals which formerly have failed because
of their use of violence. The strike can be and more
often than is commonly supposed is an example of effec
tive meekness. The violence of strikes is always exagger
ated by the local press, which is usually controlled by the
persons against whom the strike is directed; and the fre
quent brutality of these persons is not dwelt upon. But
in view of the fact that even in the least justifiable strike,
no matter how condemnable its methods, the strikers are
always on the side of higher standards of living while

22 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
those against whom they strike are always opposing such
standards, we can see that the strike is capable of be
coming the supreme, social example of that passive re
sistance to evil which is the essence of the whole life
and teaching of Jesus Christ. For the successful strike
cannot depend upon violence and in any strike the essen
tial feature is the failure to exert force rather than the
use of it.
In another very real sense, moreover, meekness is the
absolute prerequisite to any successful opposition to indus
trial oppression. For there being no likelihood what
ever, as will be indicated later, that industrial masters
will right social wrongs on their own initiative, the log
ical means of righting them is through organized labor.
That kind of organization has improved greatly the aver
age standards of living among the workers; and many a
man who owes his good wages and his good conditions of
labor to the organization of his craft refuses to give
allegiance to his craft organization. Such a man becomes
a great hindrance to labor organization because of his lack
of meekness. He sets his own individual interests above
those of his fellow workers and by blatantly upholding
against the common good his personal right of contract,
he lowers the standard of living which the organization
is trying to elevate.
The so-called freedom of the individual, by the way,
in this matter is one of those meaningless notions, like
the false national honor which commercial interests use
through the Jingo Press to promote wars that are profita
ble to them. In a large majority of cases under modern
conditions the laborer's freedom of contract amounts to
no more than to take the job offered at the wages offered
or to go hungry. Such freedom of contract, with all its
opposition to meekness, helps no one and has as its natural

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS 23
outcome pure destructiveness — or as the Bible terms it
"the abomination of desolation."
It is not hard to see, then, that the heart of the world's
difficulties is the widespread self-assertion which is in
compatible with meekness. The national self-glorification
demanding territory and recognition to which its only
claim is its brutal power of enforcing its will, the business
expansion at the cost of others — that commercial avarice
which is one of the most fruitful causes of war, and the
workman's holding out for his individual privileges
against the common good are all scarlet sins against the
Kingdom of Heaven. But those who are meek lose them
selves in the common good; instead of standing out in
self-exaltation against each other they sacrifice themselves
in cooperating for the general welfare; and in this co
operation lies inevitably certain mastery. The meek shall
inherit the earth.
This line of thought is bound up with that of a later
Beatitude which may be properly considered here —
"Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the
sons of God."
The surest way of making peace in an industrial civili
zation is by the use of the passive resistance just men
tioned. If the world's manual workers, in any crisis
when war threatens, combine with a view to refusing to
turn the wheels of industry until the nations come to a
sane settlement of their differences, war cannot be carried
on: and no Christian person, really willing to lose him
self for Christ's sake, can look forward with anything but
eager yearning to a time when the combined host of the
world's toilers shall make peace by refusing to lend their
efforts to the prosecution of war.
Nor is it extravagant to hope that world peace may
come in this way. National jealousies arid commercial

24 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
ambitions are, if unbridled, absolutely certain ultimately
to plunge those who uphold them into war. It is the first
principle of group psychology that national armament is
bound to produce national aggression; and the primary
incentive to national armament is the work of the army
and navy leagues of the various countries, which leagues
throughout the world are controlled by the corporations
and trusts which produce the munitions of war. But the
men who do the hard labor of the world have every interest
to prevent war: and the certain prevention of it is in
their power. God wants the toilers of the world to make
peace and when they realize their sonship to Him peace
will be assured. "Blessed are the peacemakers for they
shall be called the sons of God."
But to those who work for a great cause like world
peace there is sure to come a certain amount of persecu
tion. There has been no considerable movement in his
tory toward human betterment that has not been misrep
resented, slandered, and persecuted by the respectable
Scribes and Pharisees of the time in which that movement
arose. The Christian Church of the early saints and mar
tyrs, for example, was supposed by the intelligent citizens
of Rome to be guilty of the most repulsive, conceivable
enormities, even to the sacrificing and eating of young chil
dren • and modern intelligence has advanced very little
in appreciating the ideals of social progress as maintained
by the so-called lower classes. After allowing for propa
ganda, deliberate misrepresentation, and pardonable be
lief that the work of the industrial detective (to be con
sidered later) is actual violence on the part of organized
labor, there may remain some violence of the type so
eagerly accepted as real by the hysteria of social con
servatism: industrial conditions have been and are such

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS 25
as would naturally produce violent rebellion on the part
of some individual sufferers and social groups: but the
general feeling that all social unrest or the typical social
unrest is cruel, bloodthirsty and violent is of a piece with
the Roman misinterpretation of early Christianity. Years
ago Mr. H. G. Wells, in "The Future in America," made
the intelligent portion of the English-reading public
chuckle at the average American understanding of the
doctrines of social revolt : but the bourgeois American still
cherishes his favorite bugbears of a socialism which teaches
the equal division of wealth, a syndicalism which believes
in rapine and murder, and an Anarchy which practices
violence. This merely indicates that misrepresentation and slan
der are inherent in the group psychology of the human
race. But, to turn at once to the closing Beatitude, Jesus
says that to he persecuted and slandered in a righteous
cause is to be blessed. "Blessed are they that have been
persecuted for righteousness' sake for theirs is the King
dom of Heaven."
Just as those who suffer deprivation are blessed because
they have the Kingdom of Heaven, so are those who suffer
persecution. Human nature is cast in a heroic mold, and
every war proves that men are glad to endure the hardest
trials in what they consider to be a good cause. The
pacificism of Jesus is in keeping with this spirit; it
is not a weak, effeminate cringing; it realizes that all
progress is a hard, exacting, manhood-straining effort.
But with all its clear consciousness of the bitter persecu
tion which it must necessarily encounter, it knows that
there is no cause comparable to the advancement of the
Kingdom of Heaven and that there is no satisfaction com
parable to that of giving all in this cause. Any one who

26 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
has been, willingly, even slightly persecuted in a good
cause knows that there is a thrill of satisfaction in such
persecution, impossible to describe.
This is connected with what Jesus means by the reward
in Heaven which is discussed at length in Chapter VI.
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute
you and say all manner of evil against yon falsely on
account of Me: rejoice and exult for great is your re
ward in Heaven."
One may remain on the earth and still enjoy a con
suming satisfaction in things above and beyond the earth.
No great cause has ever succeeded without men of such
a mold, and the progress of social justice depends upon
those for whom social justice is the all-consuming passion
of their lives. Their whole satisfaction will lie in giving
themselves up to this passion and in this satisfaction is
their reward. But since this thought is to be developed
more fully later on, we need not go into detail here.
In fact the Beatitudes, for the most part, are merely
preludes giving themes which are developed later in the
sermon : and this is peculiarly the case with the Beatitudes
that have so far been left unmentioned.
For instance there is the "Blessed are they who hunger
and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled."
The prevailing note of the entire sermon is struck here.
The abiding satisfaction of the soul in righteousness is a
dominant theme in the whole discourse. Righteousness
is the only lasting way of life and it is the only perma
nently filling nourishment of which one can partake.
Again "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain
mercy" is a theme developed later. The words of Jesus
in various places run along this line which for want of
a better term may be called spiritual reciprocity. Like
begets like in the spiritual realm: and all through the

THE NATURE OF BLESSEDNESS 27
New Testament we find such teaching as that, on the
sinister side, they who take the sword shall perish by
the sword or that they who condemn shall be condemned,
and, on the bright side, that those who forgive shall be
forgiven and the merciful shall obtain mercy.
But the most beautiful form of like reaching unto like
is given in the remaining Beatitude, "Blessed are the pure
in heart for they shall see God." We can appreciate only
that to which our souls are akin. In art, literature, and
music the purer our perceptions become, the deeper is our
understanding. Obviously the purer our hearts become,
the more we shall understand of God.

The Beatitudes, then, preface with marvelous felicity
the great discourse which is to follow. They preclude
any thought of the Sermon on the Mount being a mere
compilation of moral and ethical precepts. They are
based upon the profoundest possible spiritual conceptions.
They take for granted a wide-reaching doctrine of God
and Man. They find human souls as such infinitely
precious — capable of sonship to God. They look toward,
and cannot be understood without reference to the estab
lishment of an ideal commonwealth which is called the
Kingdom of Heaven and which shall transform and radi
cally revolutionize the accepted ways of the world.
These ideas are all carried out in the sermon proper.
It is primarily an exposition of the laws, principles, and
methods — the working polity, of the Kingdom of Heaven.

THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD

YOU ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH; BUT IF THE SALT
HAVE LOST ITS SAVOR, WHEREWITH CAN ITS SALTINESS
BE RESTORED? IT IS GOOD FOR NOTHING FURTHER EX
CEPT TO BE CAST OUT AND TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT BY
MEN. YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. A CITY CANNOT
BE HID WHEN IT LIES ON A HILL: AND THEY DO NOT
BURN A LAMP AND SET IT UNDER A MEASURE BUT UPON
A LAMPSTAND, AND IT GIVES LIGHT TO ALL IN THE
HOUSE. SO LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE BEFORE MEN THAT
THEY MAY SEE YOUR BEAUTIFUL DEEDS AND GLORIFY
YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.
DO NOT SUPPOSE THAT I HAVE COME TO DESTROY THE
LAW OR THE PROPHETS: I HAVE NOT COME TO DESTROY
BUT TO FULFILL. FOR OF A TRUTH I SAY TO YOU THAT
UNTIL HEAVEN AND EARTH PASS AWAY, NOT ONE IOTA
OR ONE DOT SHALL PASS FROM THE LAW UNTIL ALL HAS
BEEN FULFILLED. THEREFORE WHOEVER BREAKS ONE
OF THE LEAST OF THESE (following?) COMMANDMENTS
AND TEACHES MEN SO, HE SHALL BE CALLED LEAST IN
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN; BUT WHOEVER DOES THEM
AND TEACHES THEM, HE SHALL BE CALLED GREAT IN
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. FOR I SAY TO YOU THAT IF
YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS DOES NOT GO FAR BEYOND THAT
OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES, YOU SHALL NOT GO
INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
(Matthew V: 13-20.)

CHAPTER III
THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD
THE prefatory Beatitudes are followed by a brief
introduction to the sermon proper. In this intro
duction Jesus makes his approach to His hearers,
and the nature of that approach should be closely studied
by any one who wishes to know the mind of Christ. For
unless He was a poseur or a charlatan, these introductory
words show what He thought about His followers and
about Himself.
As to what He thought about His followers something
was said in the last chapter. But it is brought out even
more clearly here. "You are the salt of the earth. You
are the light of the world."
From the point of view of those, at the time, who loved
the chief seats in the synagogues, and from the point of
view of many of those in the Church to-day who love pre
eminence, these words are not very satisfactory. For
Jesus was speaking to an uncouth crowd of one of the,
apparently, most insignificant types of peasantry in the
whole Roman Empire — poorly clad, badly housed, ill fed,
unlearned, and not particularly clean. To an alert, up-to-
date American they would give little but a feeling of
loathing disgust. More advanced and prepossessing mem
bers of the same nation had been called by Cicero "the
odium of the human race," and here was the despised
Jew at his worst.
But whether Jesus was thinking of this crowd pri
marily as Jews, it would be hard to say. If He were His
31

32 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
words would be fully justified. For it is to the Jewish
race that we owe the vision of the Kingdom of God among
men — the disturbing ideal of social justice which is the
only element that gives flavor to the common life of the
world and makes it palatable. And to the same race we
owe the strongest and clearest spiritual light that has yet
shone. For the two great modern religions, Christianity
and Mohammedanism, received their kindling light from
Judaism. So that in this very special sense the Jewish
people are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
But true as this interpretation would be, the words
taken in connection with the passage in which they lie
demand a broader interpretation; which takes us at once
to the heart of the Simple Gospel. The point under con
sideration was touched upon in dealing with the first
Beatitude but it is so fundamental to the entire Christian
system that it cannot be overemphasized. The sermon
reiterates the idea and any interpretation of the sermon
must do the same.
It is merely this, that the people — the disgustingly
common people are the supreme values of the Kingdom
of Heaven. This is not the belief of the world, and even
many of those discontented with the present course of the
world put economic considerations before anything else.
We have already noticed that modern law, with its exalta
tion of property and vested interests, does not take this
point of view; and we shall see later that business — the
consuming activity of our time, to which the law some
times seems merely the obsequious handmaid — has as its
central motive the anti-Christian principle. Nevertheless
in the teaching of Jesus the human personality is put
far above all other considerations in the world. Salt and
light are the elements which give most meaning to the
circumstances of everyday existence and human persons

THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD 33
are the essence of the meaning of the Kingdom of
Heaven.
Now if we take into consideration all the words of
Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount and other discourses as
well, it will be perfectly clear that the secret of the worth
of the human personality is its capacity for service.
"Whosoever would become great among you let him be
your servant." "He that saveth his life shall lose it, but
he that loseth his life, for My sake, shall save it."
This is a truth that humanity instinctively recognizes
even though the greater part of the world's activity fails
to conform to this motive. We give our sincerest homage
to those who have served most and have lost themselves
in the common good — to the poets who have given us light,
to the inventors who have lessened our toil, to the musi
cians who have given us joy, and to the statesmen who,
refusing to be corporations' men, have enlarged our oppor
tunities. In opposition to this way of estimating human worth
our money-grubbing age has set up the most definite imagi
nable philosophy. Nietzsche may have had absurd notions
as to some of the details of the Christian system but he
is eternally right in representing his central idea as dia
metrically opposed to the central idea of Christ. The
Superman must not on any account lose himself ; he must
serve his individual interests to the full no matter
what nor whom he has to trample and crush in the
process. But Nietzsche, like all great philosophers, is merely an
interpreter of the spirit of his time: and, while more
violent, his philosophy is of a piece with Ibsen's unbridled
individualism. Both of these masterly interpreters of
modernity went insane — perhaps because their dominating
thought was out of keeping with the saner realities of

34 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
human nature ; and yet that thought was in perfect har
mony with the actual trend of the life of their time.
However, in understanding the Nietzschean age we must,
as was noted in the last chapter, always remember that
far more typical than Prussian or other militarism and
naval megalomania is American business, with its all-
consuming trusts. But if any one still doubts the literal
accuracy of this contention, he will find more than suffi
cient proof later on when Mammon is considered.
The point here to be noted is that the teaching of Jesus
is utterly opposed to this characteristic development of the
spirit of our age. He gives even the least prepossessing
person, simply because of his personality, full recognition
in the Kingdom of Heaven: and the meaning of exalted
personality is found in self-forgetting service.
The nature of salt is to lose itself in that which it
savors, and the condition of light is the consumption of
substance for the good of those around it. Jesus urges
strength of character, therefore, in those whom he calls
the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Do not
be salt without savor; do not let your light he dim; give
yourself whole-heartedly to the service of others.
But there are circumstances which sometimes prevent
those who would gladly serve from rendering service. It
would be impossible to say whether these circumstances
occurred to the mind of Christ at this point but it is
not improbable that they did. In any case it is a legiti
mate deduction from the words here that everything which
tends to take the strength from the salt of the earth or
to dim the light of the world must be destroyed when
the Kingdom comes. The anti-social conditions of the
world of the Superman must give place to the social jus
tice of the Heavenly Realm. The devitalizing evils of
unemployment and overemployment, of indifference and

THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD 35
exploitation, of insanitation and illiteracy, and all the
other numberless unsavory and darkening conditions that
beset the common life must pass away. The salt must
keep its savor and the light must not be obstructed.

So much for Jesus' thought in regard to His followers :
but there is, in these introductory words, also a somewhat
neglected suggestion with regard to His thought about
Himself. This discussion will not endeavor to advance
a Christology — we have Christologies enough already —
and yet, if we consider the time and the place, the un
limited authority which the Master is about to assume
here is astounding. To His hearers — and He was brought
up in the same conditions with them — the Old Testament
Law was the most inviolably sacred thing conceivable. It
was the eternal, unchangeable expression of the Divine
WiU. But Jesus is about to nullify whole sections of the Old
Testament Law. He is going to set aside basic principles
of that Law and substitute higher principles. His law
giving is different from that of Moses which is repre
sented as intermediated from God. Jesus gives the new
Law on His own authority : — "You have heard that it has
been said to them of old time (i.e. the Old Testament
says) but I say unto you." No wonder that His hearers
were struck with astonishment : they had never imagined
that a man would dare speak with authority and not as
the scribes.
Yet He approaches the New Law with caution and with
tact. He endeavors to avoid giving any shock that will
spoil the effect of His words. "Do not think that I have
come to destroy the Law and the Prophets. I have not
come to destroy but to fulfill."

36 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
Thus He relieves the shock with the promise of some
thing constructive. He is going to destroy the details of
the Law but merely to supplant them with something
vastly better. He is going to fulfill by filling in with
elements in which the Law and the Prophets have been
lacking. But here there arises for the extreme literalist a sore
perplexity. How shall we reconcile with what is to follow
it, the next sentence, — "Of a truth I say to you until
Heaven and earth pass away not one iota or one dot shall
pass away from the Law till all be fulfilled" ? Almost
immediately He is going to change the Old Testament
law of divorce, He is going to annul the Old Testament
law in regard to oaths, and He is going to expunge com
pletely the Old Testament law of "an eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth." Obviously there passes away in
these changes something more than an iota or a dot. Here,
apparently, is a glaring inconsistency.
It may be due to the misquoting of the actual words
of the Saviour. When these words were written the feel
ing for literal accuracy in quotation had not yet developed
in the human consciousness and they may represent merely
the impression of a hearer who thought, because Jesus
said that He was not going to destroy anything vital, that
He meant that He was not going to destroy any detail
of the Old Testament Law. Jesus may not have gone so
far as to say "not one iota or one dot."
Or, in the mood of the modern evolutionary thought,
it is possible to say that the laws which Jesus changed or
annulled had been fulfilled already. They had served
their purpose in a less advanced age and, having been thus
fulfilled, had passed out of usefulness. This explanation
does not fit in perfectly with the ideas current at the
time but it is a possible interpretation.

THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD 37
But the demands of literalism can be satisfied by finding
an abrupt change in this paragraph from the old Law
and the Prophets to His own new Law taking place in
the second sentence : — "Not one iota or dot shall pass away
from the Law." It may be something more than an ex-
egetical quibble to call attention to the fact that in this
sentence Jesus does not repeat the expression "the Law
and the Prophets" — His usual term for the Old Testa
ment: and "the Law" here may mean the ideal Law in
the heart and mind of God — the Law which is the center
of Christ's own consciousness and whose principles, so
infinitely above the written law, He is enunciating.
At all events there occurs somewhere in this paragraph
a transition from the thought of the old law to the idea
of the new law. The next sentence speaks of "these"
commandments, in some manuscripts clearly indicating the
ones that He is about to give ; and the last sentence con
demns that righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees
which is based entirely on the Old Testament Law.
His own Law He makes supreme. "Whoever shall
break one of the least of these commandments and shall
teach men so, he shall be called least in the Kingdom of
Heaven; but whoever shall do them and teach them, he
shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven."
Here as everywhere in the words of Jesus the Kingdom
is uppermost ; and there is a clear indication of the nature
of citizenship in the Heavenly Realm. For this is one
of the many passages which make it evident that Jesus
made citizenship in His Ideal State dependent upon a
person's fitness of character to live according to the laws
of that State — his ability to conduct himself according to
the moral ideals of the Sermon on the Mount.
This is in accordance with what all students of political
institutions now see — that democracies are possible only

38 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
as the people in them are fit for self-government. De
mocracy in the long run depends absolutely upon human
character: and democracy to-day is weak because so many
of its citizens lack the will power to put the commonwealth
above individual wealth. This is such a common weak
ness that we have to be reminded constantly that the King
dom must be put first ; for if it do not come first it must
certainly fail. A kingdom that does not hold our pri
mary allegiance is not really a Kingdom.
Now it must be admitted that kingdom is not a term
which harmonizes thoroughly to-day with our idea of an
ideal commonwealth. But the petty cavilling at the term
which is now rather prevalent is hardly creditable to the
fine minds who carry it on. Kingdom as used by Jesus
and in the general usage of the time was a conventional
term, and Ferrero tells us that the Romans still thought
of their country as a republic in spite of the imperial
claims. Men of the days when Jesus preached would use
the term with as little reference to the ruler as has the
modern liberal Englishman when he speaks of the empire.
As we have already noted the term as given in the Sermon
on the Mount does not mention a Ruling Person: it is
always the Kingdom, or, if you will, the polity of Heaven.
And yet it must be admitted that throughout the New
Testament the expression Kingdom of God is more fre
quent. But according to all New Testament teaching
about God His Kingdom must be radically different from
the world's conception of a kingdom. If the Sermon on
the Mount teaches nothing else, it surely teaches that
personality is supreme in the Kingdom — that the Heav
enly polity is based on personal and not in the slightest
degree on official relationships. The peace-loving, peace-
creating citizens of this Kingdom are blessed because they
shall be called (with rhetorical precision) the sons of God.'

THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD 39
His ideal Kingdom, polity, rule, or commonwealth exists
in the Heavens — in the spiritual realm above and beyond
the world; and it can be brought down to earth only by
exalted, highly developed persons who, realizing their
sonship to the Divine Father, work out the essentially
democratic family organization of the brotherhood of man.
The Elder Brother may speak conventionally of the King
dom but He never anywhere dwells upon God as King : He
invariably speaks of Him as Father. There is no autoc
racy — that is incompatible with the idea of a Supreme
Person. Meekness is blessedness and the Supreme Per
son is surely a blessed Person : He does not violently com
pel those who make up His commonwealth to do His
will: He appeals to their personal devotion to Him.
Therefore one's degree of personal fitness for life in the
family of God is the only basis of distinction therein.
He who best conforms his conduct and his teaching to its
principles is greatest in its life.
On the other hand he who does not conform his life
and his teaching to those principles shall be called least
in the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus we are again con
fronted with the eternal distinction between the Kingdom
and the world. For those who torture the obvious mean
ings of the Sermon on the Mount out of all resemblance
to what they actually are secure the highest esteem in
this world. On the contrary no one is likely to become
influential in a worldly Church if he urges upon the
world's leaders meekness as the way to power, or if he
advocates the turning of the other cheek and the giving
of the cloak to the purloiner of the coat. Success in a
worldly Church is not a little dependent upon a clergy
man's ability gracefully to make the Syrian household
needle assume the proportions of Cleopatra's needle and
to emaciate camels to the vanishing point.

40 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
If we were not so accustomed to this process of tamper
ing with the Lord's clear meaning it would shock us be
yond expression. Ruskin was well within the bounds of
sober judgment when, referring to the same process in his
day, he said: — "I know no previous instance in history
of a nation's establishing a systematic disobedience to the
first principles of its professed religion."
This modern hypocrisy is considerably worse than that
which Jesus condemned in the Scribes and Pharisees of
old because, as the next chapter will indicate, the prin
ciples laid down in the Sermon on the Mount as the foun
dation of Christian righteousness do not admit of the
ancient legal chicanery by which the Pharisees made the
letter of the law defeat its spirit. The Scribes and Phari
sees, however, are the nearest New Testament parallel
to the modern respectability who play fast and loose with
the teachings of Jesus while they call Him Lord. The
socially prominent, highly esteemed, self-satisfied leaders
in modern life are still eager to make the letter of the
law (even the law which, strictly speaking, has no letter)
exclude, to their own advantage, actual justice; and they
are still unwilling to follow the instructions of Christ in
the more eternal righteousness. They are almost uncon
scious of the blasphemy with which they set aside the clear
meaning of the Master's words for what they think that
meaning ought to be. They are, for the most part, less
religiously inclined, less generous (tithing would be un
speakable to them), and not so strictly moral as were the
original Scribes and Pharisees: but with regard to self-
esteem and smug content with their own way of life there
is little choice between the respectability of Jesus' time
and that of to-day.
Therefore the closing words of the introduction to the
Great Discourse apply, if anything, with more fitness to

THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD 41
the respectability of our own time than to that which Jesus
had immediately in mind. These words are even more
withering when we remember the laudatory words with
which, at the beginning of the introduction, Christ ap
proached the vulgar crowd. Now as well as then the
world's accepted respectability is beneath the standard of
the Kingdom. Although it considers itself to be these, it
is not the salt of the earth nor the light of the world.
"Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the
Scribes and Pharisees (the bourgeoise respectability), ye
shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
The underlying idea here is frequently given in the
sayings of Jesus. "The last shall be first and the first
last" is a fundamental fact of the Kingdom in its radical,
uncompromising opposition to the world. The Scribes and
Pharisees were the highest type of respectability among
the Jewish people and yet they are called unfit for citi
zenship in the Kingdom of Heaven : but, according to the
thought developed in the following passage and treated in
the next chapter, it is the underlying spirit and not the
literal interpretation that is most important, and wherever
the inadequate way of life characteristic of the Pharisees
prevails to-day it comes under the same condemnation.
The social bearing of this truth, then, is at present tre
mendous. It is closely connected with the permanent ele
ment in Karl Marx's very insufficient theory of social or
ganization. To many of us who try to keep socially awake
the scientific determination of the exact amount of wealth
which each producer creates is not conceivable. To sep
arate what brain contributes from what brawn produces
is the simplest of many difficulties of similar nature. But
even if it were scientifically possible to determine approx
imately the amount of wealth produced by each worker,
that would not give a just basis for rewarding the worker.

42 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
In fact, from the point of view of human justice, it would
be only a little in advance of the present injustice in
economic remuneration. So far as the modern process is
remunerative at all it rewards lavishly, to the diminution
of all other economic return, that unsocial power, most
unequally distributed among men, of individual financial
acquisitiveness. For just as this power of acquiring
wealth is unequally distributed throughout mankind, with
out any relation to the finer human qualities, so the power
of actual creation or production of wealth is unequally
distributed; and if economic reward were given on that
basis many men of good will would still be penalized
through no fault of their making. Bellamy long ago saw
that conscientious effort is the only just basis of economic
remuneration. Nevertheless, even if we do not follow all of Marx's
quasi-scientific vagaries, we ought not to forget that he
was very close to a great moral truth ; which is that a vast
number of idle persons are living on the wealth that others
produce, consuming in extravagant quantities that to which
they have earned no right. These parasites come first in
this world: they are everywhere exalted, praised, deferred
to, and fawned upon. It is almost true that the less service
they render the higher is their standing in the general
estimation; for the upper classes, even in the American
democracy, draw a more or less sharp line of demarcation
between those who have made their money, no matter how
much it may be, and those who have inherited theirs;
the higher standing, of course, being given to those who
have done least to deserve it.
Then there is the further very disheartening but quite
obvious fact that, in America at least, the poorest service
especially in higher matters usually receives the greatest
financial return. Our later consideration of Mammon will

THE APPROACH TO THE CROWD 43
help to explain the fact and here we need only to note it.
Splendid work receives little material reward, cheap work
is exorbitantly remunerative. The best selling novel is
seldom a great piece of literature: the really best novel
frequently has small sales. While the creator of one of
our most vapid, so-called, comic sections in the newspapers
(Mutt and Jeff!) was receiving many thousands of dollars
a year, Blakelock, a really great painter, was in an asylum
largely because his poverty had driven him frantic. Mac-
Dowell, one of America's very few musicians of rank,
could hardly keep body and soul together when the per
petrator of "After the Ball" was making a fortune out
of his jingling doggerel.
But, thank God, these first in this world are last in
the Kingdom because there, as we have just noted, service
is the basis of esteem. The greatest there is not exalted
by attracting to himself the wealth that others have pro
duced ; he is exalted by becoming the servant of all. This
matter will come up again but it must be obvious already
that economically the first shall have to be last and the
last first if a socially just commonwealth is ever established
in the world.

