The Chief End of Man Part 8

It seems clear that Jesus, not less than his disciples, regarded his power over physical ills as just as truly an incident of his character and mission as was the power to inspire conduct and reclaim the erring.

What differentiated him from them was that he held the physical marvels of far less relative account than they did. Obscure as the detailed narratives must remain to us, it seems unmistakable that he habitually discouraged all publicity and prominence for his works of healing. His spiritual genius showed him that the stimulation of curiosity and expectation in this direction diverted men from the princ.i.p.al business of life, and the essential purport of his message,--to love, obey, and trust.

The point at which the idea of divine intervention most seriously affected his work seems to have been in his growing expectation of a speedy consummation which should in a day establish on earth the kingdom of truth and righteousness. His earlier teachings include striking utterances upon the gradual development of character in man, the slow ripening of society, as in the parables of the leaven and the sower.

Here he was on the firm ground of his own observation and consciousness.

But as the problem of his own mission pressed for an explicit solution; as the lofty pa.s.sion of the idealist, the yearning tenderness of the lover of men, were thwarted and baffled by the prodigious inertia of humanity,--so he was thrown back more and more on that promise of some swift catastrophic judgment and triumph which was the closing word of ancient prophecy, and which seemed to answer the cry of his soul.

The later chapters of the synoptic Gospels are intensely colored with this antic.i.p.ation of a divine judgment close at hand. The promise, the threat, the tremendous imagery, were dear to the heart of the early church. They fed the imagination of the mediaeval church. But that modern Christianity which finds in Christ the source and embodiment of all its own refined and exalted conceptions is inclined to look away from all this millennial prophecy; to weaken or ignore its significance, or to attribute it to the misconception of the disciples. This modern Christianity fastens its attention on those teachings of purely spiritual and universal truth in which Jesus indeed spoke as never other man spoke.

This exclusive insistence on the ethical and spiritual element may suffice for those to whom Christ is an ideal or a divinity. But if we are to study the historical development of our religion, and not merely its present form, it seems necessary to recognize this belief in the Judgment and Advent as a very important factor in the story.

Unless we attribute to his disciples and biographers a misunderstanding almost inconceivable, he identified himself with the Son of Man whom the prophecy of Daniel and the popular belief expected to set up a divine kingdom on earth. The whole story in the later chapters of the Gospels is pervaded by this idea. The powerful imagery of a Day of Judgment, the splendid promises and lurid threatenings, the specific incidents of teaching and event, the overstrained eagerness,--which will not suffer a son to wait to bury his father, or allow a fig-tree to refuse miraculous fruit,--all agree in the presentation of Jesus as absorbed with this tremendous expectation.

That he was on the whole so little unsteadied by this antic.i.p.ation seems due to his profound, sympathetic sense of the sad and sorrowful elements which somehow mingle with human destiny. He was not thinking chiefly of himself,--not even though he was to be G.o.d's vicegerent. What filled his heart, was the destiny of men. He wept over Jerusalem,--he mourned for those who would go away into darkness. The realities of human experience, widened by sympathy, came close home to him.

It seems plain--so far as anything can be plain in the details of the story--that as his mission went on his temper of a pure spiritual idealism changed into a controversy with the leaders of the established religion. He went to Jerusalem, foreseeing that the controversy would there take an acute form, with the gravest issues. At times the presage rose of his own defeat and death. Suppose that were to happen?

Still--so spoke his victorious faith--G.o.d's cause would triumph. And it would triumph speedily and visibly. So he heartened his followers for any event. "Be prepared--you who are to me brothers and sisters and mother--be prepared even for my death. All the same, my truth will vindicate itself, G.o.d will triumph, you shall be saved!"

Jerusalem, it is plain, struck him much as Rome did Luther. Gorgeous buildings, splendid ceremonies, august authorities, and along with it a ma.s.s of greed, formality, worldliness.

A solemn sense comes over him that this cannot endure. The disciples childishly marvel at the splendid Temple, but its gorgeousness strikes him as earthly, sensuous, perishable, and he says, "There shall not one stone be left upon another."

