The Empire of Love

By

W. J. DAWSON

New York Chicago Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1907, by

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

 To M. M. D. , who, during the last two years of our residence in London, practiced the teachings of this book before I taught them:

 proving daily in her compassionate toil for others the divine efficacy of simple love to redeem the lives, that were most estranged from virtue, and most lost to hope. 

Love feels no burden, regards not labours, would willingly do more thanit is able, pleads not impossibility, because it feels that it can andmay do all things. 

THOMAS À KEMPIS. 

CONTENTS

 I. THE GENIUS TO BE LOVED II. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? III. THE JUSTICE OF JESUS IV. LOVE IS JUSTICE V. LOVE AND FORGIVENESS VI. THE PRACTICE OF LOVE VII. LOVE AND JUDGMENT VIII. THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE IX. THE REVELATIONS OF GRIEF X. A CONFESSION XI. A LOVER OF MEN XII. THE LAW OF COMPASSION XIII. THE EMPIRE OF LOVE XIV. THE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE

THE GENIUS TO BE LOVED

 _WHY THEY LOVED HIM_

 _So kindly was His love to us, (We had not heard of love before), That all our life grew glorious When He had halted at our door. _

 _So meekly did He love us men, Though blind we were with shameful sin, He touched our eyes with tears, and then Led God's tall angels flaming in. _

 _He dwelt with us a little space, As mothers do in childhood's years, And still we can discern His face Wherever Joy or Love appears. _

 _He made our virtues all His own, And lent them grace we could not give, And now our world seems His alone, And while we live He seems to live. _

 _He took our sorrows and our pain, And hid their torture in His breast, Till we received them back again To find on each His grief impressed. _

 _He clasped our children in His arms, And showed us where their beauty shone, He took from us our gray alarms, And put Death's icy armour on. _

 _So gentle were His ways with us, That crippled souls had ceased to sigh, On them He laid His hands, and thus They gloried at His passing by. _

 _Without reproof or word of blame, As mothers do in childhood's years, He kissed our lips in spite of shame, And stayed the passage of our tears. _

 _So tender was His love to us, (We had not learned to love before), That we grew like to Him, and thus Men sought His grace in us once more. _

 CONINGSBY WILLIAM DAWSON. 

I

THE GENIUS TO BE LOVED

In the history of the last two thousand years there is but one Personwho has been, and is supremely loved. Many have been loved byindividuals, by groups of persons, or by communities; some havereceived the pliant idolatries of nations, such as heroes and nationaldeliverers; but in every instance the sense of love thus excited hasbeen intimately associated with some triumph of intellect, or someresounding achievement in the world of action. In this there isnothing unusual, for man is a natural worshipper of heroes. But inJesus Christ we discover something very different; He possessed thegenius to be loved in so transcendent a degree that it appears His solegenius. 

Jesus is loved not for anything that He taught, nor yet wholly foranything that He did, although His actions culminate in the divinefascination of the Cross, but rather for what He was in Himself. Hisvery name provokes in countless millions a reverent tenderness ofemotion usually associated only with the most sacred and intimate ofhuman relationships. He is loved with a certain purity and intensityof passion that transcends even the most intimate expressions of humanemotion. The curious thing is that He Himself anticipated this kind oflove as His eternal heritage with men. He expected that men would loveHim more than father or mother, wife or child, and even made such alove a condition of what He called discipleship. The greatest marvelof all human history is that this prognostication has been strictlyverified in the event. He is the Supreme Lover, for whose love, unrealizable as it is by touch, or glance, or spoken word, or momentarypresence, men and women are still willing to sacrifice themselves, andsurrender all things. The pregnant words of Napoleon, uttered in hislast lonely reveries in St. Helena, still express the strangest thingin universal history: "Caesar, Charlemagne, I, have founded empires. They were founded on force, and have perished. Jesus Christ hasfounded an empire on love, and to this day there are millions ready todie for Him. "

Napoleon felt the wonder of it all, the baffling, inexplicable marvel. Were we able to detach ourselves enough from use and custom, to surveythe movement of human thought from some lonely height above the floodsof Time, as Napoleon in the high sea-silences of St. Helena, we alsomight feel the wonder of this most wonderful thing the world has everknown. 

That the majority of men, and even Christian men, do not perceive thatthe whole meaning of the life of Christ is Love is a thing too obviousto demand evidence or invite contradiction. I say men, and Christianmen, thus limiting my statement, because women and Christian women, frequently do perceive it, being themselves the creatures of affection, and finding in affection the one sufficing symbol of life and of theuniverse. It is a St. Catherine who thinks of herself as the bride ofChrist, and dreams the lovely vision of the changed hearts--the heartof Jesus placed by the hands that bled beneath her pure bosom, and herheart hidden in the side of Him who died for her. It is a St. Theresawho melts into ecstasy at the brooding presence of the heavenly Lover, and can only think of the Evil One himself with commiseration as onewho cannot love. It is true that Francis of Assisi also thought andspoke of Christ with a lover's ecstasy, but then Francis in hisexquisite tenderness of nature, was more woman than man. No suchthought visited the stern heart of Dominic, nor any of those makers oftheology who have built systems and disciplines upon the divine poetryof the divine Life. 

Love, as the perfect symbol of life and the universe, does not contentmen, simply because for most men love is not the key to life, nor anend worth living for in itself, nor anything but a complex and oftentroublesome emotion, which must needs be subordinated to otherfaculties and qualities, such as greed, or pride, or the desire ofpower, or the dominant demands of intellect. Among men the poets alonehave really understood Jesus: and in the category of the poets must beincluded the saints, whose religion has always been interpreted to themthrough the imagination. The poets have understood; the theologiansrarely or never. Thus it happens that men, being the general andaccepted interpreters of Christ, have all but wholly misinterpretedHim. The lyric passion of that life, and the lyric love which itexcites, has been to them a disregarded music. They have rarelyachieved more than to tell us what Christ taught; they have whollyfailed to make us feel what Christ was. But Mary Magdalene knew this, and it was what she said and felt in the Garden that has put Christupon the throne of the world. Was not her vision after all the trueone? Is not a Catherine a better guide to Jesus than a Dominic? Whenall the strident theologies fall silent, will not the world's wholeworship still utter itself in the lyric cry, Jesu, Lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly. 

Is it then not within the competence of man to interpret Christ aright, simply because the masculine temperament is what it is? By no means, for such a statement would disqualify the evangelists themselves, whoare the only biographers of Jesus. But in the degree that atemperament is only masculine, it will fail to understand Jesus. Napoleon could not understand; he was the child of force, the son ofthe sword, the very type of that hard efficiency of will and intellectwhich turns the heart to flint, and scorns the witness of the softerintuitions. Francis could understand because he was in partfeminine--not weakly so, but nobly, as all poets and dreamers andvisionaries are. Paul could understand for the same reason, and socould John and Peter; each, in varying degrees, belonging to the sametype; but Pilate could not understand, because he had been trained inthe hard efficiency of Rome; nor Judas, because the masculine vice ofambition had overgrown his affections, and deflowered his heart. Whatis it then in Paul and John and Peter, what element or quality, whichwe do not find in Pilate, Judas, or Napoleon? Clearly there is no lackof force, for the personality of these three first apostles lifted aworld out of its groove and changed the course of history. Was it notjust this, that each had beneath his masculine strength a femininetenderness, a power of loving and of begetting love in others? Johnlying on the bosom of Jesus in sheer abandonment of love and sorrow atthe last Supper; Peter, plunging naked into the Galilean sea, andstruggling to the shore at the mere suspicion that the strange figureoutlined there upon the morning mist is the Lord; Paul praying not onlyto share the wounds of Jesus, but if there be any pang left over, anyanguish unfulfilled, that this anguish may be his--these are not aloneimmortal pictures, but they are revelations of a temperament, thetemperament that understands Jesus. He who could not melt into anabandonment of grief and love over one on whom the shadow of the lasthour rested; he who would spring headlong into no estranging sea toreach one loved and lost and marvellously brought near again; he whocan share the festal wine of life, but has no appetite for agony, nothirsting of the soul to bear another's pain--these can neverunderstand Jesus. They cannot understand Him, simply because theycannot understand love. 

WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?

 _TOWARDS GALILEE_

 _The great obdurate world I know no more, The clanging of the brazen wheels of greed, The taloned hands that build the miser's store, The stony streets where feeble feet must bleed. No more I walk beneath thy ashen skies, With pallid martyrs cruelly crucified Upon thy predetermined Calvaries: I, too, have suffered, yea, and I have died! Now, at the last, another road I take Thro' peaceful gardens, by a lilted way, To those low eaves beside the silver lake, Where Christ waits for me at the close of day. Farewell, proud world! In vain thou callest me. I go to meet my Lord in Galilee. _

II

WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?

Christianity, as it exists to-day, is in the main a misrepresentationand a misinterpretation of Christ; not consciously indeed--if it wereso the remedy would be easy; but unconsciously, which makes the remedydifficult. One need not stop to define Christianity, for there is onlyone sincere meaning to the word; it implies a _kind of life whosespirit and method reproduce as accurately as possible the spirit andthe method of the life of Jesus_. It would seem that if thisinterpretation of the term be correct there could be no difficulty inadjusting even unconscious misinterpretation of Christ to the truefacts of the case: but here we are met by that perversity of visionwhich springs not from ignorance, but from thoughtlessness, and is inits nature much more obdurate than the worst perversity of ignorance. Ignorance can be enlightened; thoughtlessness, being usually associatedwith vanity, recognizes no need of enlightenment. 

The life of Jesus, freshly introduced to a mind wholly ignorant of itsexistence may be trusted to convey its own impression; but thethoughtless mind will be either too proud, or too shallow, or tooconfident, to be sensitive to right impressions. Thus the trouble withmost people who call themselves Christians is not to educate them intoright conceptions of the life of Christ, but to destroy the growth ofwrong impressions. "Surely, " they will say, "we know all about thelife of Christ. We have read the biographies of Jesus ever since thedays of infancy. We have heard the life of Jesus expounded throughlong years by multitudes of teachers. We have a church which claims tohave extracted from the life of Jesus a whole code of laws for life andconduct; is not this enough?" But what if the teachers themselves havenever found the true secret of Jesus? What if they have but repeatedthe error of the Pharisees in elaborating a code of laws in which thevital spirit of the truth they would impart is lost? And does not thewhole history of man's mind teach us that one simple truth known atfirst-hand is worth more to us, and is of greater influence on ourconduct, than all the second-hand instruction we may receive from themost competent of teachers? It is just this first-hand thought whichwe most need. We need to see for ourselves what Jesus was, and notthrough the eyes of another, whatever his authority. 

Suppose that we should read the Gospels in this spirit, with anentirely unbiassed and receptive mind, capable of first-handimpressions, what would be the probable character of these impressions?The clearest and deepest of all, I think, would be that the Jesustherein depicted lived His life on principles so novel that we are ableto discover no life entirely like His in the best lives round about us. We should probably be struck first of all by certain outwarddissimilarities. Thus He was not only poor, but He did not resentpoverty--He beatified it. The things for which men naturally, and, aswe think, laudably strive, such as a settled position in society andthe consideration of others, He did not think worth seeking at all. Hemade no use of His abilities for private ends, which has been thecommon principle of social life since society began. He asked nothingof the world, being apparently convinced that nothing which the worldcould give Him was worth having. Strangest thing of all in one whomust have been conscious of His own genius, and of the value of Histeachings to mankind, He made not the least effort to perpetuate theseteachings. He wrote no book, provided no biographer, did none of thosethings which the humblest man of genius does to ensure that distantgenerations shall comprehend and appreciate his character and message. He was content to speak His deepest truths to casual listeners. Hespent all His wealth of intellect upon inferior persons, fishermen andthe like, who did not comprehend one tithe of what He said. He was thefriend of all who chose to seek His friendship. He discriminated solittle that He even admitted a Judas to His intimacy, and allowed womentainted with dishonour and impurity to offer Him public tokens ofaffection. In all these things He differed absolutely from any otherman who ever lived beneath the public eye. In all these things Hestill stands alone; for who, among the saintliest men we know, has notsome innocent pride in his ability, or some preference in friendship, or some instinctive compliance with social usage, or some worldly hopesand honourable aims which he shares in common with the mass of men?

But these outward dissimilarities of conduct disclose a dissimilarityof soul. Men live for something; for what did Jesus live? And theanswer that leaps upon us like a great light from every page of theGospels is plain; He lived for love. If He did not care for praise orhonour; if He regarded even the preservation of His teachings with adivine carelessness, it was because He had a nobler end in view, thelove of men. He could not live without love, and His supreme aim wasto make Himself loved. And yet it was less a conscious aim, than thenatural working out of His own character. Fishermen by the sea saw Himbut once; instantly they left their boats and followed Him. A mansitting at the receipt of custom, a hard man we should suppose, littlelikely to be swayed by sudden emotions, also sees Him once, and findshis occupation gone. A beautiful courtesan, beholding Him pass by, breaks from her lovers, and follows Him into an alien house, where shebathes His feet with tears and wipes them with the hairs of her head. Mature women without a word spoken or a plea made, minister to Him oftheir substance, and count their lives His. When He sleeps wearied outupon a rude fishing-boat, there is a pillow for His head, placed thereby some unknown adorer. The men He makes apostles, all but one, countHis smile over-payment for the loss of home, of wife, of children. Countless throngs of ordinary men and women forget their hunger, andare content to camp in desert places only to listen to the music of Hisvoice. Wild and outlawed men, criminals and lepers and madmen, becomeas little children at His word, and all the wrongs and bruisesinflicted on them by a cruel world are healed beneath His kindlyglance. Does it matter greatly what He taught? This is how He lived. He lived in such a way that men saw that love was the only thing worthliving for, that life had meaning only as it had love. And this is theimperishable tradition of Jesus:

 This is His divinity, This His universal plea, Here is One that loveth thee. 

