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THE

CHARACTER OF JESUS

BY

CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON
PASTOR OF BROADWAY TABERNACLE
NEW YORK CITY

•s*;o

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Third Thousand.

Copyright, 190S,
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO,

PublishedvSeptember, 1908.

PREFACE
The following discourses were delivered in the
Broadway Tabernacle on the Sunday evenings
between January first and Easter of the winters of
1907 and 1908, twelve of them in the former year
and fourteen of them in the latter. They are simple
studies in the character of Jesus, the twofold purpose
of the preacher being to incite professing Christians
to a deeper devotion to their Master, and to awa
ken in non-Christians a desire to know more of the
founder of the Christian church, and to persuade
them to become his followers. The congregations
were composed largely of young men, not a few of
them being students. It is in response to numerous
requests of these young men that the sermons are
now published. No preacher speaks entirely as he
writes, or writes altogether as he speaks. The
sermons have been allowed to retain for the most
part the unstudied form of extemporaneous discourse,
not even the repetitions being eliminated, which are
inevitable in a course of sermons addressed to a
congregation changing from week to week. Ques
tions of authorship and text were all left untouched,
as having but slight interest for a majority of those
who heard the sermons. -After a study of a con-
v

vi PREFACE
siderable portion of the voluminous New Testament
criticism of the last thirty years, the preacher has no
hesitation in asserting his conviction that the Gospels
give us credible history, and that they, while not
inerrant, present us a portrait of Jesus sufficiently
accurate to do the work which God intends it shall
do. In spite of all that has been written to the
contrary, the preacher has found no solid reason for
thmkmg that the reliable passages in the Gospels are
few, or that the portrait is a work of imagination
inspired and colored by affection. The men who
wrote the Gospels are in his judgment more trust
worthy than any of the men who have endeavored to
discredit them. The two opening sermons were
preached, one at the beginning of 1907, the other at
the beginning of 1908.

CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface  v
CHAPTER I. Introductory  i
II. Reasons for our Study .... 13
III. Sources  27
IV. The Strength of Jesus .... 41
V. His Sincerity  53
VI. His Reasonableness  67
VII. His Poise  83
VIII. His Originality  93
IX. His Narrowness  105
X. His Breadth  119
XI. His Trust  133
XII. His Brotherliness  145
XIH^-His Optimism  157
XIV. His Chivalry  171
XV. His Firmness  187
XVI. His Generosity  199
XVII. His Candor  213
XVIII. His Enthusiasm  227
XIX. ^His Gladness  241
XX. His Humility  255
vii

viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXI. His Patience  267
s XXII. His Courage  281
XXIII. His Indignation  295
XXIV. His Reverence  309
XXV. His Holiness  323
XXVI. His Greatness  337

INTRODUCTORY

I
INTRODUCTORY
"Behold the Man!" — John xix : 5.
Let us think together on these Sunday evenings
of the Character of Jesus. You will observe the
limitation of the subject. Jesus alone is too great
a theme to be dealt with in a course of lectures.
There are, for instance, the Ideas of Jesus, the
principles which he enunciated in his sermons and
illustrated in his parables. This is a great field,
and fascinating, but into it we cannot at present go.
The Doctrines of Jesus, the things he taught of God
and the soul, of life and death, of duty and destiny:
this also is another field spacious and rewarding,
but into it we cannot enter. We might think of the
Person of Jesus, meditate upon his relations to the
Father, and to the Holy Spirit, and to us, and ponder
the immeasurable mystery of his personality — this
is what thoughtful minds have ever loved to do. But
upon this vast field of thought we also turn our
backs in order that we may give ourselves undividedly
to the Character of Jesus. By "character" I mean
the sum of the qualities by which Jesus is dis-
3

4 CHARACTER OF fESUS
tinguished from other men. His character is the
sum total of his characteristics, his moral traits, the
features of his mind -and heart and soul. We are
to think about his quality, his temper, his disposi
tion, the stamp of his genius, the notes of his spirit,
and the form of his conduct. In one sense our
studies will be elementary. We are to deal with
the ABC's of Christian learning. This is the logical
beginning of all earnest study into the meaning of
the Christian religion. Before we are rightly pre
pared to listen to the ideas of Jesus we must know
something of what Jesus is. The significance of
what a man says depends largely upon what he is.
Two men may say precisely the same thing ; but if
one is known to be a fool, his words make no im
pression on us ; if the other is known to be wise and
good we give him close and sympathetic attention.
A man is better able to appreciate the ideas of Jesus
if he first of all becomes acquainted with Jesus'
character. To begin with the character of Jesus is to adopt
the scientific method of study. The scientist of
to-day insists upon studying phenomena. What he
wants is data, and from these he will draw his con
clusions. No scientist can begin his work unless
put in possession of definite and concrete facts.
There is a general opinion abroad that Christianity
is something very much in the air. It is vague and
nebulous, cloudy and indeterminate, something
beautiful as the mist with the morning sun playing

