{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_19134/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_19134","id":"gutenberg_19134","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19134","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Love -- Religious aspects -- Christianity"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Empire of Love\n\n\nBy\n\nW. J. DAWSON\n\n\n\n\n\nNew York  Chicago  Toronto\n\nFleming H. Revell Company\n\nLondon and Edinburgh\n\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1907, by\n\nFLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY\n\n\n\n\n  New York: 158 Fifth Avenue\n  Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue\n  Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.\n  London: 21 Paternoster Square\n  Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street\n\n\n\n\n  To\n  M. M. D.,\n\n  who, during the last two years\n  of our residence in London,\n  practiced the teachings of this book\n  before I taught them:\n\n  proving daily\n  in her compassionate toil for others\n  the divine efficacy of simple love\n  to redeem the lives,\n  that were most estranged from virtue,\n  and most lost to hope.\n\n\n\n\nLove feels no burden, regards not labours, would willingly do more than\nit is able, pleads not impossibility, because it feels that it can and\nmay do all things.\n\nTHOMAS A KEMPIS.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n    I.  THE GENIUS TO BE LOVED\n   II.  WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?\n  III.  THE JUSTICE OF JESUS\n   IV.  LOVE IS JUSTICE\n    V.  LOVE AND FORGIVENESS\n   VI.  THE PRACTICE OF LOVE\n  VII.  LOVE AND JUDGMENT\n VIII.  THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE\n   IX.  THE REVELATIONS OF GRIEF\n    X.  A CONFESSION\n   XI.  A LOVER OF MEN\n  XII.  THE LAW OF COMPASSION\n XIII.  THE EMPIRE OF LOVE\n  XIV.  THE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE\n\n\n\n\nTHE GENIUS TO BE LOVED\n\n\n\n  _WHY THEY LOVED HIM_\n\n  _So kindly was His love to us,\n    (We had not heard of love before),\n  That all our life grew glorious\n    When He had halted at our door._\n\n  _So meekly did He love us men,\n    Though blind we were with shameful sin,\n  He touched our eyes with tears, and then\n    Led God's tall angels flaming in._\n\n  _He dwelt with us a little space,\n    As mothers do in childhood's years,\n  And still we can discern His face\n    Wherever Joy or Love appears._\n\n  _He made our virtues all His own,\n    And lent them grace we could not give,\n  And now our world seems His alone,\n    And while we live He seems to live._\n\n  _He took our sorrows and our pain,\n    And hid their torture in His breast,\n  Till we received them back again\n    To find on each His grief impressed._\n\n  _He clasped our children in His arms,\n    And showed us where their beauty shone,\n  He took from us our gray alarms,\n    And put Death's icy armour on._\n\n  _So gentle were His ways with us,\n    That crippled souls had ceased to sigh,\n  On them He laid His hands, and thus\n    They gloried at His passing by._\n\n  _Without reproof or word of blame,\n    As mothers do in childhood's years,\n  He kissed our lips in spite of shame,\n    And stayed the passage of our tears._\n\n  _So tender was His love to us,\n    (We had not learned to love before),\n  That we grew like to Him, and thus\n    Men sought His grace in us once more._\n\n  CONINGSBY WILLIAM DAWSON.\n\n\n\nI\n\nTHE GENIUS TO BE LOVED\n\nIn the history of the last two thousand years there is but one Person\nwho has been, and is supremely loved.  Many have been loved by\nindividuals, by groups of persons, or by communities; some have\nreceived the pliant idolatries of nations, such as heroes and national\ndeliverers; but in every instance the sense of love thus excited has\nbeen intimately associated with some triumph of intellect, or some\nresounding achievement in the world of action.  In this there is\nnothing unusual, for man is a natural worshipper of heroes.  But in\nJesus Christ we discover something very different; He possessed the\ngenius to be loved in so transcendent a degree that it appears His sole\ngenius.\n\nJesus is loved not for anything that He taught, nor yet wholly for\nanything that He did, although His actions culminate in the divine\nfascination of the Cross, but rather for what He was in Himself.  His\nvery name provokes in countless millions a reverent tenderness of\nemotion usually associated only with the most sacred and intimate of\nhuman relationships.  He is loved with a certain purity and intensity\nof passion that transcends even the most intimate expressions of human\nemotion.  The curious thing is that He Himself anticipated this kind of\nlove as His eternal heritage with men.  He expected that men would love\nHim more than father or mother, wife or child, and even made such a\nlove a condition of what He called discipleship.  The greatest marvel\nof all human history is that this prognostication has been strictly\nverified in the event.  He is the Supreme Lover, for whose love,\nunrealizable as it is by touch, or glance, or spoken word, or momentary\npresence, men and women are still willing to sacrifice themselves, and\nsurrender all things.  The pregnant words of Napoleon, uttered in his\nlast lonely reveries in St. Helena, still express the strangest thing\nin universal history: \"Caesar, Charlemagne, I, have founded empires.\nThey were founded on force, and have perished.  Jesus Christ has\nfounded an empire on love, and to this day there are millions ready to\ndie for Him.\"\n\nNapoleon felt the wonder of it all, the baffling, inexplicable marvel.\nWere we able to detach ourselves enough from use and custom, to survey\nthe movement of human thought from some lonely height above the floods\nof Time, as Napoleon in the high sea-silences of St. Helena, we also\nmight feel the wonder of this most wonderful thing the world has ever\nknown.\n\nThat the majority of men, and even Christian men, do not perceive that\nthe whole meaning of the life of Christ is Love is a thing too obvious\nto demand evidence or invite contradiction.  I say men, and Christian\nmen, thus limiting my statement, because women and Christian women,\nfrequently do perceive it, being themselves the creatures of affection,\nand finding in affection the one sufficing symbol of life and of the\nuniverse.  It is a St. Catherine who thinks of herself as the bride of\nChrist, and dreams the lovely vision of the changed hearts--the heart\nof Jesus placed by the hands that bled beneath her pure bosom, and her\nheart hidden in the side of Him who died for her.  It is a St. Theresa\nwho melts into ecstasy at the brooding presence of the heavenly Lover,\nand can only think of the Evil One himself with commiseration as one\nwho cannot love.  It is true that Francis of Assisi also thought and\nspoke of Christ with a lover's ecstasy, but then Francis in his\nexquisite tenderness of nature, was more woman than man.  No such\nthought visited the stern heart of Dominic, nor any of those makers of\ntheology who have built systems and disciplines upon the divine poetry\nof the divine Life.\n\nLove, as the perfect symbol of life and the universe, does not content\nmen, simply because for most men love is not the key to life, nor an\nend worth living for in itself, nor anything but a complex and often\ntroublesome emotion, which must needs be subordinated to other\nfaculties and qualities, such as greed, or pride, or the desire of\npower, or the dominant demands of intellect.  Among men the poets alone\nhave really understood Jesus: and in the category of the poets must be\nincluded the saints, whose religion has always been interpreted to them\nthrough the imagination.  The poets have understood; the theologians\nrarely or never.  Thus it happens that men, being the general and\naccepted interpreters of Christ, have all but wholly misinterpreted\nHim.  The lyric passion of that life, and the lyric love which it\nexcites, has been to them a disregarded music.  They have rarely\nachieved more than to tell us what Christ taught; they have wholly\nfailed to make us feel what Christ was.  But Mary Magdalene knew this,\nand it was what she said and felt in the Garden that has put Christ\nupon the throne of the world.  Was not her vision after all the true\none?  Is not a Catherine a better guide to Jesus than a Dominic?  When\nall the strident theologies fall silent, will not the world's whole\nworship still utter itself in the lyric cry,\n\n  Jesu, Lover of my soul,\n  Let me to Thy bosom fly.\n\n\nIs it then not within the competence of man to interpret Christ aright,\nsimply because the masculine temperament is what it is?  By no means,\nfor such a statement would disqualify the evangelists themselves, who\nare the only biographers of Jesus.  But in the degree that a\ntemperament is only masculine, it will fail to understand Jesus.\nNapoleon could not understand; he was the child of force, the son of\nthe sword, the very type of that hard efficiency of will and intellect\nwhich turns the heart to flint, and scorns the witness of the softer\nintuitions.  Francis could understand because he was in part\nfeminine--not weakly so, but nobly, as all poets and dreamers and\nvisionaries are.  Paul could understand for the same reason, and so\ncould John and Peter; each, in varying degrees, belonging to the same\ntype; but Pilate could not understand, because he had been trained in\nthe hard efficiency of Rome; nor Judas, because the masculine vice of\nambition had overgrown his affections, and deflowered his heart.  What\nis it then in Paul and John and Peter, what element or quality, which\nwe do not find in Pilate, Judas, or Napoleon?  Clearly there is no lack\nof force, for the personality of these three first apostles lifted a\nworld out of its groove and changed the course of history.  Was it not\njust this, that each had beneath his masculine strength a feminine\ntenderness, a power of loving and of begetting love in others?  John\nlying on the bosom of Jesus in sheer abandonment of love and sorrow at\nthe last Supper; Peter, plunging naked into the Galilean sea, and\nstruggling to the shore at the mere suspicion that the strange figure\noutlined there upon the morning mist is the Lord; Paul praying not only\nto share the wounds of Jesus, but if there be any pang left over, any\nanguish unfulfilled, that this anguish may be his--these are not alone\nimmortal pictures, but they are revelations of a temperament, the\ntemperament that understands Jesus.  He who could not melt into an\nabandonment of grief and love over one on whom the shadow of the last\nhour rested; he who would spring headlong into no estranging sea to\nreach one loved and lost and marvellously brought near again; he who\ncan share the festal wine of life, but has no appetite for agony, no\nthirsting of the soul to bear another's pain--these can never\nunderstand Jesus.  They cannot understand Him, simply because they\ncannot understand love.\n\n\n\n\nWHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?\n\n\n\n  _TOWARDS GALILEE_\n\n  _The great obdurate world I know no more,\n  The clanging of the brazen wheels of greed,\n  The taloned hands that build the miser's store,\n  The stony streets where feeble feet must bleed.\n  No more I walk beneath thy ashen skies,\n  With pallid martyrs cruelly crucified\n  Upon thy predetermined Calvaries:\n  I, too, have suffered, yea, and I have died!\n  Now, at the last, another road I take\n  Thro' peaceful gardens, by a lilted way,\n  To those low eaves beside the silver lake,\n  Where Christ waits for me at the close of day.\n  Farewell, proud world!  In vain thou callest me.\n  I go to meet my Lord in Galilee._\n\n\n\nII\n\nWHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?\n\nChristianity, as it exists to-day, is in the main a misrepresentation\nand a misinterpretation of Christ; not consciously indeed--if it were\nso the remedy would be easy; but unconsciously, which makes the remedy\ndifficult.  One need not stop to define Christianity, for there is only\none sincere meaning to the word; it implies a _kind of life whose\nspirit and method reproduce as accurately as possible the spirit and\nthe method of the life of Jesus_.  It would seem that if this\ninterpretation of the term be correct there could be no difficulty in\nadjusting even unconscious misinterpretation of Christ to the true\nfacts of the case: but here we are met by that perversity of vision\nwhich springs not from ignorance, but from thoughtlessness, and is in\nits nature much more obdurate than the worst perversity of ignorance.\nIgnorance can be enlightened; thoughtlessness, being usually associated\nwith vanity, recognizes no need of enlightenment.\n\nThe life of Jesus, freshly introduced to a mind wholly ignorant of its\nexistence may be trusted to convey its own impression; but the\nthoughtless mind will be either too proud, or too shallow, or too\nconfident, to be sensitive to right impressions.  Thus the trouble with\nmost people who call themselves Christians is not to educate them into\nright conceptions of the life of Christ, but to destroy the growth of\nwrong impressions.  \"Surely,\" they will say, \"we know all about the\nlife of Christ.  We have read the biographies of Jesus ever since the\ndays of infancy.  We have heard the life of Jesus expounded through\nlong years by multitudes of teachers.  We have a church which claims to\nhave extracted from the life of Jesus a whole code of laws for life and\nconduct; is not this enough?\"  But what if the teachers themselves have\nnever found the true secret of Jesus?  What if they have but repeated\nthe error of the Pharisees in elaborating a code of laws in which the\nvital spirit of the truth they would impart is lost?  And does not the\nwhole history of man's mind teach us that one simple truth known at\nfirst-hand is worth more to us, and is of greater influence on our\nconduct, than all the second-hand instruction we may receive from the\nmost competent of teachers?  It is just this first-hand thought which\nwe most need.  We need to see for ourselves what Jesus was, and not\nthrough the eyes of another, whatever his authority.\n\nSuppose that we should read the Gospels in this spirit, with an\nentirely unbiassed and receptive mind, capable of first-hand\nimpressions, what would be the probable character of these impressions?\nThe clearest and deepest of all, I think, would be that the Jesus\ntherein depicted lived His life on principles so novel that we are able\nto discover no life entirely like His in the best lives round about us.\nWe should probably be struck first of all by certain outward\ndissimilarities.  Thus He was not only poor, but He did not resent\npoverty--He beatified it.  The things for which men naturally, and, as\nwe think, laudably strive, such as a settled position in society and\nthe consideration of others, He did not think worth seeking at all.  He\nmade no use of His abilities for private ends, which has been the\ncommon principle of social life since society began.  He asked nothing\nof the world, being apparently convinced that nothing which the world\ncould give Him was worth having.  Strangest thing of all in one who\nmust have been conscious of His own genius, and of the value of His\nteachings to mankind, He made not the least effort to perpetuate these\nteachings.  He wrote no book, provided no biographer, did none of those\nthings which the humblest man of genius does to ensure that distant\ngenerations shall comprehend and appreciate his character and message.\nHe was content to speak His deepest truths to casual listeners.  He\nspent all His wealth of intellect upon inferior persons, fishermen and\nthe like, who did not comprehend one tithe of what He said.  He was the\nfriend of all who chose to seek His friendship.  He discriminated so\nlittle that He even admitted a Judas to His intimacy, and allowed women\ntainted with dishonour and impurity to offer Him public tokens of\naffection.  In all these things He differed absolutely from any other\nman who ever lived beneath the public eye.  In all these things He\nstill stands alone; for who, among the saintliest men we know, has not\nsome innocent pride in his ability, or some preference in friendship,\nor some instinctive compliance with social usage, or some worldly hopes\nand honourable aims which he shares in common with the mass of men?\n\nBut these outward dissimilarities of conduct disclose a dissimilarity\nof soul.  Men live for something; for what did Jesus live?  And the\nanswer that leaps upon us like a great light from every page of the\nGospels is plain; He lived for love.  If He did not care for praise or\nhonour; if He regarded even the preservation of His teachings with a\ndivine carelessness, it was because He had a nobler end in view, the\nlove of men.  He could not live without love, and His supreme aim was\nto make Himself loved.  And yet it was less a conscious aim, than the\nnatural working out of His own character.  Fishermen by the sea saw Him\nbut once; instantly they left their boats and followed Him.  A man\nsitting at the receipt of custom, a hard man we should suppose, little\nlikely to be swayed by sudden emotions, also sees Him once, and finds\nhis occupation gone.  A beautiful courtesan, beholding Him pass by,\nbreaks from her lovers, and follows Him into an alien house, where she\nbathes His feet with tears and wipes them with the hairs of her head.\nMature women without a word spoken or a plea made, minister to Him of\ntheir substance, and count their lives His.  