What then is a true Christianity but the accurate reproduction of thisspirit of love, the creation of loving and lovable men and women, whoattract and uplift all around them by the subtle fascination of thelove that animates them? What is a Christian Church but aconfraternity of such men and women? What is a Christian society, buta society permeated by this spirit, and bringing all the affairs oflife to its test? And what place have social superiorities andinferiorities; pride, scorn, or coldness; harsh theologies, breedingharsh tempers and infinite disputes; the egoism that wounds the humble, the strength that disregards the weak, the vanity that hurts thesimple, in any company of men and women who dare to wear the name ofsuch a Founder? It was as a Bridegroom Christ came, anointed with allthe perfumes of a dedicated love, and until the last bitter hour of Hisrejection, He moved with such lyric joyousness across the earth, thatlife became festive in His presence. It is as a Bride the churchexists on earth, and if no festive smiles are awakened by its presence, and no gracious unsealing of the founts of love in human hearts, thenis it not Christ's Church, for He has passed elsewhere with anothercompany to the marriage-feast, and His Church stands without, before abarred and darkened door. 

THE JUSTICE OF JESUS

 _HOW HE CAME_

 _When the golden evening gathered on the shore of Galilee, When the fishing boats lay quiet by the sea, Long ago the people wondered, tho' no sign was in the sky, For the glory of the Lord was passing by. _

 _Not in robes of purple splendour, not in silken softness shod, But in raiment worn with travel came their God, And the people knew His presence by the heart that ceased to sigh When the glory of the Lord was passing by. _

 _For He healed their sick at even, and He cured the leper's sore, And sinful men and women sinned no more, And the world grew mirthful hearted, and forgot its misery When the glory of the Lord was passing by. _

 _Not in robes of purple splendour, but in lives that do His will, In patient acts of kindness He comes still; And the people cry with wonder, tho' no sign is in the sky, That the glory of the Lord is passing by. _

III

THE JUSTICE OF JESUS

One strong peculiarity of the teaching of Jesus--we might even call itits outstanding feature--is that it is frequently disclosed in a seriesof incidents. Unlike most teachers He philosophizes little about life. A single chapter of the Gospels, or at most two, would contain all themaxims about life which He thought necessary for wise and loftyconduct. His method is rather to put Himself in relation to thecrucial occurrences of life, and to reveal the true way of regardingthem by His own attitude towards them. When He would teach the beautyof humility it is by putting a little child in the midst of Hisarrogant and vainglorious disciples, that the child may become theliving and memorable parable of His sentiments. When He would teachhumanity, He does so by His own conduct to lepers. When He woulddiscredit and expose the barbarism of the Mosaic Sabbatarian laws asinterpreted by scribes and Pharisees, He does so by healing the sickand blind upon the Sabbath day. He is all for the concrete, teachingnot by theory, but by example. The method is novel, and its advantagesare obvious. The best conceived discourses on humility, mercy, orsympathy, might be forgotten, but no one can forget the child among thedisciples, nor the raptured gaze of the blind man when his purged eyesopen to behold the face of his miraculous Physician, nor the picture ofJesus touching without fear or disgust the leper whose uncleancontagion made him an object of aversion even to the pitiful. 

It is a wonderful method of instruction; it makes every other methodseem trite and wearisome. Its effect is to make the Gospels a seriesof tableaux, which dwell in the memory as things actually seen. Thegroups upon the stage perpetually shift and rearrange themselves; eachrepresents some phase of life, some problem, some combination ofcircumstance more or less common in the experience of men, somethingthat is typical, for Jesus chooses only the typical and essentialthings of life for these occasions. The lesser things of life Hepasses over; it is the great and crucial matters which attract Him. 

But what are the great things of life?

They all fall into one category, they all present problems in humanrelationship. No problems are so difficult. They are not speculative, but practical. A man who may be wise as the world counts wisdom, andable to pierce with acute analysis to the depth of the abstrusestphilosophic problem, may nevertheless find himself hopelessly baffledby some quite common fact of life, such as how to treat a wayward son, or a sinful woman. I am not likely to lose a night's rest because I amunable to define the Trinity but with what sore travail of heart do Itoss through midnight hours when I have to settle some course of actiontowards the friend who has betrayed me, the brother who has brought meshame, the child who scoffs at my restraint, and hears the call of thefar country in every swift pulsation of his passionate heart! And whycannot I settle my course of action? Because my mind is confused bysomething which I call justice, to which custom has given authority andconsecration. Justice prescribes one course of action, affectionanother. The convention of the world insists that wrong-doing shouldbe punished, which is manifestly right; but when it insists that Ishould be the punisher, I suspect something wrong. The more closely Istudy conventional justice the more I am conscious of something inmyself that distrusts and revolts from it. The more I incline to thevoice of affection the more I fear it, lest I should be guilty ofweakness which would merit my own contempt. The struggle is onebetween convention and instinct, and I know not which side to take. But one thing I do know; it is that I have no certain clue to guide me, no clear determining principle that divides the darkness with a swordof light, no voice within myself that is authoritative. 

Now the wonderful thing in Jesus is that He is always sure of Himself. Nothing takes Him by surprise, nothing produces the least hesitation inHis judgment. Therefore He must have had an unfailing clue to which Hetrusted in the maze of life. Behind all consistency of judgment theremust exist consistency of principle. The principle that governed allthe thoughts of Jesus was _that love was the only real justice_. Hecame not to condemn, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. There was no problem of human relationship that could not be solved bylove; there was no other principle needed for the regulation ofsociety; and no other could produce that general peace and good-willwhich He called the Kingdom of God. 

Thus, on one occasion Jesus tells a story which is so lifelike in everytouch that we may accept it, without doubt, as less a parable than anincident. A father has two sons, one of whom is industrious anddutiful, the other wayward and rebellious. The wayward son finallycasts off all pretense of filial obedience, goes into a far country, and wastes his substance in riotous living. Here we have one of thesaddest of all problems in human relationship, for presently thedisgraced son comes home a beggar. The elder brother who representsthe average social view, has no doubt whatever as to what should bedone. He is offended that the disgraced son should come home at all;he would have thought better of him if he had hidden his shame in thecountry that had witnessed it. Probably his sense of pride andrespectability is offended more than his love of virtue, though hecharacteristically gives his jealous anger the illusion of morality. This, I say, is the average social view. There are few things morecruel than affronted respectability. The elder brother is an eminentlyrespectable person, totally unacquainted with wayward passions, and hisonly feeling for his brother is disdain. 

Jesus tells the story, however, in such a way as to discredit theaverage social view. He begins by making us feel that whatever folliesthe prodigal had committed, he had already been punished for them inthe miseries he had endured. It is not for man to punish with his whipof scorn one who has already been flaggellated with a whip of scorpionsin the desert places of disgrace and shame. Jesus makes us feel alsothat whatever sins might be laid to the charge of the disgraced son, there is nevertheless in his heart a warmth of feeling of which theelder brother gives no sign. The boy loves his father, otherwise hewould not have turned to him in his anguish of distress. The elderbrother's attitude to his father is arrogant and harsh; the youngerbrother's is humble and tender. Lastly the father himself is revealedas the embodiment of love. He asks no questions, utters no reproaches, imposes no conditions; he simply takes his son back, in the rush of hisaffection cutting short the boy's pitiful confession, and calling forshoes and new robes and festal music, as though his son had returned indignity and triumph. In the last scene of all, implied rather thandescribed, the restored prodigal sits at the feast, leaning on hisfather's bosom, but the respectable son stands without in a darkness ofhis own creation--the darkness which a harsh spirit and an unlovelytemper never fail to create in men of his unhappy temperament. 

It is a very strange story, if we come to think of it; almost animmoral story, as no doubt it was considered by the Pharisees, andpersons of their cold and mechanical type of virtue. But Jesusanticipates their criticism with one of the most startling statementsthat ever fell from inspired lips, "There is more joy in heaven amongthe angels of God over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety andnine righteous persons who need no repentance. " Heaven approves thestory, if they do not. Thus God Himself would act, for God is love. Thus love must needs act, if it be the kind of love that "sufferethlong and is kind, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. " And ifwe ask what becomes of justice, Jesus assures us that love is the onlyreal justice. For the main object of justice is not punishment butreclamation. A truly enlightened justice is less concerned with thepunishment of wrong than its reparation. 

The gravest question in the case of this unhappy boy is not what he hasmade of himself by sin and folly, but what can yet be made of him bywise and tender treatment. Had the father coldly dismissed theprodigal with some bitter verdict on his past folly, he himself wouldhave been unjust to the boy's possibilities, and thus would have sinnedagainst his son with a sin much less capable of excuse than the son'ssin against him. The worst sinner in the story is not the son who wentwrong, but the son who had never done anything but right, yet had doneit in such a way that it had begotten in him a vile, censorious, loveless temper. No one can be just who does not love; and so, oncemore removing the story into that unseen world which Christ called into redress the balance of this visible world, we sinful men and womenbuild our hopes upon the great saying that God's forgiveness is God'sjustice: if we confess our sins, He is not only faithful, but JUST inforgiving us our sins. 

LOVE IS JUSTICE

 _THE WAY OF WOUNDS_

 _He touched the leper tenderly, So in His hands there came to be Wide wounds that were not wrought with nails. Alas, my hands are smooth and fair, No wound is on them anywhere, Nor any scarlet scar of nails. _

 _His lips lay on the mouth of death, God's healing dwelt within their breath, Wherefore his lips grew pale with pain, And no man shall that pain divine; Alas, my lips are red with wine, And they have scorned His draught of pain. _

 _His feet were torn of stone and thorn, Full slow He moved on roads forlorn, But joyous hearts accompanied Him; Alas, my feet are softly shod, And on the road that leads to God, They have not sought to move with Him. _

 _And so all wounded by the way, He came home at the close of day, And angels met Him at the Gate. Alas, His way I have not known-- The road forlorn, the wounding stone-- And no one waits me at the Gate. _

IV

LOVE IS JUSTICE

Love is the only real justice--never was there a more revolutionaryethic! If Christianity is to be judged by its institutions, it must bereluctantly confessed that twenty centuries of Christian teaching havealmost wholly failed to make this strange ethic acceptable to mankind. The elder brother still makes broad his phylacteries in the home, inthe Church, and on the seat of justice. The elder brother's sense ofoffended respectability still masquerades as virtue. Who forgives asthis father forgave, with such completeness that he who has wrought thewrong is encouraged to forget that the wrong was ever wrought? Whereis the loving and tolerant spirit of the father less visible than inthe Church, which crucifies men for a word, and makes a difference ofopinion the ground for deadly enmity? Of what administration of lawcan we say that its chief object is not the punishment of thewrong-doer, but his reclamation? No existing society is organized onthese principles, and the only defense the apologists of a bastardChristianity make is that it is totally impossible to apply theprinciples of Jesus to the administration of society. That is, at allevents, an intelligible defense, but is it a legitimate one? Was Jesusmerely a romantic dreamer, with entirely romantic views of love andjustice? Was He a moral anarchist, whose teachings, if interpreted inlaws, would destroy the basis of society? A strange thing indeed inhuman history if One who has been loved as no other was ever loved bymultitudes of men and women through the ages, should prove after all tobe an impracticable dreamer or a moral anarchist!

But if Jesus was a dreamer, He dreamed true, and the very reason why Heis loved with such wide and deep devotion is that men do dimly, butinstinctively, perceive that His life presents the only perfect patternof life as it should be. Life, as it exists, is clearly not ordered ona social system which any wise or good man can approve. Hence the wiseand good man is perpetually urged to the enquiry whether Jesus may notafter all have been right?

Jesus certainly acts as one who is right. He acts always with theassured air of one for whom all debate is closed and henceforthimpossible. He knows His way, and the great moral dilemmas of lifeyield instantly to His touch. He penetrates to their roots and makesus feel that He has touched the essential element in them. The dreamervindicates himself by making it manifest that he sees deeper into theproblem than the moralist, and that his is after all the bettermorality because it is of higher social value, and makes more directlyfor social reconciliation. 

Let us take, for example, the judgment of Jesus upon the woman who wasa sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The social dilemma of thefallen woman is much more difficult of solution than that of theprodigal son. We expect a certain power of moral convalescence inyouth which has been betrayed through folly. Sooner or later the manlynature kindles with resentment at its own weakness. Moreover, sociallaw allows a certain opportunity of recuperation to man which it deniesto woman. The sin of the woman seems less pardonable, not because itis worse in itself, but because it outrages a higher convention. Hencethe strict moralist who might make some allowance for the hot blood ofyouth, makes none for woman when she is betrayed through the affections. 