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM

YOU HAVE HEARD THAT IT WAS SAID TO THE ANCIENTS
—"THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER, AND WHOEVER DOES
MURDER SHALL BE LIABLE TO THE JUDGMENT." BUT I
SAY TO YOU THAT EVERY ONE WHO IS ANGRY WITH HIS
BROTHER SHALL BE LIABLE TO THE JUDGMENT; AND
WHOEVER SAYS TO HIS BROTHER "BONEHEAD" SHALL BE
LIABLE TO THE COUNCIL; AND WHOEVER SAYS "YOU
FOOL" SHALL BE LIABLE TO THE HELL OF FIRE. THERE
FORE IF YOU BRING YOUR GIFT TO THE ALTAR AND
THERE REMEMBER THAT YOUR BROTHER HAS SOME
THING AGAINST YOU, LEAVE YOUR GIFT THERE BEFORE
THE ALTAR AND GO AWAY. BE RECONCILED TO YOUR
BROTHER FIRST AND THEN COME AND OFFER YOUR GIFT.
AGREE WITH YOUR OPPONENT QUICKLY WHILE YOU
ARE WITH HIM ON THE ROAD IN ORDER THAT YOUR OP
PONENT MAY NOT DELIVER YOU OVER TO THE JUDGE,
AND THE JUDGE HAND YOU OVER TO THE SHERIFF, AND
YOU BE THROWN INTO JAIL. BELIEVE ME YOU WILL NOT
COME OUT FROM THERE TILL YOU HAVE HANDED OUT
THE LAST CENT.
YOU HAVE HEARD THAT IT WAS SAID "THOU SHALT
NOT COMMIT ADULTERY": BUT I TELL YOU THAT EVERY
ONE WHO LOOKS AT A WOMAN WITH A FEELING OF LUST
HAS COMMITTED ADULTERY WITH HER ALREADY IN HIS
HEART. AND IF YOUR RIGHT EYE CAUSE YOU TO STUM
BLE, TEAR IT OUT AND THROW IT AWAY FROM YOU: IT
IS PREFERABLE FOR YOU THAT YOU LOSE ONE OF YOUR
MEMBERS RATHER THAN THAT YOUR WHOLE BODY BE
THROWN INTO HELL. AND IF YOUR RIGHT HAND CAUSE
YOU TO STUMBLE, CUT IT OFF AND THROW IT AWAY FROM
YOU: IT IS PREFERABLE THAT ONE OF YOUR MEMBERS
BE LOST THAN THAT YOUR WHOLE BODY BE THROWN
INTO HELL.
AND IT WAS SAID "WHOEVER DIVORCES HIS WIFE, LET
HIM GIVE HER A BILL OF DIVORCE": BUT I SAY TO YOU
THAT EVERY ONE WHO DIVORCES HIS WIFE, EXCEPT FOR
UNFAITHFULNESS, MAKES HER COMMIT ADULTERY: AND
WHOEVER MARRIES A WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN DIVORCED
(perhaps 'has divorced herself), COMMITS ADULTERY. '
AGAIN YOU HAVE HEARD THAT IT WAS SAID TO THE
ANCIENTS "THOU SHALT NOT SWEAR FALSELY BUT SHALL
PERFORM TO THE LORD THINE OATHS": BUT I SAY TO YOU
DO NOT SWEAR AT ALL: NOT BY HEAVEN BECAUSE IT IS
GOD'S THRONE; AND NOT BY THE EARTH BECAUSE IT
IS THE STOOL OF HIS FEET; AND NOT BY JERUSALEM
BECAUSE IT IS THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING; AND NOT
BY YOUR HEAD BECAUSE YOU ARE UNABLE TO MAKE ONE
HAIR WHITE OR BLACK. BUT LET YOUR ASSERTION BE
"YES YES, NO NO"; FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN THESE
IS FROM THE EVIL. (Matthew V: 21-37.)

CHAPTER IV
THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM
WE come now to the main body of the Sermon:
and it is very fitting that a discourse dealing
primarily with the Kingdom of Heaven should
give, at the outset, the fundamental principles of that
Kingdom. Therefore the introduction is followed by an
extremely simple exposition of the Heavenly law.
That law contemplates an inestimably higher type of
righteousness, as we have just noted, than the type main
tained by the Scribes and Pharisees in strict obedience
to their law — the Old Testament Law under its rabbini
cal interpretations. Having told His followers that in
order to attain citizenship in the Heavenly Realm they
must acquire a better quality of righteousness than that
of these most highly esteemed persons of their race, Jesus
at once indicates the essence of the difference between the
Pharisaic, earthly righteousness and that of the Kingdom
above the earth.
That difference is radical: the two types of righteous
ness are as far apart as the East is from the West. The
Pharisaic righteousness looks always to the visible effect:
the saving righteousness of the Kmgdom looks to the pro
ductive cause. The difference in method is like that be
tween two medical systems one of which would treat dis
ease by applying remedies to its external symptoms while
the other would try to rectify the internal disturbance
producing those symptoms.
This distinction is basic in the entire New Testament
47

48 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
doctrine of righteousness. For whether or not St. Paul
added or subtracted from the original Gospel message, his
most elusive and abstruse ethical discussions reach, in
the last analysis, the exact point which Jesus makes un
mistakably clear in the passage under consideration. The
Apostle has one sentence which expresses the point more
satisfactorily than whole pages of some of his dissertations
to the same effect: and there is no more illuminating
commentary possible on this portion of the Sermon on
the Mount than that sentence — "The letter killeth but the
spirit giveth life."
This is the whole point: The Pharisaic righteousness
is, essentially, dead literalism; the ideal Christian right
eousness is living spirituality; and the two are utterly
incompatible. The passage the beginning of which we
have now reached treats in a splendid crescendo the prin
ciple that the human spirit can emphasize but one great
interest at a time ; and if visible forms of conduct make up
the consuming interest, the impulses and causes which
produce conduct are necessarily neglected.
It is a law pervading every realm of life. Emphasis
upon formality diverts human energy from spirituality;
and the times of the most meticulous observance of re
ligious and social ceremonial are usually, if not always,
the times of least moral vigor. The period of the Caroline
Restoration in England is typical. Then religious cere
monial was elaborate and the manners of society were ex
cessive but good morals were largely wanting.
The same principle appears in the field of art where
it is the rule that to conventionalize is to devitalize. The
essence of a conventional design is its remoteness from
the living reality which it represents.
Now Phariseeism was conventional religious and legal

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 49
formalism raised to its highest power. The multiplicity
of ceremonies required in the commonest daily activities
and the rigidity of legal enactments, naturally incapable
of adapting themselves to the variable elements in the
living human personality, made Phariseeism, at its best,
a living death. It tended to destroy all spontaneity and
naturalness — all real life — in those who followed its teach
ings. The fundamental defect of this system according to
St. Paul, who mastered it completely and followed it
scrupulously before he became its most severe critic, was
its adoration of the written law — a very defective thing
even in its most perfect form. This defectiveness neces
sarily inheres in written law, if for no other reason, be
cause of the fact that while it is the best instrument we
have, language is a very imperfect instrument for human
expression. The most expressive language yet devised
could not begin to cover the infinite variety of refinements
in human relationships of which ideal justice would have
to take full account. But even if language were capable
of such nicety of expression it would still be incapable
of defining ideal justice because, even if to-day we could
formulate a code of laws adequately covering every human
relationship that had yet arisen, to-morrow there would
arise new relationships not contemplated before.
This fact in regard to civil law has its parallel in scien
tific law. It is said that the best scientific text-books are
usable for only a few years because of the rapidly increas
ing body of scientific knowledge. Science is continually
establishing laws which seem adequate and are adequate
to the knowledge already possessed but which constantly
have to be changed in the light of newly discovered facts.
As when, to take one out of countless examples, the de-

50 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
velopment of the study of the radio-active elements showed
that they did not conform to the laws that were supposed
to hold true of all elements.
Human language, then, is not adequate to the task of
expressing laws that shall be good permanently in any
living, developing society. For the expressed law does
not change and expand while the living realities to
which it applies are always changing, growing, expand
ing. This truth, by the way, is one of the most important
that can be considered in the reconstruction of the Di
vinely condemned social and governmental systems of this
world. Many, perhaps most, of those who think vigor
ously and in least hampered fashion, and who have caught
a vision of a more just social order, have no misgivings
in regard to far-reaching changes that are likely to be
instituted: we cannot see how under modern enlighten
ment a worse system than the established social order
could arise. For the exploitation of the weak by the strong
— the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many,
is the characteristic growth of this present time, rooted
deep in its soil — -a tree of death whose branches are for the
bruising of the nations, whose flower and consummation
is war. And yet impossible as it would be to establish
a worse system, the socially improved schemes which are
suggested to supplant the present one seem to have a
tendency toward a superstitious devotion to law. The
various Socialist Political parties for example — probably
the most idealistic and sincerely devoted to the common
welfare that have yet arisen — do have in spite of all their
merits a more or less pronounced predilection for a stifling
legalism. To one not quite converted to their faith they
seem to restrict unnecessarily the actions of their indi
vidual members. A caricature of the impression which

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 51
they give might suggest that they would let a mad dog
run loose until the proper committee or person to whom
that work had been delegated brought the officially desig
nated weapon for killing mad dogs.
But the efficiency of all government is constantly sub
ject to danger along this line. Much of the conventional
opposition to government ownership of public utilities
would be a little less absurd if it took this fact as its
main object of attack. For the essential consideration
for any successful ownership of public utilities is the pro
curing of efficient managers and superintendents, and there
is no reason why governments cannot secure these as well
as do private corporations: the great danger to govern
mental efficiency does not lie along this line : it lies rather
in the tendency to hamper good managers with the numer
ous petty rules and regulations which it seems to be the
nature of government to establish. The wasteful — as to
time, energy, and material — superfluity of reports; the
needlessly involved, efficiency impeding minutiae of official
instructions; and all the imbecility comprehended in the
popular term "red tape" make up the most serious menace
to efficient government in any sphere.
This menace is eliminated in the Kingdom of Heaven.
For there the inner causes and motives of conduct are
emphasized rather than the outward acts. In the King
dom the spirit in which one acts is given the same prece
dence that in this world is accorded to the literal defini
tion of the act ; and in this way there is attained a deeper
understanding of wrong and a broader range of expression
for right.
Now the attainment of such a method in practical life
is not merely a vague dream. It is already being achieved
in the various professions which from time immemorial
have been constricted by stifling rules, laws, and dogmata :

52 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
and the modern trend of the professions is away from the
literal toward the spiritual.
In this trend, whatever the faults of the profession may
be, the Christian ministry must be given credit for taking
the lead. The first profession to analyze its scriptures,
dogmata, creeds and historical claims with a view to get
ting beneath the dead letter to the living spirit, was the
ministerial profession. The scientific method of studying
the Bible and Church history and the critically historical
approach to dogma and ecclesiastical claims on the part
of theologians preceded the escape from slavery to narrow
schools and methods in the medical profession and the
sane analysis of constitutions and dead legal definitions
which are revivifying political life everywhere. The legal
profession cannot yet be said to have attained anything
like a resurrection from the death which is inherent in
its method but even here the breath of life is at the point
of infusion with transforming, miraculous power. There
is an increasing number of lawyers who realize that the
spirit and purpose behind the act are of more importance
than the act itself as legally defined.
That is the whole nature of the law of the Kingdom.
It goes to the roots of conduct rather than to the super
ficial acts. Righteousness is not primarily determined
by what a man does : fundamentally it depends upon what
he is.
To illustrate the point Jesus takes a few examples
at random: and the first is the case of a brutal act like
murder. "You have heard that it was said to the ancients,
'Thou shalt do no murder and whoever does murder shall
be in danger of the judgment,' but I say to you that who
ever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the
judgment." That is to say murder grows out of the seed of anger

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 53
•
in the human heart. The spirit that leads one to call his
brother names leads him into more dangerous expression
of his feelings. Destroy the seed and you have destroyed
all its evil outgrowths from murder down. The Heavenly
righteousness in this case is a kindly disposition, not a
mere refraining from deeds, to which one's impulses are
leaning. The impulses themselves are evil and do not
conform to the law of the Kingdom.
It ought not to be hard to grasp this truth : and yet we
should note in passing a matter of textual criticism which
indicates how difficult it is for a mind developed in this
world to put itself in the Heavenly mood. For many
of the ancient New Testament manuscripts make the text
here read, "Whosoever is angry with his brother, without
a cause" inserting a phrase which is obviously out of har
mony with the whole passage. For in the personal rela
tions of the Kingdom anger has no place: it is utterly
incompatible with the righteousness which, as will appear
later, demands free, full, and unlimited forgiveness.
Nevertheless this little unchristian phrase "without a
cause," which would lead to all sorts of Pharisaic quib
bling, has insinuated itself even into the King James ver
sion of the New Testament.
Auger can have no spiritually good cause and it must
be eliminated from the character of every one who is to
become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Ameri
can colloquialism which calls anger madness is, from the
New Testament point of view, literally correct. As long
as a man is angry he actually is mad.
One of the maddest habits of the angry man, if he be
in moderate circumstances, is that of going to law; and
Jesus, to the intense delight of the crowd no doubt, pauses
a moment at this point to ridicule the application of the
law so far as the ordinary man is concerned.

54 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
His main purpose which is to advise against lawsuits
on general principles is serious enough. Let the righteous
impulses against which, as St. Paul says, there is no
law, rule in your hearts and keep you from lawlessness.
But if you are liable in a lawsuit settle your liability at
once even if you are engaged, when it comes into your
mind, in the most solemn religious ceremony — offering a
gift at the altar. "Leave there thy gift" (the case is the
most extreme possible in the line of putting inner spirit
before outward ceremony) "and go away," for the most
important thing is to be reconciled to your brother. You
cannot be reconciled to God until you are reconciled to
your fellow man.
But the serious part is followed by this : — "Agree with
your opponent quickly while you are with him on the
road in order that your opponent may not deliver you
over to the judge and the judge hand you over to the
sheriff, and you be thrown into jail. Believe me you will
not come out from there until you have paid the last cent."
This is as near to cynicism as any recorded saying of
Christ. It expresses not only the feeling of the populace
everywhere and always with regard to the hocus-pocus
of the law but also that of infinite goodness when it con
templates the same. Divine Justice incarnate cannot help
showing up the ridiculousness of the administrative proc
esses of human law, with its manipulation of the accused
by various officers and its futile prison which never over
looks a possible expense that the condemned can pay.
"The last cent" represents so much more than is due that
we can almost hear the appreciative laughter of the crowd.
This sally was directed toward only one element of
legal futility: and yet He who made it must have appre
ciated to the full the other legally enthroned wrongs which
have not grown markedly less since New Testament times.

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 55
He would have felt as keenly as any modern social rebel
feels the inequity of a legal system in which wealth can
take appeal from court to court but whose expensive tech
nicalities are utterly out of reach of the poor man. He
would have seen little or no exaggeration in the general
complaint that the very rich offenders always get free
while the poor ones never escape.
In the law of His Kingdom there are no evasive tech
nicalities. The only righteousness of which He takes
cognizance is that which flows from a heart that is right :
it is established in real character and not in legal ver
biage. Legal verbiage makes an infinite distinction be
tween a man who kills another and takes his purse, and
the man who grinds out the lives of little children in his
factory and takes the major portion of the product of their
toil. Both are willing and anxious that other lives may
be destroyed in order that they may have more wealth;
and thus both are actuated by the same heart motive.
The child-murdering robber, however, is a somewhat
weaker character than the murdering robber who is de
fined as such by human law, because the latter has courage
to face great danger while the former is protected by the
police and soldiery, if necessary, in his cruel course.
Similarly the written law makes a distinction between
gambling for recreation and sport, and gambling in stocks
and securities for a livelihood. The former it calls crime,
the latter it calls legitimate business: both sins, however,
have the same source and heart motive with any other kind
of theft.
Again in the hideous political sin of bribery there is a
legal distinction which is thoroughly remote from politi
cal righteousness. It is crime to pay money directly for
votes but even the President of the United States rewards
men who are for him with lucrative offices, removing from

56 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
those offices men who are not for him. In like manner
citizens who would never dream of selling their votes will
vote for a political party which offers them some special
advantage like a protective tariff without any reference to
the abstract morality or righteousness of that special ad
vantage. Most manufacturers who vote for their own pro
tection by tariff are bribe takers, although an illiterate
one might imagine that the general good of the body
politic was advanced by a high protective tariff.
The sin in anything, therefore, cannot be taken away
by legal definitions: and here the Simple Gospel is far
more severe upon the conduct of the exploiter of human
values than is the more intellectual type of economic So
cialism. For the scholarly Socialist to-day finds very little
fault with persons and lays all the blame for social in
justice upon the capitalistic system under which we live,
maintaining that the murderously avaricious type of busi
ness magnate is a necessary product of that system. But
while not denying a modicum of truth to that idea, the
Gospel calls all murderous avarice sin. The man who be
lieves in the Sermon on the Mount would starve before
he would exploit the lives of children to his personal gain
because the man who accepts the Gospel contained therein
has a kindness in his heart so expansive that the ex
ploiter's gruesome lust cannot find room there. Thus with
regard to murder and all its kindred evils, whatever their
legal definition may be, the principle is that the inner
spirit is the seat of any righteousness that is lasting and
real. If there could be any conceivable doubt in regard to
the Heavenly righteousness after considering the first ex
ample that Jesus gave, the second would make it perfectly
plain even to a very limited intelligence. "You have
heard that it was said 'Thou shalt not commit adultery':

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 57
but I say to you that every one who looks at a woman with
a feeling of lust has committed adultery with her already
in his heart." Here, once more, it is not the outward act
but the inner spiritual quality that determines righteous
ness. Such righteousness is of supreme importance. Even
the instinctive claims of the human body are to be ignored
if they conflict with it. The right hand should be cut
off and the right eye should be plucked out before they
should be allowed to lead one into unrighteousness.
On the other hand it is necessary to retain all upon
which one's righteousness depends whether one desires it
or not. The fact that unpleasant relations have arisen
between a man and his wife does not make it right for
either of them to get a divorce. The family is the norm
and center of social righteousness ; and that righteousness
is always at its lowest ebb where the family bond is weak
est. Polygamy and polyandry have ever been the marks
of degraded peoples : and, from what has just been asserted
with regard to the principles of righteousness, it ought
to be clear that haphazard divorce is thoroughgoing polyg
amy and polyandry — absolute promiscuity. Americans es
pecially should realize that the letter of the law cannot
change the spirit of the thing which Jesus with His down
right frankness calls adultery.
The qualifying phrase in this section which allows di
vorce on the count of unfaithfulness has a little more
authority than the obvious intrusion in regard to anger
mentioned above. The deliberate adulterer or adulteress
breaks the family bond and renders it non-existent. And
yet there is much to be said on the side of the extremists
who would allow no cause whatever for divorce. Their
strongest argument, however, is generally overlooked even
by themselves. It is that the principles of the Kingdom

58 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
of Heaven require absolute and unlimited forgiveness for
any wrong that one may receive.
It may be noted in passing that there is no suggestion
of the sacramental in this view of marriage. The Sermon
does not deal with outward and visible signs: it is con
cerned wholly with inward and spiritual graces. It does
not set forth marriage as an outward and visible sign of
anything: it considers it a basic, spiritual reality of the
commonwealth of God upon earth.
The essence of this spiritual reality is pure devotion
or devoted purity — the pureness of heart of the Beatitudes
which gives ability to see God; and the singleness of
eye, to be considered later, which enlightens our whole
being. To everything that helps in the development of
this power we must cleave; and everything that stands
in its way, even if it be the most precious member of
the body, we must destroy.
This thought suggests one of the most intricate theo
retical problems in regard to the nature of righteousness
that confronts the modern mind. It is the problem of how
far outward circumstances control inward spirituality —
the extent of the power of environment and heredity over
the development of individual righteousness. No sane
person can ignore the influence of one's surroundings and
heredity upon his character; but, to say the least, it is
permissible to ask whether outward circumstances merely
exert a powerful influence or exercise absolute control.
The latter view predominates so strongly in the modern
mind that, if it be not the true view, it is one of those
dominant suggestions which hold the mind at their mercy
and demand that everything shall be explained according
to their hypnotic spell. We have noted that Jesus did
not interpret life with a mind dominated by the suggestion
of the power of environment; and that He taught that

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 59
character should transform environment rather than let
environment determine lasting character.
He did not deny, however, that environment has a pow
erful influence. He allowed for it in His kindly attitude
toward publicans and harlots ; and He takes it for granted
when He speaks of the right eye or the right hand
"offending" or as the proper translation is "causing to
stumble." While He is not like the surgical enthusiast
who, hypnotized by his subject, believes that all immor
ality is due to physical defects, He sees that a great deal
of immorality is intimately connected with such defects;
and He would say, "Remove the adenoids and other physi
cal irritations that produce immoral tendencies." He
would almost certainly say to root out the heredible evils
from the human substance — to make it impossible for
the insane, imbecile and venereal to reproduce their kind.
A corollary to this proposition would be, similarly, to
root out the things in the body politic which cause it to
stumble. If the acquisitive, competitive business system
cause the nations to stumble, pluck it out. Though it be
the eye through which all modern values are perceived
or though it be the strong right hand which accomplishes
all great modern undertakings, it is better for the nations
to work out their progress inefficiently if it should be nec
essary, than for them, having unrighteous profits, interest
and rent, to be cast into Hell fire — that fire whose wither
ing heat from 1914 to 1919 blackened whole countries
of Europe and boiled up devils from the depths of the sea.
Nevertheless the elimination of all physical or material
causes for stumbling can never create righteousness. Even
if the original causes of all evil were physical or economic
— a gratuitous supposition — the bad tendencies persist and
grow strong long after the assumed materialistic causes
have disappeared. A profound economic change in the

60 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
ways of the world will make a higher type of social right
eousness possible; it will make the Kingdom of Heaven
easier of attainment; but it will not eradicate the evil
tendencies of envy, hatred, malice, lust, cruelty and a
thousand other vices which, no matter how they have
arisen, cannot be suppressed by physical or economic force.
This should be remembered for example in considering
the vice which has become popularly known as the social
evil. That evil undoubtedly has far-reaching economic
complications ; but it is going to the extreme limit of in
anity to try to explain social vice economically or in any
other way without reference to the sexual impulse, which
has never been mastered without spiritual force. It is
inevitable for a fine woman like Miss Jane Addams to
minimize the sexual instinct in her study of commercial
ized vice ; but for a police lieutenant — or a police commis
sioner, investigating the same evil, to assume the feminine
sweetness of Miss Addams is as grotesque a piece of hypoc
risy as could well be imagined. Economics will not purify
the hearts of men nor will the most just social conditions
take away the sin of the world.
Indeed a more just social order will necessarily increase
human responsibility and demand greater individual re
liability. Stronger character will be needed to make men
more reliable and stronger character is developed by more
earnest religious fervor. We have seen that this higher
type of character is demanded of one who shall attain citi
zenship in the Kingdom of Heaven ; and the supreme test
of such character is given in the next illustration that
Jesus uses to develop the point in hand: — "Again you
have heard that it was said to the ancients, 'Thou shalt not
swear falsely but shalt perform to the Lord thine oaths';
but I say to you swear not at all."
Here we strike the weakest spot — the most self-con-

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 61
demnatory element in the world's legal and religious sys
tem. It is a point at which, although they do not now
have the inseparable union which bound them together
under ancient Pharisaism, law and religion unite in mod
ern practice. For legal custom to-day calls upon religious
superstition and administers the oath.
The custom takes for granted very deliberately what the
Psalmist said in his haste. For if the law did not believe
that all men are liars, it would not call upon religion, with
its primitive feeling in regard to oaths, to overcome the
natural untruthfulness of men.
But the whole matter of untruthfulness is very illumi
nating upon the main point of the passage under dis
cussion. For nowhere is the letter more generally given
preference to the spirit than in speaking truth. The only
really truthful person is the one who does not intend to
deceive : but it frequently happens that a literal expression
of fact is the most deceitful thing in the world: and yet
it is common for the most estimable people to utter these
literally true deceptions without the slightest twinge of
conscience, not realizing that a pure deception in the
sheep's clothing of literal accuracy merely adds hypocrisy
to dishonesty.
The prevalence of this particular type of sin indicates
how far literalism has led most of us from spirituality.
But the law of the Kingdom demands thoroughgoing in
tegrity : it allows no chicanery of literally true deception ;
and it calls for the kind of character whose word needs
no confirmation from the oath. The citizen of the Heav
enly Realm is a true man and speaks the truth from his
heart. His YES means YES and his NO means NO.
Obviously "whatever is more than these comes of evil."
For the ideal goodness is such personal integrity on the
part of men and women that there is no element of decep-

62 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
tion in anything they say and that all need of confirma
tion of what they say is superfluous. The oath weakens
that integrity : it is based upon principles lower than any
that hold in the Kingdom of Heaven. There is no greater
condemnation of our age than the fact that in it it is a
rare distinction for a man to be pointed out as one whose
word is as good as his bond. In the Heavenly Realm a
man's word is his bond. The whole fabric of the polity
of God's Commonwealth depends upon the integrity of
those who maintain that polity.
This integrity is necessary to human freedom ; and the
Sermon on the Mount at this point is very close to the
splendid passage in the Fourth Gospel which asserts that
the truth shall make us free. Recent American history,
in so far as there has been any progress toward freedom
in it, has centered in the discovery of iniquitous, secret
understandings between private business interests and
nominal representatives of the people, such discovery be
ing followed by popular resentment and by common en
deavor to secure better, more honest and open political
representation. All the statesmen of our time whose
names are to be cherished in the future have opposed the
"invisible government" — the lie-breeding, dishonest sys
tem which is incompatible with liberty.

The law of the Heavenly Commonwealth, then, as set
forth in the examples discussed above deals with spiritual
motives and impulses rather than with rigidly defined
acts. That which is in the heart is the crucial fact, not
that which develops through the accidents of circumstance.
But such accidents are put far above spiritual considera
tions by the law of this world. If in a modern court a
man is proved to have had every intention to commit a

THE LAW OF THE HEAVENLY REALM 63
foul murder, the accident of his having failed in the at
tempt is laid to his credit, and he is treated with more
leniency than a far less condemnable man who kills an
other under more or less extenuating circumstances. In
the law of the Kingdom of Heaven the accident of a
person's failing in his evil purpose does not remove one
iota of his guilt.
But the way in which guilt is treated in the Kingdom
has nothing whatever in common with the world's treat
ment of it ; and while the next chapter goes into that sub
ject at some length, it is not too early now to point out
the central principle of law of the Realm.
That principle is love: and from love all the motives
of conduct in the Heavenly life radiate. Love, for ex
ample, kills effectively the seed of anger out of which
murder and its lesser but kindred evils grow. Love anni
hilates the origins of lust which lead to adultery for no
one with real love in his heart can injure the best in
womanhood. Love eliminates the untruthful elements
which render integrity impossible for he who loves his
fellow men has not the least desire to take advantage of
them through deception. It is clear, then, that St. Paul
was close to the thought of Jesus when, enumerating the
loftiest virtues, he concluded, — "the greatest of these is
love."

THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OF MEN

YOU HAVE HEARD THAT IT WAS SAID, "EYE FOR EYE
AND TOOTH FOR TOOTH." BUT I SAY TO YOU DO NOT
RESIST EVIL: BUT WHOEVER HITS YOU ON ONE CHEEK,
TURN TO HIM THE OTHER ALSO: AND TO THE ONE WHO
WANTS TO SUE YOU AT LAW AND TAKE YOUR COAT, GIVE
UP YOUR OVERCOAT ALSO. AND WHOEVER COMPELS YOU
TO GO ONE MILE WITH HIM, GO TWO MILES WITH HIM.
GIVE TO THE ONE WHO ASKS YOU— DO NOT EVEN TURN
AWAY FROM THE MAN WHO WOULD BORROW OF YOU.
YOU HAVE HEARD THAT IT WAS SAID, "THOU SHALT
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AND HATE THINE ENEMY": BUT I
SAY TO YOU, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, AND PRAY FOR THOSE
WHO PERSECUTE YOU, IN ORDER THAT YOU MAY BE SONS
OF YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. FOR HE MAKES HIS SUN
TO RISE UPON THE EVIL AND THE GOOD, AND CAUSES
RAIN TO FALL ON THE RIGHTEOUS AND THE UNRIGHT
EOUS. FOR IF YOU LOVE ONLY THOSE WHO LOVE YOU
WHAT PAY DO YOU HAVE? DO NOT EVEN THE TAX-COL
LECTORS DO THE SAME THING? AND IF YOU GREET ONLY
YOUR BROTHERS WHAT DO YOU DO ESPECIALLY? DO NOT
EVEN THE GENTILES DO THE SAME THING? THEREFORE
BE YOU PERFECT JUST AS YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER IS
PERFECT. (Matthew V: 38-48.)