When He sleeps wearied out\nupon a rude fishing-boat, there is a pillow for His head, placed there\nby some unknown adorer.  The men He makes apostles, all but one, count\nHis smile over-payment for the loss of home, of wife, of children.\nCountless throngs of ordinary men and women forget their hunger, and\nare content to camp in desert places only to listen to the music of His\nvoice.  Wild and outlawed men, criminals and lepers and madmen, become\nas little children at His word, and all the wrongs and bruises\ninflicted on them by a cruel world are healed beneath His kindly\nglance.  Does it matter greatly what He taught?  This is how He lived.\nHe lived in such a way that men saw that love was the only thing worth\nliving for, that life had meaning only as it had love.  And this is the\nimperishable tradition of Jesus:\n\n  This is His divinity,\n  This His universal plea,\n  Here is One that loveth thee.\n\n\nWhat then is a true Christianity but the accurate reproduction of this\nspirit of love, the creation of loving and lovable men and women, who\nattract and uplift all around them by the subtle fascination of the\nlove that animates them?  What is a Christian Church but a\nconfraternity of such men and women?  What is a Christian society, but\na society permeated by this spirit, and bringing all the affairs of\nlife to its test?  And what place have social superiorities and\ninferiorities; pride, scorn, or coldness; harsh theologies, breeding\nharsh tempers and infinite disputes; the egoism that wounds the humble,\nthe strength that disregards the weak, the vanity that hurts the\nsimple, in any company of men and women who dare to wear the name of\nsuch a Founder?  It was as a Bridegroom Christ came, anointed with all\nthe perfumes of a dedicated love, and until the last bitter hour of His\nrejection, He moved with such lyric joyousness across the earth, that\nlife became festive in His presence.  It is as a Bride the church\nexists on earth, and if no festive smiles are awakened by its presence,\nand no gracious unsealing of the founts of love in human hearts, then\nis it not Christ's Church, for He has passed elsewhere with another\ncompany to the marriage-feast, and His Church stands without, before a\nbarred and darkened door.\n\n\n\n\nTHE JUSTICE OF JESUS\n\n\n\n  _HOW HE CAME_\n\n  _When the golden evening gathered on the shore of Galilee,\n  When the fishing boats lay quiet by the sea,\n  Long ago the people wondered, tho' no sign was in the sky,\n  For the glory of the Lord was passing by._\n\n  _Not in robes of purple splendour, not in silken softness shod,\n  But in raiment worn with travel came their God,\n  And the people knew His presence by the heart that ceased to sigh\n  When the glory of the Lord was passing by._\n\n  _For He healed their sick at even, and He cured the leper's sore,\n  And sinful men and women sinned no more,\n  And the world grew mirthful hearted, and forgot its misery\n  When the glory of the Lord was passing by._\n\n  _Not in robes of purple splendour, but in lives that do His will,\n  In patient acts of kindness He comes still;\n  And the people cry with wonder, tho' no sign is in the sky,\n  That the glory of the Lord is passing by._\n\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE JUSTICE OF JESUS\n\nOne strong peculiarity of the teaching of Jesus--we might even call it\nits outstanding feature--is that it is frequently disclosed in a series\nof incidents.  Unlike most teachers He philosophizes little about life.\nA single chapter of the Gospels, or at most two, would contain all the\nmaxims about life which He thought necessary for wise and lofty\nconduct.  His method is rather to put Himself in relation to the\ncrucial occurrences of life, and to reveal the true way of regarding\nthem by His own attitude towards them.  When He would teach the beauty\nof humility it is by putting a little child in the midst of His\narrogant and vainglorious disciples, that the child may become the\nliving and memorable parable of His sentiments.  When He would teach\nhumanity, He does so by His own conduct to lepers.  When He would\ndiscredit and expose the barbarism of the Mosaic Sabbatarian laws as\ninterpreted by scribes and Pharisees, He does so by healing the sick\nand blind upon the Sabbath day.  He is all for the concrete, teaching\nnot by theory, but by example.  The method is novel, and its advantages\nare obvious.  The best conceived discourses on humility, mercy, or\nsympathy, might be forgotten, but no one can forget the child among the\ndisciples, nor the raptured gaze of the blind man when his purged eyes\nopen to behold the face of his miraculous Physician, nor the picture of\nJesus touching without fear or disgust the leper whose unclean\ncontagion made him an object of aversion even to the pitiful.\n\nIt is a wonderful method of instruction; it makes every other method\nseem trite and wearisome.  Its effect is to make the Gospels a series\nof tableaux, which dwell in the memory as things actually seen.  The\ngroups upon the stage perpetually shift and rearrange themselves; each\nrepresents some phase of life, some problem, some combination of\ncircumstance more or less common in the experience of men, something\nthat is typical, for Jesus chooses only the typical and essential\nthings of life for these occasions.  The lesser things of life He\npasses over; it is the great and crucial matters which attract Him.\n\nBut what are the great things of life?\n\nThey all fall into one category, they all present problems in human\nrelationship.  No problems are so difficult.  They are not speculative,\nbut practical.  A man who may be wise as the world counts wisdom, and\nable to pierce with acute analysis to the depth of the abstrusest\nphilosophic problem, may nevertheless find himself hopelessly baffled\nby some quite common fact of life, such as how to treat a wayward son,\nor a sinful woman.  I am not likely to lose a night's rest because I am\nunable to define the Trinity but with what sore travail of heart do I\ntoss through midnight hours when I have to settle some course of action\ntowards the friend who has betrayed me, the brother who has brought me\nshame, the child who scoffs at my restraint, and hears the call of the\nfar country in every swift pulsation of his passionate heart!  And why\ncannot I settle my course of action?  Because my mind is confused by\nsomething which I call justice, to which custom has given authority and\nconsecration.  Justice prescribes one course of action, affection\nanother.  The convention of the world insists that wrong-doing should\nbe punished, which is manifestly right; but when it insists that I\nshould be the punisher, I suspect something wrong.  The more closely I\nstudy conventional justice the more I am conscious of something in\nmyself that distrusts and revolts from it.  The more I incline to the\nvoice of affection the more I fear it, lest I should be guilty of\nweakness which would merit my own contempt.  The struggle is one\nbetween convention and instinct, and I know not which side to take.\nBut one thing I do know; it is that I have no certain clue to guide me,\nno clear determining principle that divides the darkness with a sword\nof light, no voice within myself that is authoritative.\n\nNow the wonderful thing in Jesus is that He is always sure of Himself.\nNothing takes Him by surprise, nothing produces the least hesitation in\nHis judgment.  Therefore He must have had an unfailing clue to which He\ntrusted in the maze of life.  Behind all consistency of judgment there\nmust exist consistency of principle.  The principle that governed all\nthe thoughts of Jesus was _that love was the only real justice_.  He\ncame not to condemn, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them.\nThere was no problem of human relationship that could not be solved by\nlove; there was no other principle needed for the regulation of\nsociety; and no other could produce that general peace and good-will\nwhich He called the Kingdom of God.\n\nThus, on one occasion Jesus tells a story which is so lifelike in every\ntouch that we may accept it, without doubt, as less a parable than an\nincident.  A father has two sons, one of whom is industrious and\ndutiful, the other wayward and rebellious.  The wayward son finally\ncasts off all pretense of filial obedience, goes into a far country,\nand wastes his substance in riotous living.  Here we have one of the\nsaddest of all problems in human relationship, for presently the\ndisgraced son comes home a beggar.  The elder brother who represents\nthe average social view, has no doubt whatever as to what should be\ndone.  He is offended that the disgraced son should come home at all;\nhe would have thought better of him if he had hidden his shame in the\ncountry that had witnessed it.  Probably his sense of pride and\nrespectability is offended more than his love of virtue, though he\ncharacteristically gives his jealous anger the illusion of morality.\nThis, I say, is the average social view.  There are few things more\ncruel than affronted respectability.  The elder brother is an eminently\nrespectable person, totally unacquainted with wayward passions, and his\nonly feeling for his brother is disdain.\n\nJesus tells the story, however, in such a way as to discredit the\naverage social view.  He begins by making us feel that whatever follies\nthe prodigal had committed, he had already been punished for them in\nthe miseries he had endured.  It is not for man to punish with his whip\nof scorn one who has already been flaggellated with a whip of scorpions\nin the desert places of disgrace and shame.  Jesus makes us feel also\nthat whatever sins might be laid to the charge of the disgraced son,\nthere is nevertheless in his heart a warmth of feeling of which the\nelder brother gives no sign.  The boy loves his father, otherwise he\nwould not have turned to him in his anguish of distress.  The elder\nbrother's attitude to his father is arrogant and harsh; the younger\nbrother's is humble and tender.  Lastly the father himself is revealed\nas the embodiment of love.  He asks no questions, utters no reproaches,\nimposes no conditions; he simply takes his son back, in the rush of his\naffection cutting short the boy's pitiful confession, and calling for\nshoes and new robes and festal music, as though his son had returned in\ndignity and triumph.  In the last scene of all, implied rather than\ndescribed, the restored prodigal sits at the feast, leaning on his\nfather's bosom, but the respectable son stands without in a darkness of\nhis own creation--the darkness which a harsh spirit and an unlovely\ntemper never fail to create in men of his unhappy temperament.\n\nIt is a very strange story, if we come to think of it; almost an\nimmoral story, as no doubt it was considered by the Pharisees, and\npersons of their cold and mechanical type of virtue.  But Jesus\nanticipates their criticism with one of the most startling statements\nthat ever fell from inspired lips, \"There is more joy in heaven among\nthe angels of God over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and\nnine righteous persons who need no repentance.\"  Heaven approves the\nstory, if they do not.  Thus God Himself would act, for God is love.\nThus love must needs act, if it be the kind of love that \"suffereth\nlong and is kind, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own,\nis not provoked, taketh not account of evil, beareth all things,\nbelieveth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.\"  And if\nwe ask what becomes of justice, Jesus assures us that love is the only\nreal justice.  For the main object of justice is not punishment but\nreclamation.  A truly enlightened justice is less concerned with the\npunishment of wrong than its reparation.\n\nThe gravest question in the case of this unhappy boy is not what he has\nmade of himself by sin and folly, but what can yet be made of him by\nwise and tender treatment.  Had the father coldly dismissed the\nprodigal with some bitter verdict on his past folly, he himself would\nhave been unjust to the boy's possibilities, and thus would have sinned\nagainst his son with a sin much less capable of excuse than the son's\nsin against him.  The worst sinner in the story is not the son who went\nwrong, but the son who had never done anything but right, yet had done\nit in such a way that it had begotten in him a vile, censorious,\nloveless temper.  No one can be just who does not love; and so, once\nmore removing the story into that unseen world which Christ called in\nto redress the balance of this visible world, we sinful men and women\nbuild our hopes upon the great saying that God's forgiveness is God's\njustice: if we confess our sins, He is not only faithful, but JUST in\nforgiving us our sins.\n\n\n\n\nLOVE IS JUSTICE\n\n\n\n  _THE WAY OF WOUNDS_\n\n  _He touched the leper tenderly,\n  So in His hands there came to be\n    Wide wounds that were not wrought with nails.\n  Alas, my hands are smooth and fair,\n  No wound is on them anywhere,\n    Nor any scarlet scar of nails._\n\n  _His lips lay on the mouth of death,\n  God's healing dwelt within their breath,\n    Wherefore his lips grew pale with pain,\n  And no man shall that pain divine;\n  Alas, my lips are red with wine,\n    And they have scorned His draught of pain._\n\n  _His feet were torn of stone and thorn,\n  Full slow He moved on roads forlorn,\n    But joyous hearts accompanied Him;\n  Alas, my feet are softly shod,\n  And on the road that leads to God,\n    They have not sought to move with Him._\n\n  _And so all wounded by the way,\n  He came home at the close of day,\n    And angels met Him at the Gate.\n  Alas, His way I have not known--\n  The road forlorn, the wounding stone--\n    And no one waits me at the Gate._\n\n\n\nIV\n\nLOVE IS JUSTICE\n\nLove is the only real justice--never was there a more revolutionary\nethic!  If Christianity is to be judged by its institutions, it must be\nreluctantly confessed that twenty centuries of Christian teaching have\nalmost wholly failed to make this strange ethic acceptable to mankind.\nThe elder brother still makes broad his phylacteries in the home, in\nthe Church, and on the seat of justice.  The elder brother's sense of\noffended respectability still masquerades as virtue.  Who forgives as\nthis father forgave, with such completeness that he who has wrought the\nwrong is encouraged to forget that the wrong was ever wrought?  Where\nis the loving and tolerant spirit of the father less visible than in\nthe Church, which crucifies men for a word, and makes a difference of\nopinion the ground for deadly enmity?  Of what administration of law\ncan we say that its chief object is not the punishment of the\nwrong-doer, but his reclamation?  No existing society is organized on\nthese principles, and the only defense the apologists of a bastard\nChristianity make is that it is totally impossible to apply the\nprinciples of Jesus to the administration of society.  That is, at all\nevents, an intelligible defense, but is it a legitimate one?  Was Jesus\nmerely a romantic dreamer, with entirely romantic views of love and\njustice?  Was He a moral anarchist, whose teachings, if interpreted in\nlaws, would destroy the basis of society?  A strange thing indeed in\nhuman history if One who has been loved as no other was ever loved by\nmultitudes of men and women through the ages, should prove after all to\nbe an impracticable dreamer or a moral anarchist!\n\nBut if Jesus was a dreamer, He dreamed true, and the very reason why He\nis loved with such wide and deep devotion is that men do dimly, but\ninstinctively, perceive that His life presents the only perfect pattern\nof life as it should be.  Life, as it exists, is clearly not ordered on\na social system which any wise or good man can approve.  Hence the wise\nand good man is perpetually urged to the enquiry whether Jesus may not\nafter all have been right?\n\nJesus certainly acts as one who is right.  He acts always with the\nassured air of one for whom all debate is closed and henceforth\nimpossible.  He knows His way, and the great moral dilemmas of life\nyield instantly to His touch.  He penetrates to their roots and makes\nus feel that He has touched the essential element in them.  The dreamer\nvindicates himself by making it manifest that he sees deeper into the\nproblem than the moralist, and that his is after all the better\nmorality because it is of higher social value, and makes more directly\nfor social reconciliation.\n\nLet us take, for example, the judgment of Jesus upon the woman who was\na sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee.  The social dilemma of the\nfallen woman is much more difficult of solution than that of the\nprodigal son.  We expect a certain power of moral convalescence in\nyouth which has been betrayed through folly.  Sooner or later the manly\nnature kindles with resentment at its own weakness.  Moreover, social\nlaw allows a certain opportunity of recuperation to man which it denies\nto woman.  The sin of the woman seems less pardonable, not because it\nis worse in itself, but because it outrages a higher convention.  Hence\nthe strict moralist who might make some allowance for the hot blood of\nyouth, makes none for woman when she is betrayed through the affections.\n\nBut this is the very point on which Jesus fixes as essential.  \"_The\nwoman loved much, therefore let her many sins be forgiven_,\" He says.\nAnd a true reading of the story would seem to show that in uttering\nthis sublime verdict Jesus is not thinking of the woman's sudden and\npure love for Him; He is rather reviewing the entire nature of her\nlife.  