But this is the very point on which Jesus fixes as essential. "_Thewoman loved much, therefore let her many sins be forgiven_, " He says. And a true reading of the story would seem to show that in utteringthis sublime verdict Jesus is not thinking of the woman's sudden andpure love for Him; He is rather reviewing the entire nature of herlife. She had loved much--that is her history in a sentence. Crueltyand unkindness, malice and bitterness, had no part in her misdoing. She had been undone through the very sweetness of her nature, asmultitudes of women are. That which was her noblest attribute--herpower of affection--had been the minister of her ruin through lack ofwisdom and restraint. By love she had fallen, by love also she shallbe redeemed. Her sins were indeed many, but behind all her sins therewas an essential though perverted magnanimity of nature, and for thesake of an essential good in her, which lay like a shining pearl at theroot of her debasement, she shall be forgiven. 

Again a strange verdict, and one that must have seemed to the Phariseesentirely immoral. "What becomes of justice?" is their whisperedcomment. Jesus asserts His sense of justice by an exposition of thecharacter of Simon. Simon is destitute of love, of magnanimity, evenof courtesy. In his hard and formal nature there has been no room foremotion; passion of any kind and he are strangers. Which nature isradically the better, his or "this woman's"? Which presents the morehopeful field to the moralist? The soil of Simon's heart is thin andmeagre; but in "this woman's" heart is a soil overgrown with weedsindeed, but delicately tempered, rich and deep, in which the roots ofthe fair tree of life may find abundant room and nourishment. Therefore she shall be forgiven for her possibilities, and suchforgiveness is justice. To ignore these possibilities, to allow whatshe has been utterly to overshadow the lovely vision of what she maybe, when once the soil is clear of weeds, and the real magnanimity ofher temperament is directed into noble uses, would be the most odiousform of injustice. 

Such is the justice of Jesus, but, alas, after two thousand years westill stand astonished at it, more than half doubtful of its validity, and, if truth be told, secretly dismayed at its boldness. It isromantic justice, we say, but is it practicable justice? We might atleast remember that what we call practicable justice has never yetattained the gracious results of Christ's romantic justice. Simon thePharisee knows no more how to deal with "this woman" than the elderbrother knew how to deal with the prodigal. Such sense of justice asthey possessed would have infallibly driven the penitent boy back tothe comradeship of harlots, and have refused the penitent harlot thebarest chance of reformation. Is not this enough to make the leastdiscerning of us all suspect that Pharisees and elder brothers, for alltheir immaculate respectability of life, are by no means qualified topass judgment on these tragedies of life with which they have noacquaintance, and cannot have an understanding sympathy? Does not theentire failure of legal justice with all its apparatus of punishmentand repression, to give the sinner a vital impulse to withdraw from hissin, drive us to the conclusion, or at least to the hope, that theremust be some better method of dealing with sinners than is sanctionedby conventional justice? There is another method--it is Christ'smethod. And the thing to be observed is that whereas conventionaljustice must certainly have failed in either of these crucialinstances, the romantic justice of Jesus--if we must so callit--completely succeeded. The woman who was a sinner sinned no more, and the penitent son henceforth lived a new life of purity andobedience. In each case love is justified, and proves itself thehighest justice. 

LOVE AND FORGIVENESS

 _LOVE'S PROFIT_

 _What profits all the hate that we have known The bitter words, not all unmerited? Have hearts e'er thriven beneath our angry frown? Have roses grown from thistles we have sown? Or lucid dawns flowered out of sunsets red? Lo, all in vain The violence that added pain to pain, And drove the sinner back to sin again. _

 _We had been wiser had we walked Love's way We had been happier had we tenderer been, We had found sunlight in the cloudiest day Had we but loved the souls that went astray, And sought from shame their many faults to screen Lo, they and we Had thus escaped Life's worst Gethsemane, And found the Garden where the angels be. _

 _For One there was who, angry, drew no sword, Derided, wept for those who wrought Him wrong, And at the last attained this great reward, That those who injured Him acclaimed Him Lord, And wove His story into holiest song. So sinners wrought For Him the Kingdom He had vainly sought, And to His feet the world's frankincense brought. _

V

LOVE AND FORGIVENESS

In these instances it is the singular completeness of Christ'sforgiveness which is the most startling feature. It would be a libel onhuman nature to say that men do not forgive each other, but humanforgiveness usually has reservations, reticences, conditions. Jesustaught unlimited forgiveness, and what He taught He practiced. 

"_Then came Peter, and said to Him, 'Lord, how oft shall my brother sinagainst me and I forgive him? Until seven times?' Jesus said unto him, 'I say not unto thee, until seven times; but until seventy times seven. '_"

It is a vehement reply, in which a quiet note of scorn vibrates; notscorn of Peter, but scorn of any kind of love that is less thanlimitless. But whose love is limitless? Do we not commonly speak oflove as being outworn by offense or neglect? In the compacts which wemake with one another in the name of love, do we not specifically namecertain offenses as unpardonable? Thus one man will say, "I can forgiveanything but meanness, " and another says, "no friendship can surviveperfidy"; and in the relations between men and women unfaithfulness isheld to cancel all bonds, however indissoluble they may seem. Now andagain, it is true, some strange voice reaches us, keyed to a differentmusic. Shakespeare, for example, in his famous one hundred and sixteenthsonnet, boldly states that

 Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. 

But who listens, who believes? Yet, if it should happen to us to beplaced in the position of the offender, we need no one to convince usthat a true love should be, in its very nature, unalterable. Howastonished and dismayed are we, when eyes that have so many times metours in tenderness harden at our presence, and lips which have uttered somany pledges of affection, speak harshly! We do not deny our fault, indeed; but we think we can discern reasons why it should be regardedmercifully, why the very memory and sacredness of old affection shouldmake harsh judgment impossible; nay, more, why a deeply generous loveshould even rejoice in the opportunity to forgive, and so should sanctifyour very shame with the healing touch of pity, and pour our tears intothe sacramental cup which ratifies a new fidelity. 

It is so the sinner argues, his vision of what love ought to be growingclearer by his offense against love. It is he alone, the sinner, who canreally sympathize with Christ's conception of love, for he alone feelsthat this is the kind of love he needs. The elder brother does notunderstand, Simon the Pharisee does not understand, because neither hassinned in such a way as to be flung helpless at the feet of love. Peterdid not understand when he put his question to Christ. He spoke just asthe average man would speak, who has never sounded the tragic depths inlife, has never known the misery of weakness, and therefore has no fellowfeeling for the weak. Love as such men know it is less a passion than acompact. It is a bond of mutual advantage, guarded from abuse by swiftpenalty and forfeit. It is the reward of qualities, it gives no morethan it gets, it exists by an equal equipoise of service. If thisequipoise is disturbed its obligations are dissolved. It is easilyaffronted, and under affront becomes resentful, bitter, even vindictive. How oft shall I forgive my brother? Only as oft as a sense of duty shalldemand, only up to the point which is sanctioned by social custom, sothat I may save my reputation for magnanimity, always excepting certainsins for which no pardon can be legitimately asked. But the hour was notfar off when Peter himself was to commit the very sins for whichcustomary love has no pardon. He was to be guilty of those offenseswhich just and good men say they cannot forgive--meanness, cowardice, perfidy, denial. That bitter hour revealed the true nature of love toPeter. He knew that in spite of his sin against Jesus, he still lovedHim, and since love was unalterable in him, he expected an unalterablelove in Christ. It was the seventy times seven forgiveness that heneeded then; and how sweet to recollect in that hour that Jesus hadtaught a love that knew no limit. "_Lovest thou Me_?" was the one wordhis Master uttered when they met in the quiet morning light beside thesea. "_Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee_, " was theswift reply. Storms disturb the sea but the central tides run on. Peterfound with equal astonishment and gratitude that not even perfidy wasable to separate him from the love of Christ, for that love wasunalterable as the morning star which hung above the lake, and cleansingas the soft waves that lapped its shore. 

The self-righteous man will never understand these things. Men and womenof meagre natures, with whom love is a compact, not a passion, willvehemently disapprove them. People of smooth lives, ignorant of strongtemptations, will refuse even to discuss them. Jesus was well aware oftheir implacable indifference or cold hostility, and boldly said that forsuch people He had no gospel. His mission was not to the whole, but tothe sick. The Gospel of Jesus is in truth not designed for people ofcomfortable lives. He has little to say to the children of compromise, whose emasculated lives attain the semblance of virtue by the cautiousexercise of niggard passions. They can take care of one another, theserighteous ones, whose very righteousness is a negation. 

But Christ's Gospel is for a tragic world. It is for the disinherited, the weak, and the strong who have become weak; for those who have beenwrecked by folly and passion, and too much love of living; for thosewhose capacities for good and evil, being both rooted in passion, areequally a peril and a potency--it is to these Christ chiefly speaks. Tothem the Gospel of unlimited forgiveness and unalterable love is the onlyvital, because the only efficacious Gospel. The man whose very virilityof nature makes him the easy prey of murderous joy; the man shut up inprison, who hears from the lips that once spake love to him, the sentenceof inexpiable disgrace; the outcast from honour, gnawing the bitter husksof hated sin in far lands, and tortured in his dreams by the sweetness ofrecollected happiness; these, and all like these, will understand Jesus, for it is to them He speaks. Their very sin interprets Him. To theirforlorn ears the love He teaches will sound not strange, for it is theonly kind of love that can redeem them; nor foolish, for it is the onlylove that dare stoop low enough to lift them up. These will not fail tounderstand what conventional righteousness finds so difficult; these, andalso all good women who have had acquaintance with either deep love orreal grief, because it is a loving woman's sweet prerogative and divinedisposition to forgive, and to draw from her grace of forgiveness a moretender and maternal power of loving. 

THE PRACTICE OF LOVE

 _FELLOW SUFFERERS_

 _When men of malice wrought the crown for Thee Didst Thou complain? Nay; in each thorn God's finger Thou didst see, His love thro' pain. _

 _His finger did but press the ripened Vine, Thy fruit to prove, That henceforth all the world might drink the wine Of Thy great love. _

 _So when the darkness rose about Thy feet Thy lips met His, Amid the upper light, in Death's long sweet, Releasing kiss. _

 _And shall I cry aloud in anger when Men make for me A Cross less harsh? Nay, I'll remember then Thy constancy. _

 _And if the darkness hide me from Thy sight At God's command, I'll talk with Thee all thro' the prayerful night, And touch Thy hand;_

 _Greatly content, if I whose life has been So long unwise, May, wounded, on Thy wounded bosom lean In Paradise. _

VI

THE PRACTICE OF LOVE

So convinced was Jesus that love alone was the master law of life, thatHe based His own life wholly on His conviction, cheerfully acceptingall the risks which were implied. He was perfectly aware of theconsequences to Himself and His reputation when He made Himself thefriend of publicans and sinners. These consequences He ignored, makingHimself of no reputation, that He might uplift by His love those whoneeded His love the most. Under the constant contradiction of thosewho mistook His spirit, and even libelled His character, He manifestedneither bitterness nor resentment. He suffered injuries withoutretaliation, and went so far as to denounce all forms of retaliation asa wasteful expenditure of spirit, wrong in themselves, and attaining noend but the worse injury of those who employed them. He might easilyhave used the miraculous power which He possessed for His own defense, and for the confusion of His enemies. Had He been selfishly ambitious, He might have organized a party so strong, that it would have become anirresistible force, which would have shattered the old order whoseevils He denounced, and have made Him the dictator of a new order, based on the ideals in which He believed. He did none of these things, not through lassitude of spirit or failure to perceive their possibleissues, but simply because these were not the things to do. In Hisjudgment the only abiding kingdom belonged to the meek. He whosuffered injustice with patience would prove the ultimate conqueror. There was an irresistible might in love and meekness against which thepeople raged in vain. Love was a working and practicable law of life;in the long issue of things it was the only law that justified itself. 

Was Jesus right in these conclusions? Can human life proceed along thelines He indicated? Certainly it has never yet done so. The woman whois a sinner finds no Jesus to absolve her utterly among the priests ofHis religion. The resentment of injury is regarded even by good men asentirely justified when injury to the person involves the rights ofsocial order. Force is regarded by persons of the highest amiabilityas necessary to the defense of society, and the Church applauds thepunishments inflicted by the civil magistrate, and even hastens tobless the banners and baptize the deadly weapons of the warrior. Meekness, which endures injury without resentment, is regarded as thesign of a servile and cowardly spirit, and is the subject of ridiculeand contempt. No Christian society exists in which a Peter would befreely pardoned his offense; the best that could be hoped would be theinfliction of humiliating penance, and a reluctant reinstatement in theapostleship after a long period of bitter ostracism. Yet who wouldventure to challenge the conduct of Jesus in these respects? Who wouldnot find his opinion of Jesus tragically lowered, and his adorationpractically destroyed, if some new and more authentic Gospel werediscovered by which we learned that Jesus smote with leprosy thePharisees who resisted Him, as Elisha smote Gehazi: that He sanctionedthe stoning of the adultress taken in the act of sin; or that Hebranded Simon Peter for his perfidy, and drove him out forever from theapostleship he had disgraced, denouncing him as a son of hell and apredestined citizen of the outer darkness? Could such acts beattributed to Jesus, though each act in itself would preciselyrepresent the common temper of Christian courts and so-called Christianmen under circumstances of similar and equal provocation, the worshipof Jesus would at once cease throughout the world. 

