yL-’'''5
U
Speaking Tenth in Love.’
’At It, all at it, alwops at it.
The Central Messenger.
K (J IN TRUTH AND SERVICE.
Vol. 1.
Wake Forest, K. C., July, 1911.
JSTo. 7...
JESUS’ TEACHERS AND THE
SOURCE OF HIS GREATNESS.
Three teachers ire (Je^us) ha,.': to
whom he dilisently listcne..: natare,
the Bi’^le, ai.d His own soul.
His I'fe was largely spent out ct
doors. Later, He was accustomed to
wrap His shawl or cloak abcut Him
and lie down upon the grass, wit.) the
blue sky above His only canopy. We
may well believe that this was His
custom in His earlier life; that He did
not first make the hills His refuge af
ter He had begun His public minis
try but that they were already famil
iar resorts to Him. His teaching
makes the habit of His life clear: the
habit of an observing eye and a medi
tating spirit. In one of the pictured
windows of the Central Congrega
tional Church of Boston, Jesus, as a
boy, is portrayed looking upon the
sparrow dead upon the grass at His
feet. The artist is a true interpreter.
It was in His boyhood that He learned
that not a sparrow falleth to ground
without “my Father’; that some seeds
grew, falling in fertile soil, while the
birds carried other seeds away; that
some v/ere cheked and hindered by
the tares in which they grew; with
what painstaking the husbandman en
deavored to bring back to life the
fruitless tree, and how readily he
hewed it to the ground when it pore
no fruit; how the lilies of the field,
grew surpassing the glory of Solomon.
That He ever knew the scientific use of
nature in material service there is no
indication, but nature was to Him
written in symbolic language, and He
learned to read it with reverent at
tention.
His spiritual faith in the two great
tenets of Judaism, the Fatherhood of
God and the Brotherhood of Man,
makes it clear that He had imbibed
the spirit of the Old Testament. His
frequent quotations from it make it
clear that He was familiar with its
words. In all ages of the world it
may be questioned whether commen
tators have not done as much to ob
scure as to interpret the Scriptures.
Jesus pushed away the obscuration
which the scribes had spun over the
simple message of the prophets, the
traditions with which they had made
cf none effect the law of God, The
Old Testament in Christ's time, as
sometimes since, was like an ancient
palimpsest on which over the valua
ble original text a later scribe has
written valueless reflections of his
own. Jesus erased these valueless re
flections and read with keen spiritual
vision the original writing.
And He had what modern life de
nies to most children of the peasant
class—leisure. “In the Bast,” says
Edmond Stapfer, “poverty is almost
unknown; compulsory labor and the
struggle for life are still more rare.
Foed and clothing suffice. Men have
no extraordinary needs, and the easy
conditions of life allow ample leisure
to all. The Jew of the first century,
like the Arab of today, passed long
hours of every day in contemplation;
and when he had worked a little at
his trade and performed his religious
duties, he could rest and medicate at
his ease.” Whether poverty is an
advantage or a disadvantage, whether
it elevates or degrades, whether it
leads to virtue or to vice, depends on
the use which is made of it. Not in
vain had Jesus read in the old Hebrew
Psalms the words, “Be still, and know
that I am God.” In these hours of
quiet and unharrassing meditation He
heard in His own - soul that voice
which is better and clearer than the
confused and enigmatical voices of na-
tu;e, which is mere inspiring even
than the echoes of that inward moni
tor as they are recorded in the sa
cred pages of Scripture.
There are three elements that go
to make up character: heredity, edu
cation, and that innate force which
we sometimes call genius. “Only the
lower natures,” says Henry Ward
Beecher, “are formed by external cir
cumstances, Great natures are freely
developed by forces from within,”
That force from within we sometimes
call genius, we sometimes call
inspiration, we sometimes call di
vinity; but whatever we call it, it is
from within, working out, not from
without working on that which is
within. The greatness of the Master
cannot be attributed to ancestry or
to education—that is, to His heredity
or environment, in which we all live,
and move, and have our being, but to
which we do not all open our souls
that we may receive its influence or
all yield our wills that we may obey
its directions. Jesus was not produced
by His age, but was Himself a pro
ducer of the ages: strong because He
was strong in spirit and because He
was obedient to the divine calling.
“The true Sheklnah is Man,” says
St. Chrysostom. “The essence cf our
being,” says Carlyle, after quoting St.
Chrysostom, “the mystery in us that
calls Itself T’—oh, what words have
we for such things—is a bfeath of
Heaven; the Highest Being reveals
himself in man. * * * -vvE are the
miracle of miracles—the inscrutible
mystery of God. We cannot under
stand it, we know net how to speak
of it; but we may feel and know, if
we like, that it is verily so.” That
truth lies at the threshold of our frag
mentary studies in the life of the
Master. Every man, however humble
his origin, however inadequate his ed
ucation, however poverty-stricken his
envirenment, can still be great, not
perhaps in the extent of his influence.
Pot in the largeness of his power, not
in a widely extended reputation, but
in all that makes tnie character—the
divineness of his life. He can become
so by accepting the teaching, adopt
ing the principles, and imbibing the
spirit of the Master Builder.—Lyman
Abbott, in The Outlook.
When Whitfield was at Exeter,, a
man in the audience had his pocket
full of stones, which he intended to
throw at the preacher. He waited
through the prayer; and as the text
was about to be announced, he pulled
out a stone. But God sent the sword
of the Spirit into his breast; and the
stone was never thrown. He went up
to Whitfield after the service, saying,
“Sir, I came here intending to give
you a broken head; but God has given
me a BROKEN HEART.