She had loved much--that is her history in a sentence.  Cruelty\nand unkindness, malice and bitterness, had no part in her misdoing.\nShe had been undone through the very sweetness of her nature, as\nmultitudes of women are.  That which was her noblest attribute--her\npower of affection--had been the minister of her ruin through lack of\nwisdom and restraint.  By love she had fallen, by love also she shall\nbe redeemed.  Her sins were indeed many, but behind all her sins there\nwas an essential though perverted magnanimity of nature, and for the\nsake of an essential good in her, which lay like a shining pearl at the\nroot of her debasement, she shall be forgiven.\n\nAgain a strange verdict, and one that must have seemed to the Pharisees\nentirely immoral.  \"What becomes of justice?\" is their whispered\ncomment.  Jesus asserts His sense of justice by an exposition of the\ncharacter of Simon.  Simon is destitute of love, of magnanimity, even\nof courtesy.  In his hard and formal nature there has been no room for\nemotion; passion of any kind and he are strangers.  Which nature is\nradically the better, his or \"this woman's\"?  Which presents the more\nhopeful field to the moralist?  The soil of Simon's heart is thin and\nmeagre; but in \"this woman's\" heart is a soil overgrown with weeds\nindeed, but delicately tempered, rich and deep, in which the roots of\nthe fair tree of life may find abundant room and nourishment.\nTherefore she shall be forgiven for her possibilities, and such\nforgiveness is justice.  To ignore these possibilities, to allow what\nshe has been utterly to overshadow the lovely vision of what she may\nbe, when once the soil is clear of weeds, and the real magnanimity of\nher temperament is directed into noble uses, would be the most odious\nform of injustice.\n\nSuch is the justice of Jesus, but, alas, after two thousand years we\nstill stand astonished at it, more than half doubtful of its validity,\nand, if truth be told, secretly dismayed at its boldness.  It is\nromantic justice, we say, but is it practicable justice?  We might at\nleast remember that what we call practicable justice has never yet\nattained the gracious results of Christ's romantic justice.  Simon the\nPharisee knows no more how to deal with \"this woman\" than the elder\nbrother knew how to deal with the prodigal.  Such sense of justice as\nthey possessed would have infallibly driven the penitent boy back to\nthe comradeship of harlots, and have refused the penitent harlot the\nbarest chance of reformation.  Is not this enough to make the least\ndiscerning of us all suspect that Pharisees and elder brothers, for all\ntheir immaculate respectability of life, are by no means qualified to\npass judgment on these tragedies of life with which they have no\nacquaintance, and cannot have an understanding sympathy?  Does not the\nentire failure of legal justice with all its apparatus of punishment\nand repression, to give the sinner a vital impulse to withdraw from his\nsin, drive us to the conclusion, or at least to the hope, that there\nmust be some better method of dealing with sinners than is sanctioned\nby conventional justice?  There is another method--it is Christ's\nmethod.  And the thing to be observed is that whereas conventional\njustice must certainly have failed in either of these crucial\ninstances, the romantic justice of Jesus--if we must so call\nit--completely succeeded.  The woman who was a sinner sinned no more,\nand the penitent son henceforth lived a new life of purity and\nobedience.  In each case love is justified, and proves itself the\nhighest justice.\n\n\n\n\nLOVE AND FORGIVENESS\n\n\n\n  _LOVE'S PROFIT_\n\n  _What profits all the hate that we have known\n    The bitter words, not all unmerited?\n  Have hearts e'er thriven beneath our angry frown?\n  Have roses grown from thistles we have sown?\n    Or lucid dawns flowered out of sunsets red?\n        Lo, all in vain\n  The violence that added pain to pain,\n  And drove the sinner back to sin again._\n\n  _We had been wiser had we walked Love's way\n    We had been happier had we tenderer been,\n  We had found sunlight in the cloudiest day\n  Had we but loved the souls that went astray,\n    And sought from shame their many faults to screen\n        Lo, they and we\n  Had thus escaped Life's worst Gethsemane,\n  And found the Garden where the angels be._\n\n  _For One there was who, angry, drew no sword,\n    Derided, wept for those who wrought Him wrong,\n  And at the last attained this great reward,\n  That those who injured Him acclaimed Him Lord,\n    And wove His story into holiest song.\n        So sinners wrought\n  For Him the Kingdom He had vainly sought,\n  And to His feet the world's frankincense brought._\n\n\n\nV\n\nLOVE AND FORGIVENESS\n\nIn these instances it is the singular completeness of Christ's\nforgiveness which is the most startling feature.  It would be a libel on\nhuman nature to say that men do not forgive each other, but human\nforgiveness usually has reservations, reticences, conditions.  Jesus\ntaught unlimited forgiveness, and what He taught He practiced.\n\n\"_Then came Peter, and said to Him, 'Lord, how oft shall my brother sin\nagainst me and I forgive him?  Until seven times?'  Jesus said unto him,\n'I say not unto thee, until seven times; but until seventy times seven.'_\"\n\nIt is a vehement reply, in which a quiet note of scorn vibrates; not\nscorn of Peter, but scorn of any kind of love that is less than\nlimitless.  But whose love is limitless?  Do we not commonly speak of\nlove as being outworn by offense or neglect?  In the compacts which we\nmake with one another in the name of love, do we not specifically name\ncertain offenses as unpardonable?  Thus one man will say, \"I can forgive\nanything but meanness,\" and another says, \"no friendship can survive\nperfidy\"; and in the relations between men and women unfaithfulness is\nheld to cancel all bonds, however indissoluble they may seem.  Now and\nagain, it is true, some strange voice reaches us, keyed to a different\nmusic.  Shakespeare, for example, in his famous one hundred and sixteenth\nsonnet, boldly states that\n\n      Love is not love\n  Which alters when it alteration finds,\n  Or bends with the remover to remove.\n\nBut who listens, who believes?  Yet, if it should happen to us to be\nplaced in the position of the offender, we need no one to convince us\nthat a true love should be, in its very nature, unalterable.  How\nastonished and dismayed are we, when eyes that have so many times met\nours in tenderness harden at our presence, and lips which have uttered so\nmany pledges of affection, speak harshly!  We do not deny our fault,\nindeed; but we think we can discern reasons why it should be regarded\nmercifully, why the very memory and sacredness of old affection should\nmake harsh judgment impossible; nay, more, why a deeply generous love\nshould even rejoice in the opportunity to forgive, and so should sanctify\nour very shame with the healing touch of pity, and pour our tears into\nthe sacramental cup which ratifies a new fidelity.\n\nIt is so the sinner argues, his vision of what love ought to be growing\nclearer by his offense against love.  It is he alone, the sinner, who can\nreally sympathize with Christ's conception of love, for he alone feels\nthat this is the kind of love he needs.  The elder brother does not\nunderstand, Simon the Pharisee does not understand, because neither has\nsinned in such a way as to be flung helpless at the feet of love.  Peter\ndid not understand when he put his question to Christ.  He spoke just as\nthe average man would speak, who has never sounded the tragic depths in\nlife, has never known the misery of weakness, and therefore has no fellow\nfeeling for the weak.  Love as such men know it is less a passion than a\ncompact.  It is a bond of mutual advantage, guarded from abuse by swift\npenalty and forfeit.  It is the reward of qualities, it gives no more\nthan it gets, it exists by an equal equipoise of service.  If this\nequipoise is disturbed its obligations are dissolved.  It is easily\naffronted, and under affront becomes resentful, bitter, even vindictive.\nHow oft shall I forgive my brother?  Only as oft as a sense of duty shall\ndemand, only up to the point which is sanctioned by social custom, so\nthat I may save my reputation for magnanimity, always excepting certain\nsins for which no pardon can be legitimately asked.  But the hour was not\nfar off when Peter himself was to commit the very sins for which\ncustomary love has no pardon.  He was to be guilty of those offenses\nwhich just and good men say they cannot forgive--meanness, cowardice,\nperfidy, denial.  That bitter hour revealed the true nature of love to\nPeter.  He knew that in spite of his sin against Jesus, he still loved\nHim, and since love was unalterable in him, he expected an unalterable\nlove in Christ.  It was the seventy times seven forgiveness that he\nneeded then; and how sweet to recollect in that hour that Jesus had\ntaught a love that knew no limit.  \"_Lovest thou Me_?\" was the one word\nhis Master uttered when they met in the quiet morning light beside the\nsea.  \"_Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee_,\" was the\nswift reply.  Storms disturb the sea but the central tides run on.  Peter\nfound with equal astonishment and gratitude that not even perfidy was\nable to separate him from the love of Christ, for that love was\nunalterable as the morning star which hung above the lake, and cleansing\nas the soft waves that lapped its shore.\n\nThe self-righteous man will never understand these things.  Men and women\nof meagre natures, with whom love is a compact, not a passion, will\nvehemently disapprove them.  People of smooth lives, ignorant of strong\ntemptations, will refuse even to discuss them.  Jesus was well aware of\ntheir implacable indifference or cold hostility, and boldly said that for\nsuch people He had no gospel.  His mission was not to the whole, but to\nthe sick.  The Gospel of Jesus is in truth not designed for people of\ncomfortable lives.  He has little to say to the children of compromise,\nwhose emasculated lives attain the semblance of virtue by the cautious\nexercise of niggard passions.  They can take care of one another, these\nrighteous ones, whose very righteousness is a negation.\n\nBut Christ's Gospel is for a tragic world.  It is for the disinherited,\nthe weak, and the strong who have become weak; for those who have been\nwrecked by folly and passion, and too much love of living; for those\nwhose capacities for good and evil, being both rooted in passion, are\nequally a peril and a potency--it is to these Christ chiefly speaks.  To\nthem the Gospel of unlimited forgiveness and unalterable love is the only\nvital, because the only efficacious Gospel.  The man whose very virility\nof nature makes him the easy prey of murderous joy; the man shut up in\nprison, who hears from the lips that once spake love to him, the sentence\nof inexpiable disgrace; the outcast from honour, gnawing the bitter husks\nof hated sin in far lands, and tortured in his dreams by the sweetness of\nrecollected happiness; these, and all like these, will understand Jesus,\nfor it is to them He speaks.  Their very sin interprets Him.  To their\nforlorn ears the love He teaches will sound not strange, for it is the\nonly kind of love that can redeem them; nor foolish, for it is the only\nlove that dare stoop low enough to lift them up.  These will not fail to\nunderstand what conventional righteousness finds so difficult; these, and\nalso all good women who have had acquaintance with either deep love or\nreal grief, because it is a loving woman's sweet prerogative and divine\ndisposition to forgive, and to draw from her grace of forgiveness a more\ntender and maternal power of loving.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PRACTICE OF LOVE\n\n\n\n  _FELLOW SUFFERERS_\n\n  _When men of malice wrought the crown for Thee\n    Didst Thou complain?\n  Nay; in each thorn God's finger Thou didst see,\n    His love thro' pain._\n\n  _His finger did but press the ripened Vine,\n    Thy fruit to prove,\n  That henceforth all the world might drink the wine\n    Of Thy great love._\n\n  _So when the darkness rose about Thy feet\n    Thy lips met His,\n  Amid the upper light, in Death's long sweet,\n    Releasing kiss._\n\n  _And shall I cry aloud in anger when\n    Men make for me\n  A Cross less harsh?  Nay, I'll remember then\n    Thy constancy._\n\n  _And if the darkness hide me from Thy sight\n    At God's command,\n  I'll talk with Thee all thro' the prayerful night,\n    And touch Thy hand;_\n\n  _Greatly content, if I whose life has been\n    So long unwise,\n  May, wounded, on Thy wounded bosom lean\n    In Paradise._\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE PRACTICE OF LOVE\n\nSo convinced was Jesus that love alone was the master law of life, that\nHe based His own life wholly on His conviction, cheerfully accepting\nall the risks which were implied.  He was perfectly aware of the\nconsequences to Himself and His reputation when He made Himself the\nfriend of publicans and sinners.  These consequences He ignored, making\nHimself of no reputation, that He might uplift by His love those who\nneeded His love the most.  Under the constant contradiction of those\nwho mistook His spirit, and even libelled His character, He manifested\nneither bitterness nor resentment.  He suffered injuries without\nretaliation, and went so far as to denounce all forms of retaliation as\na wasteful expenditure of spirit, wrong in themselves, and attaining no\nend but the worse injury of those who employed them.  He might easily\nhave used the miraculous power which He possessed for His own defense,\nand for the confusion of His enemies.  Had He been selfishly ambitious,\nHe might have organized a party so strong, that it would have become an\nirresistible force, which would have shattered the old order whose\nevils He denounced, and have made Him the dictator of a new order,\nbased on the ideals in which He believed.  He did none of these things,\nnot through lassitude of spirit or failure to perceive their possible\nissues, but simply because these were not the things to do.  In His\njudgment the only abiding kingdom belonged to the meek.  He who\nsuffered injustice with patience would prove the ultimate conqueror.\nThere was an irresistible might in love and meekness against which the\npeople raged in vain.  Love was a working and practicable law of life;\nin the long issue of things it was the only law that justified itself.\n\nWas Jesus right in these conclusions?  Can human life proceed along the\nlines He indicated?  Certainly it has never yet done so.  The woman who\nis a sinner finds no Jesus to absolve her utterly among the priests of\nHis religion.  The resentment of injury is regarded even by good men as\nentirely justified when injury to the person involves the rights of\nsocial order.  Force is regarded by persons of the highest amiability\nas necessary to the defense of society, and the Church applauds the\npunishments inflicted by the civil magistrate, and even hastens to\nbless the banners and baptize the deadly weapons of the warrior.\nMeekness, which endures injury without resentment, is regarded as the\nsign of a servile and cowardly spirit, and is the subject of ridicule\nand contempt.  No Christian society exists in which a Peter would be\nfreely pardoned his offense; the best that could be hoped would be the\ninfliction of humiliating penance, and a reluctant reinstatement in the\napostleship after a long period of bitter ostracism.  Yet who would\nventure to challenge the conduct of Jesus in these respects?  Who would\nnot find his opinion of Jesus tragically lowered, and his adoration\npractically destroyed, if some new and more authentic Gospel were\ndiscovered by which we learned that Jesus smote with leprosy the\nPharisees who resisted Him, as Elisha smote Gehazi: that He sanctioned\nthe stoning of the adultress taken in the act of sin; or that He\nbranded Simon Peter for his perfidy, and drove him out forever from the\napostleship he had disgraced, denouncing him as a son of hell and a\npredestined citizen of the outer darkness?  Could such acts be\nattributed to Jesus, though each act in itself would precisely\nrepresent the common temper of Christian courts and so-called Christian\nmen under circumstances of similar and equal provocation, the worship\nof Jesus would at once cease throughout the world.\n\nThe dilemma is truly tragic.  A Jesus who should be proved to have\nlived according to the conventions we respect, who did not rise above\nconventional ideals of either love or justice, who approved force, and\nresented injuries, who repudiated the friend who had betrayed Him, who\nshunned the contact of persons whose touch dishonoured Him--such a\nJesus would cease to be our Jesus.  He would no longer attract us, He\nwould not touch our hearts, He would barely command our respect.\nAstounding fact!  Those very things in the life of Jesus which we\ndisapprove are the things for which we love Him; and those tempers\nwhich we ourselves disallow are in Him the sources of our adoration.\n\nWe are bound therefore to ask, can that method of conduct be wrong\nwhich has won this triumphant issue?  It may be ironically true that we\nlove Him most for those very acts of His which we are least likely to\nimitate; but is not this our tacit testimony to the essential rightness\nof these acts?  In our better, or our softer moments; or in those\nmoments when we are most conscious of the cruelty of life, and most in\nneed of love, do we not feel, as the life of Jesus grows before us,\nthat this is how life should be lived?  