The dilemma is truly tragic. A Jesus who should be proved to havelived according to the conventions we respect, who did not rise aboveconventional ideals of either love or justice, who approved force, andresented injuries, who repudiated the friend who had betrayed Him, whoshunned the contact of persons whose touch dishonoured Him--such aJesus would cease to be our Jesus. He would no longer attract us, Hewould not touch our hearts, He would barely command our respect. Astounding fact! Those very things in the life of Jesus which wedisapprove are the things for which we love Him; and those temperswhich we ourselves disallow are in Him the sources of our adoration. 

We are bound therefore to ask, can that method of conduct be wrongwhich has won this triumphant issue? It may be ironically true that welove Him most for those very acts of His which we are least likely toimitate; but is not this our tacit testimony to the essential rightnessof these acts? In our better, or our softer moments; or in thosemoments when we are most conscious of the cruelty of life, and most inneed of love, do we not feel, as the life of Jesus grows before us, that this is how life should be lived? Dare we question that a worldgoverned wholly by the ideals of Jesus would be a far happier worldthan this we know? Love, as the one necessary law of life, clearlystands justified in Jesus, since it has produced the most adorablecharacter in history. If we admit this, it is foolish to speak ofChrist's ideals as impracticable. What we approve in another's life wecannot wholly repudiate in our own. Let it be added also, that a lifelived by another is always a life that others can live. We may seek tocover our failure, and the world's failure, to reproduce the life ofJesus, by the plea of incompetence, but against our plea Jesus recordsHis verdict, "_Behold I have left you an example_. "

From that verdict there is no appeal. 

LOVE AND JUDGMENT

 _MOTHER AND SON_

 _When, for the last time, from His Mother's home The Son went forth, foreseeing perfectly What doom would happen, and what things would come, Was there upon His lips no stifled sigh For happy hours that should return no more, Long days among the lilies, pure delights Of wanderings by Galilee's fair shore, And converse with His friends on starry nights? Yet brave He stepped into the setting sun With this one word, "Father, Thy will be done!"_

 _With a low voice the stooping olive-trees Whispered to Him of His Gethsemane; The cruel thorn-bush, clinging to His knees, Proclaimed, "I shall be made a crown for Thee!" And, looking back, His eyes made dim with loss, He saw the lintel of the cottage grow In shape against the sunset, like a cross, And knew He had not very far to go. Yet brave He stepped into the setting sun, Still saying this one word, "Thy will be done!"_

 _So, when the last time, from His Mother's home The Son passed out, no choir of angels came, As long before at Bethlehem they had come, To comfort Him upon the road of shame. Alone He went, and stopped a little space, As one overburdened, stopped to look again Upon His Mother's pleading form and face, And wept for her, that she should know this pain. Then, silently, He faced the setting sun And said, "Oh, Father, let Thy will be done!"_

VII

LOVE AND JUDGMENT

Just as Jesus called in the vision of the unseen world to redress thebalance of the visible world, when He said that there was more joy inheaven over the penitent sinner than over ninety and nine just men whoneeded no repentance, so in His final addresses to His followers Heagain discloses the unseen world. These final addresses deal with thetremendous problem of a future judgment. Over no problem does thehuman mind hover with such breathless interest, such unfeigned alarm. But with characteristic perversity the elements in Christ's vision ofthe judgment on which men have seized most tenaciously, are preciselythose elements which are least intelligible, and least capable ofstrict definition. It is around the word "eternal" and the nature ofthe punishment suggested, that the theological battles of centurieshave centred. Yet the really central point of both the vision and theteaching, is not here at all; and it is only man's habitual love ofenigma which can explain the passion with which men have opposed oneanother over the interpretation of words and phrases which must alwaysremain enigmatic. 

Let us turn to Christ's vision of the Judgment, as recorded by St. Matthew, and what do we find? First that the same Son of Man, whosewhole life was an exposition of the law of love, is Himself the finaljudge of men and nations. "_The Son of Man shall sit on the throne ofHis glory, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and Heshall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates thesheep from the goats_. " No alien judge, observe, unacquainted with thenature of man, but one who knows human life so thoroughly that He isthe representative man--"the Son of Man"; and although He is now theJudge, yet He still calls Himself by the tender name of the Shepherd. The tribunal is therefore the tribunal of love, and the court is thecourt of love. He who shall judge mankind is He who judges Peter andthe woman who was a sinner, He of whose tenderness and sympathy we haveassurance in a hundred acts of mercy, pity, and magnanimity. Yet forcenturies the Church has sung its terrible _Dies Irae_, has clothed thejudgment seat with thunder, has put into the hands of Jesus bolts offlame, and has applauded and enthroned in His sanctuaries suchpictorial blasphemies as Michael Angelo's _Last Judgment_, whichrepresents Jesus as an angry Hercules, and even gratifies the privatespite of the artist by overwhelming in a sea of fire one who hadoffered him a personal affront. 

Blasphemy indeed, and falsehood too; for the second thing we find isthat the one principle which governs the entire vision of Jesus is thatLove judges, and that it is by Love that men are tested. The men andwomen of loving disposition, who have wrought many little acts ofkindness which were to them so natural and simple that they do not somuch as recollect them, find themselves mysteriously selected forinfinite rewards. The men and women of opposite disposition, in spiteof all their outward rectitude of behaviour, find themselves numberedwith the goats. A cup of cold water given to a child, a meal bestowedupon a beggar, a garment shared with the naked--these things purchaseheaven. One who Himself had been thirsty, hungry, and naked, judgestheir worth, and He judges by His own remembered need. It is lovealone that is divine, love alone that prepares the soul for divinefelicity. With a beautiful unconsciousness of any merit, the peoplewho have lived lovingly plead ignorance of their own lovely acts andtempers; but they have been witnessed by the hierarchies of heaven, themorning stars have sung of them, they have made glad the heart of God;and the reward of these humble servitors of love now is that havingadded to the joy of God, henceforth they shall share that joy forever. 

Never was there vision at once so exquisite and so surprising. It islike a child's dream of heaven and judgment, so untouched is it by theconventions of the world, so innocent, so daring, so tenderly imagined, and so impossibly probable. Alas, that most of us are too wise tounderstand it, and too worldly to receive it. Yet in nothing thatJesus uttered is there clearer evidence of deliberation. And it is ofa piece with all He taught; so much so indeed that without it, Histeaching 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 thanthat they need comfort; the doers of forgotten kindnesses are crownedwith sudden splendours of divine approval while the lords of genius andthe makers of empire are forgotten; and the very anthems of the blessedare hushed into silent wondering and joy when solitary penitents turnhomewards from the roads of sin! But it is not stranger than thatkingdom in which Jesus lived habitually, the kingdom He created roundHim in His earthly life. In that kingdom also love was lord, and shewho anointed the tired feet of the Master against His burial waspromised everlasting remembrance, and she who out of her penury gaveher mite to the poor was praised as having done more than all the rich, who from their abundance distributed careless and unmissedbenefactions. In all that Jesus says and does the same sequence ofthought runs clear, the same master principle rules the various result. Life is a unity either here or hereafter, and love is, and mustevermore 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 God, 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 anexposition of love as the law of life, the deduction is entirelysimple, and as logical as it is simple. That deduction has beenalready stated. It is that Christianity is a method of life by whichmen and women are taught and inspired to love as Jesus loved, and tolive loving and lovable lives. It has little to do with creeds, andstill less with formal codes of conduct. For this reason such adefinition of Christianity will satisfy neither the theologian nor thephilosopher. Jesus never expected that it would. He knew that the onewould regard it as heretical, and the other as so deficient in subtletyas to seem foolish. Therefore He made His appeal to simple and naturalpeople, saying that what was hidden from the wise and prudent, wasrevealed to babes. 

The simple and natural people understood Jesus; they always do. Thesophisticated and artificial people did not understand Him; they neverwill. With scarcely an exception the people of intelligence andculture regarded Him with disdain, withdrew from Him, or violentlyopposed Him. The reason for their conduct lay not so much in eithertheir culture or their intelligence, as in the kind of life that seemedto be necessary to them as the expression of their culture. 

Thus, they were full of prejudices, prepossessions, and foregoneconclusions, all of which had the sanction of their culture. It wasenough for them to know that Jesus came from Nazareth and wasunlettered; this produced in them violent scorn and antipathy. Theywere still further offended because He used none of the shibbolethswith which they were familiar. Nor could they conceive of any life assatisfactory but the kind of life they lived, and that was a life ofsocial complexity, ruled by conventional usages and maxims, andessentially artificial in ideal and practice. Jesus, therefore, turnedfrom them to the simple and natural people, fishermen, artisans, andhumble women, in whom the natural instincts had fuller play. Hisreward was immediate; then, and ever since, the Common People heard Himgladly. 

The reason why simple and natural people readily understand Jesus isthat 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 endlessdisquisitions on conduct, and religion itself is for them an emotionrather than a systematized creed. For the poor man home, children, fireside affection, mean more than for the rich man, because they arehis only wealth. This is the lesson which Wordsworth has so noblytaught 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 numerousillusions of an artificial life, have no difficulty in acceptingChrist's teaching that love is the supreme law of life, because lovemeans everything to them in the kind of life they lead. In the wisdomof the heart they are more learned than the wisest Pharisee, who israrely "softened into feeling, " whose whole social life indeed imposesa restraint on feeling. What peasant father would not welcome areturning prodigal, what peasant mother would not open her arms wide togather to her bosom a penitent daughter, recovered from the cruel snareof cities? Certainly one is much more likely to find such acts of purefeeling among peasant folk than among the rich and cultured, for thepeasant cares less for opinion, is less respectful of social etiquette, and follows more closely in his actions the instincts of primalaffection. Who has not discovered among poor and humble folk a strangeand beautiful lenience, the lenience of a great compassion, towardsthose sins which in more artificial conditions of society are held tojustify the most violent condemnation, and do indeed close the heart topity? In poor men's huts beside the Sea of Galilee Jesus Himself hadfound love, love in all its divine daring, lenience, and magnanimity, and He knew that among people like these He would be understood. Healso knew that the only people fitted to interpret His doctrine ofsovereign love to the world were these simple folk of the lake andfield, and therefore to them He committed His Gospel, and from them Hechose His disciples. 

It needed a peasant Christ to teach these things, for no other couldhave imagined them, no other could have had the daring and simplicityto utter them. A peasant Christ He was, living, thinking, and actingas a peasant even in His highest moments of inspiration. It wasbecause He always remained a peasant that He was able to see so clearlythe defects of that more intricate social system to which His ministryintroduced Him. He brought with Him a new scale of values, which Hehad learned in the school of a more primal life than could be found incities. Nature always spoke in Him, convention never. In Histreatment of sin it is always the voice of Nature that we heartriumphing over the verdicts of convention. The sins which conventionregards as inexpiable are sins of passion; the sins which it excusesare 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 compassion--the foolish man is as a lostsheep whose very helplessness invokes our pity. But for the man ofhard and self-sufficient nature, whose very righteousness is a mixtureof prudence and egoism, He has only words of flame. An offense againstvirtue counts for less with Him than an offense against love. Nowonder the Pharisees called Him a blasphemer! Were the true nature ofChrist's teaching understood to-day many who profess to revere Himwould join in the same accusation. What more offensive and unpalatabletruth could be presented to mankind than this on which Jesus constantlyinsists, that sins of temper are much more harmful than sins ofpassion, 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 simplenatures, which are not bewildered by conventional views of right andwrong. Who has occasioned more suffering, the youth who has sinnedagainst himself in wild folly and repented, or the man who has plannedhis life with that cold craft and deliberate cruelty which sacrificeseverything to self-advantage? Can any human mind measure the variousand almost infinite wrongs committed by the man who piles up throughyears of sordid avarice an unjust fortune? Who can count the brokenhearts in the pathway of that implacable ambition which "wades throughslaughter to a throne"? These things may not be apparent to the manwhose nature is subdued to the hue of that artificial society in whichhe lives, a society which permits such crimes to pass unquestioned. They are certainly not perceived by the criminals themselves. To-day, as in the day of Christ, they "devour widows' houses, and for apretense make long prayers, " save, perhaps, that more blind than theancient Pharisees, their prayers seem real, and they themselves areunconscious of pretense. Now also, as then, they give their tithes inconventional benevolence, forgetting, and hoping to make others forget, the sources of their wealth in their use of it. How is it that suchmen are so unconscious of offense? Simply because they have nevergrasped Christ's deliberate statement that sins of temper are muchworse than sins of passion; that cruelty is a worse thing than folly;that the wrong wrought by squandering the substance in a far country ismore quickly repaired, and more easily forgiven, than the wrong ofhoarding one's substance in the avarice which neglects the poor, oradding 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 truthof Christ's contention; very little experience of life to discover thatthe utmost corruption of the human heart lies in lovelessness. Thespiteful and rancorous temper, always seeking occasions of offense; thejealous spirit which cannot bear the spectacle of another's joy; thebitter nagging tongue, darting hither and thither like a serpent's fangfull of poison, and diabolically skilled in wounding; the sour andgrudging disposition, which seems most contented with itself when ithas produced the utmost misery in others; the narrow mind and heartdestitute of magnanimity; the cold and egoistic temperament, whichdemands subservience of others and receives their service withoutthanks, as though the acknowledgment of gratitude were weakness--theseare common and typical forms of lovelessness, and who can estimate thesum of suffering they inflict? Their fruit is everywhere the same;love repressed, children estranged, the home made intolerable. It doesbut add to the offense of these unlovely people that in what the worldcalls morality they are above reproach, for they instill a hatred ofmorality itself by their appropriation of it. Before them love fliesaghast, and the tenderest emotions of the heart fall withered. Couldthe annals of human misery be fairly written, it might appear that notall the lusts and crimes which are daily blazoned to the eye havewrought such wide-spread misery, have inflicted such generalunhappiness, as these sins of temper, so common in their operation thatthey pass almost unrebuked, but so wide-spread in their effects thattheir 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 becomeevident to even the least observant of us. When we stand beside thenewly dead the most intolerable reflection of countless mourners isthat their tears fall on quiet lips to which they gave scant caresses, in the days of health: their passionate words of love are uttered tounhearing ears, which in life waited eagerly for such assurances asthese, and waited vainly. All the purity and beauty of the vanishedhuman soul is revealed to us now, when it is no longer in our power togladden or delight it with our kindness or our praise. All the willingservice rendered to us by those folded hands and resting feet, which weso thanklessly accepted, is seen as a thing dear and precious to usnow, when the opportunity of thanks is past forever. What would wegive now if but for one brief hour we might recall our dead just to saythe tender things we might have said and did not say, through all thosedays and years when they were with us, --presences familiar andaccustomed, moving round us with so soft a tread that we scarceregarded them, nor laid on them detaining hands, nor lifted ourpreoccupied and careless eyes to theirs!