CHAPTER V
THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OF MEN
THE best known test of orthodoxy is the Vincentian
Rule:— "That should be held for Catholic truth
which has been believed everywhere, always, and
by all." To be sure practically nothing in the course
of the Church's life has conformed to this rule and yet
there is one belief which throughout the Christian centu
ries has been held almost everywhere, almost always, and
by almost all. That is that the words of Jesus in the
passage to which we have now come need not be accepted
at their face value. The few individual believers like
Tolstoi and the few peculiar sects like the Quakers who
give the doctrine of non-resistance the same central place
in their religious systems which it had in the doctrine and
in the life of Jesus Christ are not a corporal's guard in
comparison with the vast hordes of nominal Christians
who have considered and who still consider such individual
believers and peculiar sects ridiculous: and those have
been rare times in the experience of the Church, if there
have been any such times, when it was not possible for
the clergy to preach against the spirit of non-resistance
which the Founder of the Church here demands on the
ground that is an attribute of the heavenly Father.
Nowhere is the opposition to this particular doctrine
more pronounced than in America: and we shall not go
far astray in seeking the typical American point of view
in that of the late President Roosevelt. He was fre
quently commended as an example of right feeling to the
67

68 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
popular admiration even by Christian preachers during his
lifetime, and at the time of his death thousands of
Churches throughout the United States held services in
his memory: and yet he was frankly and unalterably
opposed to the doctrine of Jesus as here set forth. None
of his numerous facile terms of derision delighted his
worshippers more than that which he would have applied
to any one who lived according to the closing verses of
the Fifth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew; such a
man to him would have been a "mollycoddle." He would
have had unbounded contempt for one who would turn the
other cheek: he always taught that a man should resent
an insult even to the point of physical violence. His
rugged, manly vigor was upheld everywhere as the way
of life for American youth.
On the other hand those very few Christian ministers
who in the last months of Mr. Roosevelt's life, at the time
of the nation's entry into the great war, preached what
Jesus said with regard to strife were branded by that
statesman and considered by his admirers as cowards,
scoundrels and traitors. This was not merely the attitude
of those outside the Church: it represented the mood of
the great body of nominal Christians of almost every sect.
Even in the large-minded American Episcopal Church
which has, perhaps, been hospitable to as wide a range
of religious opinion as has any Church that has yet arisen,
there was found no room for this part of the Sermon on
the Mount; and one of her best bishops was asked to re
sign because he insisted on preaching the obvious meaning
of Jesus.
But wholesale rejection of part of the Saviour's teach
ings is not peculiar to America. It has characterized
all so-called Christian lands. Ruskin need not have iso
lated England when he said: — "I know no previous in-

THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OF MEN 69
stance in history of a nation's establishing a systematic
disobedience to the first principles of its professed re
ligion." Therefore it would seem that Jesus in preaching non-
resistance was going contrary to strongly entrenched, hu
man instincts. He attacks those instincts, however, at
what is, from an intellectual standpoint, their weakest
spot. In treating the whole subject of our opposition to
wrong He touches first a primitive animal instinct which
although almost universal in extent has not a vestige of
justification in any sane thought — the impulse to strike
back, the scratching, biting, kicking reflex action of the
nervous system which sometimes does not rise to the level
of even the lowest brain action. This, in our idiotic ter
minology, we call "getting even" with another or "taking
satisfaction out of" him. "Revenge is sweet" runs the
old proverb; and the average man, to put it mildly, re
tains a little of that primordial feeling; but Jesus allows
no place for revenge in the Heavenly Realm.
This attitude of the Saviour is in especially marked
contrast to the ancient prejudices of His own people. For
they felt, beyond a doubt, that God Himself rejoiced in
the spirit of revenge. But the obvious fact that He lets
the rain and the sunlight — calamity and good fortune —
fall equally on the just and the unjust is, in Christ's
reasoning, conclusive proof that the Divine Nature has
in it no place for such evil.
This fact, we may well note in passing, makes it im
possible to associate the mind of Christ with any doctrine
of the Atonement that presupposes an angry God. That
which keeps us apart from God is not His anger but our
choice of ways that lead us from rather than to Him.
His attitude toward His erring children is illustrated un
mistakably in the attitude of the father in the parable of

70 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
the Prodigal Son who, when the wayward son was yet a
great way off, saw him and ran and fell on his neck and
kissed him. And although this parable is peculiar to
St. Luke's Gospel, the passage under consideration asserts
that the nature of God is precisely as this parable would
have us understand it.
But if this be a true interpretation of the Divine Nature,
primitive law is not divine. For practically all primitive
law has provisions similar to those of Exodus, Leviticus,
and Deuteronomy making it a principle of resistance to
evil that a life shall be given for a life, an eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth — a principle which to the
naive, barbaric consciousness of the law givers of infant
nations seems to contain ideal justice.
Perhaps it is due to its very primitiveness that this
absurd notion of justice persists so tenaciously in the
average mind. It certainly is one of the most deeply
imbedded concepts in human thought, and he is a very
abnormal being who in the first flush of indignation, on
hearing of some atrocity, does not say of its perpetrator, —
"He ought to be shot" ; or who does not suggest some cruel
type of retribution which to unthinking indignation seems
to fit the case.
The same primeval instinct always crops up plenteously
whenever there is an effort to abolish capital punishment
from the penal system of a state. The writer has actually
heard, in Arizona, both laymen and ministers of an un
cultivated type publicly oppose the abolition of this kind
of punishment on the ground that the Bible says, "An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
This attitude, says Jesus, is fundamentally wrong.
"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye and tooth
for tooth,' but I say to you, do not resist evil." It is a
thoroughly bad and cruel instinct which for any reason

THE DOCTKINE REJECTED OE MEN 71
whatever can take satisfaction in seeing human beings
suffer. The one who in the first instance puts out the
eye or knocks out the tooth of another commits the wrong
in order to satisfy an evil passion in his heart; but the
one who seeks a retribution in the same kind desires to
gratify a like passion. He attempts to establish the right
by a double negation of the right.
Partly because of such venerable nonsense the penal
system of mankind has been one of the most dismal fail
ures of all human efforts. Nothing has done more to in
tensify crime in society than society's method of punishing
criminals. Even since the Crucifixion civil courts have
not made (until this generation) the slightest endeavor
to conform to the teaching of Jesus in this matter: and,
so far from setting a good example, Church courts have
been not only anti-Christian but absolutely inhuman.
Men in our day have been excommunicated for not
believing that Adam was a real person. In earlier times
they were burned at the stake for saying that Jesus was
speaking figuratively when He called the bread and wine
of the Last Supper His Body and Blood. But no one has
ever been even mildly rebuked for denying in toto the
doctrine of non-resistance which, as the New Testament
gives it, allows of but one possible interpretation.
So little has this doctrine been regarded hitherto that
any one who defended it in the completeness which it
attains in the words of Christ would hardly be considered
sane by the average Christian. Moreover numerous appar
ently valid objections can be raised against the acceptance
of the doctrine the commonest of which are suggested by
the questions: How can children be reared? How can
crime be suppressed ? How can the sanctity of the home
be defended? And how can national existence be secure
without the use of physical force?

72 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
And yet these very questions recall the fact that a more
Christlike spirit is now showing itself in civilization. In
the matter of child training, for example, a great many
rather dull persons have discovered that some children
can be spared the rod without being spoiled ; and that an
unstinted use of the rod is very likely to spoil all that is
finest even in a domestic animal. Those who have been
most harshly treated in childhood tend to overstep all
bounds when the restraints of childhood are removed. In
fact the whole educational process is showing a decided
trend in the direction of drawing children to knowledge
through love of their work rather than forcing them
through fear of beatings.
But in dealing with criminals as well as with children
the more modern methods show some little advance to
ward the spirit of Christ. Primitive systems, as we have
just noted, begin with the principle that a wrong can be
righted by a similar wrong. Among the many supersti
tions of primeval human consciousness there is never want
ing an idea of justice which views the balancing of wrong
with wrong as conforming to the eternal fitness of things.
The idea is perfectly represented by the conventional fig
ure of justice, blindfold, holding in one hand the scales
and in the other the sword of brutal force. The blindfold
is supposed to stand for freedom from improper influ
ences, but it more truly represents utter lack of that in
sight which is the essential principle of the Heavenly
justice. But justice in its development among any people usu
ally goes into a second stage which is even worse morally
than this first stage of emphasis upon retribution. In
the second stage prevention of crime is the exclusive mo
tive; and, so far from being satisfied with eye for eye
or tooth for tooth, it demands a life for almost any offense

THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OF MEN 73
that can be committed. Not only he who shoots the king's
deer but also he who steals the maid's kerchief must pay
for his crime with his life; and the death penalty is ex
pected to become an effective preventative fer all crime.
The idea is in thorough agreement with the principle,
taken for granted in all modern law, that property is more
precious than persons. No court to-day, for instance, even
if it so desired would have any right legally so much
as to rebuke the officers of a corporation if they should
order one of their gunmen to shoot a poor widow, tres
passing on their premises in order to gather a few scattered
pieces of coal. We are not yet so far from a barbarous
legalism that the average man among us feels the slightest
horror at the death of a trespasser incurred in his tres
passing. *But there is no better proof of the common understand
ing in the Anglo-Saxon race that property is above man
hood than that which was brought out in the triumph of
the conscription principle during the late war. The na
tions had very little difficulty in making the conscription
of men for military service universal; but any Anglo-
Saxon nation that had tried to commandeer property, with
out full compensation, would have had a revolution. For
taking over the railroads the American Government had
to pay liberally besides guaranteeing earnings on proper
ties some of which never had earned anything before.
Therefore the second phase of the development of crim
inal procedure still has strong hold upon us. We instinc
tively feel that things are more sacred than persons: and
we punish misdeeds in regard to things by the utmost
exertion of cruel, brutal force upon persons. But the
larger part of our present-day legal feeling and procedure
has reached a third stage — that of endeavoring to reform
the criminal by punishments severe enough to make him

74 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
regret his misconduct and, because of fear, to resolve to
change his way of life. The underlying theory of this
method has been held for a long time by men who con
sider themselves absolutely practical; but these men pre
sent one of those cases (not so common as so-called prac
tical men suppose) in which theory does not work out in
practice. As a means of reformation the penal system
maintained by our civilization for generations has made
the most sorry failure of all human undertakings. Our
reformatories have done anything but reform, and by far
the larger number of our imprisoned criminals are under
sentence for the second, third, or fourth times, in almost
all cases becoming worse and more dangerous with each
imprisonment. However, there is a new spirit abroad in criminal pro
cedure; and that spirit is far more akin to the spirit of
Christ. It is having a hard struggle to establish itself;
and the large, Mammon-worshipping, commercial interests
are very much against it. Nevertheless it is the only
approach to a sane method in dealing with criminals that
has yet been put into practice. Instead of making prisons
as they have been hitherto universities of crime where,
because of his associations and as a reaction against his
treatment, the imprisoned man becomes worse than when
he entered, it gives the criminal every encouragement to
reform. The first offense is not severely punished and
the offender is generally released on parole, being given
a chance to demonstrate that he can be trusted : and after
a criminal is imprisoned, he is given as much liberty and
as much incentive to trustworthiness as can safely be
afforded. It is a method that has proved eminently suc
cessful wherever it has been tried by competent officers.
There are, to be sure, other quite different theories
with regard to the processes of criminal law; and many

THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OE MEN 75
keen students of the problem believe that practical cer
tainty of detection and punishment will eliminate the
greater amount of crime. If the criminal knew that he was
almost sure to be caught and severely punished, these stu
dents say, he would not commit the crime.
There is probably much to be said in favor of this notion
in spite of the fact that detection never can be made
certain, if for no other reason, because of the psychological
law that every police force will develop in its number
some who are going to share the criminality of those
against whom they are supposed to guard. But even if
detection and punishment became practically certain,
crime would not necessarily be eliminated: there was a
time when protracted indebtedness was a crime punishable
by imprisonment: the crime was one that could not pos
sibly escape detection; and yet the average indebtedness
has decreased since the removal of the harsh penalties
which it formerly involved.
No doubt it can be said that the debtors always felt that
there was a chance of escaping their indebtedness; but
there will always be a chance of escape for any criminal.
It is certain, moreover, that criminals will often run the
most tremendous risks. They will stake their lives on a
very unequal chance; and it is said that when men were
hanged for theft in England pickpockets usually operated
in the crowd watching the hanging.
Therefore there is good reason to believe that diminish
ing forceful resistance to crime does not increase crime.
The weight of modern experience in correction leans heav
ily to the side advocated by Jesus. Moreover, slow and
discouraging as it may have been, there has been some
progress toward Christian non-resistance in other lines. It
used to be considered necessary for a "gentleman" to fight
to the death in order to avenge an insult; and in some

76 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
countries duelling still persists with considerable vigor.
But there has been such a general progress in civilization
that real gentlemen cannot any longer resist insults with
force. Since no gentleman can offer an insult, forcible
resistance to an insult cannot come within the scope of
gentlemanly activities. Non-resistance has utterly de
stroyed the importance of the insult among all the more
refined persons. It will be but another step in civilization
to remove the influence of the insult in international re
lations. If civilization is to progress at all it cannot be
long before nations that are willing to fight over an insult
will be realized to be just as degraded as ruffians in the
back alleys, fighting for the same cause. The satisfaction
derived from striking back is just as much due to an
animal — brutal — passion as is the satisfaction of any other
depraved lust of the flesh.
But the main point here involved goes even deeper than
this. It is, in fact, the most important point in the
doctrine of Christ. For here again we are at the
central thought of Jesus : — "He who exalteth himself
shall be abased and he who humbleth himself shall be
exalted." Thus it is usually undue self-exaltation in the case
either of personal or of national feelings which exaggerates
insults to the point of fighting to avenge them : and there
is an intimate spiritual connection between this type of
self-aggrandizement and the even more revolting type of
the same vice which leads one to attempt to exalt himself
through the accretion of worldly possessions. As far as
nations are concerned the anti-peace spirit is always most
earnestly fostered by these two types of self-exaltation
working in harmony. The Jingo whose highest ideal of
patriotism is belligerent national self-assertion and the
war profiteer whose financial interests make it comfortable

THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OF MEN 77
for him to see nothing but good in the ghastly discipline
of war naturally work together for evil.
The chief motive of all such evil is the desire for superi
ority. All quarrels and contests are carried on by those
who wish to prove themselves superior to others. The
popular conception of business as war is a true one be
cause that lust for undue accumulation of riches, which
has to be considered more at length further on, is but
another manifestation of the consuming desire for superi
ority which leads to all fighting.
This desire can be effectively crushed only by the
method of Christ. For the fighter's passion cannot be sated
where there is no real fighting: and non-resistance by re
fusing to offer a fight defeats the fighter's purpose. Ulti
mately even the feeling of superiority which comes with
the accumulation of worldly possessions must diminish
in the presence of those who are themselves superior to
such possessions. There is no glory, surely, in winning
the coat of one who is willing to give you his cloak also:
and, in. New Testament times, it would certainly have
lessened the Roman's feeling of superiority if after he
had exacted his legally established privilege of compelling
a man of a subject race to accompany him one mile that
same man should, of his own accord, offer to accompany
him another mile.
But, as has just been noted, the Saviour's injunctions
to perform such unwonted acts as these have their primary
reason in His fundamental doctrine which maintains that
"he who findeth his life shall lose it and he who loseth
his life shall find it." This principle has been discussed
already but in dealing with the words of Jesus we have
to come back to it again and again for it is the heart and
soul of all His living message. That which truly exalts
a person, we cannot too often remind ourselves, is not the

78 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
self-exaltation which makes all around him minister to
his wants but that self-abasement which ministers, as much
as in him lies, to the wants of others : and here the doc
trine becomes unlimited in its scope, for this self-denying
service must extend even beyond those who wish one no
good to his bitter enemies. "I say to you, Love your
enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who
hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and
persecute you."
This is the eternal wisdom; and it is obvious that, if
one is exalted through the service that he renders, the
more far-reaching the service, the greater is the exaltation
of him who renders that service. One who lovingly serves
his enemies is necessarily a more exalted character than
one who does not.
The ethical theory involved in such practice is the only
sound one. We have already found that replying to evil
with evil merely intensifies evil. Two wrongs cannot make
a right: and so the only way in which evil can be de
stroyed is through an excess of good. The only conceivable
constructive righteousness is to return good for evil.
This type of righteousness Jesus finds to be fundamen
tally and obviously characteristic of His Heavenly Father.
"He makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and
causes rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous."
This principle is shown forth not only in numerous
words from the lips of Christ but also in His entire life.
He who preached against distinctions in dress and in title
dressed simply and called Himself the Son of Man. If
He were the Incarnation of the Word of God — God's
human expression of Himself — it would be impossible to
imagine a more perfect way in which Deity could reveal
itself to men than in this supreme personal exaltation
through complete humility. The more divine we think

THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OE MEN 79
the nature of Jesus to be, the more profound become the
depths into which the Cross would show that God is willing
to descend in order to reconcile us unto Himself in love.
Far more powerful than all the physical force in the uni
verse is that influence of which the Saviour is conscious
when He says, in the Fourth Gospel, — "I, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself."
But whatever we see or fail to see in the nature of
Jesus, we can hardly fail to discover in His earthly life
a thoroughgoing illustration of the non-resistance that He
taught — the self-abasement which is the only real exalta
tion. The entire course of that lowly career from the
manger which is His throne to the Cross which is His
judgment seat is in perfect harmony with what the prophet
of old realized as to the life which is acceptable to God,
when he said : — "He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause
his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed he
shall not break and the dimly burning wick he shall not
quench." Naturally this spirit prevailed at the supreme crisis of
His life. If ever one nation had just cause to fight
against another, Israel had full cause against Rome; and
either Jesus refused to fight because He lacked the courage
of Albert, King of the Belgians, in a somewhat similar
crisis or else He chose a better course. For it will not
do to say that He saw great odds against Him and refused
to accept those odds because great patriotic souls never
count the costs in crises like this. The few Greeks before
the vast Persian hordes at Thermopylse did not weigh
their chances; nor did the tiny British fleet when the
mighty Spanish Armada came; nor did the French when,
according to military science, they had no chances of suc
cess before Verdun and at the Marne.
That Jesus had full courage to act in a similar way

80 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
His going to the Cross makes evident: and it was not
through worldly wisdom but through divine insight that
He took the more excellent way. This way of the Cross
keeps Christian non-resistance — true pacifism — from being
the weak, trivial, unmanly spirit that is expressed by some
types of pacifism.
For Christian doctrine never loses sight of the fact that
the powers of men are developed by hard exercise— that
worthy attainment must ever be the result of toil and
strain. But this fact is practically ignored by many other
wise excellent plans for social advance. Mention is made
elsewhere in these pages of the importance of proper cloth
ing and food, but the main reason for giving right care to
the body is that it may have all the more strength to
exert in courageous, self-sacrificing service.
Jesus, then, is wholly on the side of manly exertion.
Many of those who follow Him in this day and generation
will almost inevitably go to their crucifixions because the
world persists in its everlasting refusal to walk in the
light. • Men may have to choose to be shot rather than
lift up their hands against their fellows: and it would
be to the eternal shame of Christendom if the Hindoo
followers of Ghandi should be the first to die rather than
shed the blood of their enemies. But although some lives
may be sacrificed in this kind of non-resistance it is cer
tain that not nearly so many can be lost in this way as
have been lost in the silly round of striking back or as
must continue to be lost, to no lasting purpose, unless a
way out of the futile, meaningless repetition of wars is dis
covered. It is this futility of war rather than its splendid hero
ism that Jesus would destroy. The energy, courage, and
sacrifice now wasted in unending, destructive contests will,
when Christ's principles become effective, be devoted to

THE DOCTRINE REJECTED OF MEN 81
constructive purposes. For example the physician discov
ering a new, vital fact may, as happened when the yellow
fever germ was being studied, deliberately lay down his
life for others. But there is an unlimited number of
ways in which the citizens of the Kingdom will use their
courageous powers to build up life and enlarge intelli
gence. This latter achievement alone would put the Christian
spirit infinitely above the spirit of war. For even if
seers like Romain Rolland did not use their consummate
genius to analyze the intellectual depravity of the war
spirit, any person with the slightest cultural advantages
who lived through the war knows that when the guns
of the nations begin to fire the finer mental processes of
the nations cease to function.
But the courageous, sacrificing effort of the true citizen
of the Heavenly Realm creates larger values in all depart
ments of life. It is big enough to take in the welfare of
its opponents: it loves its enemies and in virtue of that
love it knows what true conquest means. It has the spirit
of Him who makes His sun to rise upon the evil and the
good and causes it to rain on the righteous and the un
righteous. This is the perfection of the Heavenly Father which
Jesus requires of those who would enter the Kingdom.
His demands are not satisfied by an ordinary goodness: —
"For if you love those who love you what reward have
you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same thing?
And if you greet only your brothers, what do you do espe
cially? Do not the gentiles do the same thing? There
fore be you perfect even as your Heavenly Father is
perfect." Such perfection cannot be forced upon an individual
person. One can attain to it only by the free development

82 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
of the good impulses within him. All the great achieve
ments of the human genius have been accomplished not
by those who were forced to their work but by those who
so loved their occupation that nothing really satisfied the
deep cravings of their nature except being busied in that
occupation. All the great books, paintings, statues, musical
compositions, and architectural designs were achieved by
those who lost themselves in their labors and worked pri
marily for the joy that was in the work.
This fact naturally brings up the subject of reward for
labor and that is the subject of the next section of the
Sermon, which will demand a chapter by itself.

THE REWARD IN HEAVEN

BE CAREFUL NOT TO DO YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE
PRESENCE OF MEN IN ORDER TO BE OBSERVED BY THEM.
OTHERWISE YOU DO NOT HAVE A REWARD IN THE PRES
ENCE OF YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.
THEREFORE WHENEVER YOU GIVE ALMS DO NOT BLOW
A TRUMPET BEFORE YOU AS THE HYPOCRITES DO IN THE
CHURCHES AND IN THE STREETS IN ORDER THAT MEN
MAY GIVE THEM GLORY. INDEED I TELL YOU THEY
HAVE THEIR REWARD. BUT WHEN YOU GIVE ALMS DO
NOT LET YOUR LEFT HAND KNOW WHAT YOUR RIGHT IS
DOING; AND YOUR FATHER WHO SEES IN SECRET SHALL
REWARD YOU. (Some MSS. add OPENLY.)
AND WHEN YOU PRAY DO NOT BE LIKE THE HYPO
CRITES FOR THEY^ LOVE TO PRAY STANDING IN THE
CHURCHES AND AT THE CORNERS OF THE AVENUES IN
ORDER THAT THEY MAY SHOW THEMSELVES OFF TO MEN
(Possibly SHOW THEMSELVES UP). INDEED I TELL YOU
THEY HAVE THEIR REWARD. BUT WHEN YOU PRAY, GO
INTO YOUR INNER ROOM AND SHUT THE DOOR IN ORDER
THAT YOU MAY PRAY IN SECRET TO YOUR FATHER: AND
YOUR FATHER, SEEING YOU IN HIDING, SHALL REQUITE
YOU. (Again some add OPENLY.)
AND WHEN YOU PRAY DO NOT RATTLE ON WITH REPE
TITIONS AS THE HEATHEN DO; FOR THEY THINK THAT
THEY SHALL BE LISTENED TO BECAUSE OF THEIR VOLU
BILITY. DO NOT BE LIKE THEM; FOR YOUR FATHER
KNOWS WHAT THINGS YOU NEED BEFORE YOU ASK HIM.
PRAY THUS:—
OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED
BE THY NAME. THY KINGDOM COME— THY WILL
BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. GIVE
US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD: AND FORGIVE
US OUR DEBTS AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS:
AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION BUT DE
LIVER US FROM EVIL.
FOR IF YOU FORGIVE MEN FOR THEIR TRESPASSES
YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER WILL ALSO FORGIVE YOU; BUT
IF YOU DO NOT FORGIVE MEN FOR THEIR TRESPASSES,
YOUR FATHER WILL NOT FORGIVE YOUR TRESPASSES.
AND WHEN YOU FAST, DO NOT BECOME LIKE THE HYPO
CRITES—LONG FACED : FOR THEY CHANGE THEIR EXPRES
SIONS IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY APPEAR TO MEN TO
FAST. VERILY I SAY TO YOU THEY HAVE THEIR REWARD.
BUT WHEN YOU FAST OIL YOUR HEAD AND \VASH YOUR
FACE IN ORDER THAT YOU MAY NOT APPEAR TO MEN TO
FAST, BUT TO YOUR FATHER, IN SECRET; AND YOUR
FATHER SEEING IN SECRET SHALL RECOMPENSE YOU.
(OPENLY once more in some MSS.) (Matthew VI: 1-18.)

CHAPTER VI

THE BEWAED IN HEAVEN

THE last chapter brought us face to face with the
deepest issue of life — the reward for conduct or
the attainment of satisfaction. The section of the
Great Sermon now before us gives the final word of Jesus
on the subject ; and His teaching here has all the thorough
going, radical unworldliness which we have noted in His
entire view of life.
It will not therefore, at first, be very acceptable to him
whom St. Paul calls the natural, and we call the normal
man. For the ordinary person does not naturally feel
the truth of the Saviour's teaching that "a man's life con-
sisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possess-
eth." The general understanding is quite to the con
trary. It is the instinctive impression of all men that
the amount of one's possessions does determine his satis
faction in life.
In this connection it does no good to point out the in
numerable facts which prove that this impression is intel
lectually untenable. Undoubtedly the most obvious truth
of any man's experience is that the amount of possessions
which those around him have is no measure of their hap
piness : but obvious truths have very little influence over
instinctive feelings. So that no matter what every man
sees as to failure of his neighbor's possessions to give
satisfaction, he is certain that in his own case it would
be different.
But absurd as this general notion may he there is some
85

86 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
justification for holding it: because we should never for
get that the average man must have a certain amount of
material welfare in order to attain his normal spiritual
development. The instrument through which the individ
ual person expresses himself and attains spiritual effective
ness is his nervous system — a very complex material sub
stance, dependent for its best development upon a plenti
ful, wholesome, and varied form of nourishment. This
nourishment moreover cannot have its proper effect in a
body that is not adequately clothed and does not have a
reasonable amount of rest and recreation.
No intelligent civilization could fail to take such matters
into account and of course the Kingdom of God takes
them for granted. But necessary as proper material con
ditions are, they are not in the Kingdom, as they are in
this world, the end and aim of existence. The abiding
satisfactions of life cannot be found in them.
But abiding satisfaction in life is a vital consideration
in the Heavenly Realm: and its theory of such satisfac
tion is based upon a broader point of view than any that
is limited to mere economic considerations. Material
things play an important part in life's satisfactions; but
we shall go far astray if we do not realize that the primary
element in the case is not economics but that for which
alone economics exists — human desire: and although hu
man desire has economic satisfactions, these can never ful
fill human desire.
Indeed the deepest satisfactions known to men have
never been the economic ones. They have not been along
the line of receiving to oneself but of giving of oneself.
All parents know that the joy which they had as children
in receiving presents at Christmas or on their birthdays,
intense as it may have been, is incomparable with the joy
they have in giving presents to their children. Although

THE REWARD IN HEAVEN 87
we have no account of the occasion on which they were
spoken, we know there were never any more characteristic
words of Jesus than those quoted by Paul: — "It is more
blessed to give than to receive."
This truth is the basis of those paradoxical Beatitudes
which speak of the blessedness of persecution and suffering
for righteousness' sake. For such experiences mark the
giving of oneself wholly and completely: and it is only
in such giving that the ultimate satisfaction can be found.
No phenomenon could be more natural than that related
of Saint Stephen of whom, when he was undergoing the
supreme test of offering himself wholly to a great cause,
it is said: — "And those who sat in the council, looking
steadfastly upon him, saw his face as it had been the face
of an angel."
In this light even the futility and insanity of war seem
to take on a kind of meaning : and the power of mere Jingo
patriotism to make men forego all their economic inter
ests lies in its offering them a chance to give themselves
completely to a great cause. Ordinary men seldom get
a thrill of satisfaction or an enduring memory like those
arising out of their undergoing the utmost danger, hard
ship, and tribulation for that which is more than they.
There is a real "glory even at the cannon's mouth" in
that there is revealed there the unconquerable spirit in the
humblest and most ordinary men.
Indeed one's glory may be defined as the manifestation
for the good of others of that which is best in himself.
The artist, the musician, and the poet all give the best that
is in them, and the satisfaction which they take in doing
their work well is greater than any other satisfaction that
can come to them.
So to the man worthy of citizenship in the Kingdom of
Heaven the doing of righteousness, which is the essence

88 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
of that citizenship, is the supreme satisfaction in life : and
in this fact lies the crucial difference between actual Chris
tianity and Pharisaism — a difference which is beautifully
illustrated in the Fourth Gospel by the parable of the true
shepherd and the hireling. The Pharisee is the hireling;
he performs his righteousness with a view to tangible re
ward; he knows nothing of the satisfaction of the good
shepherd in the very activities of caring for the sheep.
It may be noted, by the way, that one of the worst curses
of modern industrialism lies along this line. Present-
day machinery in supplanting handicraft has made it nec
essary for an increasing number of workers to be chained
to the monotonous grind of a single tedious process like
sealing cans or stamping buttons, the machinery doing all
the work that could interest a workman and the workman,
unless he be infinitely more resourceful than the average
person, finding no scope for the shepherding instinct — no
satisfaction in the doing of his task.
Because of this fact there is a general deterioration in
workmanship affecting a great deal of the product of mod
ern industry. Furniture made in America two hundred
years ago will outlast most of the furniture made here
to-day. Leather tanned by the old process was far better
than the chemically treated product that we use. The
durable qualities whether of furniture or of shoe leather
have gone with the satisfaction of the craftsman in his
craft. The hireling has supplanted the shepherd of the
sheep. Thus has arisen Sabotage — the most natural develop
ment conceivable under the above conditions. It is dis
tinctly the invention of the employer rather than of the
employed: and Prof. Veblen has demonstrated beyond a
peradventure that Sabotage is the basis of many large
accretions of wealth. If you ask any I.W.W. member

THE REWARD IN HEAVEN 89
about his organization's open advocacy of Sabotage he will
tell you that the workers learned it from the master class ;
and he will recount experiences of doing, under compul
sion from his employers, such things as packing the large
apples or potatoes at the top of the container in order to
conceal the great bulk of smaller ones, or putting paste
board into shoe leather and foreign substances into silk,
or poisonous adulterations into food, or a thousand and
one other similar capitalistic tricks which make up the rule
rather than the exception. Fruit and vegetables are often
destroyed in order to raise the price of what is left, hides
are kept back in storehouses in order to elevate the price
of shoes, eggs are held in storage in order to make them
dear, and labor is deliberately kept in inactivity in order
to make it cheap. We legislate against labor Sabotage
but the capitalist can and does retard the wheels of in
dustry ad libitum when it becomes to his interest so to do.
But all Sabotage, whether that of Capital or that of
Labor, is due to our remoteness from the Kingdom of
Heaven with its insistence upon the fact that life's deepest
satisfactions come in the rendering of good service. We
are too content with the ways of this world which the
wisdom of the Fourth Gospel distinguishes so sharply from
the Kingdom. The way of the world is for each to extract
all that is possible to his individual advantage: the way
of the Kingdom is for each to contribute all that is possible
to the common good. The world receives its satisfaction
apart from its work : the Kingdom receives its satisfaction
in its work.
Nowhere is the way of the world more evident to-day
than in the field of journalism. It is a field in which,
ideally, one who devoted himself to its possibilities would
take unlimited satisfaction. For it ought to be obvious
that political freedom is as dependent upon truth as is

90 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
spiritual freedom, and the ostensible object of journalism
is the promulgation and interpretation of current facts.
For a man of insight and power of expression there would
seem to be few more attractive opportunities for service.
But too often in these days journalism is used for any
thing except the promulgation of truth. Great financial
interests buy the important periodicals or secure domi
nance over them in order to disseminate ideas which ad
vance their business interests and in order to win support
for politicians who serve them. In accomplishing this
purpose they have to hire men who have very keen intelli
gence but who are willing to prostitute their integrity in
the interest of that which is not true.
Moreover in addition to editorial distortion of truth
there is a widespread suppression of truth and deliberate
promulgation of falsehood on the part of news gathering
and distributing agencies. Just how far the process has
already gone it would be hard to say : but it is a perfectly
simple process for a great financial combination to make
terms with an important press bureau. If financial gain
rather than human service be the motive of the press
bureau — and the most optimistic would be justified in
wondering if financial considerations might not influence
a news trust — there is absolutely certain to be a tendency
to color and suppress news unfavorable to special interests.
It is the nature of the hireling not to care for the sheep.
Success in the above process depends upon that which
Jesus hated with all the intensity of His being — hypoc
risy. The editor gives the impression, and, in order to
be successful must give the impression, of urging upon
his readers convictions at which he has arrived through
the exertion of his splendid mental faculties, while in
reality he is merely giving out thoughts dictated to him
by the owners of the publication for which he writes.