Dare we question that a world\ngoverned wholly by the ideals of Jesus would be a far happier world\nthan this we know?  Love, as the one necessary law of life, clearly\nstands justified in Jesus, since it has produced the most adorable\ncharacter in history.  If we admit this, it is foolish to speak of\nChrist's ideals as impracticable.  What we approve in another's life we\ncannot wholly repudiate in our own.  Let it be added also, that a life\nlived by another is always a life that others can live.  We may seek to\ncover our failure, and the world's failure, to reproduce the life of\nJesus, by the plea of incompetence, but against our plea Jesus records\nHis verdict, \"_Behold I have left you an example_.\"\n\nFrom that verdict there is no appeal.\n\n\n\n\nLOVE AND JUDGMENT\n\n\n\n  _MOTHER AND SON_\n\n  _When, for the last time, from His Mother's home\n    The Son went forth, foreseeing perfectly\n  What doom would happen, and what things would come,\n    Was there upon His lips no stifled sigh\n  For happy hours that should return no more,\n    Long days among the lilies, pure delights\n  Of wanderings by Galilee's fair shore,\n    And converse with His friends on starry nights?\n      Yet brave He stepped into the setting sun\n      With this one word, \"Father, Thy will be done!\"_\n\n  _With a low voice the stooping olive-trees\n    Whispered to Him of His Gethsemane;\n  The cruel thorn-bush, clinging to His knees,\n    Proclaimed, \"I shall be made a crown for Thee!\"\n  And, looking back, His eyes made dim with loss,\n    He saw the lintel of the cottage grow\n  In shape against the sunset, like a cross,\n    And knew He had not very far to go.\n      Yet brave He stepped into the setting sun,\n      Still saying this one word, \"Thy will be done!\"_\n\n  _So, when the last time, from His Mother's home\n    The Son passed out, no choir of angels came,\n  As long before at Bethlehem they had come,\n    To comfort Him upon the road of shame.\n  Alone He went, and stopped a little space,\n    As one overburdened, stopped to look again\n  Upon His Mother's pleading form and face,\n    And wept for her, that she should know this pain.\n      Then, silently, He faced the setting sun\n      And said, \"Oh, Father, let Thy will be done!\"_\n\n\n\nVII\n\nLOVE AND JUDGMENT\n\nJust as Jesus called in the vision of the unseen world to redress the\nbalance of the visible world, when He said that there was more joy in\nheaven over the penitent sinner than over ninety and nine just men who\nneeded no repentance, so in His final addresses to His followers He\nagain discloses the unseen world.  These final addresses deal with the\ntremendous problem of a future judgment.  Over no problem does the\nhuman mind hover with such breathless interest, such unfeigned alarm.\nBut with characteristic perversity the elements in Christ's vision of\nthe judgment on which men have seized most tenaciously, are precisely\nthose elements which are least intelligible, and least capable of\nstrict definition.  It is around the word \"eternal\" and the nature of\nthe punishment suggested, that the theological battles of centuries\nhave centred.  Yet the really central point of both the vision and the\nteaching, is not here at all; and it is only man's habitual love of\nenigma which can explain the passion with which men have opposed one\nanother over the interpretation of words and phrases which must always\nremain enigmatic.\n\nLet us turn to Christ's vision of the Judgment, as recorded by St.\nMatthew, and what do we find?  First that the same Son of Man, whose\nwhole life was an exposition of the law of love, is Himself the final\njudge of men and nations.  \"_The Son of Man shall sit on the throne of\nHis glory, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and He\nshall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the\nsheep from the goats_.\"  No alien judge, observe, unacquainted with the\nnature of man, but one who knows human life so thoroughly that He is\nthe representative man--\"the Son of Man\"; and although He is now the\nJudge, yet He still calls Himself by the tender name of the Shepherd.\nThe tribunal is therefore the tribunal of love, and the court is the\ncourt of love.  He who shall judge mankind is He who judges Peter and\nthe woman who was a sinner, He of whose tenderness and sympathy we have\nassurance in a hundred acts of mercy, pity, and magnanimity.  Yet for\ncenturies the Church has sung its terrible _Dies Irae_, has clothed the\njudgment seat with thunder, has put into the hands of Jesus bolts of\nflame, and has applauded and enthroned in His sanctuaries such\npictorial blasphemies as Michael Angelo's _Last Judgment_, which\nrepresents Jesus as an angry Hercules, and even gratifies the private\nspite of the artist by overwhelming in a sea of fire one who had\noffered him a personal affront.\n\nBlasphemy indeed, and falsehood too; for the second thing we find is\nthat the one principle which governs the entire vision of Jesus is that\nLove judges, and that it is by Love that men are tested.  The men and\nwomen of loving disposition, who have wrought many little acts of\nkindness which were to them so natural and simple that they do not so\nmuch as recollect them, find themselves mysteriously selected for\ninfinite rewards.  The men and women of opposite disposition, in spite\nof all their outward rectitude of behaviour, find themselves numbered\nwith the goats.  A cup of cold water given to a child, a meal bestowed\nupon a beggar, a garment shared with the naked--these things purchase\nheaven.  One who Himself had been thirsty, hungry, and naked, judges\ntheir worth, and He judges by His own remembered need.  It is love\nalone that is divine, love alone that prepares the soul for divine\nfelicity.  With a beautiful unconsciousness of any merit, the people\nwho have lived lovingly plead ignorance of their own lovely acts and\ntempers; but they have been witnessed by the hierarchies of heaven, the\nmorning stars have sung of them, they have made glad the heart of God;\nand the reward of these humble servitors of love now is that having\nadded to the joy of God, henceforth they shall share that joy forever.\n\nNever was there vision at once so exquisite and so surprising.  It is\nlike a child's dream of heaven and judgment, so untouched is it by the\nconventions of the world, so innocent, so daring, so tenderly imagined,\nand so impossibly probable.  Alas, that most of us are too wise to\nunderstand it, and too worldly to receive it.  Yet in nothing that\nJesus uttered is there clearer evidence of deliberation.  And it is of\na piece with all He taught; so much so indeed that without it, His\nteaching would be incomplete.\n\nTruly, we may say, the Heaven of Jesus is a strangely ordered Kingdom;\nfor in it beggars are comforted for apparently no other reason than\nthat they need comfort; the doers of forgotten kindnesses are crowned\nwith sudden splendours of divine approval while the lords of genius and\nthe makers of empire are forgotten; and the very anthems of the blessed\nare hushed into silent wondering and joy when solitary penitents turn\nhomewards from the roads of sin!  But it is not stranger than that\nkingdom in which Jesus lived habitually, the kingdom He created round\nHim in His earthly life.  In that kingdom also love was lord, and she\nwho anointed the tired feet of the Master against His burial was\npromised everlasting remembrance, and she who out of her penury gave\nher mite to the poor was praised as having done more than all the rich,\nwho from their abundance distributed careless and unmissed\nbenefactions.  In all that Jesus says and does the same sequence of\nthought runs clear, the same master principle rules the various result.\nLife is a unity either here or hereafter, and love is, and must\nevermore remain, the one temper that gives significance to life.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE\n\n\n\n  _THE WELL_\n\n  _When Galilee took morning's flame\n  Thro' fields of flowers the Master came.\n  He stopped before a cottage door,\n  And took from humble hands the store\n  Of crumbs that from the table fell,\n  And water from the living well.\n  He smiled, and with a great content\n  Upon the road of flowers went._\n\n  _Foredoomed upon the road of shame\n  With bleeding feet the Master came,\n  And found the cottage door again.\n  \"No wine have we to ease Thy pain,\n  But only water in a cup.\"\n  The Master slowly drank it up.\n  \"Thy kindness turns it into wine,\"\n  He said, \"and makes the gift divine.\"_\n\n  _Upon a day the Master trod\n  The road of stars that leads to God,\n  All tasks for men accomplished.\n  \"They gave Me hate,\" He softly said,\n  \"But Love in larger measure gave,\n  And therefore was I strong to save.\n  I had not reached the Cross that day\n  But for the Well beside the way.\"_\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE\n\nIf these things be true, if the whole tradition of Jesus is an\nexposition of love as the law of life, the deduction is entirely\nsimple, and as logical as it is simple.  That deduction has been\nalready stated.  It is that Christianity is a method of life by which\nmen and women are taught and inspired to love as Jesus loved, and to\nlive loving and lovable lives.  It has little to do with creeds, and\nstill less with formal codes of conduct.  For this reason such a\ndefinition of Christianity will satisfy neither the theologian nor the\nphilosopher.  Jesus never expected that it would.  He knew that the one\nwould regard it as heretical, and the other as so deficient in subtlety\nas to seem foolish.  Therefore He made His appeal to simple and natural\npeople, saying that what was hidden from the wise and prudent, was\nrevealed to babes.\n\nThe simple and natural people understood Jesus; they always do.  The\nsophisticated and artificial people did not understand Him; they never\nwill.  With scarcely an exception the people of intelligence and\nculture regarded Him with disdain, withdrew from Him, or violently\nopposed Him.  The reason for their conduct lay not so much in either\ntheir culture or their intelligence, as in the kind of life that seemed\nto be necessary to them as the expression of their culture.\n\nThus, they were full of prejudices, prepossessions, and foregone\nconclusions, all of which had the sanction of their culture.  It was\nenough for them to know that Jesus came from Nazareth and was\nunlettered; this produced in them violent scorn and antipathy.  They\nwere still further offended because He used none of the shibboleths\nwith which they were familiar.  Nor could they conceive of any life as\nsatisfactory but the kind of life they lived, and that was a life of\nsocial complexity, ruled by conventional usages and maxims, and\nessentially artificial in ideal and practice.  Jesus, therefore, turned\nfrom them to the simple and natural people, fishermen, artisans, and\nhumble women, in whom the natural instincts had fuller play.  His\nreward was immediate; then, and ever since, the Common People heard Him\ngladly.\n\nThe reason why simple and natural people readily understand Jesus is\nthat in the kind of life they live the primal emotions are supreme.\nThe very narrowness of their social outlook intensifies those emotions.\nThey have little to distract them; they are not bewildered by endless\ndisquisitions on conduct, and religion itself is for them an emotion\nrather than a systematized creed.  For the poor man home, children,\nfireside affection, mean more than for the rich man, because they are\nhis only wealth.  This is the lesson which Wordsworth has so nobly\ntaught in his \"_Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_,\"--\n\n  How, by heaven's grace this Clifford's heart was framed,\n  How he, long forced in humble walks to go,\n  Was softened into feeling, soothed and tamed.\n\n  Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;\n  His daily teachers had been woods and rills,\n  The silence that is in the starry sky,\n  The sleep that is among the lonely hills.\n\n\nPeople who live thus, in wise simplicity, undistracted by the numerous\nillusions of an artificial life, have no difficulty in accepting\nChrist's teaching that love is the supreme law of life, because love\nmeans everything to them in the kind of life they lead.  In the wisdom\nof the heart they are more learned than the wisest Pharisee, who is\nrarely \"softened into feeling,\" whose whole social life indeed imposes\na restraint on feeling.  What peasant father would not welcome a\nreturning prodigal, what peasant mother would not open her arms wide to\ngather to her bosom a penitent daughter, recovered from the cruel snare\nof cities?  Certainly one is much more likely to find such acts of pure\nfeeling among peasant folk than among the rich and cultured, for the\npeasant cares less for opinion, is less respectful of social etiquette,\nand follows more closely in his actions the instincts of primal\naffection.  Who has not discovered among poor and humble folk a strange\nand beautiful lenience, the lenience of a great compassion, towards\nthose sins which in more artificial conditions of society are held to\njustify the most violent condemnation, and do indeed close the heart to\npity?  In poor men's huts beside the Sea of Galilee Jesus Himself had\nfound love, love in all its divine daring, lenience, and magnanimity,\nand He knew that among people like these He would be understood.  He\nalso knew that the only people fitted to interpret His doctrine of\nsovereign love to the world were these simple folk of the lake and\nfield, and therefore to them He committed His Gospel, and from them He\nchose His disciples.\n\nIt needed a peasant Christ to teach these things, for no other could\nhave imagined them, no other could have had the daring and simplicity\nto utter them.  A peasant Christ He was, living, thinking, and acting\nas a peasant even in His highest moments of inspiration.  It was\nbecause He always remained a peasant that He was able to see so clearly\nthe defects of that more intricate social system to which His ministry\nintroduced Him.  He brought with Him a new scale of values, which He\nhad learned in the school of a more primal life than could be found in\ncities.  Nature always spoke in Him, convention never.  In His\ntreatment of sin it is always the voice of Nature that we hear\ntriumphing over the verdicts of convention.  The sins which convention\nregards as inexpiable are sins of passion; the sins which it excuses\nare sins of temper, such as greed, malice, craft, unkindness, cruelty.\nJesus entirely reverses the scale.  His pity is reserved for outcasts,\nHis harshest words are addressed to those whom the world calls good.\nFolly He views with infinite compassion--the foolish man is as a lost\nsheep whose very helplessness invokes our pity.  But for the man of\nhard and self-sufficient nature, whose very righteousness is a mixture\nof prudence and egoism, He has only words of flame.  An offense against\nvirtue counts for less with Him than an offense against love.  No\nwonder the Pharisees called Him a blasphemer!  Were the true nature of\nChrist's teaching understood to-day many who profess to revere Him\nwould join in the same accusation.  What more offensive and unpalatable\ntruth could be presented to mankind than this on which Jesus constantly\ninsists, that sins of temper are much more harmful than sins of\npassion, that they spring from a more incurable malignancy of nature,\nthat they produce far wider and more disastrous suffering?\n\nYet the truth is clear enough to all broadly truthful and simple\nnatures, which are not bewildered by conventional views of right and\nwrong.  Who has occasioned more suffering, the youth who has sinned\nagainst himself in wild folly and repented, or the man who has planned\nhis life with that cold craft and deliberate cruelty which sacrifices\neverything to self-advantage?  Can any human mind measure the various\nand almost infinite wrongs committed by the man who piles up through\nyears of sordid avarice an unjust fortune?  Who can count the broken\nhearts in the pathway of that implacable ambition which \"wades through\nslaughter to a throne\"?  These things may not be apparent to the man\nwhose nature is subdued to the hue of that artificial society in which\nhe lives, a society which permits such crimes to pass unquestioned.\nThey are certainly not perceived by the criminals themselves.  To-day,\nas in the day of Christ, they \"devour widows' houses, and for a\npretense make long prayers,\" save, perhaps, that more blind than the\nancient Pharisees, their prayers seem real, and they themselves are\nunconscious of pretense.  Now also, as then, they give their tithes in\nconventional benevolence, forgetting, and hoping to make others forget,\nthe sources of their wealth in their use of it.  How is it that such\nmen are so unconscious of offense?  Simply because they have never\ngrasped Christ's deliberate statement that sins of temper are much\nworse than sins of passion; that cruelty is a worse thing than folly;\nthat the wrong wrought by squandering the substance in a far country is\nmore quickly repaired, and more easily forgiven, than the wrong of\nhoarding one's substance in the avarice which neglects the poor, or\nadding to it by methods which trample the weak and humble in the dust,\nas deserving neither pity nor attention.\n\nYet it needs but a very brief examination of society to prove the truth\nof Christ's contention; very little experience of life to discover that\nthe utmost corruption of the human heart lies in lovelessness.  