EXTRACTS FROM A GREAT SER
MON.
You complain of ingratitude; were
you not repaid by your pleasure in
doing good?—Levis.
The following extracts are from a
sermon by Dr. Lyman Abbott, pub
lished in the Congregationalist o:
June 24, 1911.
Moral Certainties.
There are some things we know,
and, first of all, we know that good
ness is better than tvickedness, virtue
is better than vice, uprightness is
better than crookedness; no matter
where the virtue may lead, no matter
where the crookedness may lead. We
know that if honor and truth and in
tegrity led down to eternal hell it
would be better to follow,' them than
it v/ould to fellow vice, (iniquity and
selfishness, though they/ crowned us
in an eternal heaveji. I
V/e do not know ,a great deal about
heaven, we do not knoti’ a great deal
about hell; but we do know that vir
tue is better than vice, goodness than
wickedness. We kno-y that character
is after all the supreme^, end of living.
If a man gets that 'and sacrifices
everything else, he is pich, and it he
loses that and gains everything else
he is poor. We do not always act
upon that knowledge when we judge
ourselves, but we always act upon it
when we are judging Others. Love of
truth is the foundation of science;
love of beauty is thd^ foundation of
art; love of goodness) and virtue is
the foundation of religion. That Is
the starting point.
I
The Supremacy of Jesus.
I do not know of wliat substance
the Father is; I do not ;know of what
substance Jesus Christ is. What I do
know is this—that whe’n I look into
the actual life that I kn iw about, the
men and women that aj-e about me,
the men and women in a.l the history
of the past, of all the living beings
that ever lived and walked the earth,
there is no one that so fills my heart
with reverence, with affettion, with
loyal love, with sincere deSy.re to fol-
lcw,*as doth .Tesus Christ. Avid when
my neighbor sometimes says'^to me,
“You are looking, not at a riil life,
but at a life which the apostles^ideal
ized,” I reply with .John Stuart\M:
All the evidence shows they got
ideals from him, not he his ideals
them.
What is divine ? What shall I re\ ■
erence? I will not reverence power
the greater the power the worse the
being if that power is used selfishly.
I will not reverence wisdom; the
greater the wisdom the worse the be
ing if that wisdom is used to pull him
self up and put others down. I will
reverence unselfishness, I will rever
ence service, I will reverence love.
And nowhere in all the history of the
world is there such an embodiment of
unselfishness and service and love and
sacrifice as in the story of those Four
Gospels.
So to me Jesus Christ is not only
what Martineau has called him, “the
realized ideal of humanity”; he is the
realization of my Ideal of divinity.
When I have given my imagination
wings, when I have read poetry and
prophecy and sacred books, and tried
to picture to myself the supremest
creature my imagination can create.
it fildes into darimess, as the stars
fad/ before the rising sun, by the side
of/this real character that lived and
ved and suffered and died. That I
an know.
Let me turn to this chapter from
•which my text is taken:
“Love suffereth long, and is kind;
love envieth not; love vaunteth not
Itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave-
itself unseemly, seeketh not ner own,,
is not easily provoked, thinketh no
evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but re-
joiceth in the truth; beareth all
things believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things.”
That is Paul’s description of love.
Now, I will put the name of Jesus
Christ where Paul has put “love,” and
read it again and see if there is any
incongruity in the reading:
“Jesus Christ suffered long, and was
kind; Jesus Christ envied not; Jesus
Christ vaunted not himself. Jesus
Christ was not puffed up, Jesus Christ
did not behave himself improperly,
Jesus Christ did not seek his own,
Jesus Christ was not easily provoked,
Jesus Christ thought no evil; Jesus
Christ rejoiced not in iniquity, but re
joiced in the truth; Jesus Christ bear
eth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
That is a character worth having,
that is a life wodh living. And that
is what I njean by fhe divinity of Je
sus Christ.
My Four Anchors.
You remember in that story of the
shipwreck of Paul he said that they
threw out four anchors and waited for
day. I have thrown out in my life
those four anchors—my faith in good
ness, my faith in the possibility of
men’s accomplishment of goodness,
my faith in Jesus Christ as the ideal
of goodness, and my faith in the di
vine helpfulness in the world to help
me to goodness. And then I have
waited for day. Not all is clear; the-
universe is still an enigma, there is a
great deal I do not pretend to under
stand. But the changes that have ta
ken place in the last hundred years
have only deepened and enlarged my
faith.
I am a democrat in every nerve of
my body, in every globule of my
blood. And what I mean by “demo
crat” is this—that God has made this
world, net for a tew privileged classes,
rich and strong and wise, but for all
his children; and his Kingdom will
not come until all his children have
omething like a fair chance to make
1 themselves what they can in the
wo^ld, and to have some share in its
joy\and in its prosperity. And I am
setti\g myself with clearer and clear
er vllion as the \ears go by to do
what little I can to make this a world
of universal humanity. I care less
about preparing men for heaven here
after, and more for bringing heaven
to earth; less about singing, "Heaven
is my home,” and more about turning
home into heaven.
And I believe—believe? ch, I am-
sure of it, sure of it—that there is
One higher than the highest, and
greater than the greatest, and wiser
than the wisest, and better than the-
best, who is working out this world
destiny. And I—I do the little I can
do, and leave the rest to God.