His indignation rises and seeks expression in some outward act which shall blaze upon the dull mult.i.tude the sense of their sinful state. He goes into the courts of the Temple, drives out the money-changers and merchants, overthrows their tables, scatters all the apparatus of trade.

This is the turning-point in his career; he has given an effective handle against him to the formalists and bigots who already hated him, and they speedily bring about his ruin.

The life of Jesus culminates in the scenes of the last night. At the supper, sure now of his impending fate, his willing self-devotion expresses himself in that poetry of humble objects which was characteristic of him, and with pa.s.sionate intensity. "This bread is my body." "This wine is my blood." "I give myself for you."

The scene in Gethsemane shows the dismay and recoil of the hour when his ardent faith met full the stern actuality. G.o.d was not to interfere, defeat and death were before him. All was hidden, save a fate which rose upon his imagination in dark terror. "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pa.s.s from me!" Then comes the victory of absolute self-surrender, "Not my will, but thine, be done."

The birth-hour of the religion of Jesus was that in which he began to declare forgiveness to the outcast and good tidings to the poor. But the birth-hour of Christianity, as the worship of Jesus, was that in which Mary Magdalene saw her master as risen and eternally living.

The impulse which caught up and gave wings to his work just when it seemed crushed came from the heart of Mary. In a spiritual sense the mother of Christianity was a woman who had been a sinner, and was forgiven because she loved much. The faith that sent the disciples forth to conquer the world was the faith that their Lord was not dead but living, not a memory but a perpetual presence. That conviction first flashed into the heart of Mary. It was born of a love stronger than death, the love of a rescued soul for its savior. It sprang up in a mind simple as a child's, incapable of distinguishing between what it felt and what it saw, between its own yearning or instinct and the actualities of the outward world. It took bodily form under a glow of exaltation that knew not itself, whether in the body or out of the body. It crystallized instantly into a story of outward fact. It communicated itself by sympathetic intensity to other loving and credulous hearts. They too saw the heavenly vision. Its acceptance as a reality became the corner-stone of the new society. About it grew up, in ever increasing fullness and definiteness of outline, a whole supernal world of celestial personalities. But the initial fact was the heart's conviction--Jesus lives! Our friend and master is not in the grave, nor in the cold underworld; he is the child of the living G.o.d, and he draws us toward him in that divine and eternal life.

To get some partial comprehension of how the belief in Jesus'

resurrection took possession of the disciples' minds, we are to remember that during the last months of their master's life he was in a state of tense, high-wrought expectation, which communicated itself to them.

Something wonderful was just about to happen. There was to be a sudden and amazing manifestation of divine power, by which the kingdom of G.o.d was to triumph and thenceforth to reign. But the way to this consummation might lead through the valley of the shadow of death. In the soul of Jesus a sublime hope and a dark presage alternated and mingled. It is not to be supposed that he held a definite and unchanging conception. Cloud-shadows and sunbursts played by turns across him, with the intensity natural to a soul of vast emotions. Constant through it all was the fixed purpose to be true to his mission, and with victorious recurrence came his confidence in the divine issue. His sympathetic disciples were vaguely, profoundly stirred by this elemental struggle and victory. They too became intensely expectant of some great catastrophe and triumph. After the first shock of the Master's death, all this emotion surged up in them afresh, with their love heightened as death always heightens love, with the fresh and vivid memories of their leader sweeping them on in the current of his purpose and hope and faith. His words were true,--he must, he will, conquer and reign. If he has gone to the underworld, he will live again. "Will,"--nay, is he not here with us now? Is he not more real to our thought and love than ever before? And first in one mind, then in another, the conviction flashes into bodily image. Mary has seen the Master! Peter has seen him! And for a little time--for "forty days"--the electric air seems often to body forth that luminous shape. The story, as it grew with years, took on one detail after another, became definite and coherent, was accepted as the charter and foundation of the little society.

To rightly understand the faith of the disciples in the risen Christ, we must look below the stories of sense-appearance in which that faith clothed itself. What they essentially felt--what distinguished their faith from a mere opinion or dogma--was not a mere expectation, "The dead _will_ rise;" not a mere fact of history, "Some one _did_ rise;" it was the conviction and consciousness, "Our friend _is living_." It was an experience--including and transcending memory and hope--of present love, present communion, present life.