INTRODUCTORY 5
on it, but also like the mist very thin and high above
the world in which men live. But in this course of
lectures I do not ask you to think about visions or
conceptions, principles or relations; I call your
attention to a few definite and clean-cut facts. This
man Jesus was an historic character. He lived his
life upon this earth. In his passage from the cradle
to the grave he manifested certain traits and disposi
tions which it is our purpose to study. If we were to
attempt to deal with all his sayings, we should find
many of them hard to understand, and if we should
attempt to grapple with his personality, we should
find ourselves face to face with mysteries too deep
to be fathomed; but in dealing with his character
we are handling somethmg concrete and compre
hensible. Let us place ourselves before him and
permit him to make upon us whatsoever impression
he will.
Not only is this the scientific method, it is also the
New Testament method. It was just in this manner
that the disciples came to know Jesus. They did
not begin with the mystery of his person, nor did
they begin with sayings which were hard for them to
understand. They began simply by coming near
him, looking at him with their eyes, listening to
him with their ears. It is with a shout of exulta
tion that the beloved apostle in the first of his letters
says, "We handled him with our hands." It would
seem from the New Testament that Jesus desires
men to come to the truth which he is to give to the

6 CHARACTER OF fESUS
world by a knowledge of his character. When two
young men one day followed him along the bank of
the Jordan, and he turned upon them and said:
"Whom are you looking for?" and they replied,
"Where do you live?" his answer was, "Come and
see." They remained with him for the rest of the
day, and the result of their first meeting was that
they wanted their comrades to come and see him
also. And from that day to this the cause of Chris
tianity has advanced in the world simply because
those who have already seen him have wanted others
to come and share their experience.
If this was the method of approach to Christianity
in the first century, why is it not the best approach
for our time? Christianity in the course of its
development has taken on many forms and has
gathered up into itself many things which are non
essential. The result is that thousands are be
wildered, not knowing what to think or what to do.
Many have been offended by Christianity because
they have attempted to enter it through the eccle
siastical door. They have come to the religion of
Jesus through some professing Christian who has
been inconsistent or hypocritical, and simply one
such disastrous experience is sufficient sometimes
to keep a man away from Christ through his entire
life. Sometimes it is no individual Christian, but the
local church as a body that gives the offence. It
may be that the church is dead or that its leading
men are corrupt or that its preacher is ignorant and

INTRODUCTORY 7
does not have the Christian spirit or the Christian
outlook ; in which case the total impression made by
the church is disastrous, and the soul is repelled.
There are many men who are not Christians to-day
because it was their peculiar misfortune to come at a
critical period in their life in contact with a church
which was lacking in Christian sympathy and
devotion. There are others who have attempted
to get into Christianity through the dogmatic door.
They have come to the dogmatic statements of the
Christian church, the doctrines formulated by
church councils and theologians, and by these they
have been offended. Their reason has been re
pelled and their heart has been chilled. Let me
suggest that there is another door: the character
of Jesus. Neither professing Christians nor dog
matic statements are the door of the Christian re
ligion. The founder of Christianity says: "I am
the Door." It may be that some man in the con
gregation who has been made cynical by professing
Christians, or sceptical by church dogmas may find
that he is neither sceptical nor cynical after he has
studied the character of Jesus. For after all, to be
a Christian is not to be like other professing Chris
tians, or to accept ecclesiastical propositions; to be
a Christian is to admire Jesus so sincerely and so
fervently that the whole life goes out to him in an
aspiration to be like him.
This is a very opportune time in which to study
the character of Jesus because it is in our day and