THE REWARD IN HEAVEN 91
He is acting a part: he is a thoroughgoing hypocrite (or
actor) .
A similar evil affected for the worse the life of Israel
in the time of our Lord. The Pharisees did all in their
power to appear righteous but it was the appearance that
they desired most, not the righteousness itself. They
gave alms, prayed, and fasted "to be seen of men."
This, after all, is one of the most influential incentives
to human conduct. Frequently the compelling eco
nomic motives have proved weaker than the desire to be
seen favorably of men. Some poor people go into reckless
extravagance in order to be seen of men as rich; and the
average person would rather be seen to have certain quali
ties than actually to possess them. There are many right
eous men in prison while a great many who should be
there are outside and seen of men to be righteous: but
the average man, if it came to the actual test, would rather
be in the position of the hypocritical scoundrel than in
that of the publicly condemned righteous man. Many a
refined woman would rather nourish a secret sin than be
discovered in a slight open breach of etiquette. We all
incline to the Pharisaic preference of a good reputation to
deeply righteous character.
But real character is the sole test of fitness for citizen
ship in the Heavenly Realm. There one gives alms or
shows kindness in other ways not to be seen of men but
for the pure joy of doing good: he does not let his left
hand know what his right hand is doing. It is the per
forming of a good deed which interests him, not the repu
tation for goodness.
The same principle is even more striking in relation
to prayer. We still think of the devotional nature as the
one which makes long petitions and which is meticulous
in the acts of worship: but in the teaching of Jesus the

92 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
main purpose of prayer is not to gain a reputation for
piety; it is to strengthen character.
In order to leave no doubt in this matter, the Saviour
gives His ideal prayer — one that we constantly repeat but
seldom if ever feel to anything like its depths. In har
mony with the whole spirit of the sermon it makes God
and His Kingdom exclusively paramount. It begins with
an endeavor to realize the presence of God and as much
of what that presence means as the finite being can com
prehend — "Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be
Thy Name." This naturally leads to the thought of God's
purpose and, from the stand-point of the Gospel, the first
petition could not conceivably be other than "Thy King
dom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven"
— the most striking illustration imaginable of the con
stantly reiterated supremacy of the Kingdom of God. At
the most solemn moments of a Christian's life — his times
of prayer — he is taught by Christ to put before all other
possible concerns God and His Kingdom.
All prayer, according to the Simple Gospel, centers
here. For him who is fit to enter the Kingdom all the
deeper yearnings of the heart are concerned with the in
terests of the Kingdom. He does not think of his own
needs first : those needs — his daily bread and the forgive
ness of his sins — are secondary to the progress of the
Kingdom. All the petitions of the great prayer can be
made merely with reference to that progress. As one
who accepts the Gospel, I can pray for only those things
which conform to the Gospel. Since the heart of the
Gospel is the coming of the Kingdom, my personal needs
as objects of prayer can have reference only to my fitness
for advancing the Kingdom. Any of my own personal
desires not connected with the all-consuming interests of
the Heavenly Realm are, as far as the Simple Gospel

THE REWARD IN HEAVEN 93
is concerned, impertinences wholly outside Christian
bounds.
The life of the social body, therefore, is predominant
in Christian teaching. The sublime prayer itself has the
social form. It runs not My Father but "Our Father";
not give me but "give us." The idea of the social group
is supreme.That is the deepest reason for condemning the attitude
of the typical Pharisee. He exalts himself above the
group and he wants to be esteemed as more generous and
more devotional than the ordinary man. He has the de
basing self-exaltation which fails to lose itself in whole
hearted service. In what little he does perform his main
object is outward praise for himself, not internal satis
faction in doing good.
The same attitude is common to-day. Many an efficient
man or woman withdraws from telling work in a good
cause because he or she has failed to receive due credit
for what has been done ; and one of the anomalies in the
life of a Christian minister is his constant dread that
some Church member may withdraw from a good piece
of service because of not receiving full or even fulsome
praise. So intense is this yearning for personal credit in the
human heart that many people actually enjoy receiving
praise which they know that they do not deserve. Several
prominent Americans have reveled in praise for making
discoveries and inventions the real credit for which be
longs of right to others: and it has become the law of
modern industrial establishments that the credit and emol
uments accruing from anything invented by a man work
ing for any firm shall go to the firm.
The pride that is satisfied in this way is of a piece
with the larger proportion of all human pride. For the

94 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
chief causes of pride in men and women are qualities
like good looks, inherited social or financial standing, and
good brain power — traits for which no conceivable credit
is due the possessor. So that while there is a rhetorical
difference between pride and vanity there is very little
spiritual difference and the satisfaction in receiving credit,
whether it be deserved or not, is a vain thing — an empty
reward. But the satisfaction in doing righteousness is a real re
ward. It is the profoundest satisfaction that can come.
If such an exercise as fasting aids one spiritually — makes
for more righteousness in him, the sacrifice is nothing; it
does not demand marks of sadness but rather the washed
face and the anointing oil of gladness. The reward that
God gives is not in the public appreciation but in the
intimate, inner relation with Him.
This fact must be remembered in connection with the
refrain of the passage under discussion which has become
familiar to us in the old translation : — "Thy Father which
seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." The best texts
leave out the expression "openly" altogether; but if it was
in the original gospel, it could not mean "in the public
eye" for that contradicts the whole intention of the pas
sage. In order to make sense here the expression has to
mean "obviously" or "evidently," referring not to the
public but to the individual understanding. "Tour Father
who sees in secret shall reward you in a manner perfectly
evident to yourself."
To the materialist, of course, there is no satisfaction
in this Heavenly type of reward. But human nature is,
normally, above materialism. Toilers have always found
their deepest satisfaction in the realization that others —
their dependents, were supported by their toil just as
mothers have always found their supreme joy in caring for

THE REWARD IN HEAVEN 95
their broods. For humankind the satisfaction derived
from loving service is incomparable with any other.
It is a master of his craft whose ideal of the Heavenly
reward is: —
"And only the Master shall praise us, and only the
Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work
for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his
separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of
Things as They are."
Some years ago an English gentleman, writing heavily
in the "Hibbert Journal," found the ethical teaching of
Jesus to be on an inferior plane because this itinerant,
Galilean Teacher promised a reward for righteousness.
But very obviously the word reward or pay as used by
the Master is figurative and means satisfaction in a pur
pose fulfilled. Activity without a purpose, whether ethical
or of any other type, has no conceivable dignity in it;
and such activity does not suggest sanity. The fact is
that our heavy English gentleman was trying to uphold
a fine ethical principle by attacking the classic expression
of that principle. For this section of the Sermon on the
Mount is an immortal assertion of the fact that righteous
ness is more desirable than any other treasure which can
be acquired.
It is clearly the only abiding kind of reward because
the point at which material satisfactions are ripest and
richest is the very point where corruption and decay are
most fatally imminent. Therefore it is fitting that at
this juncture Jesus should dwell upon the inadequacy of
the materialistic interpretation of existence: — "Lay not

96 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and
rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and
steal." But that is another chapter.

THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL

DO NOT STORE UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES UPON
EARTH WHERE MOTH AND RUST SPOIL, AND WHERE
THIEVES DIG THROUGH AND STEAL: BUT STORE UP FOR
YOURSELVES TREASURES IN HEAVEN WHERE NEITHER
MOTH NOR RUST SPOIL, AND WHERE THIEVES DO NOT DIG
THROUGH AND STEAL. FOR WHERE YOUR HEART IS THERE
ALSO SHALL YOUR TREASURE BE.
THE LAMP OF THE BODY IS THE EYE. IF, THEN, YOUR
EYE BE SINGLE, YOUR WHOLE BODY SHALL BE ENLIGHT
ENED: BUT IF YOUR EYE BE BAD, YOUR WHOLE BODY
SHALL BE DARKENED. IF, THEREFORE, THE LIGHT IN
YOU BE DARKNESS, HOW GREAT THAT DARKNESS IS!
(Matthew VI: 19-23.)

CHAPTER VII

THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL

NONE of the more profound minds of the human
race have been given to a cheap optimism. The
higher poetry, whether in the Book of Job, the
Greek tragedies, the Inferno of Dante, or in the dramas
of Shakespeare and Goethe, is all permeated with a sense
of the awfulness of reality. The best intellect finds no
easy satisfaction in the world. It is less on the side of
the gushing triviality of Margaret Fuller who said, "I
accept the universe" than on the side of Carlyle who, on
hearing of this remark, said, "She'd better."
It was not to have been expected, then, that Jesus would
find the world a primrose path. His boundless spiritual
vision did not escape the dark certainties of which less
perfect understanding is cognizant: and nothing makes
His teaching more convincing than His straightforward
realization of the unsatisfactory elements in life. If He
finds that the children of this world are in their genera
tion wiser than the children of light, He does not try
to blind Himself to that fact ; if He sees that it is a law
of life that to him that hath shall be given, He accepts
it as a law of life; and since He sees that the good are
not more favored by worldly fortune than the wicked, He
says frankly that those who were killed by the falling of
the tower of Siloam were not worse than others.
In fact to Him the essence of the earth's nature is its
unreliability, or rather its certainty to disappoint those
who put their trust in its so-called good things. The earth
99

100 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
in His understanding is essentially a place "where moth
and rust spoil and where thieves dig through and
steal." This is but one of those faultless interpretations of
history and experience which have made the Saviour's
simple utterances the common coinage of our remarks upon
life as we see it. But nowhere do the facts bear out the
accuracy of His observations more completely than this
seeing the earth as a place of corruption and forcible
expropriation. Corruption, as we have already noted, is the one abso
lute certainty in material development. No matter how
much of the world's substance a man may accrue to him
self, the longest human life is very brief and even if moth
and rust do not corrupt his treasures, the man himself
is doomed to material dissolution usually at the height of
his success.
But material success can come, in the nature of things,
to only a few compared with the whole number of human
beings. The more the material wealth that accrues to this
so considered fortunate few, the less of it is there to be
distributed among the less fortunate many. "To him who
has shall be given and from him who has not shall be
taken even the little that he has" ; and forcible expropria
tion of the possessions of the weak by the strong is as
fundamental a scientific fact of the life of the world as
is the certainty of material corruption. For the first
law of biology is that of an unending struggle for exist
ence resulting in the survival of the most successfully
acquisitive ; and the dominant law of history has been that
of the suppression and subjugation of the weaker political
units by the stronger.
The history of England, for example, has been that of
the stealing of lands by one set of conquerors from those

THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 101
who, or whose ancestors, had stolen them in former time.
Even in America the spirit of this kind of theft, now
known as imperialism, is still strong.
Moreover, it is in America that the crowning example
of forcible expropriation has developed. The American
Trust, as we have already noted, has without conscience
and without fear appropriated or destroyed the possessions
of any business interest which stood in its way. It may
be true that stealing and murder were not necessary in
the building up of our great trusts but it is certainly true
that such crimes have been and probably will continue to
be perpetrated by the trusts in the course of their develop
ment. Crime of this nature is but the necessary outcome
of the way of the world — that "earth where thieves dig
through and steal."
But Jesus is conscious of the existence of a Realm in
which corruption and forcible expropriation are not the
rule. "Store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where
neither moth nor rust spoil, and where thieves do not dig
through and steal." These words might be taken as con
firming the point of view mentioned in an earlier chapter
as so odious to socially alert minds — the idea that we
should be content with evil conditions here in our hope
for compensation hereafter. There surely is in the passage
that feeling of the permanent reality of spiritual things
which pervades the entire New Testament: and words of
Jesus like these bear out St. Paul when he says: — "The
things which are seen are temporal but the things that are
unseen are eternal."
For reasons which will appear forthwith the mind of
Christ could not make the easy deduction that because
all material being and possessions are transitory nothing
is lasting — nothing is immortal. As we found in the
above chapter the deepest yearnings of men and women

102 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
have no material satisfaction ; and it is even more obvious
that the heaviest afflictions have no material solace. Jesus
could not believe that our Heavenly Father would disap
point the noblest and most ardent longings of His children.
As the second Beatitude suggests the very mourning of
the bereaved is an earnest of their future comfort. This
is because spiritual force is an unconquerable force: and
St. Paul's interpretation of the Resurrection as the tri
umph of spiritual power over material force — the Spirit
over the flesh — is in keeping with the principle.
The application of that principle in the passage under
consideration is the most interesting of all its applications
although it seems to have been strangely overlooked. For
while there has been enough misinterpretation of passages
of this kind to give those who were eager to believe it
the impression that the Church has taught submission to
social wrong to be a virtue that is rewarded in the here
after, the actual purport of this passage, in its entirety,
is wholly in the other direction. The firm assurance of
Jesus that the spiritual is supreme over the material makes
it necessary in His ideal that the spiritual shall triumph
in the material conditions of this world. His dissatisfac
tion and discontent with the way of the world are un
bounded and His Gospel cannot be truly received without
revolutionizing the world.
To be sure He does not teach forcible revolution: but
the unvarying lesson of history that force can only beget
force justifies, to common sense, His peace ideal. It
follows therefore that the spiritual way is the only way
out of the world's iniquities. Spiritual life is the only
power that can overcome the earth's essential processes
of decay and loss. Moreover no sane man can doubt that
the way of Jesus would remove all the iniquities of
the way of the world: and we have no reason to believe

THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 103
that there is any other system which can bring complete
fairness and full justice to mankind.
At all events ideal systems of social order have been
suggested in unlimited number by the finest minds of the
human race; and innumerable idealistic experiments in
community life have been made by very intelligent and
sincere men and women. Nevertheless trouble and pare
still fret the world as a moth fretteth a garment ; and the
highly respectable rich and strong still exploit the weak
and poor just as those of old "devoured widows' houses
and for pretense made long prayers."
But beyond all the world's pathetic inadequacy remains
the one great social ideal not yet taken seriously and the
one alluring social experiment still untried — the idea of
the Kingdom of God, the Simple Gospel of Christ. This
Gospel men and women have not, to any great extent, ac
cepted because their hearts have not been truly in it:
for "where one's heart is there shall his treasure be also."
The fact that we are so eager to store up treasures upon
earth makes real eagerness for Heavenly treasure on our
part impossible.
This, principle is now developed in the sermon with
consummate beauty, and the passage before us contains
all that the most profound psychologists can say in the
matter without resorting to their tedious verbiage. In
deed it is striking that words so simple and beautiful as
these in the last half of the Sixth chapter of St. Matthew
should conform so closely to the best results of modern
psychology. The truth which this psychology emphasizes, more per
haps than all others, is that of the power of suggestion.
We have learned that very few, if any, men can escape
the influence of the peculiar prepossessions of their minds,
and that these prepossessions are often more likely to affect

104 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
our view of facts than facts are to affect these preposses
sions. That is to say the principle of hypnotism, in a com
paratively mild form, is at work in our mental life far
more generally than we imagine. The hypnotized subject
sees everything in the light of the suggestion dominating
his attention : if he receives the suggestion that the floor is
a pool of water, he will see the water and none of the
actual facts that contradict the suggestion will have any
effect upon him. This is of course an extreme case; but
it is the same principle as this, in a less intense form,
which makes the political partisan unconscious of any of
the faults or inconsistencies in his party's program, and
that makes the spiritualist oblivious to material limita
tions and the materialist oblivious to spiritual realities.
All this we moderns call the psychology of suggestion
but Jesus deals with the same phenomena in simpler
though far more expressive terms: — "The lamp of the
body is the eye : if therefore your eye is single, your whole
body shall be full of light." Here the eye stands for that
dominant prepossession which governs our vision of ex
perience. It is the point from which we get the light in
which we view all that is around us.
Upon this point of view depends our entire under
standing: from it we seek and receive light: it is our
enlightening eye. This is seen in such an ordinary matter
as the way in which people read their newspapers. The
banker turns at once, on receiving his sheet, to the stock
reports; the athlete, to the sporting column; the young
lady, to the fashion notes ; and the seaman, to the shipping
news. Our heart interests guide our attention and they
do help to illuminate our understanding. For we all
realize that when we are particularly interested in any
subject we are constantly discovering new facts with re
gard to that subject: if, for example, an intimate friend

THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 105
goes to live in some remote place we suddenly begin to
notice, in our reading, various accounts of that place and
we wonder why such an interesting locality never inter
ested us before.
Facts like this represent the good side of the psychology
of suggestion. An absorbing point of view is an illuminat
ing thing. Our cherished fundamental convictions, if we
are sane, determine our characters. Even a prejudice can
bring us some understanding. "If your eye be single
your whole body shall be full of light."
But there is a sinister side to the same principle. "But
if your eye be bad, your whole body shall be darkened.
If therefore the light which is in you be darkness, how
great the darkness is!" The word "bad" here has both
a physical and a moral meaning; and Jesus would have
us think both of a defective vision and of a view of life
which is spiritually evil.
To consider the latter case first there is a type of mind,
far too common, which is so dirty that it tends to befoul
everything which enters into it. There are men whose
entire mental processes are so salacious that they can find
a filthy suggestion in the most commonplace remark: and
with this type of mind it is hard not to classify those
scientists who find in the sexual impulse the origin and
cause of all that is high and holy in life.
Not quite so loathsome as this variety of bad eye and
yet thoroughly bad is that of the cynic — the man whose
point of view is that all apparent goodness is sham. His
eye is so bad that all his vision of the righteousness of
others is darkened. He has lost the power of discernment.
But the bad eye is not always morally bad. There is
the eye which produces darkness within because it is de
fective. In other words one's point of view is often too
constrained to let in the full light.

106 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
This kind of visual defect is well exemplified by those
who are captivated by any one of the various systems of
healing that come into vogue from time to time. When
some peculiar kind of healing has seemed to be successful
in certain cases, those who are especially interested in
that kind of healing jump to the conclusion that it is good
for every malady and that it is the only true system.
Homeopathy has worked out favorably in many cases and
therefore the typical Homeopathist believes it to be the
only system that should be practiced. So with the various
forms of psychic or mental healing excellent results are
often obtained particularly in relieving the very painful
physical accompaniments of nervous disorders ; and many
who have seen such results believe the peculiar type of
psychic healing which they have observed to be the ex
clusively sure cure for all ailments. The Christian Scien
tist considers it blasphemous to attribute his cures to sug
gestion ; and the New Thought enthusiast, while also mak
ing light of the power of suggestion, excludes the claims
of Christian Science.
Thus all healers are inclined to look upon their practice
from a single viewpoint, attributing unlimited power to
their fragmentary scheme. They have the single eye but
the light that is in them is darkness because their defec
tive, inadequate point of view will not admit any light
from other sources. The sincere chiropractor or osteopath
— and orthodox medicine is probably wrong in denying that
any such are sincere — cannot see truths according to which
Homeopaths practice with considerable success; there are
still a few rigid materialists who allow no credit to psychic
treatment; and many psychic practitioners consider all
materia medica worthless. Rare indeed is the physician
of larger enlightenment who can use various systems to
suit individual cases.

THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 107
But the medical field is not unique in exemplifying this
principle. Everywhere the restricted point of view shuts
out the full light in proportion to its restrictions. In art
and poetry, for example, we have such incarnations of im
perfection as futurism and free verse taking themselves
seriously as expressions of the ideal absolute in their
spheres. Truth and beauty are here darkly clouded in
the vision of those who are confident that their sight is
faultless. So it is everywhere: each man considers his
particular outlook the only illuminating one. Browning
makes Abt Vogler, at his instrument, say: —
"Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and
the woe:
But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear ;
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians
know."
But if Abt Vogler had been a banker, or a physician, or
a street car conductor he would have been just as certain
that because of his point of vantage for viewing the world
his enlightenment was superior.
This failing is especially marked in those of a scientific
turn. There is none so dominated by suggestion as is the
materialist, and it is not strange that this should be the
case: because the material world is a definite focus for
the attention ; and it readily becomes the dominant, light-
excluding, hypnotic suggestion which determines one's en
tire view of reality. Not necessarily, of course, for there
have been many like Swedenborg, Fechner, Lombroso, and
Lodge whose extraordinary scientific acumen has not re
stricted their ability to escape the dominance of the materi
alistic point of view. Nevertheless the tendency is pecul
iarly strong among scientific men to allow the understand
ing to be darkened by an inadequate vision of reality.

108 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
An interesting phase of their general materialism is the
attitude that they are most likely to take toward the idea
of personal immortality. To them the idea is obviously
absurd: and yet it is a fact that the ordinary inference
from a dead body that the soul has become extinct is due
far more to the influence of suggestion than to the appli
cation of reason. To the person who draws such an in
ference the dead body acts as a focus of attention similar
to that which is used in preparing the subject for the
hypnotic state.
Another such focus is economic reality; and there is
a strong trend in modern thought toward the idea of eco
nomic determinism or the materialist conception of his
tory. It is true, moreover, that the influence of economic
conditions upon history has been very much neglected by
some historians. We have not fully appreciated such facts
as that the endeavor to free the trade with the East from
the danger of Saracen brigands was a major cause of the
crusades, or that cheapening the traffic with India seemed
worth frightful risks to Columbus, or that the cotton in
dustry was the crux of the Civil War in the United States,
or that the desire to control world markets lay at the
bottom of the recent world cataclysm: for economic influ
ences do exert a tremendous pressure upon history.
Nevertheless it is only a mind ensnared in the trap of
suggestion that can find in economics the whole point of
history. For there are other factors like the promulgation
of knowledge and the development of religion which are
also powerful in determining the course of history. It is
true, no doubt, that educational and religious institutions
have been, time and again, more or less perverted by eco
nomic forces ; and yet knowledge and religion are prized for
their own sakes more highly than all material possessions.
A telescopic or a microscopic lens that would take us a

THE LIGHT OE THE GOSPEL 109
little farther into the infinite or into the infinitesimal
would command a price all out of proportion to any con
ceivable economic gain which could accrue from the larger
knowledge: and religion is so precious to mankind that
men and women without number have been and are will
ing to sacrifice all that they possess and even their lives
in its service. It was not economic advantage that kept
the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth after their first, ghastly
winter; and even that most economically minded of all
men, the typical Jew, will keep the fires of his religion
burning at all costs.
Indeed one could become as readily hypnotized by the
religious conception of history as by the economic. The
history of England, for example, is dominated by religious
motives: and very early the conversion of the Teutonic
conquerors of Britain to Christianity showed its effect.
To be sure Christianity has not even yet taken away
from Teutonic peoples the lust of conquest and the desire
of the strong to oppress the weak: but at the outset it
so modified the barbarity of their conquering spirit that
whereas the heathen Angles, Jutes, and Saxons annihi
lated completely the early British inhabitants, we find
that after these peoples were converted to Christianity
they were far less cruel and in the last sections to be
conquered — Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall — we still find
remnants of the earlier Celts. Again we find that the
union of the early Teutonic kingdoms of Britain into one
nation, which was such an extremely difficult process, was
really brought about by the unity of the Church in Eng
land whose laws, councils, and jurisdiction covered the
whole body of Christians in England. Among the famous
names of Great Britain moreover there are more of the
clergy and their children than of any other class.
Nevertheless the man of understanding does not let

110 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
the effect of either religion or learning upon history blind
him to the effect of economic influences any more than
he lets the simple materialistic facts exclude further light.
In other words he is not a rigid dogmatist: for, while
it is perhaps not necessarily the case, it is likely to be
the effect of dogma to serve as the paradoxical light of
which Jesus speaks — "the light in you which is dark
ness." Now it should be noted that dogmatism in these days
is not the weakness of the more alert minds of the religious
type. In our day it is frequently the principles of science
that are so rigid that it becomes hard to redefine them
in view of further, modifying light. Scientific truths
are gathered so rapidly that a text-book of science is good
only for a brief period after which it is superseded by
others containing newer illumination : and yet the teacher
and student of science constantly feel that they are deal
ing with the eternal and unchanging realities — that "the
things which are seen are eternal."
This scientifically dogmatic attitude, unfortunately,
seems to be obsessing the minds of many of the more
socially enlightened persons of to-day. Those who, with
considerable reason, are all at odds with the prevailing
social system tend to have a very exalted opinion of their
own grasp of economic science. They commonly speak of
one of their number as "one who knows"; and, with the
kindest spirit in the world, it would have to be admitted
that they tend to have an intellectual pride in what they
consider themselves to have apprehended which is not
usually found in solid scholarship.
They would do well to remember that economics is the
most complicated of all sciences, its ultimate truths only
to be comprehended by those who comprehend the whole
meaning of the throbbing life of humanity from its low-

THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 111
est vices to its most exalted esthetics. For value, price
and profit, if we get any adequate view of them, are found
to be connected with every element of living.
Therefore we can hardly expect this science to remain
static while sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics,
vastly easier of comprehension than economics, are always
expanding and demanding constant intellectual readjust
ment. It is not easy to believe, even granting them full
credit for great contributions to science, that Marx and
Engels shall remain the two single, infallibly inspired
writers of the human race when Darwin, Spencer, and
all the other immortal scientists have in many respects
been outgrown.
The dogmatism that would so teach spreads darkness
rather than light. It impedes that extension of vision
upon which all progress depends. It is akin to every kind
of conviction, prepossession or prejudice which makes
our vision poor.
Now the great Physician, in the passage under con
sideration, offers a remedy for defective spiritual vision.
It is to hold such broad, inclusive views that they cannot
exclude light. In other words he wants us to look out
upon life from the viewpoint of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In obtaining this viewpoint the principles which we
have so often noted as essential must be considered once
more. For one of the main causes of defective spiritual
vision is self-exaltation. The man of poor sight lets his
petty prejudices dominate. He actually is abased by
exalting his weaknesses. But he that abases himself shall
be exalted to the true, clear outlook upon life. He who
becomes like a little child, eager to see and to learn more,
capable of unlimited growth in comprehension, is neces
sarily one whose whole body shall be full of light.
Then there is that other fundamental principle of the

112 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
Gospel — the principle of love — which is always a light-
giving element. For in spite of the cynicism which feels
that love is blind it is the most obvious teaching of ex
perience that love alone can find the whole truth. A
quarrel is invariably a misunderstanding, and a man can
never justly estimate the worth of one whom he hates.
The all-inclusive love of the citizen of the Heavenly
Realm is all-illuminating too; and love makes one un
derstand the point of view of him with whom he dis
agrees. It is one's love of any subject moreover which gives
him his insight. The great chemist is enamored of chem
istry, the great artist adores art, and the great saint loses
himself in rapture with the Kingdom of Heaven.
Therefore the passage before us begins with the idea
of the heart interest as the illuminating center. "Do not
store up treasures upon earth . . . but store up for
yourselves treasures in heaven . . . for where your treas
ure is there shall also be your heart."