Sight and speech lent their forms to clothe the ineffable experience of Mary and the disciples. For us, the story of outward events--the visible form, the eating of bread and fish, the conversations, the floating up into the clouds--all this fades away as a mirage. The reality below this symbol--the sense of the human friend's continued and higher life--this abides and renews itself; not as an isolated historic fact, but as an instance and counterpart of the message which in every age comes to the bereaved heart--of a love greater than loss, a life in which death is swallowed up.

The religion of the followers of Jesus became a centring of every affection, obligation, and hope, in him.

For the first few years all this was merged in the eager expectation of his return. While this lasted in its fullness, even memory was far less to them than hope. They did not attempt any complete records of his earthly life,--what need of that, when the life was so soon to be resumed? The bride on the eve of her marriage is not reading her old love-letters,--she is looking to the morrow.

That first eager flush had already pa.s.sed when the earliest gospels were written. By that time hope had begun to prop its wavering confidence, by looks turned back even to a remote past. Hence the constant appeals to the supposed predictions of the Old Testament; hence even the imagining of special events in the life of Jesus to fulfill those predictions.

The Old Testament as conceived by the writers of the New is fantastically unlike the original writings. The Evangelists found Messianic prophecies everywhere. The writers of the Epistles, Paul and the rest, dealt with ceremonies and histories as a quarry out of which to hew whatever allegory or argument suited their purpose.

In Luke's Gospel we first see fully displayed the idea of Christ which took possession of the common mind, and has largely held it ever since,--a personal Savior,--a gracious, merciful, all-powerful deliverer.

It is a gospel of the imagination and the heart--inspired by the actual Jesus, but half-created by ardent, adoring imagination.

This conception grew up side by side with Paul's. It is far closer to the popular mind and heart than Paul's idea,--his was philosophic and metaphysic; this is pictorial. Paul has been studied by theologians, but the Gospels have given the Christ of the common people.

The early church was divided into two parties, of which one was led by Paul, who stood for the free inclusion of all who would accept Jesus as the Messiah, and would impose no further requirement of ceremony or dogma, trusting all to the guidance of "the Spirit"--the Spirit of which the sufficient fruit and evidence was "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." The other party, led by disciples who had known and followed Jesus himself, maintained that the entire Jewish law was still in force, and treated Paul as a dangerous heretic. To narrate the struggle and the final reconcilement is beyond the purpose of this book, but we must pause a moment on the figure of Paul.

It marks the extraordinary force and vividness of Paul's character, that in a few pages of letters, in which the autobiography is only brief and incidental, he has so displayed himself that few historical characters are more familiar.

We see him,--deep-hearted, vehement, irascible, tender, self-a.s.sertive; intensely bent on the higher life; thwarted in that aspiration by unruly pa.s.sion,--l.u.s.t of the flesh and pride of the spirit; stumbling, stammering, conquering; a nature full of internal conflict, brought into harmony by one sublime spiritual affection; thenceforth throwing its whole energy into the diffusion of a like harmony throughout this world of troubled conflict.

We see a mind guided in its deepest workings by the realities of personal experience, but wholly untrained in logic, unversed in accurate knowledge; acquainted with history only through the Old Testament; ignorant of the philosophy of Greece; taught by intimate a.s.sociation with many men and women in their deepest personal experiences; familiar by travel and observation with the broad life of the time, and judging it from a lofty ethical standpoint; wholly credulous as to miracle; wholly confident in its own theories--theories gendered in the strangest wedding of fact and fancy; using constantly the form of argument, which often is pure fantasy; illumined by gleams of spiritual insight, which sometimes broaden into pure radiance; striving always to express the conscious fact of a great freedom of the soul which binds it fast to all duty; aiming at a human society dominated wholly and solely by the same spiritual principle; but often clothing both the personal and social ideal in forms of thought which have become obsolete, so that for us to-day his truth has to be stated in other language, and broadened by other truths.