For most of us, alas, it is not Grief and Love alone who conduct us tothe chambers of the dead; the sad and silent Angel of Reproach alsostands beside the bed, and the shadow of his wings falls upon thefeatures fixed in their immutable appeal, their pathetic and unwillingaccusation. Then it is that veil after veil is lifted from the past, till in the pitiless light we read ourselves with a new understandingof our faults. We see that through some element of hardness inourselves which we allowed to grow unchecked; through vain pride, orobstinate perversity, or mere thoughtless disregard, we repulsed lovefrom the dominion of our hearts, and made him the servitor of ourdesires, but no longer the lord of our behaviour and the spirit of ourlives. And now as we gaze on these things across the gulf of theirreparable, we see our sin and how it came to pass; how we were unkindnot in the things we did but in those we failed to do; how, withoutbeing cruel, our denied response to hearts that craved our tendernessbecame a more subtle cruelty than angry word or hasty blow; how withevery duty accurately measured and fulfilled, yet love evaporated inthe cold and cheerless atmosphere of repression and aloofness withwhich we clothed ourselves; and then the significance of Christ'steaching comes home to us, for we know too late, that kindness is morethan righteousness, and tenderness more than duty, and that to haveloved with all our hearts is the only fulfilling of the law whichheaven approves. None, bowed beside the newly dead, ever regrettedthat they had loved too well; millions have wept the bitterest tearsknown to mortals because they loved too little, and wronged by theirpoverty of love the sacred human presences now withdrawn forever fromtheir vision. 

But there are other and more joyous ways of learning the truth ofChrist's teaching, ways that are accessible to all of us. The best andmost joyous way of all is to make experiment of it. Here is a law oflife which to the sophisticated mind seems impossible, impracticable, and even absurd. No amount of argument will convince us that we canfind in love a sufficient rule of life, or that "to renounce joy forour 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 wepractice. "I wish I had your creed, then I would live your life, " saida seeker after truth to Pascal, the great French thinker. "Live mylife, and you will soon have my creed, " was the swift reply. Thesolution of all difficulties of faith lies in Pascal's answer, which isafter all but a variant of Christ's greater saying, "He that willeth todo the will of God, shall know the doctrine. " Is not the whole reasonwhy, for so many of us, the religion of Christ which we profess has solittle in it to content us, simply this, that we have never heartilyand honestly tried to practice it? We have accepted Christ's religionindeed, as one which upon the whole should be accepted by virtuous men, or as one which has sufficient superiorities to certain other forms ofreligion to turn the scale of our intellectual hesitation, and win fromus reluctant acquiescence. But have we accepted it as the onlyauthoritative rule of practice? Have we ever tried to live one day ofour 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 tothink and act and feel as He did--and if we have not, what wonder thatour religion, being wholly theoretical, appears to us tainted withunreality, a thin-spun web of barren, fragile idealism which leaves usquerulous and discontented?

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

I am convinced that these feelings are general among great multitudesof the more thoughtful and intelligent adherents of Christianity. Religion rests with them upon a certain intellectual acquiescence, orupon the equipoise of rational probabilities, or on the compromise ofintellectual hesitations. Their tastes are gratified by the normalforms of worship, and their sentiments are softly stirred andstimulated. But when the voice of the orator dies upon the porches ofthe ear, and the music of the Church is silent, and the seduction ofsplendid ceremonial is forgotten, there remains the uneasy sense thatbetween all this and the actual Carpenter-Redeemer there is a wide gulffixed; that Jesus scarcely lived and died to produce only such resultsas these; that there must be some other method of interpreting Hislife, much simpler, much truer, and much more satisfying. Is itwonderful that among such men the current forms of Christianity exciteno enthusiasm, and that the bonds of their attachment to it are lax andeasily dissolved? And what is felt by these men within the Church isfelt with much greater strength by multitudes of sincere men outsidethe Church, who do not hesitate to express their feeling and topronounce current Christianity a burlesque and tragic travesty upon thereal religion of the Nazarene. 

But the moment we do begin to live, however inefficiently, as Jesuslived, the sublime reality of His religion is revealed to us. We doactually find that in the postponement of our own desires for the sakeof others; in the abandonment of our own apparently legitimateambitions for the service of the poor; in the patient endurance ofaffront and injury; in the forgiveness of those whose wrong seemsinexpiable; in the daily exercise of love that "seeketh not itself toplease, " but hopeth all things, and believeth all things, --there is ajoy beyond joy, and an exceeding great reward. We do actually findthat to forgive our brother freely is better both for him and us thanto judge him harshly, and the wisdom of Jesus is thus justified in itsmoral and social efficacy. We do actually find that in ceasing to liveby worldly maxims and by living instead according to the maxims ofJesus, we have attained a form of happiness so incredibly sweet andpure that the world holds nothing that resembles it, and nothing thatwe would exchange for it. For this is now our great reward, that peaceattends our footsteps, and that our hearts are no longer vexed with theperturbations of vanity and self-love, of envy and revenge. We findhuman nature answering to our touch even as it answered to the touch ofJesus, and revealing to us all its best and purest treasure. We findthe very natures we thought intractable and destitute of all affinitywith ours, brought near our own; the very men and women we thoughtwholly alien to us suddenly made lovable, and full of qualities thatclaim our love. And as we thus humbly follow in the steps of Jesus, trying to live each day as He lived, we know that sublimest joy ofall--we feel Jesus acting once more through our actions, and we see inthe eyes that meet our own the same look that Jesus saw in the eyes ofthose whom He had cured of misery and redeemed from sin. 

A CONFESSION

 _THE NOBLEST GRACE_

 _'Tis something, when the day draws to its close, To say, "Tho' I have borne a burdened mind, Have tasted neither pleasure nor repose, Yet this remains--to all men, friends or foes, I have been kind. "_

 _'Tis something, when I hear Death's awful tread Upon the stair, that his swift eye shall find Upon my heart old wounds that often bled For others, but no heart I injurèd-- I have been kind. _

 _Praise will not comfort me when I am dead; Yet should one come, by tenderness inclined, My heart would know if he stooped o'er my bed And kissed my lips for memory, and said "This man was kind. "_

 _O Lord, when from Thy throne Thou judgest me, Remember, tho' I was perverse and blind, My heart went out to men in misery, I gave what little store I had to Thee, My life was kind. _

X

A CONFESSION

In speaking thus I do but speak of those things which have beenrevealed to me in my own experience. For many years I preached thetruths of Christianity with a real sincerity, but with a fluctuatingsense of their authority and value. Sometimes their authority seemedsupreme, and then I trod on bright clouds high above the world; atother times they appeared to crumble at my touch, and then I walked indarkness. One thing I saw at intervals, and at last with complete andagonized distinctness, that however I preached these truths, they hadlittle visible effect upon the lives of others. Those to whom Ipreached lived after all much as other people lived. I did not findthem more magnanimous than the ordinary men and women of the world, norless liable to take offense, to utter harsh words, to indulge inresentments, and to retaliate on those who injured them. I did notfind that they loved humanity any better than their fellows; like allmankind they loved those who loved them, and had domestic virtues andaffections, but little more. It was impossible to say thatChristianity had produced in them any type of character wholly andradically different from that which might be found in multitudes of menand women who made no pretense of Christian sentiment. Christianityhad no doubt imposed upon them many valuable restraints, so thatwithout it they might have been worse men and women, but this was amerely negative result. Where was the spectacle of a charactercomposed of new qualities, a life wholly governed by novel impulses andprinciples? I could not find such a life; nor ought I to have beensurprised; for I could not find it in myself. I also lived much asother people did, except that I had a higher theory of conduct. Put tothe test, I also showed resentment and was moved with the spirit ofretaliation towards those who wronged me. Nor, save as a matter oftheory and sentiment, did I love my fellows any better than the averageof mankind. I sought those who were congenial to me, and had nopleasure in the company of the common and the ignorant. I liked cleverpeople. I gave them my best, but I had nothing to bestow upon the dulland stupid. How many times have I borne the society of inferior peoplewith ungracious tolerance, and hastened from them with undisguisedrelief? How often when dealing with the poor and ignorant in theexercise of conventional philanthropy, have I been careful to preservethe sense of a great gulf that yawned between me and them? And whatwas my daily life after all but a life existing for its own purposes, as most other men's lives were; and what credit could I take for thefact that the nature of those purposes was a trifle more consonant withwhat the world calls high ideals than theirs?

So the years went on, and the sense of unreality in my teaching grewsteadily more intense and intolerable. I saw myself continuallyexpending all the forces of my mind on theories which left me and myhearers alike unchanged in the essential characteristics of our lives. I felt myself, like St. Augustine, but a "seller of rhetoric. " I wasinculcating a method of life which I myself did not obey, or obeyedonly in those respects that caused me neither sacrifice norinconvenience. In order to continue such labours at all various formsof excuse and self-deception were required. Thus I flattered myselfthat I was at least maintaining the authority of morals. I did notperceive that morals are of no value to the world until vitalized byemotion. At other times I preached with strenuous zeal the superiorityof the Christian religion, and dilated on its early triumphs. Thispleased my hearers, for it always flatters men to find themselves uponthe winning side. What I wonder at now is that they did not perceivethat my zeal to prove Christianity true was exactly proportioned to myfear that it was false. Men do not seek to prove that of which theyare assured. Jesus never sought to prove the existence of a Godbecause He was assured of it; He simply asserted and commanded. In myheart of hearts I knew that I was not sure. But I did not easilydiscover the reason of my uncertainty. I supposed the source to be thedestructive criticism of the Gospels which had reduced Jesus Himself toa probability. In my private thoughts I argued that it was no longerpossible to feel the intense reality of Christ. Francis might feel it, Catherine might feel it, because they lived in an atmosphere of poetry, unchilled by criticism. I could never feel as they felt because Icould not transport myself into their atmosphere. Yet as often as Iturned to these great lives, something thrilled within me, some livingresponsive fibre, so that I knew that I was not after all quite aliento them. Could it be that there was that in me that made me, or couldmake me, of their company? But how could I attain to their faith?What could give back to a modern man, tortured by a thousandperplexities of knowledge of which they never dreamed, the reality ofChrist which they possessed? And then the answer came--not suddenly, but as a still small voice slowly growing louder, more positive, moreintense--_Live the Life_. Try to do some at least of the things thatJesus did. Seek through experience what can never come throughratiocination. _Be_ a Francis; then it may be thou shalt think likehim, and know Jesus as he knew Him. Live the life--there is no otherway. 

Simple and far from novel as the answer seems yet it came to me withthe authority of a revelation. It illumined the entire circumferenceof life. I could no longer hesitate: Jesus had never spoken from theSyrian heavens more surely to the heart of Saul of Tarsus than He hadto me. And in the moment that He spoke, I also, like Saul, found allmy feelings altered, altered incredibly, miraculously, so that Iscarcely recognized myself. I no longer stood aloof from men, andfound pleasure in intellectual superiority; I was willing to "become afool for Christ's sake" if by any means I might save some. I issued acard of invitation to the services of my Church with this motto of St. Paul's upon it, which I now felt was mine. I had had for yearsfeelings of resentment towards one who I thought had wronged me; thosefeelings were now dead. In another case I had been harsh andunforgiving under great provocation; but when I met after a longinterval of time, the one who had injured me, my heart had only loveand pity for him. I sought out the drunkard and the harlot, and, whenI found them, all repulsion perished in the flow of infinite compassionwhich I felt. I prayed with fallen women, sought them in theirmiserable abodes, fought with them for their own souls, and O exquisitemoment!--I saw the soul awake in them, I saw in their tear-filled eyesthe look that Jesus saw in the eyes of Magdalene. On my last Sabbathin London before leaving for America, one of these rescued girls, nowas pure of look and manner as those most sweetly nurtured, called at myhouse to give my daughter a little present bought with the first moneyshe had earned by honest toil in many years. On the day we sailedanother said a special mass for us, and held the day sacred for prayer, in the convent where her bruised life had been nursed back to moralbeauty. Love had triumphed in them, and I had brought them that love. I had lived the life, I had tried to do something that Jesus did, andbehold Jesus had come back to me, and I knew His presence with me evenas Francis knew it when he washed the leper's sores, and Catherine whenshe gathered to her bosom the murderer's guilty head, drew from him theconfession of his sin, and whispered to him softly of the Lamb of God. 