The\nspiteful and rancorous temper, always seeking occasions of offense; the\njealous spirit which cannot bear the spectacle of another's joy; the\nbitter nagging tongue, darting hither and thither like a serpent's fang\nfull of poison, and diabolically skilled in wounding; the sour and\ngrudging disposition, which seems most contented with itself when it\nhas produced the utmost misery in others; the narrow mind and heart\ndestitute of magnanimity; the cold and egoistic temperament, which\ndemands subservience of others and receives their service without\nthanks, as though the acknowledgment of gratitude were weakness--these\nare common and typical forms of lovelessness, and who can estimate the\nsum of suffering they inflict?  Their fruit is everywhere the same;\nlove repressed, children estranged, the home made intolerable.  It does\nbut add to the offense of these unlovely people that in what the world\ncalls morality they are above reproach, for they instill a hatred of\nmorality itself by their appropriation of it.  Before them love flies\naghast, and the tenderest emotions of the heart fall withered.  Could\nthe annals of human misery be fairly written, it might appear that not\nall the lusts and crimes which are daily blazoned to the eye have\nwrought such wide-spread misery, have inflicted such general\nunhappiness, as these sins of temper, so common in their operation that\nthey pass almost unrebuked, but so wide-spread in their effects that\ntheir havoc is discovered in every feature of our social life.\n\n\n\n\nTHE REVELATIONS OF GRIEF\n\n\n\n  _THE HOUSE OF PRIDE_\n\n  _I lived with Pride; the house was hung\n    With tapestries of rich design.\n  Of many houses, this among\n    Them all was richest, and 'twas mine.\n  But in the chambers burned no fire,\n    Tho' all the furniture was gold,\n  I sickened of fulfilled desire,\n    The House of Pride was very cold._\n\n  _I lived with Knowledge; very high\n    Her house rose on a mountain's side.\n  I watched the stars roll through the sky,\n    I read the scroll of Time flung wide.\n  But in that house, austere and bare,\n    No children played, no laughter clear\n  Was heard, no voice of mirth was there,\n    The House was high but very drear._\n\n  _I lived with Love; all she possest\n    Was but a tent beside a stream.\n  She warmed my cold hands in her breast,\n    She wove around my sleep a dream.\n  And One there was with face divine\n    Who softly came, when day was spent,\n  And turned our water into wine,\n    And made our life a sacrament._\n\n\n\nIX\n\nTHE REVELATIONS OF GRIEF\n\nNevertheless there are occasions in life when these things become\nevident to even the least observant of us.  When we stand beside the\nnewly dead the most intolerable reflection of countless mourners is\nthat their tears fall on quiet lips to which they gave scant caresses,\nin the days of health: their passionate words of love are uttered to\nunhearing ears, which in life waited eagerly for such assurances as\nthese, and waited vainly.  All the purity and beauty of the vanished\nhuman soul is revealed to us now, when it is no longer in our power to\ngladden or delight it with our kindness or our praise.  All the willing\nservice rendered to us by those folded hands and resting feet, which we\nso thanklessly accepted, is seen as a thing dear and precious to us\nnow, when the opportunity of thanks is past forever.  What would we\ngive now if but for one brief hour we might recall our dead just to say\nthe tender things we might have said and did not say, through all those\ndays and years when they were with us,--presences familiar and\naccustomed, moving round us with so soft a tread that we scarce\nregarded them, nor laid on them detaining hands, nor lifted our\npreoccupied and careless eyes to theirs!\n\nFor most of us, alas, it is not Grief and Love alone who conduct us to\nthe chambers of the dead; the sad and silent Angel of Reproach also\nstands beside the bed, and the shadow of his wings falls upon the\nfeatures fixed in their immutable appeal, their pathetic and unwilling\naccusation.  Then it is that veil after veil is lifted from the past,\ntill in the pitiless light we read ourselves with a new understanding\nof our faults.  We see that through some element of hardness in\nourselves which we allowed to grow unchecked; through vain pride, or\nobstinate perversity, or mere thoughtless disregard, we repulsed love\nfrom the dominion of our hearts, and made him the servitor of our\ndesires, but no longer the lord of our behaviour and the spirit of our\nlives.  And now as we gaze on these things across the gulf of the\nirreparable, we see our sin and how it came to pass; how we were unkind\nnot in the things we did but in those we failed to do; how, without\nbeing cruel, our denied response to hearts that craved our tenderness\nbecame a more subtle cruelty than angry word or hasty blow; how with\nevery duty accurately measured and fulfilled, yet love evaporated in\nthe cold and cheerless atmosphere of repression and aloofness with\nwhich we clothed ourselves; and then the significance of Christ's\nteaching comes home to us, for we know too late, that kindness is more\nthan righteousness, and tenderness more than duty, and that to have\nloved with all our hearts is the only fulfilling of the law which\nheaven approves.  None, bowed beside the newly dead, ever regretted\nthat they had loved too well; millions have wept the bitterest tears\nknown to mortals because they loved too little, and wronged by their\npoverty of love the sacred human presences now withdrawn forever from\ntheir vision.\n\nBut there are other and more joyous ways of learning the truth of\nChrist's teaching, ways that are accessible to all of us.  The best and\nmost joyous way of all is to make experiment of it.  Here is a law of\nlife which to the sophisticated mind seems impossible, impracticable,\nand even absurd.  No amount of argument will convince us that we can\nfind in love a sufficient rule of life, or that \"to renounce joy for\nour fellow's sake is joy beyond joy.\"  How are we to be convinced?\nOnly by making the experiment, for we really believe only that which we\npractice.  \"I wish I had your creed, then I would live your life,\" said\na seeker after truth to Pascal, the great French thinker.  \"Live my\nlife, and you will soon have my creed,\" was the swift reply.  The\nsolution of all difficulties of faith lies in Pascal's answer, which is\nafter all but a variant of Christ's greater saying, \"He that willeth to\ndo the will of God, shall know the doctrine.\"  Is not the whole reason\nwhy, for so many of us, the religion of Christ which we profess has so\nlittle in it to content us, simply this, that we have never heartily\nand honestly tried to practice it?  We have accepted Christ's religion\nindeed, as one which upon the whole should be accepted by virtuous men,\nor as one which has sufficient superiorities to certain other forms of\nreligion to turn the scale of our intellectual hesitation, and win from\nus reluctant acquiescence.  But have we accepted it as the only\nauthoritative rule of practice?  Have we ever tried to live one day of\nour life so that it should resemble one of the days of the Son of Man?\nKnowing what He thought and did, and how He felt, have we ever tried to\nthink and act and feel as He did--and if we have not, what wonder that\nour religion, being wholly theoretical, appears to us tainted with\nunreality, a thin-spun web of barren, fragile idealism which leaves us\nquerulous and discontented?\n\nSuch a sense of discontent should be for us, as it really is, the\nsignal of some deep mistake in our conception of religion.  It should\nat least cause us alarm, for what can be more alarming than that we\nshould be haunted with a sense of unreality in religion, yet still\nprofess religion for reasons which leave the heart indifferent and\nbarely serve to satisfy the intellect?  And what can produce a keener\ntorture in a sincere mind than this eternal suspicion of unreality in a\nreligion whose conventional authority is acknowledged and accepted?\n\nI am convinced that these feelings are general among great multitudes\nof the more thoughtful and intelligent adherents of Christianity.\nReligion rests with them upon a certain intellectual acquiescence, or\nupon the equipoise of rational probabilities, or on the compromise of\nintellectual hesitations.  Their tastes are gratified by the normal\nforms of worship, and their sentiments are softly stirred and\nstimulated.  But when the voice of the orator dies upon the porches of\nthe ear, and the music of the Church is silent, and the seduction of\nsplendid ceremonial is forgotten, there remains the uneasy sense that\nbetween all this and the actual Carpenter-Redeemer there is a wide gulf\nfixed; that Jesus scarcely lived and died to produce only such results\nas these; that there must be some other method of interpreting His\nlife, much simpler, much truer, and much more satisfying.  Is it\nwonderful that among such men the current forms of Christianity excite\nno enthusiasm, and that the bonds of their attachment to it are lax and\neasily dissolved?  And what is felt by these men within the Church is\nfelt with much greater strength by multitudes of sincere men outside\nthe Church, who do not hesitate to express their feeling and to\npronounce current Christianity a burlesque and tragic travesty upon the\nreal religion of the Nazarene.\n\nBut the moment we do begin to live, however inefficiently, as Jesus\nlived, the sublime reality of His religion is revealed to us.  We do\nactually find that in the postponement of our own desires for the sake\nof others; in the abandonment of our own apparently legitimate\nambitions for the service of the poor; in the patient endurance of\naffront and injury; in the forgiveness of those whose wrong seems\ninexpiable; in the daily exercise of love that \"seeketh not itself to\nplease,\" but hopeth all things, and believeth all things,--there is a\njoy beyond joy, and an exceeding great reward.  We do actually find\nthat to forgive our brother freely is better both for him and us than\nto judge him harshly, and the wisdom of Jesus is thus justified in its\nmoral and social efficacy.  We do actually find that in ceasing to live\nby worldly maxims and by living instead according to the maxims of\nJesus, we have attained a form of happiness so incredibly sweet and\npure that the world holds nothing that resembles it, and nothing that\nwe would exchange for it.  For this is now our great reward, that peace\nattends our footsteps, and that our hearts are no longer vexed with the\nperturbations of vanity and self-love, of envy and revenge.  We find\nhuman nature answering to our touch even as it answered to the touch of\nJesus, and revealing to us all its best and purest treasure.  We find\nthe very natures we thought intractable and destitute of all affinity\nwith ours, brought near our own; the very men and women we thought\nwholly alien to us suddenly made lovable, and full of qualities that\nclaim our love.  And as we thus humbly follow in the steps of Jesus,\ntrying to live each day as He lived, we know that sublimest joy of\nall--we feel Jesus acting once more through our actions, and we see in\nthe eyes that meet our own the same look that Jesus saw in the eyes of\nthose whom He had cured of misery and redeemed from sin.\n\n\n\n\nA CONFESSION\n\n\n\n  _THE NOBLEST GRACE_\n\n  _'Tis something, when the day draws to its close,\n  To say, \"Tho' I have borne a burdened mind,\n  Have tasted neither pleasure nor repose,\n  Yet this remains--to all men, friends or foes,\n        I have been kind.\"_\n\n  _'Tis something, when I hear Death's awful tread\n  Upon the stair, that his swift eye shall find\n  Upon my heart old wounds that often bled\n  For others, but no heart I injured--\n        I have been kind._\n\n  _Praise will not comfort me when I am dead;\n  Yet should one come, by tenderness inclined,\n  My heart would know if he stooped o'er my bed\n  And kissed my lips for memory, and said\n        \"This man was kind.\"_\n\n  _O Lord, when from Thy throne Thou judgest me,\n  Remember, tho' I was perverse and blind,\n  My heart went out to men in misery,\n  I gave what little store I had to Thee,\n        My life was kind._\n\n\n\nX\n\nA CONFESSION\n\nIn speaking thus I do but speak of those things which have been\nrevealed to me in my own experience.  For many years I preached the\ntruths of Christianity with a real sincerity, but with a fluctuating\nsense of their authority and value.  Sometimes their authority seemed\nsupreme, and then I trod on bright clouds high above the world; at\nother times they appeared to crumble at my touch, and then I walked in\ndarkness.  One thing I saw at intervals, and at last with complete and\nagonized distinctness, that however I preached these truths, they had\nlittle visible effect upon the lives of others.  Those to whom I\npreached lived after all much as other people lived.  I did not find\nthem more magnanimous than the ordinary men and women of the world, nor\nless liable to take offense, to utter harsh words, to indulge in\nresentments, and to retaliate on those who injured them.  I did not\nfind that they loved humanity any better than their fellows; like all\nmankind they loved those who loved them, and had domestic virtues and\naffections, but little more.  It was impossible to say that\nChristianity had produced in them any type of character wholly and\nradically different from that which might be found in multitudes of men\nand women who made no pretense of Christian sentiment.  Christianity\nhad no doubt imposed upon them many valuable restraints, so that\nwithout it they might have been worse men and women, but this was a\nmerely negative result.  Where was the spectacle of a character\ncomposed of new qualities, a life wholly governed by novel impulses and\nprinciples?  I could not find such a life; nor ought I to have been\nsurprised; for I could not find it in myself.  I also lived much as\nother people did, except that I had a higher theory of conduct.  Put to\nthe test, I also showed resentment and was moved with the spirit of\nretaliation towards those who wronged me.  Nor, save as a matter of\ntheory and sentiment, did I love my fellows any better than the average\nof mankind.  I sought those who were congenial to me, and had no\npleasure in the company of the common and the ignorant.  I liked clever\npeople.  I gave them my best, but I had nothing to bestow upon the dull\nand stupid.  How many times have I borne the society of inferior people\nwith ungracious tolerance, and hastened from them with undisguised\nrelief?  How often when dealing with the poor and ignorant in the\nexercise of conventional philanthropy, have I been careful to preserve\nthe sense of a great gulf that yawned between me and them?  And what\nwas my daily life after all but a life existing for its own purposes,\nas most other men's lives were; and what credit could I take for the\nfact that the nature of those purposes was a trifle more consonant with\nwhat the world calls high ideals than theirs?\n\nSo the years went on, and the sense of unreality in my teaching grew\nsteadily more intense and intolerable.  I saw myself continually\nexpending all the forces of my mind on theories which left me and my\nhearers alike unchanged in the essential characteristics of our lives.\nI felt myself, like St. Augustine, but a \"seller of rhetoric.\"  I was\ninculcating a method of life which I myself did not obey, or obeyed\nonly in those respects that caused me neither sacrifice nor\ninconvenience.  In order to continue such labours at all various forms\nof excuse and self-deception were required.  Thus I flattered myself\nthat I was at least maintaining the authority of morals.  I did not\nperceive that morals are of no value to the world until vitalized by\nemotion.  At other times I preached with strenuous zeal the superiority\nof the Christian religion, and dilated on its early triumphs.  This\npleased my hearers, for it always flatters men to find themselves upon\nthe winning side.  What I wonder at now is that they did not perceive\nthat my zeal to prove Christianity true was exactly proportioned to my\nfear that it was false.  Men do not seek to prove that of which they\nare assured.  Jesus never sought to prove the existence of a God\nbecause He was assured of it; He simply asserted and commanded.  In my\nheart of hearts I knew that I was not sure.  But I did not easily\ndiscover the reason of my uncertainty.  I supposed the source to be the\ndestructive criticism of the Gospels which had reduced Jesus Himself to\na probability.  In my private thoughts I argued that it was no longer\npossible to feel the intense reality of Christ.  Francis might feel it,\nCatherine might feel it, because they lived in an atmosphere of poetry,\nunchilled by criticism.  I could never feel as they felt because I\ncould not transport myself into their atmosphere.  Yet as often as I\nturned to these great lives, something thrilled within me, some living\nresponsive fibre, so that I knew that I was not after all quite alien\nto them.  Could it be that there was that in me that made me, or could\nmake me, of their company?  But how could I attain to their faith?\nWhat could give back to a modern man, tortured by a thousand\nperplexities of knowledge of which they never dreamed, the reality of\nChrist which they possessed?  And then the answer came--not suddenly,\nbut as a still small voice slowly growing louder, more positive, more\nintense--_Live the Life_.  