Where Paul has always touched men closest is in the earnestness and difficulty of his struggle for the good life, and in the sense of a celestial aid,--he calls it "the love of Christ,"--which somehow brings habitual victory in the conflict, and sheds peace in its pauses, and gives a.s.surance of ultimate triumph and perfect fruition.

The main theme for which Paul contends in most of his epistles was vital to the life of the early church,--that its members were not to be held to observance of the Jewish ritual. In support of that theme, Paul develops his philosophy of the universe. The main lines of that philosophy are essentially these: that when G.o.d had created man, man's sin incurred the penalty of death; that G.o.d chose the Jews as his peculiar people, and gave them the code of laws contained in the books of Moses; that the law was too difficult for weak human nature to perfectly obey, so that death still reigned on earth, with dire penalty impending in the afterworld; that G.o.d then had recourse to another plan. He sent his Son into the world, who became a man, taking on him that fleshly nature which is the occasion and the symbol of human transgression, but which he wore in perfect holiness. G.o.d then caused this fleshly nature of Jesus to die upon the cross, while the spiritual nature outlived the perishing body, appeared in radiant form to men, and returned to the eternal realm. By this visible sign G.o.d made proclamation to mankind, "Die unto sin by forsaking sin, and I will give you holiness which issues in eternal life.

The death and resurrection of my son, Jesus Christ, are the token and promise of my free gift, which only asks your acceptance. Accept it, by turning from sin, and you shall receive the sense of companionship with Christ, and the consciousness of a divine power working in you and in the world. Of set laws you have no longer need; rites and ceremonies were but the type of the reality which now is freely given to you. Your sole obligation is to love; your fidelity to that shall constantly merge in the sense of joyful freedom; the imperfect attainment of earth shall issue into the eternal felicity of heaven."

In such language we try to restate Paul's philosophy. Thus, or somewhat thus, he thought. Just how he thought we can never be sure, nor does it matter. The mould of his belief was so different from ours that all which closely concerns us is to discern if we can what was the kernel of genuine experience, the permanent reality and truth, which vivified this world-scheme.

In Paul before his conversion we see the man who struggles to conform to a standard of conduct so high, exacting, and minute, that it touches every particular of life, and who yet is beset by a constant sense of failure and disappointment. From this slough of despond he is lifted--how? By the sense of a love which extends to him from the unseen world. It takes form to him as the personal love of one who has lived, has died, and in some inexpressible way still lives. This friendship in the unseen world is the sufficient, the absolute pledge of a G.o.d who loves and saves. No matter what be the theory about it, of incarnation or atonement, here is the reality as it comes home: the man Jesus, highest, n.o.blest, dearest, makes himself real and present to me, though long ago he died and was laid in the grave. This one fact carries answer enough for all the craving of heart and soul. That I shall at last triumph over all besetting evils, that the ruler of the universe is my friend, that earth is the vestibule of heaven,--all this I can joyfully believe when once I have the sense of that single human friend still befriending me in the unseen world.

This was what the risen Christ meant to the early church. This was the common belief that bound its two parties, the Jewish and the Pauline Christians, at last into one. This was what gave the full meaning to all the stories of Jesus told over and over and at last written down. This was what fired the common heart of mankind as not the wisdom of Plato nor the n.o.bility of Epictetus had touched it.

Paul's experience is the more remarkable because he had never even seen Jesus in the flesh. He had borne in a sense a personal relation to him, in the fact that he had hated and persecuted his followers. The conviction that he had been in the wrong came to him with a tremendous revulsion of feeling. The poignancy of remorse was followed by an exquisite sense of forgiveness, which shed its depth and tenderness on his whole after-life. In him we first see the power of the personality of Jesus to touch those who never had seen him.

At such points we feel how shallow is the plummet-line with which our so-called psychology measures the "soul" it deals with. The influence, the presence, the living love, of one who has died,--how paradoxical, how unintelligible, to our human science; how significant to our human experience!

What concerns us historically as to Paul is that he was the conspicuous agent in transforming this sentiment into a moral force. The belief that Jesus was risen had great emotional power, but that emotion might easily waste itself, might even undermine the solid foundations of character.

