The Empire of Love Part 3

Never was there vision at once so exquisite and so surprising. It is like a child's dream of heaven and judgment, so untouched is it by the conventions of the world, so innocent, so daring, so tenderly imagined, and so impossibly probable. Alas, that most of us are too wise to understand it, and too worldly to receive it. Yet in nothing that Jesus uttered is there clearer evidence of deliberation. And it is of a piece with all He taught; so much so indeed that without it, His teaching would be incomplete.

Truly, we may say, the Heaven of Jesus is a strangely ordered Kingdom; for in it beggars are comforted for apparently no other reason than that they need comfort; the doers of forgotten kindnesses are crowned with sudden splendours of divine approval while the lords of genius and the makers of empire are forgotten; and the very anthems of the blessed are hushed into silent wondering and joy when solitary penitents turn homewards from the roads of sin! But it is not stranger than that kingdom in which Jesus lived habitually, the kingdom He created round Him in His earthly life. In that kingdom also love was lord, and she who anointed the tired feet of the Master against His burial was promised everlasting remembrance, and she who out of her penury gave her mite to the poor was praised as having done more than all the rich, who from their abundance distributed careless and unmissed benefactions. In all that Jesus says and does the same sequence of thought runs clear, the same master principle rules the various result.

Life is a unity either here or hereafter, and love is, and must evermore remain, the one temper that gives significance to life.

THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE

_THE WELL_

_When Galilee took morning's flame Thro' fields of flowers the Master came.

He stopped before a cottage door, And took from humble hands the store Of crumbs that from the table fell, And water from the living well.

He smiled, and with a great content Upon the road of flowers went._

_Foredoomed upon the road of shame With bleeding feet the Master came, And found the cottage door again.

"No wine have we to ease Thy pain, But only water in a cup."

The Master slowly drank it up.

"Thy kindness turns it into wine,"

He said, "and makes the gift divine."_

_Upon a day the Master trod The road of stars that leads to G.o.d, All tasks for men accomplished.

"They gave Me hate," He softly said, "But Love in larger measure gave, And therefore was I strong to save.

I had not reached the Cross that day But for the Well beside the way."_

VIII

THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE

If these things be true, if the whole tradition of Jesus is an exposition of love as the law of life, the deduction is entirely simple, and as logical as it is simple. That deduction has been already stated. It is that Christianity is a method of life by which men and women are taught and inspired to love as Jesus loved, and to live loving and lovable lives. It has little to do with creeds, and still less with formal codes of conduct. For this reason such a definition of Christianity will satisfy neither the theologian nor the philosopher. Jesus never expected that it would. He knew that the one would regard it as heretical, and the other as so deficient in subtlety as to seem foolish. Therefore He made His appeal to simple and natural people, saying that what was hidden from the wise and prudent, was revealed to babes.

The simple and natural people understood Jesus; they always do. The sophisticated and artificial people did not understand Him; they never will. With scarcely an exception the people of intelligence and culture regarded Him with disdain, withdrew from Him, or violently opposed Him. The reason for their conduct lay not so much in either their culture or their intelligence, as in the kind of life that seemed to be necessary to them as the expression of their culture.

Thus, they were full of prejudices, prepossessions, and foregone conclusions, all of which had the sanction of their culture. It was enough for them to know that Jesus came from Nazareth and was unlettered; this produced in them violent scorn and antipathy. They were still further offended because He used none of the shibboleths with which they were familiar. Nor could they conceive of any life as satisfactory but the kind of life they lived, and that was a life of social complexity, ruled by conventional usages and maxims, and essentially artificial in ideal and practice. Jesus, therefore, turned from them to the simple and natural people, fishermen, artisans, and humble women, in whom the natural instincts had fuller play. His reward was immediate; then, and ever since, the Common People heard Him gladly.

The reason why simple and natural people readily understand Jesus is that in the kind of life they live the primal emotions are supreme.

The very narrowness of their social outlook intensifies those emotions.