Try to do some at least of the things that\nJesus did.  Seek through experience what can never come through\nratiocination.  _Be_ a Francis; then it may be thou shalt think like\nhim, and know Jesus as he knew Him.  Live the life--there is no other\nway.\n\nSimple and far from novel as the answer seems yet it came to me with\nthe authority of a revelation.  It illumined the entire circumference\nof life.  I could no longer hesitate: Jesus had never spoken from the\nSyrian heavens more surely to the heart of Saul of Tarsus than He had\nto me.  And in the moment that He spoke, I also, like Saul, found all\nmy feelings altered, altered incredibly, miraculously, so that I\nscarcely recognized myself.  I no longer stood aloof from men, and\nfound pleasure in intellectual superiority; I was willing to \"become a\nfool for Christ's sake\" if by any means I might save some.  I issued a\ncard of invitation to the services of my Church with this motto of St.\nPaul's upon it, which I now felt was mine.  I had had for years\nfeelings of resentment towards one who I thought had wronged me; those\nfeelings were now dead.  In another case I had been harsh and\nunforgiving under great provocation; but when I met after a long\ninterval of time, the one who had injured me, my heart had only love\nand pity for him.  I sought out the drunkard and the harlot, and, when\nI found them, all repulsion perished in the flow of infinite compassion\nwhich I felt.  I prayed with fallen women, sought them in their\nmiserable abodes, fought with them for their own souls, and O exquisite\nmoment!--I saw the soul awake in them, I saw in their tear-filled eyes\nthe look that Jesus saw in the eyes of Magdalene.  On my last Sabbath\nin London before leaving for America, one of these rescued girls, now\nas pure of look and manner as those most sweetly nurtured, called at my\nhouse to give my daughter a little present bought with the first money\nshe had earned by honest toil in many years.  On the day we sailed\nanother said a special mass for us, and held the day sacred for prayer,\nin the convent where her bruised life had been nursed back to moral\nbeauty.  Love had triumphed in them, and I had brought them that love.\nI had lived the life, I had tried to do something that Jesus did, and\nbehold Jesus had come back to me, and I knew His presence with me even\nas Francis knew it when he washed the leper's sores, and Catherine when\nshe gathered to her bosom the murderer's guilty head, drew from him the\nconfession of his sin, and whispered to him softly of the Lamb of God.\n\nThere is no sense of unreality in religion now for me.  There are no\nweary uncertainties, no melancholy sense of beating the air in what I\nteach.  He who will try to live the life of Jesus for a single day, and\nin such few particulars as may lie within his scope, will at once\nrealize the presence of Jesus with him.  In the practice of love comes\nthe manifestation of the Lover, the drawing of the soul into the bosom\nof that Christ who was the very love of God, and the exchange of our\npoor proud carnal heart for the tender heart that yearned over\nMagdalene, was moved with compassion for the people, and broke upon the\nCross.\n\n\n\n\nA LOVER OF MEN\n\n\n\n  _THE CRADLE CROSS_\n\n  _\"What shall I ask for Thee, my child?\"\n    Said Mary Mother, stooping dawn\n  Above the Babe all undefiled.\n    \"O let Him wear a kingly crown.\"_\n\n  _From wise men's gifts she wrought the crown,\n    The robe inwove with many a gem,\n  Beside the Babe she laid them down.\n    He wept, and would have none of them._\n\n  _\"What shall I get for Thee, my Child?\"\n    Unto the door she slowly went,\n  And wove a crown of thorn-boughs wild,\n    He took it up, and was content._\n\n  _Upon the floor she gathered wood,\n    And made a little Cross for Him;\n  The Child smiled for He understood,\n    And Mary watched with eyes grown dim._\n\n  _\"Since these He doth prefer to gold,\"\n    She sadly said, \"Let it be so;\n  He sees what I cannot behold,\n    He knows what I can never know.\"_\n\n  _That night the eyes of Mary saw\n    A Cross of stars set in the sky,\n  Which after it the heavens did draw,\n    And this to her was God's reply._\n\n\n\nXI\n\nA LOVER OF MEN\n\nWhen I recollect these experiences, and the almost breathless sense of\njoy which accompanied them, I can only marvel that I lived so many\nyears without discovering the path that led to them.  The path was\nquite plain, and nothing concealed it from me but my own pride.  I\ncould even see with distinctness those who trod it, not only the saints\nof far-off days, but men like Father Dolling, and women whose pale\nintense faces met mine from beneath the quaint ugliness of Salvation\nArmy bonnets.  These soldiers of the League of Service moved everywhere\naround me in the incessant processions of a tireless love.  I knew\ntheir works, and there was no hour when my heart did not go out to them\nin sympathy.  Why was it that I was only sympathizer and spectator,\nnever comrade?\n\nPartly through a kind of mischievous humility which was really pride.\nThey could do these things; I could not, nor were they required of me.\nIt needed special gifts for such a work, and I had not these gifts.\nBesides, had I not my own work?  Was it not as important to educate\npersons of some culture and social position in a knowledge of Christian\ntruth as to redeem lost people from the hell of their misdoing?\nCertainly it was easier and pleasanter.  I found in it that most subtle\nof all gratifications, the sense of ability efficiently applied, and\nwinning praise by its exertion.  There was no one who wished me to live\nin any other way than that in which I lived.  Those to whom I\nministered were satisfied with me, and had I told them that I wished to\ndo the sort of things that Salvation Army people did among the slums,\nthey would have been shocked, and would certainly have dissuaded me.\nAnd so to this mischievous humility which assured me that I had no\nfitness for the kind of life which I knew was the life of the saints in\nevery age, there was added the dull pressure of convention.  Why should\nI do what no one expected me to do?  Why could I not be content to\nfulfill the common standard approved by the average conception of\nChristianity?\n\nI can see now how foolish and how wrong these thoughts were.  I saw it\neven then at intervals.  Again and again, like a torturing flash of\nfire, there ran through me illumining agonized dissatisfactions with\nmyself, my work, my whole position.  And again and again I let the\nflame die down, knowing not that the Son of Man had walked amid the\nfire.  Nay more, I deliberately smothered the holy fire, being in part\nfearful of it, and of what its consequence might be, if once it were\nallowed to triumph.  For I knew that if I followed these strange\nimpulses my whole life must be changed, and I did not want it changed.\nI did not want to give up the ease of an assured position, the calm of\nstudious hours, the tasks which flattered my ability.  I did not want\nto face what I knew must happen, the estrangement of old friendships,\nthe rupture of accustomed forms of life.  Besides, I might be wholly\nwrong.  I might have no real fitness for the tasks I contemplated;\nsaints, like poets, were born, not made.  No one who knew me would have\nbelieved me better fitted for any kind of life than that I lived.  I\nhad no friend who did not think my present life adequate and\nsatisfactory, and many envied me for the good fortune that had given me\njust the kind of sphere which seemed best suited to me.\n\nBut now I see, as I look back, that at the root of all my inconsistency\nthere lay this one thing, I was not a lover of my kind.  I did not love\nmen as men, humanity as humanity, as Jesus did.  Of course I loved\nindividuals, and even groups of men and classes of men, who could\nunderstand my thoughts, recognize my qualities, and repay my affection\nwith affection.  But to feel love for men as men; for those whose\nvulgarity distressed me, whose ignorance offended me, whose method of\nlife repelled me; love for the drudge, the helot, the social pariah;\nlove for people who had no beauty that men should desire them, nor any\ngrace of mind or person, nor any quality that kindled interest; love\nfor the dull average, with their painful limitations of mind and ideal,\nthe gray armies of featureless grief, whose very sorrows had nothing\npicturesque in them and no tragic fascination--no, for these I had no\nreal love.  I had a deep commiseration, but it was that kind of\nromantic or aesthetic pity which begins and ends in its own expression.\nI did not know them by actual contact; I could not honestly say that I\nwished to know them.  And then the thought came to me, and grew in me,\nthat Jesus did love these people with an unconquerable passion.  The\nmultitudes to whom He preached were composed, as all multitudes are, of\nquite ordinary immemorable people.  He also, to the eyes of those who\nsaw Him in the peasant garb of Galilee, and judged only by outward\nappearance, was a common man.  And so it would appear that if I did not\nlove men after the fashion in which Jesus loved them, it was very\nunlikely that I should love Jesus Christ Himself if He once more\nappeared in the habit in which men saw Him long ago in Galilee.  A\nJesus, footsore, weary, travel-stained, wearing the raiment of a\nvillage carpenter, speaking with the accent of an unconsidered\nprovince, surrounded by a rabble of rude fishermen, among whom mingled\nmany persons of doubtful character--how should I regard Him?  Should I\ndiscern the Light and Life of men beneath His gray disguise of\ncircumstance?  Should I have left my books, my studious calm, my\npleasant and sufficing tasks, to listen to One who seemed so little\nlikely to instruct me?  Would not the same spirit of disdain which made\nme think lightly and even scornfully of persons whose lives had no\nresemblance to my own, have made me disdainful of the Man of Nazareth?\nI knew the answer and I quailed before it.  I saw that the temper of my\nmind was the temper of the Pharisee, and had I lived two thousand years\nago in Jerusalem or Galilee, I should have rejected Jesus even as the\nscribes and Pharisees rejected Him.\n\nAnd I should have rejected Him for the same reason, because I had no\ntruly generous love of man as man.  I should have been no better able\nto perceive than they that it had pleased God to clothe Himself in the\nflesh of one who united in His own person all those disabilities which\nincur the scorn of those who account themselves superior and\ncultivated, such as lowly and doubtful origin, poverty and the lack of\nliberal education, and methods of life which outraged social use and\ncustom.  Did not Jesus demand for the understanding of Himself\nprecisely that temper which enabled Him to understand others, the\ntemper which discerns the soul beneath all disguise of circumstance?\nHe discerned the splendid and divine beneath the sordid.  He saw\nbeneath the drift of sin the buried magnificence of human nature as men\ndiscover the hidden temple beneath the sand-drift of the desert.  He\nwas able to love all men because all men were to Him living souls.  And\nHis own manifestation to the world was such that only those who had\nthis temper could at all perceive His divine significance.  The\nPharisee could not see that significance simply because he was not\naccustomed to see men as men.  He had no real interest in man as man.\nHe was not a lover of his kind.  Hence, when the Son of Man came out of\nNazareth, the Pharisee was too careless or too supercilious to regard\nHim with interest.  The divine wonder passed him by; all he saw was a\nwandering fanatic with no place to lay His head.  He could not pierce\nthe disguise of circumstance, and bow in love and awe before the soul\nof Jesus because he was not accustomed to discern the soul in common\npeople.  And so there came home to me the awful truth that I was not a\nlover of my kind.  I was even as the Pharisees, and in denying my\nregard and love to the lowliest of men and women I was rejecting Jesus\nChrist.  That which had seemed to me a strange exaggeration or an\nenigmatic sentence, now became a rational principle, a saying that had\nits root in the deep truth and reality of things; inasmuch as I showed\nnot love to the least of these, my fellows, I denied my love to Jesus\nChrist Himself.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LAW OF COMPASSION\n\n\n\n  _THE TRUE MUSIC_\n\n  _Not for the things we sing or say\n    He listens, who beside us stoops;\n  Too worn the feet, too hard the way,\n    Too sore the Cross wherewith He droops,\n      And much too great the need that cries\n      From these bruised eyelids and dim eyes._\n\n  _He waits the water from the spring\n    Of kindness in the human heart,\n  The touch of hands, whose touches bring\n    A coolness to the wounds that smart,\n      The warm tears falling on His feet\n      Than precious ointment much more sweet._\n\n  _O Lord, the way is hard and steep,\n    Help me to walk that way with Thee,\n  To watch with Thee, and not to sleep\n    Heedless of Thy Gethsemane,\n      Till love becomes my worshipping,\n      Who have no other gift to bring._\n\n  _It is no hour for angel-harp,\n    The sky is dark, the Cross is near,\n  The agony of Death is sharp,\n    The scorn of men upbraids Thine ear.\n      Fain would I leave all empty creeds,\n      And make a music of my deeds._\n\n\n\nXII\n\nTHE LAW OF COMPASSION\n\nThus to love our fellow men is a difficult business,--there is none\nharder.  It is so difficult that only a few in any age succeed on so\nconspicuous a scale as to attract prolonged attention.  Yet the secret\nof success is not obscure; it lies in that temper of compassion which\nis the most beautiful of all features in the character of Jesus.  When\nHe looked upon the multitude He was \"moved with compassion\"--never was\nthere more illuminative sentence.  It reveals an attitude of mind\nabsolutely original.  For the general attitude towards the multitude in\nChrist's day was harsh and scornful.  All the splendid intellectualism\nof Greece existed for the favoured few; beneath that glittering edifice\nof art and letters lay the dungeons of the slave.  It was the same with\nRome; it was an empire of privilege, in which the multitude had no\npart.  Jewish society was built after the same pattern, except that\nwith the Pharisee the sense of religious superiority bred a kind of\narrogance much more bitter than that which is the fruit of intellectual\nor social exclusiveness.  With men of this temper the call to love all\nmen as fellows could only provoke anger and derision.  What possible\nrelation could exist between an Athenian philosopher and a helot, a\nRoman noble and a slave, a Pharisee proud of his meticulous knowledge\nof the law, and the common people who were unlettered?  The gulf that\nyawned between such lives was as wide as that which separates the\nscholar, the artist, or the aristocrat of modern Europe from the pale\ntoiler of a New York sweating-room, or the coal carriers of Zanzibar or\nAden.  When Jesus bade the young ruler sell all that he had and give it\nto the poor, He proposed an entirely unthinkable condition of\ndiscipleship.  He bade him discard all the privileges of his order.  He\nproposed instead real comradeship with the poor, He Himself being poor.\nFor two thousand years the pulpit has denounced the young ruler for not\ndoing what no one even now would think of doing--not even those who are\nmost eloquent in denunciation.\n\nWe may waive the question of whether the advice of Jesus to the young\nruler was meant to be of particular or universal application, but we\ncannot ignore the new law of life which Jesus formulated when He made\ncompassion the supreme social virtue.  For it is only through\ncompassion that we learn to understand those who differ from us in\nsocial station or temperament, and can at all come to love them.  Let\nme examine my own natural tendencies, and I am soon made aware of how\nimpossible it is to love _all_ my fellow men.  I commence my life, for\ninstance, under conditions which permit me to see only a small section\nof society, which I imagine to be the world itself.  I know nothing,\nand am told nothing, of those whose lives do not lie in the direct line\nof my limited vision.  The process of education removes me at each\nstage further from the likelihood of knowing them.  I acquire ideals,\nhabits, and manners of which they are destitute.  I come to regard an\nacquaintance with various forms of knowledge as essential to life, and\nI am naturally disdainful of those who do not possess this knowledge.\nIn the same way I regard a certain code of manners as binding, and the\nlack of this code of manners in others as an outrage.  My very thoughts\nhave their own dialect, and I am totally unacquainted with the dialect\nof those whose thoughts differ from my own.  Thus with the growth of my\nculture there is the equal growth of prejudice; with the enjoyment of\nmy privilege, a tacit rejection and repudiation of the unprivileged.\n\nHow then am I ever to find myself in any relation of affection towards\nthese human creatures from whom I am alienated by the nature of my\neducation?  If, by any chance, I come in contact with them, it is\ncertain that they will arouse in me repugnance and perhaps disgust.  I\nshall find them coarse, crude, and ignorant; their methods of speech\nwill grate upon me, their manners will repel me; they will be as truly\nforeign to me as the natives of New Guinea, and their total incapacity\nto share the thoughts which compose my own inner life will be scarcely\nless complete.  