the other millions of His children before Jesus’ time, the same as in connection with large numbers to-day who cannot possibly ever even hear of Jesus. Can any sensible man or woman really believe this? No, the same everlasting truth that saves was in the world long before his time, and from the beginning of time.n7339 ¶1
But here came one with an almost supreme aptitude for the things of the Spirit, and because he struck so directly at this greatest of all truths, the supreme fact of human life, he has become the most influential teacher and leader of men in all history, and his name has become the greatest.n7339 ¶2
He was known as Jesus, a common name in his time, the same as it is even to-day in some countries. It was not until he was well along in his ministry that he was known as Jesus the Christ. This he became through his wonderful aptitude for the things of the Spirit—and dedicating his life so completely to them, with the wonderful results that inevitably followed. Then by this clear-cut knowledge of the way to God, and by his pointing out to other men the way, he became the Saviour. “Before Abraham was, I am,” said he, thereby teaching in still another way that the Christ state—oneness with the life of God—was the saving and vitalising principle. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it and was glad,” said he at the same time.n7339 ¶3
ee!n7339 ¶4
7 men7339 ¶5
The Church undoubtedly got stranded on the Jesus part, and thereby lost, or completely missed, the Christ part. Or was it that his teaching was so simple that they failed to grasp it on account of this very element of simplicity? “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” aon7339 ¶6
When any theory or system becomes institutionalised, then, there is always a very great tendency in human nature to bring in additional things, to invent, to romance, to make more complex, and to mystify, in order that there seem to be enough to hold the people, in order, in turn, that the institution may grow or even hold its own.n7339 ¶7
This has occurred time and again in the world’s history. It is the great danger of institutions and organisations. Invariably the time comes when the spirit departs from them and the empty shell remains. Then people begin to feed on husks, missing thereby the life-giving grain. They think the vehicle is the thing— the end—when it is simply a means to an end. It is this condition that Jesus spoke so profoundly against. He would unquestionably speak as profoundly against the same condition were he among us to-day.n7339 ¶8
If you get comfort out of the personal Jesus, if you get any help and comfort from water, or from public confession, from Communion, or from anything else, by all means get it. All these things will do you good if done in the right spirit. If done in the right spirit they certainly can do no one any harm. But don’t mistake any of these things for the life and the teachings of Jesus. It is the spirit of the living God, the Christ consciousness within, that saves and redeems and that guides men in the true religious life.n7339 ¶9
The redemption of man takes place when the spirit of God takes possession of his mind and heart, and permeates his daily life to the minutest detail. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God.” Such was the life and such was the teaching of Jesus.n7339 ¶10
The one who has this consciousness of God in his soul, this essence of religion in his mind and heart and life, can well afford to let it how down through and be the complete guide of his life, with the goodly train of results that will inevitably follow. He can then well afford to turn his back squarely on the various theologi. cal problems and theories and discussions that no man knows anything about anyway. While others are speculating and theorising, and in some cases even dogmatising in regard to the various problems of life—the doctrine—he is living the life, and thereby making it possible for him to know the doctrine.n7339 ¶11
Were Jesus here with us now, it would be exactly the same as before—the Fatherhood of God, hence the Sonship, and resulting necessarily from this, the Brotherhood of Man.n7339 ¶12
One day—when we have chronicled for us one of the most powerful and significant and eloquent teaching days of his life—both the Sadducees and the Pharisees were questioning him and endeavouring to trip him in connection with some of the established doctrines of the time, and one of them, who we are told was a lawyer, “asked him a question, tempting him and saying: Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Here is an epitome of Christianity and of all religion.n7339 ¶13
Religion can be not only not divorced from life, but it cannot be divorced from every thought and act and detail of every day, hour, and moment of life. Itis the guiding principle, the guiding, permeating force, and not something that can ever be apart from every-day life. As Henry Drummond has said: “To conceive of the Christian religion as itself a thing —a something which can exist apart from life;n7339 ¶14
to think of it as something added on to being, something kept in a separate compartment called the soul, as an extra accomplishment like music, or a special talent like art, is totally to misapprehend its nature. It is that which fills all compartments. It is that which makes the whole life music and every separate action a work of art.”n7339 ¶15