They have little to distract them; they are not bewildered by endless disquisitions on conduct, and religion itself is for them an emotion rather than a systematized creed. For the poor man home, children, fireside affection, mean more than for the rich man, because they are his only wealth. This is the lesson which Wordsworth has so n.o.bly taught in his "_Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_,"--

How, by heaven's grace this Clifford's heart was framed, How he, long forced in humble walks to go, Was softened into feeling, soothed and tamed.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

People who live thus, in wise simplicity, undistracted by the numerous illusions of an artificial life, have no difficulty in accepting Christ's teaching that love is the supreme law of life, because love means everything to them in the kind of life they lead. In the wisdom of the heart they are more learned than the wisest Pharisee, who is rarely "softened into feeling," whose whole social life indeed imposes a restraint on feeling. What peasant father would not welcome a returning prodigal, what peasant mother would not open her arms wide to gather to her bosom a penitent daughter, recovered from the cruel snare of cities? Certainly one is much more likely to find such acts of pure feeling among peasant folk than among the rich and cultured, for the peasant cares less for opinion, is less respectful of social etiquette, and follows more closely in his actions the instincts of primal affection. Who has not discovered among poor and humble folk a strange and beautiful lenience, the lenience of a great compa.s.sion, towards those sins which in more artificial conditions of society are held to justify the most violent condemnation, and do indeed close the heart to pity? In poor men's huts beside the Sea of Galilee Jesus Himself had found love, love in all its divine daring, lenience, and magnanimity, and He knew that among people like these He would be understood. He also knew that the only people fitted to interpret His doctrine of sovereign love to the world were these simple folk of the lake and field, and therefore to them He committed His Gospel, and from them He chose His disciples.

It needed a peasant Christ to teach these things, for no other could have imagined them, no other could have had the daring and simplicity to utter them. A peasant Christ He was, living, thinking, and acting as a peasant even in His highest moments of inspiration. It was because He always remained a peasant that He was able to see so clearly the defects of that more intricate social system to which His ministry introduced Him. He brought with Him a new scale of values, which He had learned in the school of a more primal life than could be found in cities. Nature always spoke in Him, convention never. In His treatment of sin it is always the voice of Nature that we hear triumphing over the verdicts of convention. The sins which convention regards as inexpiable are sins of pa.s.sion; the sins which it excuses are sins of temper, such as greed, malice, craft, unkindness, cruelty.

Jesus entirely reverses the scale. His pity is reserved for outcasts, His harshest words are addressed to those whom the world calls good.

Folly He views with infinite compa.s.sion--the foolish man is as a lost sheep whose very helplessness invokes our pity. But for the man of hard and self-sufficient nature, whose very righteousness is a mixture of prudence and egoism, He has only words of flame. An offense against virtue counts for less with Him than an offense against love. No wonder the Pharisees called Him a blasphemer! Were the true nature of Christ's teaching understood to-day many who profess to revere Him would join in the same accusation. What more offensive and unpalatable truth could be presented to mankind than this on which Jesus constantly insists, that sins of temper are much more harmful than sins of pa.s.sion, that they spring from a more incurable malignancy of nature, that they produce far wider and more disastrous suffering?

Yet the truth is clear enough to all broadly truthful and simple natures, which are not bewildered by conventional views of right and wrong. Who has occasioned more suffering, the youth who has sinned against himself in wild folly and repented, or the man who has planned his life with that cold craft and deliberate cruelty which sacrifices everything to self-advantage? Can any human mind measure the various and almost infinite wrongs committed by the man who piles up through years of sordid avarice an unjust fortune? Who can count the broken hearts in the pathway of that implacable ambition which "wades through slaughter to a throne"? These things may not be apparent to the man whose nature is subdued to the hue of that artificial society in which he lives, a society which permits such crimes to pa.s.s unquestioned.