There is no sense of unreality in religion now for me. There are noweary uncertainties, no melancholy sense of beating the air in what Iteach. He who will try to live the life of Jesus for a single day, andin such few particulars as may lie within his scope, will at oncerealize the presence of Jesus with him. In the practice of love comesthe manifestation of the Lover, the drawing of the soul into the bosomof that Christ who was the very love of God, and the exchange of ourpoor proud carnal heart for the tender heart that yearned overMagdalene, was moved with compassion for the people, and broke upon theCross. 

A LOVER OF MEN

 _THE CRADLE CROSS_

 _"What shall I ask for Thee, my child?" Said Mary Mother, stooping dawn Above the Babe all undefiled. "O let Him wear a kingly crown. "_

 _From wise men's gifts she wrought the crown, The robe inwove with many a gem, Beside the Babe she laid them down. He wept, and would have none of them. _

 _"What shall I get for Thee, my Child?" Unto the door she slowly went, And wove a crown of thorn-boughs wild, He took it up, and was content. _

 _Upon the floor she gathered wood, And made a little Cross for Him; The Child smiled for He understood, And Mary watched with eyes grown dim. _

 _"Since these He doth prefer to gold, " She sadly said, "Let it be so; He sees what I cannot behold, He knows what I can never know. "_

 _That night the eyes of Mary saw A Cross of stars set in the sky, Which after it the heavens did draw, And this to her was God's reply. _

XI

A LOVER OF MEN

When I recollect these experiences, and the almost breathless sense ofjoy which accompanied them, I can only marvel that I lived so manyyears without discovering the path that led to them. The path wasquite plain, and nothing concealed it from me but my own pride. Icould even see with distinctness those who trod it, not only the saintsof far-off days, but men like Father Dolling, and women whose paleintense faces met mine from beneath the quaint ugliness of SalvationArmy bonnets. These soldiers of the League of Service moved everywherearound me in the incessant processions of a tireless love. I knewtheir works, and there was no hour when my heart did not go out to themin sympathy. Why was it that I was only sympathizer and spectator, never comrade?

Partly through a kind of mischievous humility which was really pride. They could do these things; I could not, nor were they required of me. It needed special gifts for such a work, and I had not these gifts. Besides, had I not my own work? Was it not as important to educatepersons of some culture and social position in a knowledge of Christiantruth as to redeem lost people from the hell of their misdoing?Certainly it was easier and pleasanter. I found in it that most subtleof all gratifications, the sense of ability efficiently applied, andwinning praise by its exertion. There was no one who wished me to livein any other way than that in which I lived. Those to whom Iministered were satisfied with me, and had I told them that I wished todo the sort of things that Salvation Army people did among the slums, they would have been shocked, and would certainly have dissuaded me. And so to this mischievous humility which assured me that I had nofitness for the kind of life which I knew was the life of the saints inevery age, there was added the dull pressure of convention. Why shouldI do what no one expected me to do? Why could I not be content tofulfill the common standard approved by the average conception ofChristianity?

I can see now how foolish and how wrong these thoughts were. I saw iteven then at intervals. Again and again, like a torturing flash offire, there ran through me illumining agonized dissatisfactions withmyself, my work, my whole position. And again and again I let theflame die down, knowing not that the Son of Man had walked amid thefire. Nay more, I deliberately smothered the holy fire, being in partfearful of it, and of what its consequence might be, if once it wereallowed to triumph. For I knew that if I followed these strangeimpulses my whole life must be changed, and I did not want it changed. I did not want to give up the ease of an assured position, the calm ofstudious hours, the tasks which flattered my ability. I did not wantto face what I knew must happen, the estrangement of old friendships, the rupture of accustomed forms of life. Besides, I might be whollywrong. I might have no real fitness for the tasks I contemplated;saints, like poets, were born, not made. No one who knew me would havebelieved me better fitted for any kind of life than that I lived. Ihad no friend who did not think my present life adequate andsatisfactory, and many envied me for the good fortune that had given mejust the kind of sphere which seemed best suited to me. 

But now I see, as I look back, that at the root of all my inconsistencythere lay this one thing, I was not a lover of my kind. I did not lovemen as men, humanity as humanity, as Jesus did. Of course I lovedindividuals, and even groups of men and classes of men, who couldunderstand my thoughts, recognize my qualities, and repay my affectionwith affection. But to feel love for men as men; for those whosevulgarity distressed me, whose ignorance offended me, whose method oflife repelled me; love for the drudge, the helot, the social pariah;love for people who had no beauty that men should desire them, nor anygrace of mind or person, nor any quality that kindled interest; lovefor the dull average, with their painful limitations of mind and ideal, the gray armies of featureless grief, whose very sorrows had nothingpicturesque in them and no tragic fascination--no, for these I had noreal love. I had a deep commiseration, but it was that kind ofromantic or aesthetic pity which begins and ends in its own expression. I did not know them by actual contact; I could not honestly say that Iwished to know them. And then the thought came to me, and grew in me, that Jesus did love these people with an unconquerable passion. Themultitudes to whom He preached were composed, as all multitudes are, ofquite ordinary immemorable people. He also, to the eyes of those whosaw Him in the peasant garb of Galilee, and judged only by outwardappearance, was a common man. And so it would appear that if I did notlove men after the fashion in which Jesus loved them, it was veryunlikely that I should love Jesus Christ Himself if He once moreappeared in the habit in which men saw Him long ago in Galilee. AJesus, footsore, weary, travel-stained, wearing the raiment of avillage carpenter, speaking with the accent of an unconsideredprovince, surrounded by a rabble of rude fishermen, among whom mingledmany persons of doubtful character--how should I regard Him? Should Idiscern the Light and Life of men beneath His gray disguise ofcircumstance? Should I have left my books, my studious calm, mypleasant and sufficing tasks, to listen to One who seemed so littlelikely to instruct me? Would not the same spirit of disdain which mademe think lightly and even scornfully of persons whose lives had noresemblance to my own, have made me disdainful of the Man of Nazareth?I knew the answer and I quailed before it. I saw that the temper of mymind was the temper of the Pharisee, and had I lived two thousand yearsago in Jerusalem or Galilee, I should have rejected Jesus even as thescribes and Pharisees rejected Him. 

And I should have rejected Him for the same reason, because I had notruly generous love of man as man. I should have been no better ableto perceive than they that it had pleased God to clothe Himself in theflesh of one who united in His own person all those disabilities whichincur the scorn of those who account themselves superior andcultivated, such as lowly and doubtful origin, poverty and the lack ofliberal education, and methods of life which outraged social use andcustom. Did not Jesus demand for the understanding of Himselfprecisely that temper which enabled Him to understand others, thetemper which discerns the soul beneath all disguise of circumstance?He discerned the splendid and divine beneath the sordid. He sawbeneath the drift of sin the buried magnificence of human nature as mendiscover the hidden temple beneath the sand-drift of the desert. Hewas able to love all men because all men were to Him living souls. AndHis own manifestation to the world was such that only those who hadthis temper could at all perceive His divine significance. ThePharisee could not see that significance simply because he was notaccustomed to see men as men. He had no real interest in man as man. He was not a lover of his kind. Hence, when the Son of Man came out ofNazareth, the Pharisee was too careless or too supercilious to regardHim with interest. The divine wonder passed him by; all he saw was awandering fanatic with no place to lay His head. He could not piercethe disguise of circumstance, and bow in love and awe before the soulof Jesus because he was not accustomed to discern the soul in commonpeople. And so there came home to me the awful truth that I was not alover of my kind. I was even as the Pharisees, and in denying myregard and love to the lowliest of men and women I was rejecting JesusChrist. That which had seemed to me a strange exaggeration or anenigmatic sentence, now became a rational principle, a saying that hadits root in the deep truth and reality of things; inasmuch as I showednot love to the least of these, my fellows, I denied my love to JesusChrist Himself. 

THE LAW OF COMPASSION

 _THE TRUE MUSIC_

 _Not for the things we sing or say He listens, who beside us stoops; Too worn the feet, too hard the way, Too sore the Cross wherewith He droops, And much too great the need that cries From these bruised eyelids and dim eyes. _

 _He waits the water from the spring Of kindness in the human heart, The touch of hands, whose touches bring A coolness to the wounds that smart, The warm tears falling on His feet Than precious ointment much more sweet. _

 _O Lord, the way is hard and steep, Help me to walk that way with Thee, To watch with Thee, and not to sleep Heedless of Thy Gethsemane, Till love becomes my worshipping, Who have no other gift to bring. _

 _It is no hour for angel-harp, The sky is dark, the Cross is near, The agony of Death is sharp, The scorn of men upbraids Thine ear. Fain would I leave all empty creeds, And make a music of my deeds. _

XII

THE LAW OF COMPASSION

Thus to love our fellow men is a difficult business, --there is noneharder. It is so difficult that only a few in any age succeed on soconspicuous a scale as to attract prolonged attention. Yet the secretof success is not obscure; it lies in that temper of compassion whichis the most beautiful of all features in the character of Jesus. WhenHe looked upon the multitude He was "moved with compassion"--never wasthere more illuminative sentence. It reveals an attitude of mindabsolutely original. For the general attitude towards the multitude inChrist's day was harsh and scornful. All the splendid intellectualismof Greece existed for the favoured few; beneath that glittering edificeof art and letters lay the dungeons of the slave. It was the same withRome; it was an empire of privilege, in which the multitude had nopart. Jewish society was built after the same pattern, except thatwith the Pharisee the sense of religious superiority bred a kind ofarrogance much more bitter than that which is the fruit of intellectualor social exclusiveness. With men of this temper the call to love allmen as fellows could only provoke anger and derision. What possiblerelation could exist between an Athenian philosopher and a helot, aRoman noble and a slave, a Pharisee proud of his meticulous knowledgeof the law, and the common people who were unlettered? The gulf thatyawned between such lives was as wide as that which separates thescholar, the artist, or the aristocrat of modern Europe from the paletoiler of a New York sweating-room, or the coal carriers of Zanzibar orAden. When Jesus bade the young ruler sell all that he had and give itto the poor, He proposed an entirely unthinkable condition ofdiscipleship. He bade him discard all the privileges of his order. Heproposed instead real comradeship with the poor, He Himself being poor. For two thousand years the pulpit has denounced the young ruler for notdoing what no one even now would think of doing--not even those who aremost eloquent in denunciation. 

We may waive the question of whether the advice of Jesus to the youngruler was meant to be of particular or universal application, but wecannot ignore the new law of life which Jesus formulated when He madecompassion the supreme social virtue. For it is only throughcompassion that we learn to understand those who differ from us insocial station or temperament, and can at all come to love them. Letme examine my own natural tendencies, and I am soon made aware of howimpossible it is to love _all_ my fellow men. I commence my life, forinstance, under conditions which permit me to see only a small sectionof society, which I imagine to be the world itself. I know nothing, and am told nothing, of those whose lives do not lie in the direct lineof my limited vision. The process of education removes me at eachstage further from the likelihood of knowing them. I acquire ideals, habits, and manners of which they are destitute. I come to regard anacquaintance with various forms of knowledge as essential to life, andI am naturally disdainful of those who do not possess this knowledge. In the same way I regard a certain code of manners as binding, and thelack of this code of manners in others as an outrage. My very thoughtshave their own dialect, and I am totally unacquainted with the dialectof those whose thoughts differ from my own. Thus with the growth of myculture there is the equal growth of prejudice; with the enjoyment ofmy privilege, a tacit rejection and repudiation of the unprivileged. 

How then am I ever to find myself in any relation of affection towardsthese human creatures from whom I am alienated by the nature of myeducation? If, by any chance, I come in contact with them, it iscertain that they will arouse in me repugnance and perhaps disgust. Ishall find them coarse, crude, and ignorant; their methods of speechwill grate upon me, their manners will repel me; they will be as trulyforeign to me as the natives of New Guinea, and their total incapacityto share the thoughts which compose my own inner life will be scarcelyless complete. It is a truly humiliating thing to admit thatdifferences of nationality separate men less effectually than disparityof manners. If I am at all fastidious I am more likely to be repelledby coarse language, gross habits, or vulgar behaviour in my fellowmortal than by all his errors in creed or morals. So little parts men, and is permitted to part them, that it is very likely that some mereawkwardness of behaviour in my fellow man may extirpate effectually theregard I might have had for him. How little indeed is permitted topart friends--often nothing more than a tone of voice, a wordmisinterpreted, or something equally slight, the product very possiblyof shyness, or inability for right expression on a sudden call. Andthere is all that goes by the name of antipathy, the nameless and quiteirrational repulsions which we permit ourselves to cherish, for whichwe have no better excuse than that they are instinctive. With allthese forces against us how can we love our neighbour as ourselves? Itis something if we do not detest him; if we tolerate him it should becounted to us for a virtue. 