This whole theory of the heavenly light works out thor
oughly in life and it accounts for the phenomenon noted
in the Introduction that man's highest expression of him
self has invariably been a religious expression. The great
est poems, pictures, buildings, musical compositions and
the like have been religious because the fullest illumina
tion of man is the religious illumination.
The next chapter will have a great deal to do with
those facts which show up the world as unlovely and
unilluminating while the Kingdom is the source of light.

GOD AND MAMMON

NO ONE IS ABLE TO SERVE TWO LORDS: FOR EITHER
HE WILL HATE THE ONE AND LOVE THE OTHER, OR HE
WILL HOLD TO ONE AND DESPISE THE OTHER. YOU ARE
NOT ABLE TO SERVE GOD AND MAMMON. (Matthew VI: 24.)

CHAPTER VIII
GOD AND MAMMON
THE last chapter discussed the fact that one's heart
interests determine his understanding. It is the
essence of sanity that one's understanding should
determine his conduct: and Jesus would heartily assent
to the old saying: — "Out of the heart proceed all the
issues of; life."
Having expressed this truth in the words: — "Where
your treasure is there shall also be your heart," He re
iterates the thought in the words: — "No one is able to
serve two lords: for either he will hate the one and love
the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other."
All human experience goes to emphasize this fact; and
that which we consider success in life depends upon our
service to some dominant motive.
This necessitates, absolutely, the subordination of other
interests. A man cannot build up a large commercial
establishment and at the same time become a great artist
or musician. If he intends to build up the commercial
establishment, he cannot have time for the incessant study
and practice necessary in musical or artistic mastery. To
be sure an Ibsen or a Shakespeare, with fortune unusual
to great artists, may amass considerable wealth. But in
the case of each of these poets his fortune was made in
the theatrical business — a by-product, so to say, of his
heart interest, the drama. In the case of Ibsen more
over it seems clear that financial interests interfered with
the development of his unsurpassed genius for poetical
116

116 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
expression: for perfect of their kind as were his problem
plays, it is hard not to feel that the vast financial return
from that type of writing led him to withdraw his ener
gies from that exalted form of poetry of which Brand
and Peer Gynt prove him to have been a master. On
the same principle it is said that one of our most popular
moving picture Merfy Andrews sacrificed a great career
as a real comedian to the fabulous wealth that lies in his
inferior course. There can be only one controlling in
terest in a person's life.
The illustration of this fact which Jesus gives is the
most thoroughgoing and compelling that could be given : —
"You are not able to serve God and Mammon." At no
other point is the Master more explicit than here; and
at few points do His disciples take Him less seriously
at His word. It is probable that more sermons are
preached, with the purpose, perhaps not always deliberate,
of reconciling service of Mammon with service of God,
than are preached with a view to setting forth the
Saviour's hard and fast meaning as contained in these
words. But that clear and unmistakable meaning must be com
prehended by any one who is to appreciate the Gospel
of the Kingdom of Heaven. For here is perhaps the
finest of the New Testament distinctions between the
spiritual and the material, the Spirit and the flesh, the
Kingdom and the world. God is the "Spirit, Mammon
is the flesh; the Kingdom is God's service, the world is
Mammon's service. We are therefore at the simplest point
of the Simple Gospel.
It is true, we must admit, that the exact derivation
of the word Mammon has never been cleared up to the
absolute satisfaction of all scholars: and yet there is no
question that the underlying idea of the term is the wealth

GOD AND MAMMON 117
that means more to the average man than do spiritual
things, and which, in modern slang, is called the Almighty
Dollar. It is easy to ignore the justification for such a term;
and there are very few intelligent men who cannot make
a more or less convincing argument to the effect that per
sonal gain need not interfere with public welfare, or that
one's personal advancement and the good of the community
are one and the same. Nevertheless there is an eternal
distinction, leading to infinitely different results, between
making the service of Mammon and making the service
of God the first interest of the heart. The entire per
sonal, political, social, and religious welfare of men is
affected by that distinction.
For practical purposes we can put the distinction in
the most familiar terms and consider it as that between
men and money. Because in this world all that makes
for the highest development of human life and character
is the truest service of God and all that puts first the
private accumulation of money is the service of Mammon.
The first proposition is taken for granted in all the
teaching of Jesus. Loving service to one's fellow men
is actual service of God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind; this is the first and great commandment, and the
second is like unto (or identical with) it ; Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself." "Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto the least of these my brethren," says the King,
"ye have done it unto Me."
The second proposition ought to be fully as clear be
cause it is a matter upon which the New Testament has
a great deal to say and all of it to the same effect. There
never has been and there never can be anything more
radical said with regard to money than the words of

118 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
Jesus concerning it. In His view deceitfulness is a qual
ity inherent in riches. (Matt. XIII: 22) In the parable
of the rich man and Lazarus the rich man seems to be in
Hell solely because of the effect of riches upon his char
acter. There is no valid reason, moreover, for supposing
that the average camel, and the average rich man, and the
average needle's eye are not meant when it is said that
it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
The rich man went away sorrowful "because he had great
possessions." These varied passages occurring through
out the Synoptic Gospels make it seem unlikely that St.
Luke (as is so often maintained) overemphasizes the Gos
pel teaching of the spiritual superiority of the poor. The
other Gospels contain nothing out of keeping with St.
Luke's "Woe unto you that are rich."
Perhaps there is no stronger reason for this point of
view everywhere maintained by Jesus, than the fact that
riches, as a rule, give their possessors feelings of undue
exaltation above their fellows. Not to mention the troop
of menial servants, generally in uniform to emphasize
their subjection, which the rich man has around him, he is
usually fawned upon by a host of courtiers, flattering him
in every way, losing no chance to express their admira
tion which is very likely to be genuine. One in such an
environment can hardly help thinking of himself more
highly than he ought to think. It is not natural for one
to consider as brothers either those who serve him as
menials or those who fawn upon him as if they considered
him a being of a different mold.
But whatever the theoretical reasons may be, the actual
fact is obvious : the accretion of riches does make against
all feelings of brotherhood. When the point of view is
determined by desire for increased dividends — ever en-

GOD AND MAMMON 119
larging private fortune — the service of others which is
the service of God cannot have first place. If financial
profits make up the chief aim of a business system — and
no sane man can doubt that profits make up the chief aim
of the now prevailing business system — it must always be
the endeavor of the employer of labor to get as much out
of and give as little to his employees as possible. It may
be an exaggeration for the preamble of the I.W.W. Con
stitution to assert that capital and labor can have no
common interests; but it is absolutely true that, under
a system which is based on the preeminence of profits over
service, there must always be between employer and em
ployee a thoroughgoing conflict of their most vital in
terests. It frequently may be to the interest of employers
to have their employees well fed and clothed; they can
usually get enough more out of them, when they are so
circumstanced, to pay liberally for the cost of their food
and clothes : as the labor unions gain more strength it will
be good policy for the master of labor to keep his men
as contented as he can: and yet the more he can get out
of them and the less he has to give them the larger will
be that private fortune by which his success in life is
commonly judged. For the amount of individual wealth
which he can withhold from the common wealth is the
measure of the modern man's achievement. The whole
zest of present-day business practice lies in each man's
trying to see how much the better he can get of his
fellows. That is what Jesus means by the service of Mammon:
and the actual results of that service would, if properly
understood, turn all good-hearted men to the service of
God. For Mammon-worship leaves a ghastly trail over
the entire expanse of civilization. It crushes relentlessly
all that is best in human life.

120 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
It is strange how those who profess faith in Jesus
Christ can ignore this fact. We shudder when we think
of the women of India throwing their children into the
Ganges; and yet we are perfectly calm when we think
of the American sacrifices made to Mammon through such
channels as child labor. It would seem that in a civiliza
tion slightly influenced by the Simple Gospel merely to
explain the conditions of child labor ought to be enough
to arouse the overwhelming power of the community
against it; but any legislation proposed with a purpose
of suppressing that evil is passed, if at all, only after a
long and severe struggle. The whole spirit of American
business fights against such legislation with all the force
that Mammon can command: legislators are bribed and
expensive court processes are used to the utmost before
those who profit by the sacrifice of children to Mammon
will renounce the fruits of such sacrifice.
But child labor is not a unique evil in a Mammon-
worshipping civilization. That type of civilization every
where makes for the deterioration of human beings in
order to gather superior accretions of material wealth.
This is the whole point of the history of organized
labor and all other institutions vitally interested in the
improvement of the conditions of living among working
people. Every slightest gain in the improvement of the
conditions of labor is made only by the most strenuous
effort against the bitterest opposition. The servants of
Mammon have always fought vigorously the will of God.
The list of examples of this truth is as long as the list
of cases in which improvement in conditions has been
sought. One might possibly find a few exceptions but the
almost invariable rule is that every law making for the
betterment of the laborer's surroundings, when it costs
the employer anything, is contested as tenaciously as pos-

GOD AND MAMMON 121
sible by the employing corporations. If, for illustration,
it is discovered that the death rate among metal polishers
can be greatly reduced by installing little fans which will
blow the fatal dust away from the worker and keep him
from inhaling it, any righteous government on learning
of that discovery, must demand that such fans be used
in all polishing rooms. But when laws to this effect
have been brought before any legislature the owners of
the metal polishing industry have brought to bear all the
pressure that they could exert by bribery, intimidation
and coercion in order to defeat their passage. The serv
ants of Mammon can always be counted upon to do all in
their power to prevent legislatures from rendering social
service to God.
No one can doubt this who has followed the efforts of
good men to secure legislation against the deadly processes
of manufacturing the phosphorous match and white lead.
Nor can any one doubt it who has followed the history
of the manufacture and sale of harmful patent medicines
or of the adulteration of food products with deleterious
and poisonous substances, both of which social sins have
maintained such a large, wealthy and influential backing
that the mildest laws in opposition could be passed only
after a hard struggle.
But the multitudinous variety of similar facts which
leave no room for doubt that business, looking primarily
to profits, makes against social welfare, is too great to
be detailed in a single volume. No doubt unthinking
persons might object that the widespread Safety First
movement proves a rather general concern on the part
of employers for the welfare of employees. Great cor
porations, so we are reminded, spend vast sums for safety"
devices in mines, factories, and railroad systems, and
for instructing workmen how to protect themselves from

122 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
the dangers inherent in daily toil. But such carefulness
on the part of employers never developed until after the
passage of workmen's compensation laws which made the
destruction of life and limb much more costly to the
masters of industry than is the Safety First campaign.
The vital statistics of any mining community would show
that before workmen's compensation laws were passed a
ruthless indifference to accident and death befalling the
miners went on year after year without the slightest effort
toward reform on the part of mine owners. The history
of the legislature in any mining state, moreover, will show
the bitterest opposition on the part of mining corporations
to have been exerted against any legislation intending to
make such accidents costly to them. However, when the
passage of these laws was secured a thousand and one
ways were immediately discovered by which the larger
number of serious accidents — now matters of financial loss
- — were easily eliminated. The companies never acted
when God was wronged; they crucified humanity con
tinually; but when Mammon was involved they acted at
once. It is obvious, then, that the heart of modern business
is primarily set upon laying up treasures on earth; and
we noted in the last chapter that it is of the intrinsic
nature of the earth that one being shall appropriate to
himself as much as he can of the common material wealth.
The biological law of endless struggle for existence has
its economic counterpart in the sacred law of Mammon
that competition is the life of trade.
In modern times, no doubt, we have learned that in
a certain sense it is the nature of competition to destroy
itself. Free competition, which in its nature is anarchy,
gives the superior business genius an opportunity to ex
pand his operations to such an extent that he holds all

GOD AND MAMMON 123
his competitors at his mercy: and that is the result of
the last development in business life — the trust.
But while the trust eliminates at will any competition
in the mastery of its field, there is a constant struggle
for leadership within the trust itself. Those working for
the trust are continually striving to outdo each other, all
seeking the positions of greatest influence and largest
financial return. Each man still wants all that he can
get without regard to the amount of which he may de
prive others. The struggle may and does develop coopera
tive groups, but competition goes on within the groups,
and the groups themselves become predatory. The strug
gle always persists.
In the struggle it is especially advantageous to the trust
to keep labor as competitive as possible. No student of
this branch of the service of Mammon doubts that there
has been a deliberate endeavor by those who profit by
the condition to foster a large amount of unemployment
in order that the competition for jobs may keep labor
inexpensive. There has been a definite aim, concealed
by the specious virtue of maintaining the freedom of con
tract, to make each worker see how cheaply he can sell
his labor and still hold body and soul together. That is
to say the whole tendency of labor competition is to main
tain human life at the lowest standards compatible with
any existence whatever. No matter whether, in the sin
gleness of his economic vision, Marx may have been ob
livious to certain elements in value, there cannot be the
remotest doubt that it has been the principle of modern
industry to get the greatest possible contribution from
the laborer while giving him the least possible re
turn. Thus the tendency of modern industry from end to end
is the self-aggrandizement of the few at the expense of

124 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
the many. It is utterly incompatible with the rule of
doing unto others as you would have them do to you.
Obviously there is no room here for the full expression
of the fundamental Christian virtue of love: and while
there are undoubtedly men in business who are more or
less deeply moved by the Christian ideal, their ideal has
not prevailed in the system of business.
Therefore the earth's course of business life has re
sulted in the perversion of all Heavenly ways. The slight
est willingness to do unto others as one would have them
do unto him would have made corporations construct
safety appliances for their workers without being forced
to do so. The remotest approach to Christian love would
never have been willing to profit by grinding out the lives
of weak women and young children in hard, indecently
requited toil.
In dealing with this lack of Christian feeling the Sim
ple Gospel is naturally more severe than is the, so con
sidered, scientific type of revolutionary thought. The
latter, as we have seen, says that these horrors are merely
the result of the economic system; but the Simple Gospel
maintains that the evils are the result of damnable sin.
It has to apply the principle brought out in Chapter IV:
it takes for granted that the man who is willing to profit
by unsanitary and unsafe conditions in the toil of those
who work to increase his private wealth is of the same
essential character with the thug and brutal assaulter,
lacking only their courage. To the extent that he is
willing to let women and children suffer and die need
lessly to his individual profit, he has the character of a
murderer; and none of the laws of men and none of the
interpretations of those laws by human courts can change
the attitude of God in the matter for an instant.
But there is this truth in the belief of the scientific

GOD AND MAMMON 125
Socialist that our economic system is entirely to blame
for the unhappy conditions in society — the truth that the
worship of Mammon, the desire for undue wealth, is the
sinful lust out of which these evident social sins grow.
The love of money is the root of all evil. Mammon-wor
ship is in reality that self-exaltation which in divine Jus
tice must be abased — that saving of one's life which is
eternal loss.
The service of God, on the other hand, is the self-abase
ment that really exalts, and the losing of self that actually
saves. As we have just noted, it is identical with the
service of our fellow men. If such service became the
main aim of business, instead of being one of the demands
with which business for its self-preservation has grudg
ingly to reckon, there would be a most profound revolution
in society. For then leaders in business would vie with
each other to make goods as cheap and as durable as
they could, at the same time giving every care to maintain
the best possible conditions of toil in the actual produc
tion of those goods. Food would as a matter of course
become as wholesome, pure, palatable, and procurable as
human ingenuity could make it: clothing would become
as serviceable and inexpensive as natural conditions would
allow. In other words human service would take the place
of economic gain.
In the terms of modern economic revolt the Proletariat
would be freed from the Bourgeoisie. For, without at
tempting to define uncharted or only partially charted
regions of economics with mathematical exactness, the
New Testament distinction between service of Mammon
and service of God, bound up as it is with the severe
words concerning the rich and the high praise of those
who in spirit are poor, approaches closely the very real
distinction between bourgeoise and proletarian interests.

126 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
At all events the bourgeoise (shop keeper) class is the
Mammon-worshipping class. For the average business man
frankly admits that his vocation is not in harmony with
ideal righteousness ; and when he is asked to do something
finely righteous but not legally requisite in business he
is very likely to remark that "he is not in business for
his health." The generally accepted practices of business
have never approached the lowest possible interpretation
of Christian righteousness; and there can be no question
but that a man who has attained business success by using
occasionally some petty deception or, so considered, venial
trickery is held by the majority in higher actual esteem
than is the man who because of refusing to stoop to such
methods has gone down to failure in so far as the Mam
mon of unrighteousness is concerned.
Indeed, is it not true that bourgeoise thought, in spite
of Jesus' obvious teaching as to the spiritual superiority
of the poor, tends to attribute the major portion of busi
ness failure to moral inadequacy? Is it not taken for
granted by the general run of, so called, successful men
in our time that there is something morally wrong — some
failure to exert a sturdy, economic virtue — in every per
son who is not successful from the materialistic point of
view? On the other hand is there any general sympathy
with the Christian doctrine that in the eternal judgment
a person's amassing of wealth will be subjected to vastly
more humiliating scrutiny than will a person's failure to
amass wealth?
And yet the Mammon-worshipping, bourgeoise system
carries with it its own obvious condemnation. This fact
will be the more clear if we recall the truth, dwelt upon
at such length in this volume, that religion — the realm
of the spiritual — has always expressed itself in the most
consummate beauty known to the world whether we look

GOD AND MAMMON 127
for that expression in music, art, architecture, or litera
ture; that the service of God leads to the fullest, most
completely beautiful expression of human energy; that
the Kingdom of Heaven is the freest conceivable develop
ment of creative, personal power. For then the contrast
with the blighting, blasting suppression of fine human
energy on the part of our financial, mercantile system
will appear in all its sharpness.
We have noted already the natural tendency of the
Mammon-worshipping, bourgeoise class to be willing to
destroy life and limb even to the extent of devastating
childhood and womanhood for its own advantage. We
have touched upon the fact that many have been content
to profit by the sale of impure or dangerous medicines
and foods. We might have added the desire of thousands
to amass wealth through the sale and manufacture of
alcoholic drink — a business which, whether or not it could
have been made harmless, actually was a holocaust of
human interests and human beings, giving not the remotest
reason to expect that any great improvement in its con
ditions would ever take place. For in the realm of Mam
mon dividends are sacred and persons are of value only
as producers of dividends.
Thus since the private accretion of wealth is the main
end of Mammon-worship, all other interests are sacrificed
to any extent necessary in accomplishing that aim. There
is no department of life that has not felt its devastating
scourge. All the beauty and cleanliness of the world are
besmirched and befouled in the name of Mammon.
To realize how true this is in America we have but
to consider the costly ravages of Mammonism upon the
natural resources of the commonwealth. The lumber in
dustry, for example, is particularly destructive in its re
moval of vast areas of standing timber without planting

128 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
new trees, in this way not only wasting lumber resources
but also drying up water supplies. Then there is the
overcrowding of stock on grazing lands — the ghastly en
deavor to make the vegetation in a given region feed
more sheep and cattle than can be properly accommodated.
Similarly a great strain is put upon cultivated soil in
some sections by a constant succession of a single type of
crop which happens to have a long period of high prices;
and it is thought that a fall in cotton prices was all that
saved vast areas of cotton land in the Southwest.
Being willing thus to devastate the substance of life,
Mammon-worship is of course indifferent to the blight
that it puts upon the finer expressions of life: and a state
dominated by the Bourgeoisie is necessarily characterized
by the common American manifestations of mercantilism.
The blight falls first upon family life; and the central
impulse of Mammon-worship to secure cheaply and sell
dearly tends to lower wages to a point at which family
life can be only the abomination of desolation or cannot
be maintained at all. The Socialist may well laugh in
derision when the Mammon-worshipper prates of Socialism
as an endeavor to destroy the family.
After exerting his Hellish destructiveness upon the fam
ily Mammon reaches out to the educational system. Fam
ily poverty makes it necessary for the more alert mem
bers of many households (or rather tenementholds) to
leave school with a woefully incomplete education; and
no one unacquainted with the poorer districts of our cities
can begin to realize the number of splendid intellects
wasted by taking boys and girls of brilliant mentality out
of school in order that their families may be partially
supported and their employers unduly profited by their
work. But besides this special loss of the trained minds
of the unusually gifted there is a lowering of the average

GOD AND MAMMON 129
mentality by using up young life prematurely in grinding
toil. Further we have to take into account all the sinister
interferences with the promulgation of truth which work
against true education. Far too often unclean politics
dominated by selfish business interests control the election
of the school superintendent : and he in turn superintends
the public instruction in such a way as to eliminate any
teaching that is unsatisfactory to those who have placed
him in control. The very text-books given to the children
are often edited with the purpose of fixing in their readers'
minds a prejudiced point of view. It can hardly be sup
posed that the Pan-German propaganda discovered in the
schools of certain American cities at the time of the
war is the only case of bringing undue influence to bear
on the prejudices of school children. Rare indeed is the
public school text-book in history or in civics which does
not try to make the student feel that certain things are
true rather than develop in him an inquiring mind.
The spirit that fosters such conditions in the lower
grades tries in the colleges and universities to interfere
with academic freedom for the great teachers. We can
exaggerate in our imagination the extent of this vicious
condition; but it is no longer possible to doubt that the
condition does exist: too many sincere and brilliant in
tellects, holding advanced positions, have been retired from
their chairs to make it possible to doubt that academic
freedom is seriously menaced.
It would be hard to determine whether the menace is
worse in the private institutions or in the state owned
colleges and universities. Wealthy donors to private in
stitutions can sometimes exert a sinister influence: but
the great business corporations which generally dominate
and sometimes absolutely control the state governments

130 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
bring to bear a tremendous pressure on the public educa
tional system from top to bottom. The toddler in kinder
garten is started on the play song "Soldier boy, soldier
boy, where are you going" ; and the college or university
student, in his history and economics classes, is not very
vigorously reminded that soldier boy is most likely to he
going into Mexico in order to fight for the none too fairly
acquired estates of some newspaper king or some cabinet
officer. All this of course makes for the popular misunderstand
ing of truth ; but the comprehension of truth is necessary
in a people that would govern itself. The Johannine pas
sage which asserts that "the truth shall make you free"
is eternally right. Any large development of invisible
government will destroy democracy, and invisible govern
ment can be overthrown only by an electorate acquainted
with facts.
The institution charged with the heaviest responsibility
in acquainting us with facts is the periodical press: and
here Mammon often plays havoc. The manipulation of
periodical literature to suit the views of its advertisers,
the emphasis of facts and ideas favorable to the owners
of newspapers and periodicals together with the distortion
and suppression of facts not pleasing to them, and the
disingenuous machinations of the great bureaus ostensibly
devoted to the promulgation of news make modern journal
ism one of the most striking examples of the devitalizing
influence of Mammon-worship.
But it affects the more dignified literature in the same
devastating manner. The best selling novels and popular
plays, which are usually poor, are not given their place
in the popular estimation by the unprejudiced convictions
of free choice, but rather by the hypnotic influence of de
ceptive advertisement. The free democracy of Athens by

GOD AND MAMMON 131
popular vote chose instinctively the plays of iEschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides as worthy the honors given to
poets when democracy is genuine: and those best able to
judge still consider the taste of the butchers, bakers and
candle-stick makers of ancient, democratic Athens to have
been catholic taste. The bad taste of the modern populace
is not due, as our ignorant dilettanti imagine, to the spread
of democratic ideas but to the suppression of true de
mocracy by the bourgeoise artistocraey. Intellectual, spir
itual, and esthetic refinements cannot come into their own
in a materialistic age.
But interference, by deceptive advertisement, with
popular taste is only one of the devilish uses to which
Mammon puts advertisement. Satan may be the father
of lies but, if so, he and Mammon are the same because
Mammon is the father of advertisement; and advertise
ment is so thoroughly deceitful that almost every con
vention of advertising men that meets goes on record as
believing that something ought to be done to make ad
vertisements more reliable.
Nevertheless Mammon continues to use the power of
psychological suggestion to deceive as many as he can.
Such an utterly inane practice as chewing gum can be
made an unlimited source of income through clever lies
as to its healthfulness published in electric lights on city
buildings and on billboards that scar the country land
scapes. More elk hide goods are advertised for sale each
year than all the elks in the world could supply; Porto
Rican tobacco and Javan coffee are offered in such quan
tities as would fit the productive capacity of continents
more closely than that of the tiny islands from which
that tobacco and coffee are supposed to come; and count
less similar falsehoods have become the commonplaces of
our present-day mercantilism. They are taken as matters

132 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
of course in the bourgeoise ethics. We take it for granted
that stuff advertised as woolen will contain a large ad
mixture of cotton ; and we are not surprised, after paying
for silk, to receive a silk glucose combination. These are
nothing compared with the positively murderous lies that
advertise whisky as beneficent and the soothing syrup nar
cosis as a healthy condition for infants. Human welfare
all along the line has to be sacrificed to Mammon.
This is merely saying again that the principle of Mam
mon-worship is self-exaltation at the expense of others.
Modern advertisement is a perfect expression of the utter
lack of that self-abasement which Christ makes essential:
and we cannot reiterate too frequently that the ideal char
acter under Mammonism is the Superman who is best
illustrated in the Trust magnate — the man who crushes
out all that stands in the way of his own aggrandizement.
Mammon, therefore, is the archenemy of that livable-
ness of life which it is the purpose of the Kingdom of
Heaven to establish. He undermines health and physical
strength ; he conceals saving and emancipating truth ; and
he deforms and befouls beauty.
This last is the most crushing indictment of all because,
so our finest instincts would indicate, beauty is essential
to the ultimate expression of truth. Whatever may be
said for cubism, futurism, free verse, and the other char
acteristic expressions of our modern spirit, they cannot be
said to make for loveliness. Whatever appeal there may
be in the picture that one of the champions of free verse
gives of herself in the bath tub, it lacks a certain quality
inherent in the orthodox, classic poems about nymphs
around a sylvan pool: nor is it easy to feel that there is
very much expression of reality in a painting which,
though it is definitely intended to represent "Nude De
scending the Stairs," looks to the average eye like what

GOD AND MAMMON 133
an old-fashioned, bigoted critic called it — an explosion in
a shingle factory.
But setting aside this fact and cheerfully granting that
the mention of it may be but part of the invariable failure
to appreciate new excellence which has always character
ized conservative criticism, all must admit that bourgeoise,
commercial America has made scant attainment in art,
literature, or music. A land so little humanized that it
allows its beautiful landscapes to be cluttered with huge
signs concerning liver pills or razor blades and whose
newspapers do not know the use of the mother tongue,
must expect to have its novels untrue to reality, its plays
out of harmony with life, and its music lacking in dignity
or beauty.
Under such circumstances it is to be expected that the
great mass of professing Christians in America will wor
ship in crude ways and in unlovely forms. America does
not worship in the beauty of holiness because the holy
beauty of God cannot be seen in an impure, Mammon-
worshipping society. When the Kingdom comes the ma
jority of Christians in the United States will no longer
worship in buildings of hideous design, singing doggerel
hymns to tunes that are musically depraved.
These unwholesome symptoms are akin 'to the vulgarity
— sometimes actually disgusting — which we have come to
expect in the preaching of the popular evangelist. Crudity
of thought and expression, slang, slap-stick comedy, exe
crable grammar, and unsavory allusions make up the stock
in trade of the great individualistic evangelist.
But such an evangelist is apt to be the high priest of
the princes of Mammonism. He is usually sincere; the
passages concerning riches never occur to him as having
any bearing on his own amassing of wealth : but the money
power coddles him and supports him lavishly. He is in

134 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
no danger of stepping beyond the "neutral zone" in the
religious discussion of social problems; and during the
war the foremost American evangelist of this type
preached a bitter partisan hatred in utter opposition to
the passage treated in Chapter Five.
The whole theory of the cheaper sort of evangelism is
an unchristian one in that, like Mammonism and milita
rism it teaches self -exaltation. It says : — "Repent for your
individual spiritual good — to save your own soul," while
the Simple Gospel says: "Repent for the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand — repent in order to lose yourself in
the common welfare of the redeemed society." In both
cases repentance is required: but the former repentance,
however earnest it may be, generally leaves one rather
indifferent to the crying social wrongs, the cynical busi
ness dishonor, and the depraved esthetics around him
while the latter repentance makes one burn with a revo
lutionary zeal to see high standards of living, real in
tegrity, and fine appreciation and expression prevail
among his fellow men.