They are certainly not perceived by the criminals themselves. To-day, as in the day of Christ, they "devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers," save, perhaps, that more blind than the ancient Pharisees, their prayers seem real, and they themselves are unconscious of pretense. Now also, as then, they give their t.i.thes in conventional benevolence, forgetting, and hoping to make others forget, the sources of their wealth in their use of it. How is it that such men are so unconscious of offense? Simply because they have never grasped Christ's deliberate statement that sins of temper are much worse than sins of pa.s.sion; that cruelty is a worse thing than folly; that the wrong wrought by squandering the substance in a far country is more quickly repaired, and more easily forgiven, than the wrong of h.o.a.rding one's substance in the avarice which neglects the poor, or adding to it by methods which trample the weak and humble in the dust, as deserving neither pity nor attention.

Yet it needs but a very brief examination of society to prove the truth of Christ's contention; very little experience of life to discover that the utmost corruption of the human heart lies in lovelessness. The spiteful and rancorous temper, always seeking occasions of offense; the jealous spirit which cannot bear the spectacle of another's joy; the bitter nagging tongue, darting hither and thither like a serpent's fang full of poison, and diabolically skilled in wounding; the sour and grudging disposition, which seems most contented with itself when it has produced the utmost misery in others; the narrow mind and heart dest.i.tute of magnanimity; the cold and egoistic temperament, which demands subservience of others and receives their service without thanks, as though the acknowledgment of grat.i.tude were weakness--these are common and typical forms of lovelessness, and who can estimate the sum of suffering they inflict? Their fruit is everywhere the same; love repressed, children estranged, the home made intolerable. It does but add to the offense of these unlovely people that in what the world calls morality they are above reproach, for they instill a hatred of morality itself by their appropriation of it. Before them love flies aghast, and the tenderest emotions of the heart fall withered. Could the annals of human misery be fairly written, it might appear that not all the l.u.s.ts and crimes which are daily blazoned to the eye have wrought such wide-spread misery, have inflicted such general unhappiness, as these sins of temper, so common in their operation that they pa.s.s almost unrebuked, but so wide-spread in their effects that their havoc is discovered in every feature of our social life.

THE REVELATIONS OF GRIEF

_THE HOUSE OF PRIDE_

_I lived with Pride; the house was hung With tapestries of rich design.

Of many houses, this among Them all was richest, and 'twas mine.

But in the chambers burned no fire, Tho' all the furniture was gold, I sickened of fulfilled desire, The House of Pride was very cold._

_I lived with Knowledge; very high Her house rose on a mountain's side.

I watched the stars roll through the sky, I read the scroll of Time flung wide.

But in that house, austere and bare, No children played, no laughter clear Was heard, no voice of mirth was there, The House was high but very drear._

_I lived with Love; all she possest Was but a tent beside a stream.

She warmed my cold hands in her breast, She wove around my sleep a dream.

And One there was with face divine Who softly came, when day was spent, And turned our water into wine, And made our life a sacrament._

IX

THE REVELATIONS OF GRIEF

Nevertheless there are occasions in life when these things become evident to even the least observant of us. When we stand beside the newly dead the most intolerable reflection of countless mourners is that their tears fall on quiet lips to which they gave scant caresses, in the days of health: their pa.s.sionate words of love are uttered to unhearing ears, which in life waited eagerly for such a.s.surances as these, and waited vainly. All the purity and beauty of the vanished human soul is revealed to us now, when it is no longer in our power to gladden or delight it with our kindness or our praise. All the willing service rendered to us by those folded hands and resting feet, which we so thanklessly accepted, is seen as a thing dear and precious to us now, when the opportunity of thanks is past forever. What would we give now if but for one brief hour we might recall our dead just to say the tender things we might have said and did not say, through all those days and years when they were with us,--presences familiar and accustomed, moving round us with so soft a tread that we scarce regarded them, nor laid on them detaining hands, nor lifted our preoccupied and careless eyes to theirs!