Yet the method by which we may love him is quite simple; it is toapproach him not with judgment but compassion, to put ourselves in hisplace, to see his life from his point of view instead of our own. Whatis his ignorance after all but lack of opportunity? What are his badmanners but the penalty of a narrow life? What are these habits of hiswhich so offend me but things inevitable in that condition of servitudewhich he occupies--a servitude, let me recollect, which ministers to myease and comfort? To-day, not less than in earlier generations, society resembles the palaces of the Italian Renaissance, --the feast oflife in the painted hall, and the groaning of the prisoner in thedepths below. For every comfort that I have, some one has sweated. Myfire is lit not only with coal from the mine, but with the miner'sflesh and blood; my food has come through roaring seas in which menperished by hurricane and shipwreck; the very books from which I drawmy culture are the product not alone of the scholar and the thinker, but of rude unlettered men in forest and at forge who helped to makethem by their toil. If I were as educated as I claim to be I shouldknow myself debtor to the barbarian as truly as to the Greek, and as Iread my book I should see the forest falling that it might be woveninto paper, and men labouring in the heat of factories that the mouldedmetal might become the organ of intelligence. Nay, I should see yetmore; for would it not appear that these nameless toilers are richer inessential life, and in the deep knowledge of what man's existence is, than even the scholar and the writer, whose main acquaintance with lifeis with words rather than acts? They toil with tense muscles throughthe summer heat and winter cold; they endure hardship and danger; andweek by week their scanty wage is shared by wives and children, whoexcite in them tenderness and self-sacrifice, and repay them withaffection and devotion. For it is so decreed that the sacredmagnanimities of the human heart come to flower as fully in lives ofcrude labour as in lives of ease; these roughened hands grow gentlewhen they touch the heads of little children, on these strong breaststhe wife rests her weariness, and these lips that speak a language sodifferent from mine have nevertheless known the sacramental wine oflove. Were my life weighed with theirs might it not appear that theirswas the richer in essential fortitude, in patience and endurance, inall the final qualities that compose the finest manhood?

The spirit of compassion interprets these lives to me; it lends mevision. It enables me to see them not in their artificial disparities, but in their deep-lying kinship with mine and all other lives. And thesame thing happens when I survey lives stained with folly, wrecked byweakness, or made detestable by sin and crime. I also have knownfolly, weakness, sin; but for me there were compulsions to a virtuouslife which these never knew. Why am I not as these? Perhaps becausemy nature rests on a securer equipoise, or because there is in it acertain power of moral recuperation which these have lacked, or becauseI have the prudence that stops short of consummated folly, or becausemy environment imposes and creates restraint, or because I have neverknown the peculiar violence of temptation before which they succumbed. There may be a hundred reasons, but scarce one which gives me cause forboasting. With their life to live, had I done better? Exposed totheir temptations, deprived of all the helpful friendships that haveinterposed between my life and ruin, should I have done as well? Inthose wakeful hours of night when all my past life runs before me likea frieze of flame, how clearly do I see how frequently I grazed thesnare, hung over gulfs of wild disaster, courted ruin, and escaped Iknow not how? Remembering this, can I be hard towards those who fell?Can I pride myself on an escape in which my will had little part, adeliverance which was a kind of miracle, wrought not by virtue ordiscretion, but by some outside force which thrust out a strong andwilling hand to save me? And, as these thoughts pursue me, I findmyself all at once regarding these wrecked and miserable lives not fromthe outside but the inside. I penetrate their inmost coil of being, and see with horror the crumbling of the house of life--with horror, but also with a torturing pity. And then because compassion lives inme, I can at last separate between the sinner and his sin. The sinremains abhorrent, but I cannot hate the sinner. I see him as one whohas fallen in a bad cause, but his wounds cry so loud for pity that Iforget the moral treason that has brought him to a battle-field soignominious and so disastrous. And out of the pity grows love, forlove is the natural end of pity; and the magnanimity of love, overleaping moral values, fixes only on the fact of suffering thatappeals for succour, misery that cries for help. This was the vitalfact that Jesus saw when He had compassion on the multitude. 

Jesus had compassion on the multitude, and He gives the reason; He sawthem as sheep having no shepherd. It was the element of misdirectionin their lives on which Jesus fixed His glance--it was for lack ofguidance and a shepherd they had gone astray. May not the same be saidof all the lives that fail, whether through ignorance or want, folly orcrime? Rightly guided they might have attained knowledge and esteem, wisdom and virtue; and if that be so, no man of right spirit can refuseto feel the pathos of their situation. It is to this point that Jesusleads us. He makes us conscious of "the still sad music of humanity. "No further incentive is needed to make us love humanity than the pathosof the human lot. A man may be a knave, a fool, a rogue; yet could weunravel all the secrecies of his disaster we should find so much tomove our pity, so much in his life which resembles crises in our own, that in the end the one vision that remains with us is of a woundedbrother man. When once we see that vision all our pride of virtue diesin us, and quicker yet to die is the temper of contempt which we havenurtured towards those whose faults offend us. A yet greater offenseis ours if we can behold suffering, however caused, without pity. Worse than the worst crime which man can commit against society, or theworst personal wrong he can inflict on us, is the temper in ourselveswhich judges him without mercy, and refuses him the one medicine thatmay reinvigorate him--the balm of pity and forgiveness. And, afterall, of what wrong is it not true that the bitterest suffering itcreates falls not upon the wronged but the wronger, so that in the endthe sinner is the real victim, and like all victims should be theobject of compassion rather than of vengeance?

THE EMPIRE OF LOVE

 _THE WOMAN WHO WAITED_

 _She wrought warm garments for the poor, From morn to eve unwearied she Went with her gifts from door to door; And when the night drew silently Along the streets, and she came home, She prayed, "O Lord, when wilt Thou come?"_

 _She was but loving, she could please With no rare art of speech or song. The art she knew was how to ease The sick man's pain, the weak man's wrong; And every night as she came home She said, "O Lord, when wilt Thou come?"_

 _The truths men praised she deemed untrue, The light they hailed to her was dim, But that the Christ was kind she knew, She knew that she must be like Him. Like Mary, in her darkened home, She sighed, "O Christ, that thou would'st come!"_

 _Her hair grew white, her house was bare, Yet still her step was firm and glad, The feet of Hunger climbed the stair, For she had given all she had. She died within her empty home Still seeking One who did not come. _

 _She rose from out the wave of death, A Stranger stood beside the shore; The robe she wrought with failing breath, And staining tears, the Stranger wore. He drew her tired heart with His smile, "Lo, I was with thee all the while. "_

XIII

THE EMPIRE OF LOVE

But if this spirit of compassion were general, would virtue itself besecure? Would not a fatal lenience towards vice become the temper ofsociety? Would not the immediate effect be the declaration of ageneral amnesty towards every kind of wrong-doer, and from such an actwhat could be expected but a rapid dissolution of the laws andconventions that maintain the structure of society?

These are natural fears, and they are not altogether the fears of weakand timid men. They will certainly be shared by all tyrants, allpersons whose tempers incline to absolutism, all believers in force asthe true dynamic of stable social government. To reason with suchpersons is impossible, because their opinions are the fruit of temper, and are therefore irrational. But even such persons are not destituteof powers of observation, and in the long history of the world there isa field of observation which no person of intelligence can neglect. 

Do we find, as we survey this field, that force has ever proved thetrue dynamic of stable social government? We find the exact contraryto be true. The great empires of the past were founded on force andperished, even as Napoleon discovered in his final reveries on humanhistory. Whenever force has been applied to maintain what seemed aright social system it has uniformly failed. The Church of Romeapplied force to produce a world consonant with her ideas of truth; shewas all but destroyed by the recoil of her prolonged persecutions. ThePuritans were persecuted in the name of truth and virtue; theytriumphed. The Puritans in turn persecuted, under the impulse ofideals that an impartial judgment must pronounce among the loftiest andnoblest that ever animated human hearts, and in turn they wereoverthrown. Again and again, when crime has attained monstrous andthreatening proportions, laws of barbarous severity have been appliedfor its repression; in not one solitary instance have they beensuccessful. The more barbarous and severe the law against crime, themore has crime flourished. When men were hanged for petty theft, whenthey were whipped at the cart's tail for seditious language, when theywere disembowelled for treasonable practices; theft, sedition, andtreason flourished as they have never flourished since. The verydisproportion and hideousness of the penalty inflamed men's minds tothe commission of wrong. On the contrary, the birth of lenience andhumanity was immediately rewarded by a decline of crime. These arelessons which we do well to recollect to-day when statesmen advocatethe death penalty for the anarchist, irrespective of his exact crime;when city councils propose the same penalty for those guilty ofoutrages on women; when indignant mobs, in spite of law, and withouttrial, burn at the stake offending negroes. If history teachesanything with an emphasis at once clear and unmistakable, it is thatcrime has never yet been abridged by brutal harshness, but has thrivenon it. History also teaches with an emphasis equally clear andpositive, that the spirit of love, manifesting itself in lenience, compassion, and magnanimity, has constantly justified itself by thereduction of crime, and the taming of the worst kind of criminal. 

Is not this in itself a justification of the spirit of Jesus? Does itnot appear, on the review of nearly two thousand years of history, thatsociety has attained its greatest happiness and has reached its highestcondition of virtue, precisely in those periods when the gentle idealsof Jesus have had most sway over human thought and action? And if thisbe so, is it possible to doubt that society will only continue toprogress towards happiness and content in the degree that it obeys thecounsels of Jesus, making not force but love the great social dynamic, which shall control all its operations and guide all its judgments?

It may appear impossible and inexpedient for the human judge to say tothe offender, "Neither do I condemn thee; go, sin no more"; but it isvery clear that the opposite course does by no means lead to acessation of sin. For what is the total result of all our punishmentsin the name of law but the manufacture of criminals? According to ourtheory of punishment a jail should be a seminary of virtue andreformation. Men submitted to its discipline should come out newcreatures, cured of every tendency to crime. On the contrary, in ninecases out of ten, they come out a thousandfold worse than they went in. If this is not the case, it is because some Christian influence, notincluded in our legal system, has reached them. But such influencesreach very few. The influences that operate in the great majority ofcases are wholly demoralizing. Those who enter a jail with genuineintentions of reform speedily discover that they are not expected toreform. They are branded indelibly. They are exposed to thecorruption of associates a hundredfold worse than themselves. Theyleave the jail with every avenue of honest industry closed to them, every man's hand against them, and no career possible to them but alife of crime. When we consider these things we have little cause tocongratulate ourselves upon the results of our systems of justice. Even a general amnesty towards every form of crime could scarcelyproduce results more deplorable. Fantastic as it may appear, yet itseems not improbable that the abolition of the jail and of all penallaw, might produce benefits for humanity such as centuries ofpunishment on crime have wholly failed to produce. 

But no one asks this at present, though the day may come sooner than wethink, when society, tired of the long failure and absolute futility ofall its attempts to cleanse the world of crime by penal enactments, will make this demand. It is enough now if we press the questionwhether there is not good ground in all this dreary history of futilityand failure, to make some attempt to govern society by the ideals ofJesus? Why should not the Church replace the jail? Why should not theoffender be handed over to a company of Christian people, instead of acompany of jailers, paid to be harsh, and by the very nature of theiroccupation trained to harsh tempers and cruel acts? Who are betterfitted for the custody of the criminal than people whose lives arebased on the merciful ideals of Jesus? How could such persons bebetter employed than in devoting themselves to the restoration ofself-respect in the fallen, than in the attempt to nurture into vigourhis bruised or dormant instincts of right, than in the organized effortto restore him to some place in society which should give him honestbread in return for honest labour? Few men are criminals by choice. Crime is more often the fruit of weakness than intention. Almost everycriminal would prefer an honourable life if he knew how to set aboutit. Can we doubt that if Jesus presided in the councils of His Churchto-day, this would be one of the first directions in which He wouldapply His energy? And who that surveys the modern Church withundeflected judgment would not say that the Church would be a thousandtimes dearer to the world, a thousand times more sacred, respected, andauthoritative, if instead of spending its time in spiritualself-gratification, and its riches in the adornment of its worship, itbecame the true Hospice of the Fallen and Unfortunate, thusexemplifying in its action that love for men which was the essentialspirit of its Founder?