8 CHARACTER OF fESUS
generation that he has appeared with new glory
before the eyes of the world. We who are now
living can know him, if we will, better than he has
ever been known since the days of the apostles.
There have been three stupendous pieces of work
accomplished within the last seventy years. Two
of them are well known to everybody, the third is
recognized by comparatively few. The first mag
nificent accomplishment of the last seventy years
is the construction of the palace of science. This
great enterprise has been carried forward by a
host of men of genius who have thrown into their
work the heroism of prophets and the enthusiasm of
apostles. Almost the entire structure of the palace
of science has been built up within the last seventy
years. How glorious, how dazzling it is, I need not
attempt to describe, for it has caught and holds the
eyes of the world. The second great achievement
of the last seventy years is the development of
material civilization. Within these years have
come the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, the
telephone, and a thousand other inventions by means
of which the face of the world has been transformed
and the habits of men have been revolutionized.
This is a miracle which is also known to all. But
there is a third piece of work even more wonderful
and more far-reaching in its effects than these other
two, and that is the work which has been done by
a great army of scholars on both sides the sea in
bringing Jesus of Nazareth out of the shadows and

INTRODUCTORY ' g
out of the clouds in which he had been hidden, and
placing him once more before the world.
It was in 1835 that Strauss published his first
edition of the "Life of Jesus," and from that day
to this the world has been studying the character of
the Man of Galilee with an interest which has been
constantly deepening, and with a zeal that shows no
abatement. The Gospels have been subjected to a
scrutiny which has been given to no other writings.
The libraries and the mounds and the tombs have
been ransacked for manuscripts. The manuscripts
have been brought together and carefully compared
and each minutest variation has been noted and
pondered. Every paragraph has been sifted and
every sentence has been weighed, every word has
been analyzed and every syllable has been examined
and cross questioned. The amount of labor be
stowed upon the New Testament within the last
seventy years is amazing and incalculable. Men
have not been contented with studying the manu
scripts, they have studied the land in which Jesus
lived; they have measured it from north to south
and from east to west with a surveyor's chain.
They have taken the heights of the hills and the
mountains, and the depths of the rivers and seas.
With pick and shovel, they have gone down into
the earth in search of material to throw additional
rays of light upon this man who has made the land
"Holy." The first century of our era has been
studied as no other century since time began. The

10 CHARACTER OF fESUS
customs of the people, their clothing, their houses,
every feature of their social and political and eccle
siastical life, everything that they read and every
thing that they said, and everything that they did
has been analyzed, discussed, explained, illustrated,
photographed, and scattered broadcast in the hope
that this might bring men closer to Jesus. The
civilization of the first century in Palestine has been
subjected to a scrutiny and analysis which no other
civilization has ever known. The printing-presses
on both sides the sea are flooding the world with
books about the life and the times of Jesus. And
the result is he looms colossal before the eyes of the
world. It is not simply the church that sees him ;
all men can see him now. He has broken out of
ecclesiastical circles ; he walks through all cities and
lands. All sorts and conditions of men have come
to admire him. Those who despise the church
respect him, those who deny Christian dogmas bow
before him. The great unchurched classes who
care nothing for anthems or sermons break into ap
plause at the mention of his name. Many of them
see him dimly, many of them have caught only a
glimpse of his face and his heart, but everybody
knows that he is the man who went about doing
good. Everywhere his name is reverenced. It is
fitting that in these opening years of the new century
we should endeavor to gain a clearer apprehension
of the range of his mind and the reach of his heart.
How are we to get our information? There are

INTRODUCTORY 1 1
six channels through which light will come. We
may come to know him through the words he spoke,
through the deeds he did, and also through his silences.
We may know him also by the impression which he
made first upon his friends and secondly upon his
foes, and thirdly upon the general body of his
contemporaries. It awes me when I think of the great company that
no man can number to which I ask you to join your
selves in this study of the character of Jesus. Let
your mind roam over the last nineteen hundred years,
and think of the artists who have stood before him,
seeing in him new revelations of beauty; think of
the poets who have stood before him and have caught
inspiration for their songs; think of the musicians
who have stood before him and who have worked
the impression which he made upon them into tones
which lift the heart and set it dreaming; think of
the philosophers who have stood before him and
meditated on the great ideas which found expression
on his lips ; think of the unlettered men and women,
the great crowd of peasants, plain working people,
descendants of the shepherds that heard the angels
singing, who have bowed in adoration before him
and found rest from their weariness and strength
in their weakness. And then let your mind run
out into the centuries that are coming and think of
the countless generations of men and women who
are still to stand before this matchless figure, drink
ing in inspiration with which to live their life and

12 CHARACTER OF fESUS
do their work. If you can see in your imagination
this great procession which has been and the greater
procession which is yet to be, you will take your
places with reverent spirit as once again we at
tempt to study the character of the man who com
pels the heart to cry out, "Master I"