THE PRACTICAL RESULT OF THE SERVICE
OF GOD

THEREFORE I SAY TO YOU DO NOT BE ANXIOUS ABOUT
YOUR LIFE— WHAT YOU SHALL EAT OR WHAT YOU SHALL
DRINK, NOR ABOUT YOUR BODY— WHAT YOU SHALL
WEAR: IS NOT THE LIFE MORE THAN NOURISHMENT AND
THE BODY MORE THAN CLOTHING? LOOK AT THE BIRDS
OF HEAVEN FOR THEY DO NOT SOW NOR REAP NOR
GATHER INTO STOREHOUSES AND YOUR HEAVENLY FA
THER FEEDS THEM. ARE YOU NOT FAR SUPERIOR TO
THEM? WHO OF YOU BY BEING ANXIOUS CAN ADD ONE
FOOT TO HIS HEIQHT? AND WHY ARE YOU ANXIOUS
ABOUT CLOTHING? LEARN WELL FROM THE LILIES OF
THE FIELDS HOW THEY GROW. THEY DO NOT TOIL AND
THEY DO NOT SPIN; BUT I TELL YOU THAT SOLOMON IN
ALL HIS GLORY WAS NOT DECKED OUT LIKE ONE OF
THESE. BUT IF GOD SO CLOTHE THE VEGETATION OF THE
FIELD WHICH IS THERE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW IS CAST
INTO THE STOVE WILL HE NOT MUCH RATHER CLOTHE
YOU, YOU LITTLE BELIEVING ONES? THEREFORE DO
NOT BE ANXIOUS, SAYING WHAT SHALL WE EAT OR WHAT
SHALL WE DRINK OR HOW SHALL WE BE CLOTHED? FOR
THE GENTILES SEEK ALL THESE THINGS: FOR YOUR
HEAVENLY FATHER KNOWS THAT YOU NEED ALL OF
THEM BUT DO YOU SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM AND ITS
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND ALL THESE THINGS SHALL BE
ADDED FOR YOU. DO NOT BE ANXIOUS OVER TO-MORROW
FOR TO-MORROW WILL BE ANXIOUS FOR ITSELF: SUF
FICIENT FOR THE DAY IS THE EVIL THEREOF.
(Matthew VI: 25-34.)

CHAPTER IX
THE PRACTICAL EESULT OF THE SERVICE OE GOD
IN the mind of Jesus the obvious result upon character
of the Mammon-worshipping spirit is fretting anxiety.
He who puts Mammon first must be a prey to cark-
ing cares. In spite of all the witty remarks that a cynic
might make as to willingness to undergo the ordeal, the
possession of riches is a burden.
This is obvious from commonplaces which we have con
sidered in former chapters. We have dwelt at length on
the struggle for existence; and the bitterest, most intense,
and most cruel part of that incessant contest is the eco
nomic war. Wealth as a rule is neither attained nor re
tained without vigorous effort and constant strain. An
overwhelming proportion of the wealth of the average
nation is held by an extremely small percentage of its
population, each of these few grasping unceasingly for
larger gains: for every moderate success in business there
are numerous failures: and the tremendous successes are
amazingly few. Therefore the accretion of wealth is nec
essarily a nerve-racking occupation.
Since it is an abnormal achievement it demands and
produces abnormal conditions. Jesus feels that such con
ditions are out of place among men: — "Therefore I say
to you do not be anxious about your life — what you shall
eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body — what
you shall put on."
It is striking that He has chosen here the two most
telling distinctions that have weight with unredeemed hu-
137

138 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
manity. In a Mammon-worshipping world nothing so
marks the esteem in which persons are actually held —
nothing so establishes the distinctions of those who seek
to exalt -themselves, as do the kinds of things they eat and
the kinds of things they wear. In the parable of Dives
and Lazarus, you remember, the man cursed because of
his riches is described as "being clothed in purple and
fine linen and faring sumptuously every day."
These things being marks of social distinction are nec
essarily bars to effective human sympathy. According to
the principle of the single eye he whose main aim is to
be above his fellows cannot feel with them. But feeling
with — sympathy for, one's fellow men is one of those
expansive forces which make the soul too big for little
anxieties. Fretting cares are not effective upon the man
whose life is lost in the large service to which human
sympathy is the portal. It is said that Charles Kingsley,
on being asked by a narrow Evangelical if his soul were
saved, replied that he had forgotten that he had a soul;
he was so lost in a great cause that little cares had dis
appeared naturally ; and that is the condition which Jesus
urges upon His followers.
It is, of course, merely that losing of oneself which is
so fundamental in Christian doctrine and which is every
where so taken for granted in the Simple Gospel that we
are constantly led back to it. He who saves his life is
lost in the carking anxieties of food and clothes but he
who loses his life in service finds so large an experience
that it cannot be consumed in pining away.
That is why even the hardest ordeals of life bring ulti
mately an intense satisfaction. Nothing gives so much
joy to the old soldier as the memory of the trials through
which he has passed : and even while passing through them,
if he were of the normal mold, he laughed and sang. The

RESULT OF SERVICE 139
heroic is the only wholly satisfactory expression of the
spirit of man.
That is why unutterable joy has been a not unusual
accompaniment of martyrdom. Men have been exultant
while burning at the stake ; and it was in this mood that
Jesus on the Cross turned our thoughts to the Eloi, Eloi
Lama Sabacthani — a psalm of triumphant exaltation
(Psalm XXII). No one can have much knowledge of his
tory who does not realize that loss of oneself in a great
cause puts one out of reach of wasting care.
Such care comes by restricting one's life to too narrow
confines. "Is not the life more than nourishment, and
the body more than clothing?"
Perhaps there has never been an age in history more
likely to fail to grasp the implications of this telling ques
tion than the one in which we live. For with our un
precedented advance in the scientific knowledge of ma
terial things, we almost instinctively accept a thorough
going materialism. Moral goodness, so we are inclined
to imagine, is the necessary outcome of physical well-
being. Many modern physicians feel- that all immorality
is due to physical defects and that it can be removed by
surgery. "The strength of sin is the adenoid." The
typical sociologist believes that all social evils are due
to economic causes and can be removed by economic re
adjustments. Now no alert mind can fail to see a germ of truth
here. Material causes do lead to untold spiritual wrongs.
Alcoholic and opiate poisonings, for example, undoubtedly
impede the development of the higher moral qualities and
break down good habits and refinements already attained.
Economic inadequacy does lead to moral delinquency.
And yet perfect health and economic freedom do not
make better morality necessary. Exuberant health and

140 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
too much money, in the case of young men, are exceptional
incentives to the satisfaction of illicit lust. Family life
(so far as we can now see, the basis of the highest civili
zation) is not nearly so often disrupted by hard economic
conditions as it is by great wealth. By far the larger pro
portion of divorces occur among the very rich: and this
fact is not primarily due to the ability of the rich to
secure expensive legal processes which are out of reach
of the poor: it is rather due, in large measure, to that
weakening of moral resistance which Jesus looks upon as
an almost certain result of the possession of riches. It
would be hard to find anywhere a man who is larger
hearted, more sympathetic with illness and pain, or more
kindly to poverty because of superior health or more
abundant wealth.
In view of such facts the rhetorical question of the
Master here becomes very illuminating. The life is in
deed more than food and the body than clothes: material
conditions are not adequate to contain the fullness of
human experience.
Material conditions in fact are repressive and devitaliz
ing when they become ends in themselves. This is espe
cially obvious in the case of clothing. A common tendency
of style, especially in feminine apparel, is toward the in
jury of the body for the sake of clothes. The savage
who adorns himself with physical disfigurements such as
tattoo marks, scars, or metal and wood inserted into the
lips and ears is not a unique type of man: his spirit ap
pears in those Oriental women who bind their feet and
those Occidental women who bind their waists. High
heels, pore-clogging cosmetics, and the long list of similar
barbarities of civilization are at one with the immemorial
tendency to injure the body by making too much of the
raiment.

RESULT OF SERVICE 141
But this is only one example of the invariable course
of materialism — a conception of reality which is certain
to bind and fetter the finer expression of personality.
This, it may be noted in passing, seems part of the truth
in the story of the Temptation. It is not in any arrange
ment of material things, even though it be a miraculous
one, that personality can find its highest expression.
"Man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
Restricting life, then, to wholly material considerations
brings deformity and disease. The symptom of such dis
ease is the fretting care which indicates that life is not
getting a free and normal expression.
A picture of what this free and normal expression of
life is like is now given in that elemental poetry which
beautifies so much of the teaching of Jesus and which
is an earnest of the fine esthetic conditions that will prevail
in the Kingdom of Heaven. The birds of the sky get their
food and the lilies of the field get their raiment naturally
without anxious cares ; and spiritual life should be as free
and natural an unfolding as are the lives of birds and
flowers. This thought has received a great amount of trivial
criticism. Part of it has been due to the mistranslation
"take no thought" for "do not be anxious": and part of
it has been due to the inevitable predilection of the scien
tifically materialistic clodhopper to crush his heavy feet
through the fine tracery of poetry.
But Jesus elsewhere leaves no doubt as to His respect
for practical wisdom. He takes it for granted that no
one will build a tower without first estimating the cost:
and He seems to regret that the, children of this world
are, in their generation, wiser than the children of light.
The Master would not eliminate ordinary care but

142 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
He would have all worry and anxiety separated from
care. By the same token there is no warrant in the actual
words of Jesus for the dull criticism that He seems to
ignore the fact that birds have to scratch for their food
and that even lily plants make real effort in turning to
the sun and in extracting their nourishment from the soil.
It is unfortunate that so many ponderous minds have tried
to apply their clumsy machinery to the beautifully bal
anced and flexible thought of Jesus; and while hair-split
ting with regard to His words is often a needless waste
of intellectual energy, the crucial words of this passage
are so important as to make it necessary to insist on their
full meaning. The fine poetic quality displayed here is
of a type that always accompanies keen power of observa
tion: and on no theory of the personality of Christ is it
possible to imagine Him without such power. He knew
of course that birds and even flowers work in order to
subsist: He merely pointed to the fact that they do not
lose themselves in exhaustion. For that is the full mean
ing of the words translated, in the King James version,
"they toil not" — "they do not strain to the point of ex
haustion." The idea, then, is that just as birds attain mastery over
earth, air, and water without approaching mental collapse
through anxiety and as flowers attain the most perfect
beauty of form and color without physical exhaustion
through grinding toil, so should we attain the free, full,
and satisfying expression of our nature in the saving,
life-giving citizenship of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The lesson is well rounded. We are reminded that
anxiety is useless: — "which of you by taking anxious
(nerve-racking) thought can add one foot to his height?"
And we are also reminded that the finest attainment is

RESULT OF SERVICE 143
reached without crushing, exhausting toil: — "Yet I tell
you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these."
In view of this latter truth it is not fanciful to find
here another illustration of a fact discussed in the last
chapter — the fact of the beauty-destroying and ugliness-
producing effect of Mammon-worship. Just as the beauty
of the lilies comes without grinding toil, so the ugliness
of the bourgeoise civilization comes in a time of child
labor, exploitation of womanhood, and inadequate wages.
The anxieties of the rich leading to the cruelties perpe
trated upon the sweated poor prevent any beautiful ex
pression of the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Jazz
music, best selling novels, civil war soldiers' monuments,
and free verse are obviously expressions of a civilization
too careworn and exhausted to express itself in the strong
and delicate touches which will naturally come in the full
self-expression of the Heavenly Realm.
We fail to rise to this best expression of our energies
because we are lacking in a sensible faith. We do not
realize that the Power which brings the evanescent grass
of the field to perfection will exercise even greater care
upon the development of those abiding spiritual realities
which we call our souls.
It is interesting to note, at this point, how full of faith
Jesus is. It is incomprehensible to Him, in His deep
spiritual consciousness, that men cannot feel the Presence
of the Heavenly Father and His loving care. To His
understanding it is just as obvious as any of the other
facts which He analyzes in the Sermon.
Such a realization of the actuality of God's Fatherli-
ness is, of course, possible only to one who is not a
materialist: and so Jesus repeats the injunction not to
be fretted with anxiety as to what we shall eat, drink,

144 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
and wear. That is not a right condition of mind and heart
for citizenship in the Kingdom: it is, rather, the way
of the world : "for the gentiles clamor for all these things."
This point cannot be overemphasized. The great dis
course which has as its central motive the Kingdom of
Heaven constantly has to contrast the principles of that
Kingdom with the ways of the world: and notwithstand
ing differences in the form of expression the Fourth Gos
pel, as we have already remarked, is, in its underlying
contrast between the world and the redeemed, at one with
the Sermon on the Mount. Unlike "the gentiles," the
children of the Kingdom do not have to worry and chafe
about material circumstances. "Their Heavenly Father
knows that they need all these things."
Now it would be utterly unwarranted to find here a
promise that every individual follower of Jesus shall al
ways be abundantly clothed and fed. Such an idea is in
compatible with principles that have gone before in the
discourse. It would contradict the spirit of the Beati
tudes which is that poverty and worse conditions can be
blessed. It would also be out of harmony with the idea,
set forth in the Sermon, of God as making the sun to
shine and the rain to fall upon good and bad indifferently.
For although in its context that particular reference in
dicates the beneficent effect of sun and rain, it is a neces
sary inference that the evil effects of sun and rain also
come without regard to the character of those to whom
they come. Good character is no guarantee of good
material circumstances.
We would never get a suggestion to the contrary if
we did not read in such a fragmentary way. But we are
all so worldly minded that whenever we come to the splen
did passage here under consideration we think primarily
of food and clothes — the so-called good things of life.

RESULT OF SERVICE 145
This fact was well illustrated some years ago in one
of our best theological schools when the professor of homi-
letics, a great preacher and leader of religious thought,
gave the climax of this passage ("Seek ye first the King
dom of God . . . and all these things shall be added
unto you") as a sermon text, and asked his class for sug
gestions as to how a sermon upon it should be developed.
The class was made up, for the most part, of exceptionally
earnest men; but it soon became clear that to them all
the compelling thought of the passage was as to food and
raiment: and the good professor himself seemed to share
their point of view. The best of men incline to the
materialistic standpoint.
Nevertheless it is perfectly plain that food and clothing
are very secondary in the passage. "Seek you first the
Kingdom" is about as definite and emphatic an injunction,
one would imagine, as could be given against letting ma
terial considerations have first place.
It is the supreme thought of the Sermon, and it comes
as the glorious climax to a series of noble passages dealing
with what may be called spiritual sanity. The series be
gins with much the same thought as this with which it
closes — the idea of making the heavenly treasure superior
to all things else. Then follow two telling illustrations
of the importance of putting first things first — the prin
ciple of the single eye and that of the impossibility of
serving two lords. Then comes the beautiful dissertation
in regard to the result of laying up treasures in heaven
in freeing the soul from wasting care. And, finally, the
command to make the Kingdom of first importance.
This, let it be reiterated, is what the Preacher has
done in the Great Sermon. We saw the Kingdom in
the first sentence of the discourse as the true riches which
make even economic poverty blessed. We saw it as the

146 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
chief object of prayer in the model prayer. We see it
here as the only fit object of life's endeavor : and we shall
see it as necessary to be kept in mind in interpreting the
closing passages of the Sermon.
This being the case, nothing could be more absurd than
to emphasize the casual saying that as a result of seeking
first the Kingdom and its righteousness "all these things
(the food and raiment) shall be added unto you." To
one who has grasped the main content of the Sermon they
can never be of vital importance. To any one convinced
of the blessedness of poverty and loss, stamped with the
meekness and peace loving spirit of those who are eager
for no material preeminence, hungry and thirsty for
righteousness, full of the purity of heart that makes God
and His goodness the end and aim of one's being, and
so much in earnest as to welcome persecution or slander
for the sake of the cause, food and clothes are not burning
considerations. That, in fact, is the whole point of the great text: —
"Seek ye first the Kingdom and its righteousness and
all these things shall be added unto you." Seeking the
Kingdom in the spirit that Jesus urges upon us, we shall
be so filled and thrilled by a high, all-absorbing purpose
that we shall be impervious to fretting anxiety. We shall
feel the impetus of the life that made the martyrs jubilant
in their martyrdom and that has made all true mission
aries from St. Paul on able to say: — "What things were
gain to me I counted lost for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and
I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowl
edge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things and do count them but dung that I
may win Christ."
No other spirit is compatible with the acceptance of the
Sermon: and food and clothing — all material needs — are

RESULT OF SERVICE 147
wanted, in that spirit, only as they make for the progress
of the Kingdom. If the absence of these things is of
advantage to the Kingdom, the true disciple of Jesus is
glad — he realizes blessedness — in foregoing these things.
Nevertheless when we strip them of all individualistic
interpretation, as naturally we should do in a discourse
the main subject of which is the collective body of re
deemed humanity — the Kingdom of Heaven — we find in
these words a very obvious truth. For when men are
converted to that Kingdom — when they substitute the
worship of God for the worship of Mammon — when their
main object is the service of others rather than the enlarge
ment of their personal gains, food and clothing will be
plentifully and adequately distributed.
They are usually plentiful enough. Scarcity of material
necessities in these days is, as a rule, the result of sabotage
on the part of industrial magnates rather than of inability
to produce those necessities. This capitalistic sabotage,
as we have seen, takes various forms: car loads of fresh
vegetables have been thrown into the sea or plowed into
the ground in order to realize exorbitant prices on what
was saved : tons of hides have been retained in stock yards
in order to make the cost of shoes and other leather prod
ucts enormous: factories and mines have been closed for
indefinite periods in order to save labor costs and realize
advanced prices on the sabotaged product.
This process, Prof. Veblen is not far wrong in believing,
is basic in the prevailing system of production: but ac
cording to the principle dealt with in the Fourth Chapter it
is hideous sin. Looked at from the Heavenly viewpoint it
has all the guilt of thoroughgoing theft and downright
murder. It is clearly a deliberate attempt to make food
and clothing hard to procure; and it cannot be doubted
that the skill and intelligence now exerted in this evil

148 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
direction would, if converted to the interests of the King
dom, easily produce abundantly and distribute equitably.
It is easy enough to exaggerate the faults of those who
do not secure a sufficient amount of this world's goods just
as it is easy to ignore those faults altogether ; but it ought
to be clear that in a Mammon-worshipping world the high
est ethical and spiritual qualities are as fatal to one's
material welfare as are shiftlessness and lack of thrift.
An exalted ideal of fairness and honor is an impediment
to progress wherever Mammon prevails.
In this connection also it should be remembered that
no true convert to the Simple Gospel could say compla
cently, even if it were true, that those who lack material
comforts deserve their misfortune. As the followmg
chapter indicates we are not the judges of our fellow men;
and no real Christian can take any satisfaction in the
hardships of his brethren. In his doctrinally required
love for them he must be as regardless of their merits as
is the God who sends sun and rain upon them impartially.
He cannot be satisfied if they are not properly clothed and
fed. "Those that are last shall be first," said Jesus; and
it is obvious from His teaching that He holds the self-
centered thrift of Mammon-worship to be worse by far
than shiftlessness. In the ethics of the Heavenly Realm
thrift has virtue only as advancing those economies and
sacrifices which make for the general welfare — the further
ing of more ample production and the facilitating of more
efficient distribution. In a material world considerations
of this nature are absolute essentials to the minds of all
those who seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness.
The result of this attitude cannot be in doubt. Just
as the putting of Mammon first brings the devastating and
dehumanizing effects some of which were mentioned in the
last chapter, so the putting of God's service first will pro-

RESULT OF SERVICE 149
duce the most constructively humanizing effects imagina
ble. In the coming regime the material welfare of their
fellows will be a consuming and unconquerable purpose
of the activity of men and women.
That will eliminate anxiety and worry. "Do not be
anxious over to-morrow for to-morrow will be anxious for
itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
With this paradox the Sixth Chapter of St. Matthew
closes: and it is akin to the crucial Christian paradox
that "he who saveth his life shall lose it." The object
of worry and anxiety is to be sufficient unto the day and
that is not a blessing at all because it restricts life rather
than enlarges it. Bergson somewhere suggests that the
social insects like bees and ants who perform such mar
velous mechanical and engineering feats do not progress
because they are so nicely fitted to their environment.
The tools with which nature has provided their bodies
are so perfectly adapted to their work that their whole
consciousness is filled by the use of those tools. Man is
not so well provided with natural implements and he has
been forced to think and plan in order to construct arti
ficial ones. This process has developed his higher intel
lectual qualities. His very insufficiency for his day's work
has elevated him infinitely above the day's work into those
far spiritual reaches which have inclined him to the
music, art, and poetry so uncongenial to the materialistic,
Mammon-worshipping spirit which seeks sufficiency unto
the day.
This principle cannot be overemphasized. A conscious
ness bounded and contained by material considerations is
a low type of consciousness. We saw that this was obvious
in the case of the materialism of the Mammon-worship
ping, capitalistic system but it would be almost as obvious
if a socialistic materialism such as the bees and ants main-

150 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
tain were substituted for the other. Abstract philosophy
and theology may not be popular in the age of so-called
practical efficiency which ruthlessly disintegrates beauty
and the other elements of the real fullness of life, but
our entire sanity is involved in our approach to that fun
damental question of reality as to whether material things
are the work of a creative spirit or are themselves the
creative source of all that we naturally look upon as
spiritual. Now if the spiritual be supreme the point of the passage
which we are here considering is of the utmost importance.
"Seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness." With
this as the main element of humanity's endeavor all right
conditions material and spiritual inevitably follow.
For religion, as its bitterest opponents emphatically
assert, is a mighty force. It is the force which has de
veloped the highest reaches of the thought and expression
of human nature and it is the only force that can develop
them further. To spurn good religion because religion
has sometimes been evil is no more sane than to give up
the use of electric lights and engines because electricity
uncontrolled can do enormous damage.
Indeed it is only that type of mind, considered in a
former chapter, which is hypnotized by materialism that
can see in religion nothing more than a means whereby
those in power can keep those beneath them in subjection.
For while it cannot be gainsaid that religion has been
used to pervert high idealisms into false loyalties, to make
superstition a source of revenue and autocratic power, and
to torture splendid enthusiasm into brutal fanaticism,
these are a no more just basis for the interpretation of true
religion than your worst mistakes and my most unfortu
nate actions are a just basis for the interpretation of our
real characters. We do not seek to do away with education

RESULT OF SERVICE 151
itself because children can easily be educated into wrong
social and moral ways of life and thought; we do not
seek to eliminate journalism from the world's activities
because it can exert almost unlimited power in giving
wrong impressions to the populace; we do not care to
destroy all art and to silence all music because art and
music can be made to minister to the lowest passions : why,
then, should the most elevating and inspiring element in
life be cast aside as worthless because it shares with every
other excellence the possibility of being distorted and
turned into wrong channels?
For that the Christian religion is essentially excellent
we have even the testimony, unconscious to be sure, of
its most severe critics. Because when they contrast the
actions and expressions of any form of organized Chris
tianity with what they consider to be ideal righteousness,
it develops that their ideal righteousness, in so far as it
makes any strong human appeal, is the righteousness
taught by Jesus Christ. Oblivious as they sometimes are
to the fact, all opponents of organized Christianity in
order to be effective must uphold that moral idealism
which organized Christianity, with all its pitiable failures
and damnable faults, has been able to impress upon the
consciousness of the human race.
Perhaps the one matter in which there is likely to be
doubt in this regard is the emancipation of womanhood.
One great modern writer who by his socialistic writings
has been able to secure a far better livelihood than comes
to the great majority of the Christian ministers at whom
he sneers, ignoring the striking differences between the
position of woman in India, China, or Japan and her
position in the most backward of the so-called Christian
lands, finds the manifest injustices to woman in modern
law to be the result of the Christian "Mysogyny" (the

152 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
spelling is his). St. Paul, whose absurd views of woman
kind are so unsatisfactory even to himself that he admits
that they are his own uninspired, personal whims, seems,
in spite of his being the most hostile to legalism of all
men who have ever lived, to be held responsible for mod
ern laws that are unfair to women. The Hebrew story
of creation also is given some responsibility for anti-femi
nine law in the modern world : and both ideas are amazing
survivals of the nai've impression of fanatical Evangelic-
ism that modern law has its origin in the Bible rather than
in the code of the Roman Empire. Woman has already
been elevated considerably by even that small part of the
Christian system which has so far prevailed; and when
the system prevails completely she will come to her
own. But justice to womankind is only one of the elements
of the Gospel of Christ. That Gospel is humanitarian
in all its elements. It is more humanitarian than all
other systems of life and thought combined. It is the
one religion whose God is no respecter of persons and
which is essentially opposed to all priestly or other ruling
castes and classes. Its great "misogynist" has said: —
"There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither
bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for you
are all one in Christ Jesus."
In that Christ Jesus lies the supreme hope of the Pro
letariat. In birth, life, and death He was of the Pro
letariat — something that can be said neither of Marx nor
of Lenine. Their materialism is not so proletarian as is
His transcendentalism because they were not to the manor
born — or rather to the manger born. Their first thought
is food and clothes and His is of His Father's righteous
Kingdom. Their righteousness, beyond question, is vastly
more near to that of the Heavenly Realm than is that of

RESULT OF SERVICE 153
the apostate Churches which in the lands where they were
born blatantly supported autocratic impertinence and blas
phemously called such impertinence the will of Christ.
Nevertheless their rigid dogma of the all determining
sufficiency of material things is as cruel and oppressive
a dogma as any that has ever cast a shadow over the free
spirit of man.
We ought constantly to remind ourselves of this fact.
When men of learning, in the last generation, began to
set aside religious dogma they did not thereby give up the
dogmatic spirit. No religious dogmatist ever asserted that
the soul is immortal with quite the positive assurance that
Huxley maintained when he said that the soul is not im
mortal. In the introduction to the anti-religious book just
mentioned the author says: — "I have found that . . .
suffering is needless, it can with ease and certainty be
banished from the earth. I know this with the knowledge
of science." Religion is not unique in having a tendency
toward finality in its assertions.
As a matter of fact the spirit of religion in its essence
is less final than that of science. Religion has a creed
and says, "I believe" : science says, "I know." This does
not mean that the scientific method of approach to truth
is not the best method even for religion. But the finality
of the man who believes the material to be all that there
is to reality is the result of narrow dogmatism and it is
always marked by a dogmatic intolerance. It is forever
confusing deductions from observed facts with the actual
facts themselves: and that is why the very best scientific
text-books rapidly become obsolete and have, after a few
years, to be thrown out.
The great texts of other types of literature like poetry,
fairy lore, and drama, being more spiritual, are infinitely
more enduring. Dogma restricts all expansion of thought

154 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
and therefore crushes out the life which depends upon ex
panding thought for its development.
Dogma, moreover, is divisive in its tendency. The
Christian Church is divided into various sects, separated
from each other because of rigid adherence to some more
or less trivial dogma. Science has a similar tendency
as the various schools of medicine prove: and the divisive
effect of the various dogmata of economic science is one
of the saddest facts in modern civilization. If all the
men and women who are sincerely distressed at social
injustice and economic wrong could combine in a common
program for betterment they could improve conditions by
leaps and bounds. Dogma — unproved dogma — is one
of the great impediments. The forces of Mammon readily
combine to accomplish big purposes and they easily dis
rupt the forces set against them by dividing the camp of
their opponents.
The spiritual authority of Jesus, therefore, is a more
reasonable basis for socially redemptive enthusiasm than
is the scientific dogmatism of men like Marx and Lenine.
There is in the proletarian consciousness of Western lands
a long established, hereditary feeling of the supremacy
of Christ. It can be influenced by the right kind of
preaching in such a way as to become the richest asset
of the forces of social redemption. The salvation of the
world depends upon the willingness of religious people
to change their dogmatic assurances concerning indeter
minable facts about the nature of Deity and of sacraments
into a quiet confidence in the workableness of the Simple
Gospel — in the power of Him who brought that Gospel
into the world to justify all faith in it.
So, without entering into the realm of refined defini
tion, we can readily see that the larger place we give to
Jesus Christ in our hearts, the more importance will we

RESULT OF SERVICE 155
give to His Gospel. But that Simple Gospel would satisfy
the desires of the most ardent worker for social better
ment. It is really the goal of the most intense revolution
ists: and the repentance, preached from the beginning as
necessary to usher in the Kingdom which is at hand,
means, precisely, utter revolution in the heart of man
kind. So that whether one's religion centers upon the idea
of eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ or
upon the idea of a changed nature brought about by the
spiritual washing of the Blood of Jesus, the whole point
of either process is lost if it does not definitely relate itself
to the building up of the Kingdom of Heaven. Both
processes look to the conversion of the natural man into
the spiritual man and if such conversion actually takes
place, the converted person cannot be at home any more
in the ways of Mammon : he is content only in the citizen
ship of the Heavenly Realm. It is the very nature of
such citizenship to eliminate all care and want.
The passage treated in the last three chapters deals with
the unity of life — singleness of interest, vision, service.
The central motive, so it teaches, must be right or else all
things are thrown out of proportion. Common experience
teaches this fact. If the central motive is art — if art
is conceived as existing alone for art's sake, then morality
and decency will be neglected as they have been in the
lives of so many musicians, painters, and architects. If
business is given the central position we have the cruel,
hideous, bourgeoise state with its ghastly service of Mam
mon. But if the Kingdom with its righteousness come
first all things will assume right and satisfactory propor
tions.