For most of us, alas, it is not Grief and Love alone who conduct us to the chambers of the dead; the sad and silent Angel of Reproach also stands beside the bed, and the shadow of his wings falls upon the features fixed in their immutable appeal, their pathetic and unwilling accusation. Then it is that veil after veil is lifted from the past, till in the pitiless light we read ourselves with a new understanding of our faults. We see that through some element of hardness in ourselves which we allowed to grow unchecked; through vain pride, or obstinate perversity, or mere thoughtless disregard, we repulsed love from the dominion of our hearts, and made him the servitor of our desires, but no longer the lord of our behaviour and the spirit of our lives. And now as we gaze on these things across the gulf of the irreparable, we see our sin and how it came to pa.s.s; how we were unkind not in the things we did but in those we failed to do; how, without being cruel, our denied response to hearts that craved our tenderness became a more subtle cruelty than angry word or hasty blow; how with every duty accurately measured and fulfilled, yet love evaporated in the cold and cheerless atmosphere of repression and aloofness with which we clothed ourselves; and then the significance of Christ's teaching comes home to us, for we know too late, that kindness is more than righteousness, and tenderness more than duty, and that to have loved with all our hearts is the only fulfilling of the law which heaven approves. None, bowed beside the newly dead, ever regretted that they had loved too well; millions have wept the bitterest tears known to mortals because they loved too little, and wronged by their poverty of love the sacred human presences now withdrawn forever from their vision.

But there are other and more joyous ways of learning the truth of Christ's teaching, ways that are accessible to all of us. The best and most joyous way of all is to make experiment of it. Here is a law of life which to the sophisticated mind seems impossible, impracticable, and even absurd. No amount of argument will convince us that we can find in love a sufficient rule of life, or that "to renounce joy for our fellow's sake is joy beyond joy." How are we to be convinced?

Only by making the experiment, for we really believe only that which we practice. "I wish I had your creed, then I would live your life," said a seeker after truth to Pascal, the great French thinker. "Live my life, and you will soon have my creed," was the swift reply. The solution of all difficulties of faith lies in Pascal's answer, which is after all but a variant of Christ's greater saying, "He that willeth to do the will of G.o.d, shall know the doctrine." Is not the whole reason why, for so many of us, the religion of Christ which we profess has so little in it to content us, simply this, that we have never heartily and honestly tried to practice it? We have accepted Christ's religion indeed, as one which upon the whole should be accepted by virtuous men, or as one which has sufficient superiorities to certain other forms of religion to turn the scale of our intellectual hesitation, and win from us reluctant acquiescence. But have we accepted it as the only authoritative rule of practice? Have we ever tried to live one day of our life so that it should resemble one of the days of the Son of Man?

Knowing what He thought and did, and how He felt, have we ever tried to think and act and feel as He did--and if we have not, what wonder that our religion, being wholly theoretical, appears to us tainted with unreality, a thin-spun web of barren, fragile idealism which leaves us querulous and discontented?

Such a sense of discontent should be for us, as it really is, the signal of some deep mistake in our conception of religion. It should at least cause us alarm, for what can be more alarming than that we should be haunted with a sense of unreality in religion, yet still profess religion for reasons which leave the heart indifferent and barely serve to satisfy the intellect? And what can produce a keener torture in a sincere mind than this eternal suspicion of unreality in a religion whose conventional authority is acknowledged and accepted?

I am convinced that these feelings are general among great mult.i.tudes of the more thoughtful and intelligent adherents of Christianity.

Religion rests with them upon a certain intellectual acquiescence, or upon the equipoise of rational probabilities, or on the compromise of intellectual hesitations. Their tastes are gratified by the normal forms of worship, and their sentiments are softly stirred and stimulated. But when the voice of the orator dies upon the porches of the ear, and the music of the Church is silent, and the seduction of splendid ceremonial is forgotten, there remains the uneasy sense that between all this and the actual Carpenter-Redeemer there is a wide gulf fixed; that Jesus scarcely lived and died to produce only such results as these; that there must be some other method of interpreting His life, much simpler, much truer, and much more satisfying. Is it wonderful that among such men the current forms of Christianity excite no enthusiasm, and that the bonds of their attachment to it are lax and easily dissolved? And what is felt by these men within the Church is felt with much greater strength by mult.i.tudes of sincere men outside the Church, who do not hesitate to express their feeling and to p.r.o.nounce current Christianity a burlesque and tragic travesty upon the real religion of the Nazarene.