II
REASONS FOR OUR STUDY

n
REASONS FOR OUR STUDY
"Come and see." — John i : 46.
I invite you to contemplate with me the charac
ter of Jesus. Many of you have studied him under
the leadership of others, come with me for a little
interval and let us study him again. The time is
ripe for a restudy of his character and career. We
have fallen upon distracted and distracting days.
The world is crying out for something, it scarce
knows what. Wealth has come, but the heart is
hungry ; knowledge has come, but life for many has
slipped into a riddle and delusion. The world is
filled with the inventions of human skill and genius,
but there is a vast emptiness which neither science
nor art is able to fill.
One of the notes of twentieth century life is dis
content. Some of us are discontented with ourselves.
We are restless, unsatisfied, bewildered. We carry
with us a consciousness of failure. We feel we are
falling short of what we ought to be. Life in spite
of our efforts is meagre and disappointing. Loaded
with many possessions we cry, "What lack I yet?"
It may be wise, therefore, to turn aside from the path
1?

l6 CHARACTER OF fESUS
we have been travelling and listen for a season to
Jesus of Nazareth. It may be that he has the secret
for which we have been searching. On opening
the New Testament the first face which fronts us is
his and the first words which greet us come from his
lips. He says, "Come unto me and I will give you
rest, I am the bread of life, I am the Light of the
world, If any man thirst let him come unto me and
drink, My peace I give unto you, You shall receive
power, You shall rejoice." Bread and water, light
and rest and peace and power and joy, are these not
the seven elemental blessings which make human
life complete? If this man promises to give us the
things which the soul most desires, it is worth while
to study his method and find out, if we can, how his
proffered gifts can be most speedily obtained. On
approaching him we hear him saying: "Follow me!
Learn of me! Eat me! Abide in me!" It would
seem that he offers us all good things on condition
that we become like him. But what is he like?
What is his disposition, temper, attitude, nature?
Surely all who are discontented with themselves will
want to study the character of Jesus.
There are others of us who are discontented, not
so much with ourselves as with the world. The time
is out of joint, and we are sick at heart because no
one seems to be wise or strong enough to set it right.
Government is corrupt, the church seems dead or
dying, the home is a failure or scandal, society is
superficial and tainted, the social order is ready for

REASONS FOR OUR STUDY 17
the burning, the economic system is a burden and
curse, the, whole framework of the world needs to be
reconstructed, and, alas, who is sufficient for so
herculean a task? The men with panaceas are
loud-mouthed and confident, the prophets of reform
are vociferous and ubiquitous, but unfortunately
they do not agree among themselves, and the reme
dies when applied are impotent to cure. The medi
cines do not seem to be powerful enough, and the
doctors stand by the bedside of feverish and deliri
ous humanity, outwitted, discredited, dumfounded.
Modern civilization has become a tower of Babel,
and the air is so filled with theories of social ameliora
tion and programmes of industrial reorganization that
the clearest headed are bewildered by the din and
tumult, not knowing in which direction deliverance
must be sought.
When we open our New Testament, we find a
man looking at us who although not a professional
revolutionist has been the cause of many revolutions,
and who although not a disturber of the peace has
repeatedly turned the world upside down. He is
not numbered among the radicals because in his
radicalism he outstrips them all. He dares to
reverse all human standards, confounds the wise by
things which are foolish and confounds things which
are mighty by the things which are weak. He has
much to say about authority and power, and it is
his claim that he can make all things new. The
writers of history have confessed that he overturned

1 8 CHARACTER OF fESUS
the Roman Empire and has given to Europe and
America a civilization unlike any which the world
has ever known. If his ideas have in them the force
of dynamite, and if his personality has power to
change the policy of empires and even the temper of
the human heart, it may be that this man is the very
man the modern world is looking for in its wild quest
for a way of deliverance from its miseries and woes.
Surely all of those who are sick of the world as it is
and who long for the coming of a world which shall
be better, must, if they are wise, come to Jesus of
Nazareth for his secret of pulling down the strong
holds of iniquity and establishing righteousness
and peace in the earth.
When we study his method, we discover that his
supreme concern is for the rightness of heart of the
individual man. This moulder of empires gives
himself to the task of moulding individual men.
This arch revolutionist starts his conflagrations in
the individual soul. He draws one man to him,
infuses into him a new spirit, sends him after one
brother man, who in time goes after a third man,
and this third man after a fourth, and thus does he
weld a chain by means of which Caesar shall be
dragged from his throne. Strange as it may seem,
he has nothing to say about heredity, and stranger
still nothing to say about environment. He keeps
his eyes upon the soul, and by changing this he alters
the environment and also the currents of the blood
down through many generations. When we speak of