There is no such thing as religion and a man’s cheating his neighbour in the same life. There is no such thing as religion and a man’s gaining anything for himself at the expense of his neighbour or his fellow-men in general. There is no such thing in true religion as a Deacon or an Elder passing the collection plate, or the communion plate, or taking part in any way in the administration of affairs in the House of God on Sunday, and going out and doing his neighbour on Monday.n7339 ¶16
It is a curious or rather an interesting thing that the only people whom Jesus had anything to say against, the only ones whom he ever denounced, were those who observed the outward forms of the established religion of his time, but did their neighbours whenever they had the opportunity, some even chronically. Those who oppressed, those who took advantage, those who were always looking to their own personal, social, or financial interests and gain alone, he denounced in the most scathing terms as hypocrites and vipers, those who “bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men.”n7339 ¶17
“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to goin. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation . . . Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also . . . Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”n7339 ¶18
It is very easy and very common for us to be either hypocrites or thoroughly self-deluded, also in our day. Are there tests then for religion, and especially, we will say, for the Christian religion? The corporation officer who through misrepresentation as to its hold- _ ings, the value of stocks, or who seeks the company’s gain through the debauching of public officials, thereby stealing his neighbour’s rights, or who by underhanded, stealthy means undermines or blocks his competitor’s business, and who is a church member, or who professes to be anything but the crook and the oppressor that he is, would fall in the same category that Jesus made mention of. The stockholder or shareholder—man or woman—who professes to be a Christian, and who buys, or still continues to hold stock in a corporation that has any of these features in its management, belongs to this same class.n7339 ¶19
The merchant—the “princely merchant”— or the ordinary tradesman, grocer, marketman, or whatever he may be, who knowingly gives short weight, or stale or inferior or damaged goods, belongs to it. The merchant who advertises a special reduction sale (wearing apparel or household furniture or whatever it may be) of articles that were formerly thirty-five, and “some as high as a fifty dollar value,” at twenty-five dollars, and who puts in two hundred of the thirty-fives and either one or two of the fifties, with a very generous sprinkling of the regular twenty-fives, and some of the twenties, writes himself in the same class. O bargain! How many lies have been told, and how many thefts have been committed in thy name! How skillfully thou hast been written upon! How many lambs—chiefly ewe lambs— have been shorn! how Many geese—both geese and ganders—have been plucked in thy name! And thou retainest thy fascination still!n7339 ¶20
The worker in whatever field who gives inferior, half-hearted, dilatory service, or who gives seven hours for eight, or eight hours for nine, in return for a good full wage; or who is careless of the property, the effects, and the rights of those for whom he works, or who is always trying to get a higher wage without a corresponding return of services rendered, is of this class.n7339 ¶21
The man of great wealth, intent upon nothing but continually increasing it, and who doesn’t lift his hand for the aid of the young struggling for an education for advancement in life, or for the alleviation of distress when there is a crying need for help on the part of the needy and helpless; when, for example, the lives of hundreds of babies and children could be saved during the stifling heated term of the year through the agency of pure, clean and rightly cared for milk, or when ice would be a godsend and would help them or others through this portion of the year, or who shuts | his mind and heart when thousands are suffering from cold and some literally freezing for lack of fuel in an intensely cold winter, is of this class.n7339 ¶22
The one who thinks that religion has nothing to do with matters of government, or with the administration of affairs of government whereby every man, woman and child is affected for better or for worse, and through whose indifference gangs of schemers and freebooters who use politics as a cloak for thievery, whether it take the form of a Tammany Hall organisation in New York or the form of a band of political thugs and looters of another political party, in cities where its machine in turn is dominant, is of this class. This is true whether he belong to the class that we term the “average citizen,” through whose inattention to matters of government the political corruption and political abuses that are among us are primarily due, or the man of wealth who has both the ability and the means to investigate and to lead battle against these evils.n7339 ¶23