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARD
HUMAN IMPERFECTION

DO NOT PASS JUDGMENT IN ORDER THAT YOU MAY NOT
HAVE JUDGMENT PASSED UPON YOU: FOR THE KIND OF
JUDGMENT THAT YOU PASS SHALL BE PASSED UPON YOU,
AND BY THE RULE WITH WHICH YOU MEASURE YOU
SHALL BE MEASURED. AND WHY DO YOU LOOK AT THE
MOTE WHICH IS IN YOUR BROTHER'S EYE AND DO NOT
OBSERVE THE PLANK WHICH IS IN YOUR OWN EYE? AND
HOW SHALL YOU SAY TO YOUR BROTHER "ALLOW ME TO
TAKE THE MOTE OUT OF YOUR EYE": AND BEHOLD THE
PLANK IS IN YOUR OWN EYE? YOU HYPOCRITE, FIRST
CAST OUT THE PLANK FROM YOUR OWN EYE AND THEN
YOU SHALL SEE CLEARLY TO CAST OUT THE MOTE FROM
YOUR BROTHER'S EYE.
DO NOT GIVE THAT WHICH IS HOLY TO THE DOGS, AND
DO NOT THROW YOUR PEARLS IN FRONT OF THE PIGS IN
ORDER THAT THEY MAY NOT TRAMPLE THEM WITH THEIR
FEET AND TURN AND TEAR YOU UP. (Matthew VII: 1-6.)

CHAPTER X
THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARD HUMAN IMPERFECTION
THE climax of the Great Discourse is reached at the
end of the Sixth Chapter of St. Matthew, but it
would lose much if it lacked the group of sane,
well-balanced admonitions appended in the Seventh Chap
ter. They are not so loosely thrown together as a hasty
reader might assume. In reality they combine to form
a very searching commentary upon the utter fatuity and
deceptiveness of man's ways in contrast with the absolute
dependability of the Divine method. Man, so the Seventh
Chapter of St. Matthew seems to repeat, tends to set him
self forward as that which he is not; he plays a part;
consciously or unconsciously he is a hypocrite. God on
the other hand is the Giver of perfect gifts; His ways
as explained by Jesus are the rock upon which the struc
ture of every permanent life must be built.
The present chapter concerns itself with the inadequacy
of human understanding — that natural dullness of insight
which is generally due to our unwillingness to compre
hend sympathetically those who are around us. We pass
judgment on those who are better than we are and we
fail to use judgment with regard to those who have not
risen to our standards. At times we condemn others in
those very matters in which we are most open to con
demnation; and at times we pay others the undeserved
compliment of offering the finest gems of our thought to
their swinish understanding.
That these two ideas should be included in the same
159

160 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
paragraph is characteristic of the completeness of the
thought of Jesus. Standing alone the words "Judge not
that you be not judged" might be a command not to use
judgment because the words in themselves are capable
of that meaning: but they are also capable of meaning
what is here demanded by the context: — "Do not pass
judgment in order that judgment may not be passed upon
you." We have to use judgment if we are to determine
who the dogs and pigs are. Jesus looks upon His doctrine
as the very essence of wisdom and to obtain wisdom judg
ment is demanded.
Condemnation, however, is not a part of wisdom; and
we have but to recall the various heresy prosecutions of
our day to be aware that those who most vehemently con
demn others for lack of spiritual understanding are apt
to be the least enlightened of men.
But the same tendency permeates all departments of
life. It is fundamental in the teachings of Jesus that
"the first shall be last and the last first," and our ordinary
impressions are likely to be very superficial. The story
of His earthly life begins as that of a lowly babe in a
manger who is really the King of Kings, and it ends with
the account of a condemned criminal on a cross who is
really the Eternal Judge.
It is essential to Christianity, therefore, that we should
be very hesitant in condemning. We have to judge ac
cording to old, fixed rules, laws, and precedents while the
actual life that we judge is a growing, expanding reality
constantly bursting its former bounds and ever attaining
new, hitherto unrealized developments.
This, by the way, accounts for the almost constant fail
ure of contemporary literary criticism. For criticism is
hedged about by the standards of a dead past while crea
tive art is full of new life. Criticism at its best is far

ATTITUDE TOWARD IMPERFECTION 161
inferior to creative genius and the critic is almost neces
sarily the man with a heavy plank in his eye, trying to
remove the tiny speck from the creative artist's eye. Thus
Jeffreys, the leading contemporary critic of Wordsworth,
found nothing of value in Wordsworth. In the next gen
eration, however, Matthew Arnold, the prince of critics,
in commemorating the death of Wordsworth, wrote : — "The
last poetic voice is dumb," although at the time Tennyson
and Browning were publishing work that has become
classic. But the new creations in each case transcended
the old rules of judging; and the critics' condemnation
necessarily returned upon themselves. He who metes out
great condemnation is most likely to have the same meas
ured out to him.
For the principle of the mote and the beam is rooted
deeply in human nature. There is no more harsh critic
of the better people in the village than the village sot.
There is no more eager denouncer of the apparent faults
of the devoted statesman than the depraved politician.
The drunken man often conceives of himself as sober in
drunken surroundings; and the insane man usually im
agines himself as having a clear intellect in a crazy world.
The most untrustworthy man is the one most apt to shout
"liar." There is no more classic instance of the principle than
the correspondence between Coleridge and DeQuincey in
regard to the unfortunate habit that vitiated the lives of
them both. Each excuses himself for succumbing to
the influence of opium, but each sees no excuse for the
other. The tendency, however, is not confined to individual
persons: it appears in social groups. It is generally a
class, the Pharisaic respectability, that Jesus has in mind
when He uses the term hypocrite. The hypocrite who,

162 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
because of a heavy plank or beam in his own eye, can
not see clearly to take the speck out of his brother's eye
is best exemplified by the Pharisee.
This hypocrisy seems to have been entirely unconscious.
The Pharisee took himself seriously as an example of the
ideal life. Nevertheless he was a hypocrite — an actor —
because the part which he assumed in life was not his
real character.
But the Pharisee, maintaining strict religious devotions
and giving as a matter of course one tenth of all that he
possessed, was, to say the least, not worse in this regard
than is the average self-satisfied respectability to-day.
There is a strange magic in the mere idea of respectability
which renders all who take it seriously more or less un
conscious of the evil in the common sins of respectability.
No one for example who lives in these days can fail to
be aware that to the average mind in our civilization
the reported cruelties of the soviet government in Russia
seem vastly more atrocious than the undoubted cruelties
of the Romanoff dynasty a few years ago. The Romanoff
butchers maintained an anointed respectability.
This natural tendency to let the social standing of a
class of people temper our feeling in regard to wrongs
which it commits constantly lands us in the wildest ab
surdities. Genuine Christianity, from the beginning, has
frequently been under the condemnation of a superior re
spectability. The Crucifixion was but the first of numer
ous incidents of like nature.
The early Church in the Roman Empire found itself
under similar condemnation. We noted in the Introduc
tory Chapter that St. Paul found the Christian society,
throughout the empire, made up largely of the socially less
esteemed elements: and Roman History records the im
pression held quite generally by the higher classes of First

ATTITUDE TOWARD IMPERFECTION 163
Century Rome in regard to this new, despised, prole
tarian religion. It tells us that the respectability of Rome
actually believed that the slaying and eating of infants
was a part of Christian ritual. But this same respecta
bility, so shocked at cruelties which never occurred, found
its most desirable recreation at the circus where the blood
of beasts and of men was poured out lavishly for its en
tertainment. Familiar facts like these should make us more wary
than we are of taking for granted all that we hear and
read to-day in regard to the atrocious behavior of the
discontented element in society. The average American
is probably not much more accurate in his understanding
of the various, conflicting, radical, social ideas now taught
as was the average well-to-do Roman in his understanding
of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.
In the case of anarchy, for example, the public for a
generation has had an hysterical fear of the very name.
Not that it has had any real understanding of what the
name means, for in matters of this kind understanding and
hysterical fear are not usually found together. But news
papers have frothed and legislatures have legislated with
a view to setting forth anarchy as the ultimate horror
of society. European thinkers. have chuckled when they
remembered that the refined William Morris and the gentle
Tolstoi were avowed and characteristic Anarchists, pro
hibited by act of the American Congress from entering
the United States.
Here again is a striking illustration of the principle
of the mote and the beam. For of course anarchy means
without power — without rule. It is the theory of social
life which would leave men ungoverned and allow them
to develop unhampered, each in his own way, the theory
taking for granted the rather large assumption that people

164 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
will normally, if left to their own instincts, refrain from
over-reaching or injuring one another.
There is little, if any, difference between this idea and
that which is covered by the term laissez faire. The laissez
faire policy is that which allows industry and business to
take their natural' course unimpeded by legal or legislative
restraint. Let the competitive struggle rage unhampered
and let the fittest, from Mammon's standpoint, survive.
Naturally enough, on the principle under consideration,
those men in Congress who were most enthusiastic for
this economic laissez faire were the most violent in their
opposition to anarchy. We considered in the Eighth Chap
ter the natural results of laissez faire : and it is very fitting
that those who were willing to maintain the system which
brings disease and demoralization to women and children,
and which so thoroughly deforms and discolors the beauti
ful, should vehemently oppose the system of Tolstoi and
Morris. We would naturally expect that those suffering
from the laissez faire beam would be most earnest in re
moving the anarchistic mote.
The principle crops out everywhere. It is manifested
just as clearly in the attitude of the conservative mind
toward those who think that society is to be redeemed
by revolutionary systems which are utterly different from
anarchy. The syndicalist for example is severely and not
unjustly attacked because he advocates sabotage — the com
paratively mild sabotage which retards production as a
protest against inadequate wages. Perhaps he tampers
with machinery in a way to make it less effective or per
haps he diminishes the amount of his labor effort during
a given time, getting out only five cars of ore when he
could easily get out eight.
No other policy on the part of labor ever so angered
employers as does this type of sabotage. And yet, as

ATTITUDE TOWARD IMPERFECTION 165
we have already had occasion to recall, sabotage of a
much worse type is a common practice of the owners of
industry. In fact a famous case of sabotage which oc
curred some years ago was carried out by a dyer in a
silk factory who deliberately compounded a dye formula
wrongly in order to get a chemical reaction that indicated
adulterations in the silk and revealed to the world that
manufacturers practice sabotage at the expense of the
public. A number of forms of this capitalistic sabotage were
mentioned in the Eighth Chapter in another connection.
They are recalled here merely to insist that the adultera
tion, whether poisonous or not, of food, the use of glucose
or shoddy in what purports to be pure silk or pure wool,
the closing of factories and mines in order to keep the
prices of mine and factory products high, the various
devices by which the large and fair fruit in a container
is made to conceal the small and imperfect fruit, and
the construction of bottles and baskets in such a way that
they appear to contain more than they do; are all forms
of sabotage fully as sinful as any other form whether
the law calls them criminal or not. Labor sabotage, as
a rule, is to capitalistic sabotage as the mote is to the
beam. Another case very much in point is that of the Socialists
some of whom have written in such a way as to make
the wholly irrelevant doctrines of atheism and free love
essential parts of the socialist system. But even if these
irrelevancies were actually essential to Socialism no up
holder of the Mammon-worshipping society would be in a
position to pass judgment because his system keeps many
men at toil so long that they have no opportunity to wor
ship God and pays many others such inadequate wages
that they cannot support families. Child-labor and the

166 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
unremitting employment of potential mothers are immeas
urably more destructive of family life than all the theories
of the wildest social rebels.
At the beginning of the great war an American Social
ist, addressing a crowd in a mining camp, took sweet re
venge by saying: — "Our opponents tell us that we Social
ists intend to wreck the state, destroy the family and cor
rupt religion. War is upon us. You know what that
means. Good Lord, they've beaten us to it."
A system that necessitates war — a system that even
allows war — has such a beam in its eye that the vision
impeding defects of the half baked theorists are motes in
comparison. Or again, not to be impartial to any special theory,
there is the Bolshevik. No intelligent person accepts all
the tales of atrocities that have come out of Russia in
recent years; but even allowing for a larger percentage
of truth in the stories than the most meager understand
ing of psychology would permit us to allow, we have to
remember that Russian cruelty did not originate with
the Bolsheviki. The conservative, Romanoff Russian with
his Siberian Hell and his tax-gatherers wielding the bloody
scourge — the royalist hypocrite — of that unhappy country
is in no position to reprove his Bolshevik brother.
One further illustration out of a thousand that might
be chosen will more than suffice. It is the hypocrisy of
the employing class which, during industrial struggles,
always talks volubly of law and order. So cynical have
the radical social agitators become in regard to this matter
that they commonly call the industrial masters "the law
and morder crowd." These agitators have seen too much
to be anything but humorously impressed when business
magnates in time of labor strife prate, as they incessantly
do, of law and order. We have had occasion in an earlier

ATTITUDE TOWARD IMPERFECTION 167
chapter to note Lloyd's abundant, incontrovertible evidence
of lawless and murderous conduct on the part of the build
ers of the great trusts ; and the writer has seen the masters
of a large mining community, while boasting an adherence
to law and order, usurp every function of government in
defiance of the national and state constitutions. A state
law in Arizona explicitly provides for peaceful picketing
in time of strikes but corporation controlled city govern
ments in that state pass ordinances rendering the state law
ineffective — a typical "law and order" policy. The in
dustrial master cares little for any law and order that
does not help him in his business.
To be sure it would not be fair to attribute all the
violence during an industrial conflict to the masters of
industry. Men, when fighting as they believe for their
wives and children, whether in international or industrial
war, are inclined to be violent. But we are never in
much danger of underestimating the violence of strikers.
For as we have already noted the distribution and — shall
we not say ? — production of news can be in large measure
controlled by industrial magnates. It is what they want
the public to believe that in predominant measure goes
over the wires. If their agencies send out word that what
was really an unprovoked attack upon strikers was self-
defense against them, the unwary public is going to believe
the false account, although no person conversant with such
matters ever takes seriously what he reads in inspired
newspapers concerning an industrial struggle.
Moreover it would be almost impossible for strikers
against any large industrial establishment to perpetrate
a great outrage unless the owners of the establishment
wished to have it perpetrated. For in almost all instances
these owners have the forces of the law at their disposal
and they can deputize sheriff's assistants without limit

168 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
in the rare cases in which they cannot secure the state
militia. Besides they are practically always conversant
with the plans of the strikers because of the invariable
presence of their detectives — a fact which Mr. Sidney
Howard's recent, extremely conservative work on "The
Labor Spy" puts forever out of the realm of doubt.
In this connection we should always bear in mind the
fact that each party in a labor dispute considers the popu
lar approval of its cause very desirable. No labor leader
would be much inclined to risk popular condemnation by
permitting a violent outrage and any one who has seen
a strike from the inside knows that the leaders are always
on the alert to keep irresponsible, individual strikers or
their sympathizers from rash action. On the other hand
it is practically always advantageous to those against whom
the strike is directed if there be violence on the part
of the strikers since it turns the public against the strike.
That they frequently instigate violence among the workers
through the influence of spies no competent observer
doubts any longer.
When, therefore, the owners of industrial plants are
loud in their abuse of strikers as violent and bloodthirsty
it is hard not to feel that the Master would say: — "You
hypocrite, first cast the plank out of your own eye, and
then you shall see clearly to take the speck out of your
brother's eye."
Now it is peculiarly difficult for certain minds to com
prehend facts like these. If a man tries to be fair and
kindly in a discussion of an unpopular idea which he
himself does not accept, he will surely be accused of
accepting it. If he attempts to tell fairly, from their
point of view, just what the Anarchists actually think,
he will be called an Anarchist: if he tries to enter the

ATTITUDE TOWARD IMPERFECTION 169
real mind of the Socialist or Bolshevik and treat their
views sympathetically, he must expect to be described as
a red radical: and it is not unknown even for a man of
sympathetic insight to be dubbed, in the same editorial
column, as both an Anarchist and a Socialist although
Anarchy is, as we have noted, the exact opposite of
Socialism. That is of course the extreme of intellectual perversity
but it is not uncommon for men and women to reach such
perversity. It is an imperviousness of mind well recog
nized by Jesus and likened by Him to the nature of dogs
and pigs. In other words the Saviour took full account
of the important fact that some people are so mentally
beclouded by prepossessions and prejudices as to be in
capable of ascertaining truth not in accordance with their
peculiar views. He indicates that no possible good can
come of discussing with such persons facts unpalatable to
them. It is especially true of those who hold eccentric religious
notions. A Seventh Day Adventist could not be affected
in the least by any disconcerting facts of Biblical criticism.
The mind of the thoroughly convinced Christian Scientist
is not open to the acceptance of some of the demonstrated
incongruities in the life and teaching of Mrs. Eddy. The
old line Mormon is not open to conviction with regard
to the absurdities of his "revelation."
This last case was clearly demonstrated by the late
Bishop Spaulding of Utah who found that in the Mormon
Book of Abraham there were some actual reproductions
of Egyptian inscriptions with what purported to be Eng
lish translations. He sent copies of these inscriptions to
several of the leading Egyptologists in America and
abroad, requesting them to send him translations: and
they all, working independently of each other, obtained

170 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
practically the same results which bore no resemblance
to the interpretations given in the Book of Abraham.
However, when the bishop told of his experiment to a
more than ordinarily well-informed Mormon he was ad
monished that a true believer would always accept the
teaching of the Church in preference to anything that
outsiders, no matter how learned, might say. The publi
cation of these facts has not caused even a slight ripple
of unbelief in Mormondom.
But we all have the same failing to a greater or less
degree. It tends to become more marked with increasing
years; and unless a man trains himself when young to a
spirit of receptivity for new and unaccustomed ideas, his
later years are bound to be full of a stiff intolerance.
Mental rheumatism is as common a malady among the
aged as is physical rheumatism.
Intellectual agility indeed is not any too common
among those who are not aged: and Jesus considered it
a waste of time to try to affect certain minds. "Do not
give that which is holy to the dogs, and do not throw
your pearls in front of pigs."
This is a teaching that every strong man must ponder
carefully because a coward might try to take advantage
of the words and hold his peace when a courageous ex
pression of conviction was necessary. But if it is some
times the refuge of cowardice to hide behind these words,
at other times it is the height of futility to ignore them
and attempt to convince the incorrigible.
When for example a nation is frothing with the war
madness it would be impossible for the Angel Gabriel
to convince the people of the truth of Christ's doctrine
of peace. When the dogs of war are loosed and the profi
teering swine are wallowing in blood, he who casts the
precious gems of the Gospel of Peace before them will

ATTITUDE TOWARD IMPERFECTION 171
surely see them turn and rend him. At such a time even
a leader of the Church if he preached the literal meaning
of the Sermon on the Mount would find himself viciously
attacked by the Church as a whole.
The principle here involved was discussed in the Seventh
Chapter where defective spiritual vision and its cure were
considered at length. It was there assumed that the per
fecting of one's spiritual vision went along with the in
creasing of the fitness of his character for citizenship in
the Kingdom of Heaven. Only in the love which is the
first essential of such a character can there be that eager
sympathetic understanding which can see actual facts with
unimpeded vision.
This teaching should be emphasized at this point. For
the intellectual stiffness touched upon in the latter part
of the passage under consideration is a severe strain upon
the loving disposition of any one who runs afoul of it.
To contend with it, in any of its various manifestations,
is an exasperating, trying experience.
But a follower of Jesus has to overcome such exaspera
tion in the spirit indicated in the former part of the
passage. He has to remember his own weakness along
the same line and that he himself is likely to present
an impervious mind to facts not in line with his predilec
tions. Being subject himself to unfavorable judgment, he
must be careful not to pass judgment.
Moreover it can do no possible good to mete out con
demnation. Sympathy is the only force that can supply
the need which condemnation tries to fill. Though there
are notable exceptions, men are pretty much the same
under the same conditions. Those who have riches are,
in the view of Jesus, almost certain to have deep-seated
spiritual defects; and those who are poor are more than
likely to have a large portion of saving grace. The average

172 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
labor leader if he were the head of a great trust would
feel, think, and act as does the head of a great trust:
the head of a trust, on the other hand, if he were a labor
leader would be like the average labor leader.
Therefore the business magnate during industrial strife
may justly ask for the sympathy of the public and, for
that matter, of even the strikers themselves in his extreme
difficulties. But he puts himself in a very absurd position
if he asks for that sympathy and then withholds all sym
pathy from his opponents. The Gospel of Christ ceases
to come into play wherever and to whatever extent loving
sympathy is lacking.
The value of such sympathy — and this is the larger
meaning of the passage in hand — is due to the law of
spiritual reciprocity which plays so great a part in the
teaching of Jesus. Misunderstanding arouses misunder
standing, condemnation falls upon those who condemn,
hate begets hate, there can be no forgiveness to him who
has not a forgiving spirit, sympathy engenders sympathy,
and love produces love.
Nevertheless if the spirit of condemnation is strong
within us there is one excellent use to which it may be
put and that is to turn it upon ourselves. The repentance
or spiritual revolution which is the beginning of the gospel
of preparation for the near-approaching Kingdom will
have this effect : it will make individual persons and social
groups turn the severe criticism which they have hitherto
poured out upon others, in upon themselves: and it will
cause them to make in behalf of others those liberal ex
cuses and kindly indulgences which they can always dis
cover in behalf of themselves. Such repentance is pre
requisite to all peace without and it must precede any
peace within.
Once more then we are at the fountain head of doc-

ATTITUDE TOWARD IMPERFECTION 173
trine. "He who abases himself shall be exalted." The
man who condemns himself and is liberal toward the faults
of others necessarily enlarges the field of his experience:
he lives in a bigger world.
But it is especially important to bring this truth to
bear upon the life of social groups, of nations in particular.
For if the ideal here set forth is that of the Kingdom of
Heaven, the spirit of the Jingo is that of Hell. During
the week when the Peace delegates at Versailles were
working out the problem of the Shantung Peninsula
one of the worst of the American Jingo papers had in one
corner of a page an editorial article urging that the United
States grab some land in Mexico, and in the opposite
corner of the same page a cartoon picturing Japan as a
thief carrying away Shantung. The Christian nation
would, while not condoning imperial avarice, try to un
derstand more sympathetically Japan's point of view but
would be bitterly severe upon any imperialism at home.
England should realize that if imperial arrogance is bad
in Berlin or in Paris it is just as bad in London. Any
investigating committee from the United States Congress
can easily unearth cases of cattle stealing and worse atroci
ties on the part of Mexicans but a Christian attitude on
the part of the United States would make large allowances
for an oppressed, unfortunate people but it would make
no allowance at all for Americans who perpetrate the
same outrages against Mexicans. "Do not pass judgment
in order that you may not have judgment passed upon
you: for the kind of judgment that you pass shall be passed
upon you, and by the rule with which you measure you
shall be measured."

THE NATURE OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE
HEAVENLY REALM

ASK, AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN TO YOU; SEEK, AND YOU
SHALL FIND; KNOCK, AND IT SHALL BE OPENED TO YOU:
FOR EVERY ONE WHO ASKS RECEIVES, AND EVERY ONE
WHO SEEKS FINDS, AND TO EVERY ONE WHO KNOCKS IT
IS OPENED. OR WHAT MAN IS THERE OF YOU WHO,
WHEN HIS SON ASKS FOR BREAD, WILL GIVE HIM A
STONE? OR WHO IF HE ASKS FOR A FISH WILL GIVE HIM
A SNAKE? THEREFORE IF YOU WHO ARE BAD KNOW HOW
TO GIVE GOOD GIFTS TO YOUR CHILDREN, HOW MUCH
MORE WILL YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN GIVE GOOD THINGS
TO THOSE WHO ASK HIM? THEREFORE ALL THINGS
WHATEVER THAT YOU WOULD HAVE MEN DO TO YOU, DO
JUST THE SAME TO THEM: FOR THIS IS THE LAW AND
THE PROPHETS.
ENTER THROUGH THE NARROW GATE: BECAUSE THE
GATE IS BROAD AND THE ROAD IS WIDE LEADING TO
DESTRUCTION AND THERE ARE MANY GOING THROUGH
IT: BECAUSE THE GATE IS NARROW AND THE ROAD IS
CONSTRICTED LEADING INTO LIFE, AND FEW ARE FIND
ING IT.
LOOK OUT FOR FALSE PROPHETS WHO COME TO YOU IN
SHEEP'S SKIN BUT INSIDE ARE RAGING WOLVES. YOU
SHALL KNOW THEM FROM THEIR FRUITS. DO PEOPLE
GATHER GRAPES FROM THORNS OR FIGS FROM THISTLES?
THUS EVERY GOOD TREE MAKES GOOD FRUIT AND THE
ROTTEN TREE MAKES BAD FRUIT. A GOOD TREE IS NOT
ABLE TO MAKE BAD FRUIT AND A ROTTEN TREE IS NOT
ABLE TO MAKE GOOD FRUIT. EVERY TREE THAT DOES NOT
MAKE GOOD FRUIT IS CUT DOWN AND THROWN INTO THE
FIRE. THEREFORE FROM THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW
THEM. NOT EVERY ONE WHO SAYS TO ME LORD, LORD, SHALL
ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN BUT THE ONE WHO
DOES THE WILL OF MY FATHER IN HEAVEN. MANY
SHALL SAY TO ME IN THAT DAY, "LORD, LORD, HAVE WE
NOT PROPHESIED IN YOUR NAME, AND IN YOUR NAME
THROWN OUT DEVILS, AND IN YOUR NAME DONE MANY
WORKS OF POWER?" AND THEN I WILL CONFESS TO
THEM, "I NEVER KNEW YOU: GO AWAY FROM ME, YOU
DOERS OF LAWLESSNESS." (Matthew VII: 7-23.)