It will no doubt be replied that the Church already, by a thousandinstitutions, of a philanthropic character, is attempting this verywork. But this is an evasion of the point, for such institutions onlybegin their work of redemption when the existing social systems haveaccomplished their work of destruction. Moreover, no institution, however admirable, can be a substitute for the general action of theChurch. It is precisely this practice of substitution that accountsfor so much of the weakness of the Church. It is so much more easy andpleasant to devolve upon others duties which to us are disagreeable, tobuy ourselves out of the conscription of personal duty, to persuadeourselves that we have done all that can be asked of us when we havegiven money for some worthy end, that it is not surprising thatmultitudes of excellent and kindly people adopt such views andpractices. But, in doing so, they miss not only the joy of personalwell-doing, but also the sense of reality in the good that is done. And the spectator and critic of the life of the Church, although he maynot be ignorant of the kind of work done by these institutions, nevertheless is keenly conscious of the lack of reality in the work ofthe Church, when he finds that its individual members are leading livesin no way distinguishable by any active love for their fellows. Forthe main reason why thoughtful men manifest aversion to the Church isnot found in dislike for her worship, or rejection of her creeds; it isfound rather in the sense of unreality in her life. Who, such men willask, among all this multitude of well-dressed worshippers, offeringtheir adoration to the Deity, visits the fatherless and widow in theiraffliction, lays restraining hands upon the tempted, uplifts the fallenor instructs the depraved, and so fulfills the true ideal of religionpure and undefiled? What is the exact nature of their impact uponsociety? Are they more merciful, more compassionate, more sympatheticthan average mankind? Do they not share the same social prejudices, and guide their lives by the same social traditions as the bulk of menand women? And if nothing more than this can be predicated of them, how is it possible to avoid that impression of essential unrealitywhich is inseparable from the subscription to social ideals infinitelyloftier and purer than any others in human history, united with liveswhich in no way rise above the average? Here is the true reason whythoughtful men think lightly, and even scornfully of the Church. It isnot the truths and ideals of Jesus that offend them, but the travestyof those truths and ideals in the average life of Christians. 

But whenever any man attempts to live in the spirit of Jesus, the firstto rally to him are the sincere recusants from the church. He may besatirised, and probably will be, as a moral anarchist, a fanatic, and ahare-brained enthusiast; but nevertheless the best men will rally tohim. They rallied to a Father Dolling, they rally to a General Booth. The types represented by such men lie far apart. One was so high aritualist as to be almost Catholic, the other is an ecclesiasticanarchist so extreme that he dispenses with the sacraments. But thesethings count for little; what the world sees in such men is theessential reality of their life. One of the severest critics ofDolling once went to hear him with the bitterest prejudice. He foundhim with a couple of hundred thieves and prostitutes gathered roundhim, to whom he was telling the love of Jesus in the simplest language. "Dolling may be a Roman Catholic, or anything else he pleases, " saidhis critic; "all I know is that I never heard any one speak of Christlike that, " and from that hour he was his warmest friend. No doubtsimilar conversions of sentiment have attended the ministries of allapostolic men and women, of Francis and Catherine, of Wesley andWhitfield, of Moody and General Booth. Men know by instinct the loverof his kind. Men forgive a hundred defects for the sake of reality. Perhaps the sublimest of all justifications of Christ's law of love isthat no man has truly practiced it in any age without himself risinginto a life of memorable significance, without immediate attestationsof its virtue in the transformation of society, without attracting tohimself the reverence and affection of multitudes of fellow workers whohave rendered him the same adoring discipleship that the friends ofJesus gave to Him. 

No doubt it will also be said that were the ideals thus indicated totriumph, there would be nothing left for the direction of society but amischievous and sentimental spirit of amiability. The general fibre ofvirtue would disintegrate. Pity for the sinner, pushed to suchextremes, would in the end mean tolerance for sin. But to such anobjection the character of Jesus furnishes its own reply. Thecharacter of Jesus displays love in its supreme type, but it is whollylacking in that weak-featured travesty of love which we callamiability. His hatred of sin was at times a furious rage. His lipsbreathed flame as well as tenderness; "Out of His mouth proceeded asharp two-edged sword. " We may search literature in vain to discoverany words half as terrible and scathing as the words in which Jesusdescribed sin. The psychological explanation is that great powers oflove are twin with great powers of hatred. The passionate love ofvirtue is, in its obverse, an equally passionate hatred of vice. Inthe same way the passionate love of our kind has for its obverse anequally passionate hatred for the wrongs they endure. For this reasonjustice and virtue are nowhere so secure as in the hands of men wholove their kind intensely. They are most insecure in the hands of thecynic, who despises his kind, and therefore misapprehends theirconduct. For love, in its last analysis, is understanding, and wherethere is understanding of our fellows there can hardly fail to bewisdom in our method of treating them. That was the great secret ofJesus in these examples which we have reviewed. He understood SimonPeter. He understood the woman who was a sinner. He therefore knewthe only wise method of treating them. One with less pity might havesent the harlot back to her shame, one with less love might have drivenPeter into permanent apostasy. But Jesus, in His understanding of thehuman heart, knew the exact limit of reproof, the exact point at whichmagnanimity became efficacious in redemption. Those who follow Hisspirit will attain the same rare wisdom. They will never sacrificevirtue to compassion, nor will they put virtue in opposition tocompassion. One question may suffice. Would we be content to leavethe administration of society in the hands of Jesus? Would weconfidently submit our own case to His jurisdiction? If, in everydispute between men and nations, in every case of wrong and crime, Jesus were the one Arbiter, would the world be better ruled, would theprobable course of events be such as to increase the sum of humanhappiness? We can scarcely hesitate in the reply--we, who daily praythat His kingdom may come. And if to such questions we return ourinevitable affirmative, we cannot doubt that society has everything togain in being governed by those who live most closely in the spirit ofJesus; that they, and they only, are the true leaders and judges of thenations. 

THE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE

 _THE PRAYER_

 _Lover of souls, indeed, But Lover of bodies too, Seeing in human flesh The God shine through; Hallowed be Thy name, And, for the sake of Thee, Hallowed be all men, For Thine they be. _

 _Doer of deeds divine, Thou, the Father's Son, In all Thy children may Thy will be done, Till each works miracles On poor and sick and blind, Learning from Thee the art Of being kind. _

 _For Thine is the glory of love, And Thine the tender power, Touching the barren heart To leaf and flower, Till not the lilies alone, Beneath Thy gentle feet, But human lives for Thee Grow white and sweet. _

 _And Thine shall the Kingdom be, Thou Lord of Love and Pain, Conqueror over death By being slain. And we, with the lives like Thine Shall cry in the great day when Thou earnest to claim Thine own, "All Hail! Amen. "_

XIV

THE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE

It may be long before the world recognizes this leadership of theloving, and accepts their judgment, but nevertheless the world isdebtor to them for all that sweetens life, and makes society tolerable. Such men and women move unrecognized, doing their kindly work withoutpraise, and not so much as asking praise from men; but theirs is asecurer triumph than earth can give, and on their brows rests a rarercrown than earthly monarchs wear. I know many of these men and women, and I never meet them without the sense that the seamless robe ofChrist has touched me. I meet them in unlikely places; I overtake themon the road of life, oftenest in the places where the shadows lie mostthickly; but on each brow is the white stone which is the sign ofpeace, and in each voice is that deep note of harmony that belongsalone to those who walk through tribulations which they overcome, griefs of which they know the meaning, sorrows which they have theskill to heal. Their very footsteps move more evenly than other men's, as though guided by the rhythm of a music others do not hear; theirvery hands have a softness only known to hands that bind up wounds andwipe men's tears away; and in all their movements and their aspect is astillness and a sweet composure, as of hearts at rest. Whence arethese, and why are they arrayed in white robes? And we know theanswer, though no angel-voice may speak to us; these are they on whosebowed heads the starlight of Gethsemane has fallen, in whose hands arethe wounds of service, in whose breasts is the heart that breaks withlove for men. 

One such man I met some months ago, fresh from the forests ofWisconsin. Through a long spring day he told me his story, or ratherlet me draw it from him episode by episode, for he was much too modestto suppose anything that he had done remarkable. After wild andcareless years of wasted youth, Christ had found him, and from the dayof his regeneration he gave himself to the redemption of his fellowmen. He became a "lumber-jack, " a preacher to the rough sons of theWisconsin forests. He told me how he first won their respect bysharing their toil--he, a fragile slip of a man, and they giants inthew and muscle: how by tact and kindness he got a hearing for hisMaster; how he travelled scores of miles through the winter snows tonurse dying men, wrecked by wild excesses; how he had sat for hourstogether with the heads of drunken men, on whom the terror had fallen, resting on his knees, performing for them offices of help which noother would attempt; how he had heard the confessions of thieves andmurderers, who had fled from justice to the refuge of the forest; howhe had stood pale, and apprehensive of violence in an angry drunkenmob, and had quelled their rage by singing to them "Anywhere withJesus"; how, finally, he had fallen ill, and had hoped in his extremeweariness for the great release, but had come back from the gates ofdeath with a new hope for the success of his work; and as he spoke, that light which fell upon the face of the dying Stephen rested also onhis face; for he also saw, and made me see, the heavens opened, andJesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God. He was only alumber-jack, but to these men he was a Christ. He was poor, so poor, that I marvelled how he lived; but he had adopted into his home theforsaken child of a drunken lumberman, whose wife was dead. His lifewas full of hardship, but never have I met a happier man. For he hadfound the one secret of all noble and tranquil living, the life ofservice; and as I grasped his hand at parting and remembered how oftenit had rested in healing sympathy upon the evil and the weary, Ithought of the words of the blessed Master, "He laid His hands uponher, and the fever left her, and she rose and ministered unto Him. "

Another man of the same order I have talked with as these concludinglines were written. He had begun life with brilliant prospects as alawyer, had been wrecked by drink, and one night while drunk had fallenoverboard into deep water, and had with difficulty been brought back tolife. From that hour his life was changed. He went to a Western cityand became a missionary to drunkards and harlots. He told me of ayouth of nineteen he had recently visited in prison. The youth was amurderer, and the woman he had loved had committed suicide. He wasutterly impervious to reproof, did not want to live, and said that ifhis mistress had gone to hell he wanted to go there too, for she wasthe only human creature who had ever loved him. "God loves you, " saidmy friend; "yes, and I love you too. I know how you feel. You wantjust to be loved. Come, my poor boy, let me love you. " And at thatappeal this youth, with triple murder on his conscience, melted, andflung his arms round the neck of his visitor, and sobbed out all thestory of his sin and shame. O exquisite moment when the heart melts atthe touch of love--could all the heaped-up gains of a life of pleasureor ambition yield such felicity as this? For this man's face, roughand plain as it was, glowed as he spoke with the same light thatbeatified the features of my friend the lumber-jack--"the Lord God gavethem light, " and the Lamb upon the throne was the light of all theirseeing. 

A little while ago to this man came the offer of restoration to thesocial place which he has lost. He might have gone back to hisforfeited career, with an ample income. He put the case to his wifeand to his boys; with instant unanimity they said, "Never; this work isthe best work in the world. " And so the once brilliant lawyer is happyon a pittance, happier than he ever could be on a fortune, because heis doing Christ's work of love among his fellow men. And theseinstances are typical. In every corner of the world are those whobelong to the true Society of Jesus--the Order of Love andService, --and the happiest lives lived on earth are lived by these menand women. For Jesus will not suffer any man to be the loser by Him;He overpays those who truly follow Him with a happiness that worldscould not buy; and "even in the present time, " so enriches with thelove of others those who love, that they are unconscious of anydeprivation in their lot, knowing in all things, amid poverty, insult, violence, hardship and pain, that their gain exceeds their loss bymeasureless infinitudes of joy. 

We may be neither wise nor great, but we may be loving, and he wholoves is already "born of God, and knoweth God, for God is love. " Wemay have but a poor understanding of conflicting theologies andphilosophies, and may even find our minds hostile to accepted creeds;but we can live lives of pitiful and serviceable love. He who doesthese things is the true Christian and no other is. Against the manwho loves his fellows Heaven cannot close its doors, for He who reignsin Heaven is the Lover of men, and the greatest Lover of them all. Weknow now why He is loved as no other has been loved. We know now whatHis religion truly is; it is the religion of Love. To accept thisreligion requires in us but one quality, the heart of the little childwhich retains the freshness and obeys the authority of the emotions;but unless we become as little children we cannot enter this kingdom. This is the condition of entrance, and the method is equally simple. It is to follow Jesus in all our acts and thoughts, to allow no temperthat we do not find in Him, to build our lives upon His ideals of loveand justice, remembering always that He is more than the Truth, --He isthe Way in which men may confidently tread, and the Life which they mayshare. 

All things in the intellectual and social life of men move, as by afixed law, towards simplification. May we not hope that this sametendency may permeate the universal Church of Christ, dissolving theaccretions of mistaken and conventional piety, combining the vitalelements into a new synthesis, at once simple and convincing, --the newwhich is the oldest and the earliest, --that the Church is the organ ofthe Divine Love, and that love alone is the Christian equivalent ofreligion?

May we not even anticipate that the visible decay of many symbols thatonce were authoritative, of many forms of creed that are now barelytolerated rather than respected, may work towards this issue; thatgradually the test of service will supplant the test of intellectualbelief, and that a new Church will arise founded not on creed at all, but on a real imitation of the life of Jesus? If this should happen weneed not regret the dissolution of the forms of religious life which isso evident to-day, for though the older kingdom be shaken, we shallarrive in God's time at the better kingdom which cannot be shaken. 

When the Church does manifestly become the organ of the Divine Love, visibly creating a type of loving and lovable men and women foundnowhere else, whose lives are as lamps borne before the feet of theweary and the lost, then the world, now hostile or indifferent to theChurch, will love the Church even as by instinct it loves the Christ. Such lives have been lived, and they are, even to those who have theleast instinct for religion, the most sacred memories of history, andthe most inspiring. Such lives may still be lived by all who love theLord Christ Jesus in sincerity.