It is a truly humiliating thing to admit that\ndifferences of nationality separate men less effectually than disparity\nof manners.  If I am at all fastidious I am more likely to be repelled\nby coarse language, gross habits, or vulgar behaviour in my fellow\nmortal than by all his errors in creed or morals.  So little parts men,\nand is permitted to part them, that it is very likely that some mere\nawkwardness of behaviour in my fellow man may extirpate effectually the\nregard I might have had for him.  How little indeed is permitted to\npart friends--often nothing more than a tone of voice, a word\nmisinterpreted, or something equally slight, the product very possibly\nof shyness, or inability for right expression on a sudden call.  And\nthere is all that goes by the name of antipathy, the nameless and quite\nirrational repulsions which we permit ourselves to cherish, for which\nwe have no better excuse than that they are instinctive.  With all\nthese forces against us how can we love our neighbour as ourselves?  It\nis something if we do not detest him; if we tolerate him it should be\ncounted to us for a virtue.\n\nYet the method by which we may love him is quite simple; it is to\napproach him not with judgment but compassion, to put ourselves in his\nplace, to see his life from his point of view instead of our own.  What\nis his ignorance after all but lack of opportunity?  What are his bad\nmanners but the penalty of a narrow life?  What are these habits of his\nwhich so offend me but things inevitable in that condition of servitude\nwhich he occupies--a servitude, let me recollect, which ministers to my\nease and comfort?  To-day, not less than in earlier generations,\nsociety resembles the palaces of the Italian Renaissance,--the feast of\nlife in the painted hall, and the groaning of the prisoner in the\ndepths below.  For every comfort that I have, some one has sweated.  My\nfire is lit not only with coal from the mine, but with the miner's\nflesh and blood; my food has come through roaring seas in which men\nperished by hurricane and shipwreck; the very books from which I draw\nmy culture are the product not alone of the scholar and the thinker,\nbut of rude unlettered men in forest and at forge who helped to make\nthem by their toil.  If I were as educated as I claim to be I should\nknow myself debtor to the barbarian as truly as to the Greek, and as I\nread my book I should see the forest falling that it might be woven\ninto paper, and men labouring in the heat of factories that the moulded\nmetal might become the organ of intelligence.  Nay, I should see yet\nmore; for would it not appear that these nameless toilers are richer in\nessential life, and in the deep knowledge of what man's existence is,\nthan even the scholar and the writer, whose main acquaintance with life\nis with words rather than acts?  They toil with tense muscles through\nthe summer heat and winter cold; they endure hardship and danger; and\nweek by week their scanty wage is shared by wives and children, who\nexcite in them tenderness and self-sacrifice, and repay them with\naffection and devotion.  For it is so decreed that the sacred\nmagnanimities of the human heart come to flower as fully in lives of\ncrude labour as in lives of ease; these roughened hands grow gentle\nwhen they touch the heads of little children, on these strong breasts\nthe wife rests her weariness, and these lips that speak a language so\ndifferent from mine have nevertheless known the sacramental wine of\nlove.  Were my life weighed with theirs might it not appear that theirs\nwas the richer in essential fortitude, in patience and endurance, in\nall the final qualities that compose the finest manhood?\n\nThe spirit of compassion interprets these lives to me; it lends me\nvision.  It enables me to see them not in their artificial disparities,\nbut in their deep-lying kinship with mine and all other lives.  And the\nsame thing happens when I survey lives stained with folly, wrecked by\nweakness, or made detestable by sin and crime.  I also have known\nfolly, weakness, sin; but for me there were compulsions to a virtuous\nlife which these never knew.  Why am I not as these?  Perhaps because\nmy nature rests on a securer equipoise, or because there is in it a\ncertain power of moral recuperation which these have lacked, or because\nI have the prudence that stops short of consummated folly, or because\nmy environment imposes and creates restraint, or because I have never\nknown the peculiar violence of temptation before which they succumbed.\nThere may be a hundred reasons, but scarce one which gives me cause for\nboasting.  With their life to live, had I done better?  Exposed to\ntheir temptations, deprived of all the helpful friendships that have\ninterposed between my life and ruin, should I have done as well?  In\nthose wakeful hours of night when all my past life runs before me like\na frieze of flame, how clearly do I see how frequently I grazed the\nsnare, hung over gulfs of wild disaster, courted ruin, and escaped I\nknow not how?  Remembering this, can I be hard towards those who fell?\nCan I pride myself on an escape in which my will had little part, a\ndeliverance which was a kind of miracle, wrought not by virtue or\ndiscretion, but by some outside force which thrust out a strong and\nwilling hand to save me?  And, as these thoughts pursue me, I find\nmyself all at once regarding these wrecked and miserable lives not from\nthe outside but the inside.  I penetrate their inmost coil of being,\nand see with horror the crumbling of the house of life--with horror,\nbut also with a torturing pity.  And then because compassion lives in\nme, I can at last separate between the sinner and his sin.  The sin\nremains abhorrent, but I cannot hate the sinner.  I see him as one who\nhas fallen in a bad cause, but his wounds cry so loud for pity that I\nforget the moral treason that has brought him to a battle-field so\nignominious and so disastrous.  And out of the pity grows love, for\nlove is the natural end of pity; and the magnanimity of love,\noverleaping moral values, fixes only on the fact of suffering that\nappeals for succour, misery that cries for help.  This was the vital\nfact that Jesus saw when He had compassion on the multitude.\n\nJesus had compassion on the multitude, and He gives the reason; He saw\nthem as sheep having no shepherd.  It was the element of misdirection\nin their lives on which Jesus fixed His glance--it was for lack of\nguidance and a shepherd they had gone astray.  May not the same be said\nof all the lives that fail, whether through ignorance or want, folly or\ncrime?  Rightly guided they might have attained knowledge and esteem,\nwisdom and virtue; and if that be so, no man of right spirit can refuse\nto feel the pathos of their situation.  It is to this point that Jesus\nleads us.  He makes us conscious of \"the still sad music of humanity.\"\nNo further incentive is needed to make us love humanity than the pathos\nof the human lot.  A man may be a knave, a fool, a rogue; yet could we\nunravel all the secrecies of his disaster we should find so much to\nmove our pity, so much in his life which resembles crises in our own,\nthat in the end the one vision that remains with us is of a wounded\nbrother man.  When once we see that vision all our pride of virtue dies\nin us, and quicker yet to die is the temper of contempt which we have\nnurtured towards those whose faults offend us.  A yet greater offense\nis ours if we can behold suffering, however caused, without pity.\nWorse than the worst crime which man can commit against society, or the\nworst personal wrong he can inflict on us, is the temper in ourselves\nwhich judges him without mercy, and refuses him the one medicine that\nmay reinvigorate him--the balm of pity and forgiveness.  And, after\nall, of what wrong is it not true that the bitterest suffering it\ncreates falls not upon the wronged but the wronger, so that in the end\nthe sinner is the real victim, and like all victims should be the\nobject of compassion rather than of vengeance?\n\n\n\n\nTHE EMPIRE OF LOVE\n\n\n\n  _THE WOMAN WHO WAITED_\n\n  _She wrought warm garments for the poor,\n    From morn to eve unwearied she\n  Went with her gifts from door to door;\n    And when the night drew silently\n  Along the streets, and she came home,\n  She prayed, \"O Lord, when wilt Thou come?\"_\n\n  _She was but loving, she could please\n    With no rare art of speech or song.\n  The art she knew was how to ease\n    The sick man's pain, the weak man's wrong;\n  And every night as she came home\n  She said, \"O Lord, when wilt Thou come?\"_\n\n  _The truths men praised she deemed untrue,\n    The light they hailed to her was dim,\n  But that the Christ was kind she knew,\n    She knew that she must be like Him.\n  Like Mary, in her darkened home,\n  She sighed, \"O Christ, that thou would'st come!\"_\n\n  _Her hair grew white, her house was bare,\n    Yet still her step was firm and glad,\n  The feet of Hunger climbed the stair,\n    For she had given all she had.\n  She died within her empty home\n  Still seeking One who did not come._\n\n  _She rose from out the wave of death,\n    A Stranger stood beside the shore;\n  The robe she wrought with failing breath,\n    And staining tears, the Stranger wore.\n  He drew her tired heart with His smile,\n  \"Lo, I was with thee all the while.\"_\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nTHE EMPIRE OF LOVE\n\nBut if this spirit of compassion were general, would virtue itself be\nsecure?  Would not a fatal lenience towards vice become the temper of\nsociety?  Would not the immediate effect be the declaration of a\ngeneral amnesty towards every kind of wrong-doer, and from such an act\nwhat could be expected but a rapid dissolution of the laws and\nconventions that maintain the structure of society?\n\nThese are natural fears, and they are not altogether the fears of weak\nand timid men.  They will certainly be shared by all tyrants, all\npersons whose tempers incline to absolutism, all believers in force as\nthe true dynamic of stable social government.  To reason with such\npersons is impossible, because their opinions are the fruit of temper,\nand are therefore irrational.  But even such persons are not destitute\nof powers of observation, and in the long history of the world there is\na field of observation which no person of intelligence can neglect.\n\nDo we find, as we survey this field, that force has ever proved the\ntrue dynamic of stable social government?  We find the exact contrary\nto be true.  The great empires of the past were founded on force and\nperished, even as Napoleon discovered in his final reveries on human\nhistory.  Whenever force has been applied to maintain what seemed a\nright social system it has uniformly failed.  The Church of Rome\napplied force to produce a world consonant with her ideas of truth; she\nwas all but destroyed by the recoil of her prolonged persecutions.  The\nPuritans were persecuted in the name of truth and virtue; they\ntriumphed.  The Puritans in turn persecuted, under the impulse of\nideals that an impartial judgment must pronounce among the loftiest and\nnoblest that ever animated human hearts, and in turn they were\noverthrown.  Again and again, when crime has attained monstrous and\nthreatening proportions, laws of barbarous severity have been applied\nfor its repression; in not one solitary instance have they been\nsuccessful.  The more barbarous and severe the law against crime, the\nmore has crime flourished.  When men were hanged for petty theft, when\nthey were whipped at the cart's tail for seditious language, when they\nwere disembowelled for treasonable practices; theft, sedition, and\ntreason flourished as they have never flourished since.  The very\ndisproportion and hideousness of the penalty inflamed men's minds to\nthe commission of wrong.  On the contrary, the birth of lenience and\nhumanity was immediately rewarded by a decline of crime.  These are\nlessons which we do well to recollect to-day when statesmen advocate\nthe death penalty for the anarchist, irrespective of his exact crime;\nwhen city councils propose the same penalty for those guilty of\noutrages on women; when indignant mobs, in spite of law, and without\ntrial, burn at the stake offending negroes.  If history teaches\nanything with an emphasis at once clear and unmistakable, it is that\ncrime has never yet been abridged by brutal harshness, but has thriven\non it.  History also teaches with an emphasis equally clear and\npositive, that the spirit of love, manifesting itself in lenience,\ncompassion, and magnanimity, has constantly justified itself by the\nreduction of crime, and the taming of the worst kind of criminal.\n\nIs not this in itself a justification of the spirit of Jesus?  Does it\nnot appear, on the review of nearly two thousand years of history, that\nsociety has attained its greatest happiness and has reached its highest\ncondition of virtue, precisely in those periods when the gentle ideals\nof Jesus have had most sway over human thought and action?  And if this\nbe so, is it possible to doubt that society will only continue to\nprogress towards happiness and content in the degree that it obeys the\ncounsels of Jesus, making not force but love the great social dynamic,\nwhich shall control all its operations and guide all its judgments?\n\nIt may appear impossible and inexpedient for the human judge to say to\nthe offender, \"Neither do I condemn thee; go, sin no more\"; but it is\nvery clear that the opposite course does by no means lead to a\ncessation of sin.  For what is the total result of all our punishments\nin the name of law but the manufacture of criminals?  According to our\ntheory of punishment a jail should be a seminary of virtue and\nreformation.  Men submitted to its discipline should come out new\ncreatures, cured of every tendency to crime.  On the contrary, in nine\ncases out of ten, they come out a thousandfold worse than they went in.\nIf this is not the case, it is because some Christian influence, not\nincluded in our legal system, has reached them.  But such influences\nreach very few.  The influences that operate in the great majority of\ncases are wholly demoralizing.  Those who enter a jail with genuine\nintentions of reform speedily discover that they are not expected to\nreform.  They are branded indelibly.  They are exposed to the\ncorruption of associates a hundredfold worse than themselves.  They\nleave the jail with every avenue of honest industry closed to them,\nevery man's hand against them, and no career possible to them but a\nlife of crime.  When we consider these things we have little cause to\ncongratulate ourselves upon the results of our systems of justice.\nEven a general amnesty towards every form of crime could scarcely\nproduce results more deplorable.  Fantastic as it may appear, yet it\nseems not improbable that the abolition of the jail and of all penal\nlaw, might produce benefits for humanity such as centuries of\npunishment on crime have wholly failed to produce.\n\nBut no one asks this at present, though the day may come sooner than we\nthink, when society, tired of the long failure and absolute futility of\nall its attempts to cleanse the world of crime by penal enactments,\nwill make this demand.  It is enough now if we press the question\nwhether there is not good ground in all this dreary history of futility\nand failure, to make some attempt to govern society by the ideals of\nJesus?  Why should not the Church replace the jail?  Why should not the\noffender be handed over to a company of Christian people, instead of a\ncompany of jailers, paid to be harsh, and by the very nature of their\noccupation trained to harsh tempers and cruel acts?  Who are better\nfitted for the custody of the criminal than people whose lives are\nbased on the merciful ideals of Jesus?  How could such persons be\nbetter employed than in devoting themselves to the restoration of\nself-respect in the fallen, than in the attempt to nurture into vigour\nhis bruised or dormant instincts of right, than in the organized effort\nto restore him to some place in society which should give him honest\nbread in return for honest labour?  Few men are criminals by choice.\nCrime is more often the fruit of weakness than intention.  Almost every\ncriminal would prefer an honourable life if he knew how to set about\nit.  Can we doubt that if Jesus presided in the councils of His Church\nto-day, this would be one of the first directions in which He would\napply His energy?  And who that surveys the modern Church with\nundeflected judgment would not say that the Church would be a thousand\ntimes dearer to the world, a thousand times more sacred, respected, and\nauthoritative, if instead of spending its time in spiritual\nself-gratification, and its riches in the adornment of its worship, it\nbecame the true Hospice of the Fallen and Unfortunate, thus\nexemplifying in its action that love for men which was the essential\nspirit of its Founder?\n\nIt will no doubt be replied that the Church already, by a thousand\ninstitutions, of a philanthropic character, is attempting this very\nwork.  But this is an evasion of the point, for such institutions only\nbegin their work of redemption when the existing social systems have\naccomplished their work of destruction.  Moreover, no institution,\nhowever admirable, can be a substitute for the general action of the\nChurch.  It is precisely this practice of substitution that accounts\nfor so much of the weakness of the Church.  