CHAPTER XI
THE NATURE OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE HEAVENLY REALM
THE last part of the section discussed in the last
chapter gives the theme for a long passage upon
fitness and unfitness for the Kingdom of Heaven,
and that passage is the subject of the present chapter.
Those words concerning the non-receptivity of dogs and
pigs to holy and precious things are an application of a
spiritual law which is of the utmost importance in prac
tical living — the law that to receive, understand and ap
preciate that which is highest and best in life one must
have in him something of the nature of that which he
is to appreciate.
There are, for example, people who have no poetry in
their make-up and to whom the most exalted verse is
an unmitigated bore. There are others so lacking mathe
matically that they cannot comprehend the simplest geo
metric figures. Incapacity to appreciate art and music
also is extremely common : and, as has already been men
tioned, millions of Americans, worshipping in buildings
that are hideous, sing hymns which, to say nothing of
their literary decrepitude, are musically depraved.
It is not strange then that the Kingdom of Heaven,
to appreciate which requires a more refined taste than
does any other kind of appreciation, should be trampled
under the feet of canine and porcine materialism. It
would be hard enough to eradicate the vitiated tastes,
literary and artistic, of a generation accustomed to the
present-day newspapers and moving pictures: but how
177

178 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
much more difficult it would at first seem to eradicate
those coarse, worldly habits of mind which make us callous
to the fine elements of the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is clear, however, that just as those whom Jesus
calls dogs and swine fail to appreciate Heavenly things
because they lack Heavenly qualities, so they who would
appreciate and enter the Kingdom must have the spirit
of the Kingdom within them. Now the first requisite for
receiving that spirit is the desire to have it. The dogs
and pigs do not want the Kingdom; their feeling toward
those who bring it to them is one of anger (turning and
rending) and therefore, because of unfitness, they cannot
have the privileges of the Heavenly Realm. But for those
who desire the Kingdom the case is utterly different.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteous
ness because they shall be filled," it was said at the be
ginning of the Sermon; and here the same promise is
made again — "Ask, and it shall be given to you ; seek, and
you shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened to you."
For we must be careful not to give the restricted, fool
ish meaning which is sometimes found in these words
after tearing them from their context and making them
apply to individual objects of prayer. Because thus de
vitalized they would contain all the absurdity that is at
tributed to them in trivial discussions of the subject of
prayer. But they have absolutely no bearing upon the
problem of the earnest citizen of one country praying for
the success of his nation's arms in war against another
country wherein earnest men are praying that their arms
may prevail. They do not intend to make us think of
prayer as a signed check by means of which the Heavenly
Father allows His children to draw out an unlimited sum
of His infinite resources to be used according to their
whims. The words, on the contrary, are addressed only

THE HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 179
to those who seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness.
They have to do merely with entrance into the Kingdom ;
for, in the whole passage with which this chapter deals,
both the gate of entrance and the act of entering into
the Kingdom are the dominant motives. So that the
words promise a satisfactory answer to the primary prayer
of all — the first petition of the Model Prayer, "Thy King
dom come." What they definitely intend to say is: —
"Ask for the Kingdom and you shall receive it; seek the
Kingdom and you shall find it ; knock at the gate of the
Kingdom and it shall be opened to you."
Thus these words, while they do not promise the ful
fillment of our every particular wish, do offer a perfectly
satisfactory answer to prayer. Taking for granted that
our praying to enter and to have the Kingdom of Heaven
is an earnest of our having the spirit that will grow in
appreciating the Kingdom of Heaven, the words promise
the gratification of this deepest desire that we can
have. Nor will it be out of place here to note, in passing, one
of the most notable facts in regard to prayer — the fact
that often our entering into the spirit of true prayer with
reference to something that we desire is the very element
that makes us fit to receive it. Jesus says nothing in this
passage as to our ability or inability always to know
what is good for us : but He does assert that our Heavenly
Father knows how to give good things to those who ask
Him. His greatest and best possible gift is citizenship in His
Kingdom: and Jesus assures us that we can have this
citizenship if we desire it sufficiently to pray sincerely
for it. To accept this assurance is a splendid triumph
of faith because the human probabilities are not reassur
ing. This world of ours does not seem to have room for

180 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
the Divine Kingdom. Prussian militarism, Russian bru
tality, French lasciviousness, British imperialism, Ameri
can industrialism, Occidental materialism and Oriental
detachment seem to shut out all hope of the coming upon
earth of a Heavenly Kingdom.
And yet, face to face with the most discouraging facts
in regard to the world's condition, Jesus makes the con
fident assertion that His Father will give the Kingdom
to those who desire it. The Father has it to give and
He will no more withhold eternal life from His children
than an earthly father would give snakes and stones to
children asking fish and bread.
It goes without saying moreover that such a father
would not give bad gifts even if his children asked for
them. If the children thought snakes and stones were
good to eat and asked to be served with them, one knowing
how to give good gifts would not provide snakes and
stones. Not so, the world. For if a man desires anything in
this world with the same eagerness that leads a spiritual
man into earnest prayer, he is more than likely to receive
it from the world whether it be good for him or not.
God, however, in His infinite wisdom and goodness
gives to us only those things which if He were in our
place He would desire to have given to Him. The whole
point of the Law and the Prophets is that we should
maintain a similar righteousness. "All things whatever
that you would have men do to you, do just the same to
them." This injunction, although perhaps the most important,
is but one of many similar New Testament passages deal
ing with what we have clumsily termed spiritual reci
procity. The merciful shall obtain mercy, those who
expect forgiveness must forgive, those who are not severe

THE HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 181
in condemning others will not be severely condemned, and
those who have freely received should freely give.
Such reciprocity should be a part of the nature of any
one who has the fitness of character upon which right to
citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven depends. For we
have found the Heavenly Realm to be a Democracy and
no democracy can long exist unless its individual citizens
maintain good moral character. The essence of democ
racy is the recognition of the equal rights of others and
citizens of a democracy must hold themselves in leash in
order to maintain the high sense of responsibility and the
strong, enduring purpose necessary to all who are fit to
govern themselves. It is fundamental to the life of the
Heavenly Realm that its inhabitants should do to others
whatever they would have others do to them.
This principle demolishes at once any possible defense
of a very common bit of hypocrisy on the part of many
who take themselves seriously as Christians, but who have
no interest in the material well-being of their fellow men.
Of course it is easy to say that spiritual life is above
material conditions : and a Christian who deliberately lim
ited himself to the coarsest clothing and most meager diet
might have some excuse for being indifferent to the worldly
good of others, however unlikely it is that such a person
would have that indifference. But a person who enjoys
and desires the pleasurable things of this life has no sav
ing Christian love in him if he does not want his fellows
to have goods of this nature. No employer has a right
to the name Christian if he desires large dividends and
is, at the same time, impatient of a demand for higher
wages. In fact there is nothing more essentially ridicu
lous in modern life than the spectacle of industrial mag
nates whose ideal of success is to buy as cheaply and to
sell as dearly as possible fuming at the conduct of laboring

182 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
men who are trying to sell their labor as dearly as possible.
It is not difficult to throw a sheep's skin over such a
wolfish attitude; and men in comfortable circumstances
are prone to wax eloquent over the value of material hard
ships in developing character. But such chatter is merely
of a piece with Artemus Ward's patriotism when he in
sisted that the Civil War must continue even if he had
to sacrifice all his wife's relatives. It is well enough to
welcome the severe disciplines of life as helpful to one's
own personal development; one cannot grasp spiritual
truth without such an attitude: but any one who has the
love which is essential to Christian living in his heart
cannot be indifferent to the material welfare of his
brethren. Without a realization of this truth we cannot get any
where with the Simple Gospel. As we find in another
part of the New Testament the command, "Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself," is of like importance with
the first and great commandment, "Thou shalt love the
Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind."
This teaching is hard for the religious enthusiast of
the conservative type to understand. He inclines to feel
that the love of God is an experience not closely related
to social life — that the second commandment (to love one's
neighbor as oneself) is not like the first and great com
mandment (to love God perfectly).
Therefore we find among religious enthusiasts various
inadequate and unessential matters receiving the attention
which Jesus would have given only to love of neighbor.
He does not, of course, say that doctrine and beliefs are
unimportant: He gives love of God first place — calls it
"the first and great commandment": He realizes that it

THE HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 183
is but a part of sanity to hold convictions and beliefs and
to act in accordance with them. But His purpose here is
to indicate how that love of God which is the center of
true religion shall receive the human expression that
brings it into actual life. He recognizes no saving love
of God which does not issue in effective, practical love
of neighbor.
This neighborly, brotherly love, which necessitates do
ing unto others as we would have them do to us, is the
strait gate and the narrow road into the Heavenly
Realm. For immediately after the command to do to
others as we would have done to us come the words: —
"Enter through the narrow gate : because the gate is wide
and the road is broad, leading to destruction and there
are many going through it: because the gate is narrow
and the road is constricted, leading into life and few are
finding it."
Now in all conscience some of the ways substituted
by religious enthusiasm for the true way of life are nar
row and constricted enough. Many earnest believers are
burning with a notion that their eternal salvation de
pends upon their keeping Saturday as a holy day: many
others are convinced that without baptismal immersion
none can enter the Kingdom of God : and millions of nom
inal Christians believe that all effective relationship to
God is administered by a specially authorized priesthood
the source of whose authority is the Apostolic laying on
of hands.
But the holding of peculiar ideas as to mechanical ways
of salvation — outward ceremonies for inward purification ;
or the maintaining of strict theological views, whether true
or false, will never save a soul alive. In the Twelfth
Chapter of St. Matthew Jesus is reported to have said : —

184 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
"Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall
be forgiven him: but whoever speaks a word against the
Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him."
That which follows this assertion would indicate that
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost consists in refusing to
perform definite righteous acts when the Illuminating
Spirit within us has revealed what is right and what is
wrong. For the same idea of good life bringing forth
good fruit which is brought out immediately after the
passage under discussion in the Sermon on the Mount is
also brought out after this passage in the Twelfth Chapter
of Matthew concerning blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit. It is interesting moreover to see how the principle was
taken for granted by St. Paul. He combines the love of
God with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the
fellowship of the Holy Ghost : and the love of God cannot
iBe worked out into human living in any other way. No
man who has the love of God in his heart can fail to
live something like the graceful, gracious, pleasing Christ
life which is essential to any fellowship pervaded by a
Holy Spirit. The fellowship of the Holy Ghost means
nothing unless it means an actual state of social living
in which men do to others as they would have them do to
themselves. But it is easy to ignore this constricted way of actual
righteous doing through the narrow gate into the King
dom. "Few are finding it." For it is a very exacting
way. Again and again in His other teaching the Master
makes His own work and His own program of more vital
importance than anything else in the world. The rich
young man must sell all that he possesses in order to be
saved. "He who loves father and mother more than me
is not worthy of me, and he who loves son or daughter

THE HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 185
more than me is not worthy of me." He makes His Sim
ple Gospel — His social teaching — absolutely supreme.
He looks upon any other point of view as absurd. He
ridicules those who would soften the meaning or subtract
from the words of His Gospel. He compares those who
would do so to children playing wedding and funeral.
"But whereunto shall I liken this generation. It is like
unto children sitting in the market place and calling unto
their fellows and saying, 'We have piped unto you and
you have not danced ; we have wailed unto you and you
have not mourned.' " A perfect picture of those would
modify the truth as it is in Jesus. And yet there are
many who answer the description: we all would prefer
to have the Gospel measure set to our tune. As has been
mentioned before, some evangelical Christian bodies have
diverted resources that might be applied to promote actual
social welfare into campaigns of that type of individual
evangelism which excludes politics, economics, and social
justice from the religious field. Moreover all Churches
are likely to contain many who say that Jesus could not
have meant what He said about the rich, or about turn
ing the other cheek, or about meekness in general, or about
any of the guide posts to the narrow gate on the constricted
road. Any way of life differing from this narrow way of
acting out neighborly, brotherly love is hypocrisy. The
preaching of any doctrine as a substitute for this doctrine
of love issuing in loving deeds is false prophecy. "Look
out for false prophets who come to you in sheep's skin but
inside are raging wolves."
This is a hard message but a vital one for the times
in which we live. "No man can serve two masters" ;
and a man whose heart is set, as the modern heart gener
ally is set, upon selfish acquisition cannot live the self-

186 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
sacrificing life of the Gospel. It makes no difference how
often a man performs the observances of the Church or
how orthodox the theological definitions to which he sub
scribes may be, if he employs little children and weak
women at inadequate pay in order to increase his dividends
the fleecy cloak of religion serves but to cover a vulpine
rapaciousness. No Evangelical is really washed in the
Blood of Jesus and no Sacramentarian has actually par
taken of the Body of Christ if his own body and blood
do not thrill with the compassion which the Saving Victim
felt for the multitude.
For the only test of saving grace is righteous conduct.
"You shall know them from their fruits." Good fruit
does not come on a bad tree : grapes do not grow on thorn
bushes and figs do not grow on thistles. Moreover a tree
that does not bear good fruit is fit only for burning;
and the obvious inference is that a man assuming the
Christian name but not doing righteous deeds must be
cast out of the Heavenly Realm.
The doing unto others, then, as we would have them
do unto us is the crucial, all important Christian princi
ple: but it is one that is not always discovered by those
who should make it supreme in their lives. "Not every
one who says to me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the Kingdom -
of Heaven but he who does the will of My Father who
is in Heaven."
The great tragedy of life is to misinterpret that will:
and the tragedy is deepened because so many earnest peo
ple do this misinterpreting. They say "Lord, Lord" ;
they hold the most finely attenuated theological defini
tions ; they perform meticulously their peculiar devotional
acts; but so far are they from attaining the love toward
their neighbors which they have for themselves that they

THE HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 187
look down upon — sometimes even despise — those who have
not attained their way of life.
They are damned by the most deadly influence in life,
self-satisfaction. "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in
Thy Name, and in Thy Name cast out devils, and in Thy
Name done many works of power?" They have not the
least doubt but that their conduct is above reproach. And
yet, with all their narrowness, they have missed the narrow
way of life. Letting their effort be withdrawn from the
right way, they have necessarily entered the wrong way.
"Then shall I confess to them 'I never knew you : go away
from me, you doers of lawlessness.' "
This whole thought is so emphasized throughout the
New Testament that we have to make it central in any
system of Christian Doctrine worthy the name. The final
Judgment passage in the Twenty-fifth Chapter of St.
Matthew is a complete parallel to the passage under dis
cussion. There, on the great day, the sheep are divided
from the goats; and those who are rejected are amazed
at their rejection, while those who are chosen cannot see
wherein they have been so good — possibly because they
too , have been misled in their thoughts by an idea of
spiritual devotion confined to ritual acts and dogmatic
tenets. But the whole question of salvation is made to
hinge upon the Simple Gospel — the simple performance
of those actual works which flow necessarily from a heart
in which neighborly, brotherly love is a reality. It is con
cerned, to the exclusion of any conceivable prior interest,
with matters like feeding the hungry, clothing the unclad,
and visiting the sick and incriminated. "Inasmuch as
you have done or done it not unto the least of these, my
brethren, you have done it or done it not unto me."

188 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
Likewise in the Gospel according to St. John, which
some hold to be primarily concerned with theological defi
nition, we find spiritual understanding as well as salva
tion dependent upon the doing of righteous deeds. "If
you continue in my word, then you are my disciples in
deed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free."
Even in St. Paul with his doctrine of Justification by
Faith, which has confused so many minds, we find, after
all is said, that the doing of righteous deeds is taught as
absolutely essential. The Pauline controversy is not, al
though many students have liked to believe to the con
trary, as to whether righteous acts are necessary, but as
to how we can obtain the power to perform righteous acts.
We cannot obtain it, says St. Paul, through ceremonial
acts — works of the Law — but through faith in Christ.
Through that faith we are made the doers of good deeds
because the very word justification means not, acquitted
for unrighteousness, but being made actually, pragmati
cally righteous.
But if any one misconceives the teaching of St. Paul
let him be corrected by the General Epistle of James,
which seems to have itself misconceived that teaching, but
which expresses the common feeling of the Apostolic
Church that faith without works is dead — a feeling with
which St. Paul was really heartily in accord.
But whatever any one else may have taught, the teach
ing of Jesus in the matter is absolutely clear. Citizen
ship in His Kingdom depends upon fitness of character
for such citizenship. The constricted road and narrow
gate into the Heavenly Realm are the actual doing of
helpful deeds because of the perfect love of God in one's
heart.

THE SUPREMACY OF THE SIMPLE GOSPEL

THEREFORE WHOEVER HEARS THESE WORDS OF MINE
AND ACTS UPON THEM SHALL BE LIKE A WISE MAN WHO
BUILT HIS HOUSE UPON THE ROCK: AND THE RAIN CAME
DOWN AND THE RIVERS ROSE AND THE WINDS BLEW AND
FELL UPON THAT HOUSE AND IT DID NOT FALL BECAUSE
IT WAS FOUNDED UPON THE ROCK. AND EVERY ONE WHO
HEARS THESE WORDS OF MINE AND DOES NOT ACT UPON
THEM SHALL BE LIKE A FOOLISH MAN WHO BUILT HIS
HOUSE UPON THE SAND: AND THE RAIN CAME DOWN AND
THE RIVERS ROSE AND THE WINDS BLEW AND FELL UPON
THAT HOUSE: AND ITS FALL WAS A GREAT ONE.
(Matthew VII: 24-29.)

CHAPTER XII
THE SUPREMACY OF THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
THE Great Discourse ends with a -parable setting
forth that characteristic attitude of Jesus to His
Gospel which was touched upon in the last chapter
— His never-failing consciousness that His teaching de
mands the exclusive, preeminent position in the minds
of His followers. In spite of the humility which domi
nated the entire course of His human life from the
manger to the convict's doom, He demands that nothing
shall be allowed to come between us and the observance
of the practical righteousness which He taught. Readapt-
ing the fine Old Testament concept that righteousness is
wisdom, He makes the distinction between those who hear
His teaching and follow it and those who hear and do
not follow it the distinction between the wise and the
foolish. "Therefore whoever hears these words of mine and acts
upon them is like a wise man who built his house upon the
rock and the rain came down and the rivers rose and the
winds blew and fell upon that house but it did not fall
because it was founded upon the rock. And every one
who hears these words of mine and does not act upon
them is like a foolish man who built his house upon the
sand and the rain came down and the rivers rose and
the winds blew and fell upon that house and it fell and
its fall was a great one."
The very last words of the Sermon, therefore, "and its
fall was a great one," indicate how preposterous Jesus
191

192 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
felt to be any other way of life than that which He lived
and which He taught. But this feeling of His has been
justified again and again in human experience. Those
earthly methods of building a social fabric which differ
so widely from His method have proved thoroughly fatu
ous ; and the way of the world in repeating age after age
its ghastly performance of building on the sand might
almost make us despair of man's intelligence. For human
history in the main is one stupid round of construction
of vast systems of unchristlike, brutal force, each one of
which crashes in horrible destruction in the storm and
flood and blow of war. Surely to reconstruct on obviously
shifting sand like this is the work of incorrigible fools.
The dogged persistence in this kind of building even
among nominal followers of Jesus centuries after He has
explained its absurd nature can be accounted for only
by reference to that animal inheritance in human nature
which has been dwelt upon in another chapter. It makes
little difference whether you connect the fact with the
idea of original sin so prominent in the great theologies
of other days, or with the modern biological doctrine of
struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, the truth
remains that it is instinctive in individual persons and in
social groups to exalt themselves as much as they can.
This tendency, as we have had so much occasion to note,
has received literary and philosophical expression of the
highest order in our time. Great intellects have accepted
as a necessary deduction from science, history, and con
temporary experience the doctrine of the Superman — a
teaching that accepts as eternal necessity the cruel process
of nature which develops the strong at the expense of
the weak. It exalts in every line of endeavor the acquisi
tive spirit.
"That this spirit dominates our time no one can doubt.

SUPREMACY OF SIMPLE GOSPEL 193
Acquisition is the central aim of men's effort and the
measure of their success in the larger number of all un
dertakings to-day. He who can amass an enormous for
tune is exalted in common opinion as is no other type
of man.
As to the effect of this dominant acquisitive spirit upon
the common life a great deal was said in the chapter on
God and Mammon. But we cannot overemphasize the
importance of the matter and it is worth while here to
reiterate that the acquisitive, grasping, self -exalting motive
upon which the world is trying to build is the poorest
ground imaginable as a base for any lasting social edifice.
It secures not permanent reconstruction but inevitable de
struction. To say nothing of the already mentioned disintegration
of journalism, educational facilities, family life, physical
welfare, and artistic expression due to Mammonism in its
various forms, we can well illustrate the point in hand
by the tragedy in American political life resulting from
the unrestrained exaltation of the acquisitive man. The
American public is very wary of placing in office the ideal
ist or the scholar, but the successful business man is given
any office to which he may aspire. No doubt the same
influences are at work in Great Britain more or less con
cealed by picturesque titles, for the essence of imperialism
is commercial acquisition — the exploitation, even to profit
ing by vices like the drug habit, of backward peoples. But
in America the facts are a little more obvious. What is
known as Old Guard Republicanism — easily the strongest
single element in American politics — is based upon a more
or less frank belief that the common people are not fit
to govern themselves; and that they must be guided and
controlled by those who are more capable. A position
which might have a great deal to be said in its favor

194 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
practically but which is utterly absurd in its American
interpretation is that the man really fit for political leader
ship is the successful business man. For this interpreta
tion holds up the man whose dominant trait is self-centered
acquisitiveness as the ideal man to render disinterested
public service.
Now of course human character is a complex: and men
who in business have managed cleverly for their own gain
have been known, when in political office, to use the same
cleverness for the public good. But the broad tendency
of acquisitive men in an acquisitive society is to base their
political constructions on unstable ground — to create ex
orbitant tariffs for the exceptionally strong, like steel and
woolen manufacturers ; to make large appropriations along
those lines in which big business is interested like armor
plate and powder and trivial appropriations for those
things in which big business is not interested, like aero
planes; and to allow wasteful expenditures the real pur
pose of which, no matter what the ostensible purpose may
be, is to add to the success of the successful business man.
It is but fitting that this type of politics should be
characterized by a self -laudatory jingoism which, because
the type naturally lacks refined intelligence, it considers
to be patriotism. This false patriotism takes its place
in the ceaseless round of acquisition, self-exaltation, im
perialism, war, and ultimate destruction which is the
epitome of all recorded history. But the mental incapacity
of which jingoism is the expression must necessarily end
in futility.
In place of this futility Jesus Christ offers a sane, wise
plan of civilization building. He presents the plan of a
Heavenly Realm whose life is rooted and grounded in love
and whose activity is made up of effective service.
Now service is the real constructive principle in social

SUPREMACY OF SIMPLE GOSPEL 195
life. Under normal conditions it affords the only reason
that a person has for living. No one should receive from
the commonwealth who does not contribute to the general
welfare. But in spite of all the beautiful words that we hear
in this connection we have very little actual experience
of what public service really can be. We have not ex
perienced thoroughgoing service because that has not be
come our dominant aim. We have not laid up a heavenly
treasure of service because our vision of life has not been
single and clear from the standpoint of service; and this
is due to the fact that we have made Mammon paramount
while trying to serve God.
Therefore the present-day attempts at service can hardly
help falling down. The American coal industry and
transportation system, for examples, are failing miserably
from the standpoint of service. The services that these
two businesses are supposed to render are of inestimable
importance, but to say that they are rendering these serv
ices well is preposterous. The coal consumer has, for sev
eral years, been forced to pay prices which according to
the principle given in the Fourth Chapter are so unjust
as actually to be theft: and according to careful United
States Government reports, the producers of perishable
commodities, unless they belonged to the great trusts, have
never been able to count on transportation. The railroads,
even when deliberate wrong was not intended, have not
rendered fair, economical, and efficient service.
Those responsible for this particular inefficiency, cover
ing their grim humor with sedate faces, have been able
to convince large portions of the public that all the outrage
in the cost of such service is due to the rapacity of labor.
Many who are not ignorant of the facts of watered securi
ties and stock gambling are still obtuse enough to imagine

196 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
that labor costs are the main handicap of railroad service.
But it is unnecessary to dwell at length on the futility,,
from a humanitarian standpoint, of serving Mammon.
Mammon's plan, as has been sufficiently indicated, is to
build upon the soft sand of self-exaltation and personal
gain: God's plan is to build upon the rock of self-sacrific
ing service.
It should not be forgotten, however, that building upon
the rock is extremely difficult. Strength is developed by
exercise and the human service demanded in the Heavenly
Realm is a hard exercise. So that any type of social reform
that looks forward to a soft, easy existence is doomed to
failure. In any kind of society one strong, hard man shall
make a thousand soft ones do his bidding. The effort and
restraint of Christian living produce the sturdiest char
acters. Certain forms of pacifism may have missed this point
and we need not be distressed at their failure to establish
themselves. For the tragedy of the cruel hardships of war
does not lie so much in the difficulty involved as in their
futility. The courage and the sacrifice of war would be
glorious if they built up anything — if they were founded
upon anything but hate and misunderstanding and were
not therefore devoted to falsehood and unreality. The
courage and sacrifice of the Kingdom is illustrated by those
physicians who, knowing the danger, offered their lives
as a ransom for many by exposing themselves to the yellow
fever mosquito in order to obtain saving knowledge in
regard to the yellow fever germ. That is to say their hard,
brave service was performed constructively, not in the
militaristic way which leads only to more destruction.
The conclusion of the whole Sermon, then, is that wis
dom consists in building society upon the plan of Jesus.

SUPREMACY OF SIMPLE GOSPEL 197
No doubt it is hard in an age unkindly to and perhaps
incapable of deep, abstract religious thinking to form an
adequate conception of the nature of Jesus Christ; but
it is difficult for any one to contemplate seriously and care
fully His teaching without feeling himself to be at the
very center of eternal truth. When we consider the great
library of classic treatises upon ideal commonwealths writ
ten by the world's profoundest thinkers, and when we re
member that all this intellect and superb literary expres
sion expended upon Utopian dreams has failed quite sig
nally to convince any large portion of mankind as to the
possibility or desirability of reconstructing civilization ac
cording to these plans — when, in other words, the best hu
man wisdom fails, the sublimity of the eternal plan of
social salvation as explained by Jesus is all the more im
pressive. In the social sense when we identify, as we
must, His life with His message there is no difficulty
of thinking of Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Therefore there is nothing out of place or out of reason
in upholding a religion of Jesus on this basis. Such a
religion will not prove shifting sand, but the bed rock
of reality. Liberal in its attitude toward the various
definitions and understandings of the nature of God in
those matters in which human intellect is not refined
enough to be accurate; but strictly dogmatic in those ob
viously valid corrections of our folly in social living which
Jesus makes, such a religion can reasonably expect the
assent of all mankind at its best.
In the war epidemic we learned that a violent jingo
patriotism can wreck the finest intellectual and social fab
rics that have so far been reared upon earth. The reason
for this phenomenon is that anything which calls out the
spiritual enthusiasm of men calls out their greatest
strength.

198 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
This fact should be firmly grasped by all social mal
contents, revolutionaries, and constructive thinkers. There
is deep in the heart of the common man of Christendom
an inherited capacity for loyalty to Jesus Christ and His
message when truly preached. That message contains all
that the most eager social reformer could desire : and that
latent loyalty to Jesus is the most potent driving force
which any social movement can procure. No other force
is powerful enough for the work in hand.
Any social reconstruction that is built upon a lesser
motive may wreck the present civilization but it cannot
build up a lasting new civilization. Any social revolu
tion, for example, that is built upon such soft sand as
the worker's mere self-interest, like the desire to procure
what one produces with no reference to the great principle
of service, cannot endure the storm and stress of actual
social living. The cheap jingo patriotism of the imbecile
in social enlightenment is a nobler thing and a thing that
can easily overwhelm mere human selfishness.
Social discontent to-day is undoubtedly something far
larger than the self-interest which it preaches overmuch.
It has many thoroughly self-sacrificing leaders: but they
would add infinitely to their effectiveness if they would
base this self-sacrifice upon the immovable rock of Christ.
Probably there is nothing that works against their so
doing as effectively as does the failure of the professing
followers of Christ to take Him seriously when He is
most in earnest. Those who call themselves Christians
are so obviously indifferent to the actual concerns of the
Kingdom which Christ made all important that those who
are attracted to the kind of society which that Kingdom
would maintain do not call themselves Christians — a fact
very interesting in connection with the point that we noted
in regard to the final judgment passages as to the surprise

SUPREMACY OF SIMPLE GOSPEL 199
at their rejection by those who were rejected and the sur
prise at their reception by those who were received.
> So it is because nominal Christians fail to take their
Saviour's doctrine seriously that their religion does not
come to its own. If those who have professed that re
ligion had really comprehended the implications of its
central idea of a Heavenly Realm coming upon earth,
there would be very little of the widespread indifference
to the Christian Church on the part of the socially minded,
strong men and women who are working for greater justice
in life's business. The Christian Church has not given
heartfelt loyalty to the idea and principles of the Kingdom
of Heaven.
But to-day, as never before, there is sounding the
ancient call to the Church which has so signally failed
to repent of her unbelief. It is the call that brought the
Christian Church into being : — "Repent ye, for the King
dom of Heaven is at hand." Only by entering upon that
repentance can the Church save herself and only in that
repentance is there salvation for a war-tossed, hate-mon-
gering world.
The modern Church is somewhat in the position of Car
dinal Wolsey when he made his pathetic plaint: — "Had
I but served God as diligently as I have served the king."
Wolsey was richly clothed in scarlet and the Church is
finely robed and housed, but these savor more of Mammon
than of God. And yet there is this difference: Wolsey
was nearing his inevitable end, but the Church, if she so
elects, need not die ; she has, if she wants it, the best of
her life before her.
When the various warring states commanded the
Churches within their borders to preach a narrow, war
like patriotism the ministry of the Church responded vig
orously to the demand of the world. But there is a higher

200 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL
patriotism — the patriotism of "those who desire a better
country, even a Heavenly, the city prepared by God for
those of whom He is not ashamed to be called their God."
If men can be stirred, in a crisis, to lay their all upon
their nation's altar, sacrificing treasure and blood to the
uttermost, surely in this supreme crisis of history they
can be stirred with patriotism for the Perfect State. The
Heavenly Realm is worthy of all the devotion, all the
sacrifice, and all the enthusiasm of all mankind. If men
give themselves to the vital interest of this country they
will not see their lovely ideals trampled upon and be
smirched by politicians and their fair visions befogged
by diplomats. They will not be doomed to the continual
round of disappointment that comes to those who build
foolishly on the sand.
"Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give shall
never thirst: but the water that I shall give shall be a
well of water springing up into everlasting life."

SUPREMACY OF SIMPLE GOSPEL 201
AND IT CAME ABOUT WHEN JESUS HAD FINISHED THESE
WORDS THAT THE CROWDS WERE DUMBFOUNDED AT HIS
TEACHING; FOR HE TAUGHT THEM, NOT LIKE THEIR
SCRIBES, BUT ON HIS OWN AUTHORITY.

YALE UNIVERSITY