Paul held the belief in its literal form, but it had for him a further significance, as the symbol and type of the soul's experience in its every-day walk. The death we are most concerned about is the extinction of evil act and desire. Life--the only life worth thinking of, here or hereafter--is lofty, pure, and tender life. Die to sin, live to holiness, and present or future is safe with G.o.d.

Paul's theology is in one sense a pa.s.sage in a long chapter of pseudo-science. It is one of a series of attempts to explain the universe from a starting-point of fable. These have been the accompaniment--sometimes as help, sometimes as obstacle--of a spiritual life far deeper than the stammering language they found. And it is to be noted that Paul himself when at his best rises above his theology or forgets it. The words of his which have lodged deepest in the world's heart are the vital precepts of conduct, and the utterances of love and hope. In one matchless pa.s.sage, he celebrates "charity"--simple human love--as the one sufficient, supreme, and eternal good.

Some misconceptions in his philosophy became the fruitful seeds of mischievous harvests. One such seed was the ambiguous sense of "faith"--the confusing of intellectual credence with moral fidelity.

This misconception--which underlies much of the New Testament--was an almost inevitable incident of a religion generated as this was.

Christianity based itself, in its own theory, on the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This was offered as a basis for the whole appeal which the church made to the world. Thus Belief--or Credulity--usurped the place among the virtues which of right belongs to Truth.

Another misconception lay in the use of "flesh," the ant.i.thesis of "spirit," as the name of the evil principle. Paul indeed uses "the flesh" in no restricted sense of merely sensual sin. With him it equally includes all other forms of wrong, like malevolence and pride and self-seeking. But the nomenclature and the way of thought which it reflected put a stigma on the whole physical nature of man. In that stigma lay the germ of asceticism, hostility to marriage, depreciation of some vital elements of man's nature.

Paul's conception of the church never was fully realized. He expected to see the whole body of believers filled with a "holy spirit," a divine-human inspiration, which should of itself guide them into all truth and duty. Outward law or doctrine there needed none, beyond the acceptance of Christ as G.o.d's son who had lived and died and risen.

Accept that, and the divine spirit would be given you. No need then of circ.u.mcision or sacrifice, of Sabbath or fast, of written code or human ruler. The saint is free from all law but that of love; the company of saints needs no control or guidance but that.

The beautiful ideal shattered itself against a stubborn fact. Love of Christ did not guide his followers into all truth, or into harmony with each other. Paul's life was half spent in a bitter contest with men who loved Christ as well as he did. His epistles are full of the struggle with that great party of Christ's followers who called him a heretic and sought to win away his converts. Suppose any one had asked him: "You say the spirit of Christ will guide his followers into all truth,--why does it not guide these Christian Jews and you into so much of truth as will make you friends instead of foes?"

Paul was hoping too much. The new impulse in the world--sublime, beautiful, full of power and promise--was by no means sufficient to lead the world straight and sure to harmonious perfection. There was no such gift of "the spirit" as to supersede all search, all struggle, all human leadership and human groping. That hope was almost as exaggerated as the expectation--with which in Paul's mind it mingled--of Christ's bodily return. The road to be traveled by mankind was still long and arduous.

Any complete history of the early church must deal largely with the stubborn and bitter contest between the Jewish and Pauline parties,--the champions of the law and the champions of liberty. That contest gave its stamp to the epistles of Paul, and was indeed their most frequent occasion. At a later time the attempt to harmonize the two parties seems to have given birth to the book of Acts, in which history mixes with fiction. But we are here concerned only with such features of the history as made the most vital and permanent contributions to religion, and for this purpose we need only specify the Epistle to the Ephesians.

This epistle opens the heart of the early church. It a.s.sumes to be written by Paul, but there are some indications that this name was borrowed by the real author. This a.s.sumption of a great name, so common in this age, as in the books of Daniel, Wisdom of Solomon, Enoch, and others, marks a timidity, a deference to authority of the past. Only the greatest, like Jesus and Paul, dared to speak in their own name.