It is so much more easy and\npleasant to devolve upon others duties which to us are disagreeable, to\nbuy ourselves out of the conscription of personal duty, to persuade\nourselves that we have done all that can be asked of us when we have\ngiven money for some worthy end, that it is not surprising that\nmultitudes of excellent and kindly people adopt such views and\npractices.  But, in doing so, they miss not only the joy of personal\nwell-doing, but also the sense of reality in the good that is done.\nAnd the spectator and critic of the life of the Church, although he may\nnot be ignorant of the kind of work done by these institutions,\nnevertheless is keenly conscious of the lack of reality in the work of\nthe Church, when he finds that its individual members are leading lives\nin no way distinguishable by any active love for their fellows.  For\nthe main reason why thoughtful men manifest aversion to the Church is\nnot found in dislike for her worship, or rejection of her creeds; it is\nfound rather in the sense of unreality in her life.  Who, such men will\nask, among all this multitude of well-dressed worshippers, offering\ntheir adoration to the Deity, visits the fatherless and widow in their\naffliction, lays restraining hands upon the tempted, uplifts the fallen\nor instructs the depraved, and so fulfills the true ideal of religion\npure and undefiled?  What is the exact nature of their impact upon\nsociety?  Are they more merciful, more compassionate, more sympathetic\nthan average mankind?  Do they not share the same social prejudices,\nand guide their lives by the same social traditions as the bulk of men\nand women?  And if nothing more than this can be predicated of them,\nhow is it possible to avoid that impression of essential unreality\nwhich is inseparable from the subscription to social ideals infinitely\nloftier and purer than any others in human history, united with lives\nwhich in no way rise above the average?  Here is the true reason why\nthoughtful men think lightly, and even scornfully of the Church.  It is\nnot the truths and ideals of Jesus that offend them, but the travesty\nof those truths and ideals in the average life of Christians.\n\nBut whenever any man attempts to live in the spirit of Jesus, the first\nto rally to him are the sincere recusants from the church.  He may be\nsatirised, and probably will be, as a moral anarchist, a fanatic, and a\nhare-brained enthusiast; but nevertheless the best men will rally to\nhim.  They rallied to a Father Dolling, they rally to a General Booth.\nThe types represented by such men lie far apart.  One was so high a\nritualist as to be almost Catholic, the other is an ecclesiastic\nanarchist so extreme that he dispenses with the sacraments.  But these\nthings count for little; what the world sees in such men is the\nessential reality of their life.  One of the severest critics of\nDolling once went to hear him with the bitterest prejudice.  He found\nhim with a couple of hundred thieves and prostitutes gathered round\nhim, to whom he was telling the love of Jesus in the simplest language.\n\"Dolling may be a Roman Catholic, or anything else he pleases,\" said\nhis critic; \"all I know is that I never heard any one speak of Christ\nlike that,\" and from that hour he was his warmest friend.  No doubt\nsimilar conversions of sentiment have attended the ministries of all\napostolic men and women, of Francis and Catherine, of Wesley and\nWhitfield, of Moody and General Booth.  Men know by instinct the lover\nof his kind.  Men forgive a hundred defects for the sake of reality.\nPerhaps the sublimest of all justifications of Christ's law of love is\nthat no man has truly practiced it in any age without himself rising\ninto a life of memorable significance, without immediate attestations\nof its virtue in the transformation of society, without attracting to\nhimself the reverence and affection of multitudes of fellow workers who\nhave rendered him the same adoring discipleship that the friends of\nJesus gave to Him.\n\nNo doubt it will also be said that were the ideals thus indicated to\ntriumph, there would be nothing left for the direction of society but a\nmischievous and sentimental spirit of amiability.  The general fibre of\nvirtue would disintegrate.  Pity for the sinner, pushed to such\nextremes, would in the end mean tolerance for sin.  But to such an\nobjection the character of Jesus furnishes its own reply.  The\ncharacter of Jesus displays love in its supreme type, but it is wholly\nlacking in that weak-featured travesty of love which we call\namiability.  His hatred of sin was at times a furious rage.  His lips\nbreathed flame as well as tenderness; \"Out of His mouth proceeded a\nsharp two-edged sword.\"  We may search literature in vain to discover\nany words half as terrible and scathing as the words in which Jesus\ndescribed sin.  The psychological explanation is that great powers of\nlove are twin with great powers of hatred.  The passionate love of\nvirtue is, in its obverse, an equally passionate hatred of vice.  In\nthe same way the passionate love of our kind has for its obverse an\nequally passionate hatred for the wrongs they endure.  For this reason\njustice and virtue are nowhere so secure as in the hands of men who\nlove their kind intensely.  They are most insecure in the hands of the\ncynic, who despises his kind, and therefore misapprehends their\nconduct.  For love, in its last analysis, is understanding, and where\nthere is understanding of our fellows there can hardly fail to be\nwisdom in our method of treating them.  That was the great secret of\nJesus in these examples which we have reviewed.  He understood Simon\nPeter.  He understood the woman who was a sinner.  He therefore knew\nthe only wise method of treating them.  One with less pity might have\nsent the harlot back to her shame, one with less love might have driven\nPeter into permanent apostasy.  But Jesus, in His understanding of the\nhuman heart, knew the exact limit of reproof, the exact point at which\nmagnanimity became efficacious in redemption.  Those who follow His\nspirit will attain the same rare wisdom.  They will never sacrifice\nvirtue to compassion, nor will they put virtue in opposition to\ncompassion.  One question may suffice.  Would we be content to leave\nthe administration of society in the hands of Jesus?  Would we\nconfidently submit our own case to His jurisdiction?  If, in every\ndispute between men and nations, in every case of wrong and crime,\nJesus were the one Arbiter, would the world be better ruled, would the\nprobable course of events be such as to increase the sum of human\nhappiness?  We can scarcely hesitate in the reply--we, who daily pray\nthat His kingdom may come.  And if to such questions we return our\ninevitable affirmative, we cannot doubt that society has everything to\ngain in being governed by those who live most closely in the spirit of\nJesus; that they, and they only, are the true leaders and judges of the\nnations.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE\n\n\n\n  _THE PRAYER_\n\n  _Lover of souls, indeed,\n    But Lover of bodies too,\n  Seeing in human flesh\n    The God shine through;\n  Hallowed be Thy name,\n    And, for the sake of Thee,\n  Hallowed be all men,\n    For Thine they be._\n\n  _Doer of deeds divine,\n    Thou, the Father's Son,\n  In all Thy children may\n    Thy will be done,\n  Till each works miracles\n    On poor and sick and blind,\n  Learning from Thee the art\n    Of being kind._\n\n  _For Thine is the glory of love,\n    And Thine the tender power,\n  Touching the barren heart\n    To leaf and flower,\n  Till not the lilies alone,\n    Beneath Thy gentle feet,\n  But human lives for Thee\n    Grow white and sweet._\n\n  _And Thine shall the Kingdom be,\n    Thou Lord of Love and Pain,\n  Conqueror over death\n    By being slain.\n  And we, with the lives like Thine\n    Shall cry in the great day when\n  Thou earnest to claim Thine own,\n    \"All Hail!  Amen.\"_\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nTHE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE\n\nIt may be long before the world recognizes this leadership of the\nloving, and accepts their judgment, but nevertheless the world is\ndebtor to them for all that sweetens life, and makes society tolerable.\nSuch men and women move unrecognized, doing their kindly work without\npraise, and not so much as asking praise from men; but theirs is a\nsecurer triumph than earth can give, and on their brows rests a rarer\ncrown than earthly monarchs wear.  I know many of these men and women,\nand I never meet them without the sense that the seamless robe of\nChrist has touched me.  I meet them in unlikely places; I overtake them\non the road of life, oftenest in the places where the shadows lie most\nthickly; but on each brow is the white stone which is the sign of\npeace, and in each voice is that deep note of harmony that belongs\nalone to those who walk through tribulations which they overcome,\ngriefs of which they know the meaning, sorrows which they have the\nskill to heal.  Their very footsteps move more evenly than other men's,\nas though guided by the rhythm of a music others do not hear; their\nvery hands have a softness only known to hands that bind up wounds and\nwipe men's tears away; and in all their movements and their aspect is a\nstillness and a sweet composure, as of hearts at rest.  Whence are\nthese, and why are they arrayed in white robes?  And we know the\nanswer, though no angel-voice may speak to us; these are they on whose\nbowed heads the starlight of Gethsemane has fallen, in whose hands are\nthe wounds of service, in whose breasts is the heart that breaks with\nlove for men.\n\nOne such man I met some months ago, fresh from the forests of\nWisconsin.  Through a long spring day he told me his story, or rather\nlet me draw it from him episode by episode, for he was much too modest\nto suppose anything that he had done remarkable.  After wild and\ncareless years of wasted youth, Christ had found him, and from the day\nof his regeneration he gave himself to the redemption of his fellow\nmen.  He became a \"lumber-jack,\" a preacher to the rough sons of the\nWisconsin forests.  He told me how he first won their respect by\nsharing their toil--he, a fragile slip of a man, and they giants in\nthew and muscle: how by tact and kindness he got a hearing for his\nMaster; how he travelled scores of miles through the winter snows to\nnurse dying men, wrecked by wild excesses; how he had sat for hours\ntogether with the heads of drunken men, on whom the terror had fallen,\nresting on his knees, performing for them offices of help which no\nother would attempt; how he had heard the confessions of thieves and\nmurderers, who had fled from justice to the refuge of the forest; how\nhe had stood pale, and apprehensive of violence in an angry drunken\nmob, and had quelled their rage by singing to them \"Anywhere with\nJesus\"; how, finally, he had fallen ill, and had hoped in his extreme\nweariness for the great release, but had come back from the gates of\ndeath with a new hope for the success of his work; and as he spoke,\nthat light which fell upon the face of the dying Stephen rested also on\nhis face; for he also saw, and made me see, the heavens opened, and\nJesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God.  He was only a\nlumber-jack, but to these men he was a Christ.  He was poor, so poor,\nthat I marvelled how he lived; but he had adopted into his home the\nforsaken child of a drunken lumberman, whose wife was dead.  His life\nwas full of hardship, but never have I met a happier man.  For he had\nfound the one secret of all noble and tranquil living, the life of\nservice; and as I grasped his hand at parting and remembered how often\nit had rested in healing sympathy upon the evil and the weary, I\nthought of the words of the blessed Master, \"He laid His hands upon\nher, and the fever left her, and she rose and ministered unto Him.\"\n\nAnother man of the same order I have talked with as these concluding\nlines were written.  He had begun life with brilliant prospects as a\nlawyer, had been wrecked by drink, and one night while drunk had fallen\noverboard into deep water, and had with difficulty been brought back to\nlife.  From that hour his life was changed.  He went to a Western city\nand became a missionary to drunkards and harlots.  He told me of a\nyouth of nineteen he had recently visited in prison.  The youth was a\nmurderer, and the woman he had loved had committed suicide.  He was\nutterly impervious to reproof, did not want to live, and said that if\nhis mistress had gone to hell he wanted to go there too, for she was\nthe only human creature who had ever loved him.  \"God loves you,\" said\nmy friend; \"yes, and I love you too.  I know how you feel.  You want\njust to be loved.  Come, my poor boy, let me love you.\"  And at that\nappeal this youth, with triple murder on his conscience, melted, and\nflung his arms round the neck of his visitor, and sobbed out all the\nstory of his sin and shame.  O exquisite moment when the heart melts at\nthe touch of love--could all the heaped-up gains of a life of pleasure\nor ambition yield such felicity as this?  For this man's face, rough\nand plain as it was, glowed as he spoke with the same light that\nbeatified the features of my friend the lumber-jack--\"the Lord God gave\nthem light,\" and the Lamb upon the throne was the light of all their\nseeing.\n\nA little while ago to this man came the offer of restoration to the\nsocial place which he has lost.  He might have gone back to his\nforfeited career, with an ample income.  He put the case to his wife\nand to his boys; with instant unanimity they said, \"Never; this work is\nthe best work in the world.\"  And so the once brilliant lawyer is happy\non a pittance, happier than he ever could be on a fortune, because he\nis doing Christ's work of love among his fellow men.  And these\ninstances are typical.  In every corner of the world are those who\nbelong to the true Society of Jesus--the Order of Love and\nService,--and the happiest lives lived on earth are lived by these men\nand women.  For Jesus will not suffer any man to be the loser by Him;\nHe overpays those who truly follow Him with a happiness that worlds\ncould not buy; and \"even in the present time,\" so enriches with the\nlove of others those who love, that they are unconscious of any\ndeprivation in their lot, knowing in all things, amid poverty, insult,\nviolence, hardship and pain, that their gain exceeds their loss by\nmeasureless infinitudes of joy.\n\nWe may be neither wise nor great, but we may be loving, and he who\nloves is already \"born of God, and knoweth God, for God is love.\"  We\nmay have but a poor understanding of conflicting theologies and\nphilosophies, and may even find our minds hostile to accepted creeds;\nbut we can live lives of pitiful and serviceable love.  He who does\nthese things is the true Christian and no other is.  Against the man\nwho loves his fellows Heaven cannot close its doors, for He who reigns\nin Heaven is the Lover of men, and the greatest Lover of them all.  We\nknow now why He is loved as no other has been loved.  We know now what\nHis religion truly is; it is the religion of Love.  To accept this\nreligion requires in us but one quality, the heart of the little child\nwhich retains the freshness and obeys the authority of the emotions;\nbut unless we become as little children we cannot enter this kingdom.\nThis is the condition of entrance, and the method is equally simple.\nIt is to follow Jesus in all our acts and thoughts, to allow no temper\nthat we do not find in Him, to build our lives upon His ideals of love\nand justice, remembering always that He is more than the Truth,--He is\nthe Way in which men may confidently tread, and the Life which they may\nshare.\n\nAll things in the intellectual and social life of men move, as by a\nfixed law, towards simplification.  May we not hope that this same\ntendency may permeate the universal Church of Christ, dissolving the\naccretions of mistaken and conventional piety, combining the vital\nelements into a new synthesis, at once simple and convincing,--the new\nwhich is the oldest and the earliest,--that the Church is the organ of\nthe Divine Love, and that love alone is the Christian equivalent of\nreligion?\n\nMay we not even anticipate that the visible decay of many symbols that\nonce were authoritative, of many forms of creed that are now barely\ntolerated rather than respected, may work towards this issue; that\ngradually the test of service will supplant the test of intellectual\nbelief, and that a new Church will arise founded not on creed at all,\nbut on a real imitation of the life of Jesus?  If this should happen we\nneed not regret the dissolution of the forms of religious life which is\nso evident to-day, for though the older kingdom be shaken, we shall\narrive in God's time at the better kingdom which cannot be shaken.\n\nWhen the Church does manifestly become the organ of the Divine Love,\nvisibly creating a type of loving and lovable men and women found\nnowhere else, whose lives are as lamps borne before the feet of the\nweary and the lost, then the world, now hostile or indifferent to the\nChurch, will love the Church even as by instinct it loves the Christ.\nSuch lives have been lived, and they are, even to those who have the\nleast instinct for religion, the most sacred memories of history, and\nthe most inspiring.  Such lives may still be lived by all who love the\nLord Christ Jesus in sincerity.","title":"The Empire of Love","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":24410}