REASONS FOR OUR STUDY ig
environment, we think of the physical surroundings :
the paving in the street, the sewerage, the architecture
of the houses, and the lighting of the rooms. We
are convinced that with better sewerage and better
ventilation and better lighting the plague of humanity
would be speedily abated. But this Reformer of
Nazareth acts and speaks as though environment
is not a matter of brick and plaster but rather of
human minds and hearts. Men are made what they
are, not by pavements and houses, but by the men
among whom they live. Would you change the
environment, then begin by a transformation of
men ; and would you transform men, then begin by
a transformation of some particular man. It is
by the changing of the character of a man that we
change the character of other men, and by changing
the character of many men we change the character
of institutions and ultimately of empires and civiliza
tions. When Jesus says, "Behold I make all things
new," he lays his hand on the heart of a man. It
is out of the heart the demons proceed which tear
humanity to pieces, and it is out of the heart that
the angels come which restore the beauty and peace
of Paradise.
Here then is Jesus' own secret for making an
old world over. He will introduce golden ages
by giving individuals a character like his own.
His character is a form of power mightier -than the
legions of Caesar or the wisdom of the greatest of
the schools. We who are most discontented with

20 CHARACTER OF fESUS
the world and most eager to banish its tyrannies and
abuses may profitably give our days and our nights
to the study of the character of Jesus, for through
this the burdened world is to pass forward into a
brighter day. There are many fussy and noisy
workers, many a blatant and spectacular leader,
reformers are often plausible and dashing, and
revolutionists impress us by their schemes of creat
ing a world which is new, but after all there is no
more effective worker for the world's redemption
than the man or woman who in high or obscure
places, strives, in season and out of season, to per
suade men to conform their lives to the pattern
presented to us in the character of Jesus; and no
one is advancing so swiftly toward the golden age
as the man or woman who by prayer and daily
effort endeavors to build up in mind and spirit the
virtues and graces of the Man of Galilee.
Here then we find the supreme mission of the
Christian clergyman : it is to help men to fall in love
with the character of Jesus. The Bible is an invalu
able book chiefly because it contains a portrait of
Jesus. The New Testament is immeasurably supe
rior to the Old because in the New Testament we
have the face of Jesus. The holy of holies of the
New Testament is the Gospels because it is here we
look directly into the eyes of Jesus. We often speak
of the Gospel : What is it ? Jesus !
Let us come now a little closer and ask, What is it
in Jesus which is most worth our study ? A deal of

REASONS FOR OUR STUDY 21
attention is being given to the circumstances which
formed the framework of his earthly life. Many
men are working on the chronology and others are
at work on the geography, and others are interested
in the robe and the turban and the sandals. Pho
tographers have photographed every landscape on
which he ever looked, and every scene connected with
his work or career. Painters have transferred the
Palestinian fields and lakes and skies to canvas, and
stereopticon lecturers have made the Holy Land
the most familiar spot on earth. Writers of many
grades have flooded the world with descriptions of
customs and houses, of fashions and ceremonies, and
amid such a mass of drapery and upholstery we are
in danger of losing the man Jesus. We may become
so interested in the fringes and tassels of his outer
life as to miss the secret which his heart has to tell.
Many an hour has been spent upon the outer trap
pings of Jesus' life which might better have been
employed in the earnest study of his mind and
heart. Palestine has no interest for us except in
so far as it assists us to understand what Jesus was
and did. The temporal and local and provincial
may be interesting, but it is not important. It is
the character of Jesus which has unique and endless
significance, and to this then every earnest mind
and heart should turn. The pictures have no value
unless they carry us deeper into the soul of the man.
It is surprising what meagre materials we have to
deal with in the study of Jesus. The New Testament

22 CHARACTER OF fESUS
writers were not interested in trifles. They cared
nothing for his stature, the clothes he wore or the
houses he lived in. He had none of the things which
biographers are wont to expatiate upon to the extent
of many chapters. He had no lineage to boast of.
His friends were all obscure. He held no office
either in church or state. He had no prestige of
wealth and no repute for learning. He was born in
a stable, worked in a carpenter's shop, taught for
three years, and then died on a cross. The external
is reduced to its lowest, circumstances are common
place and meagre, the framework of life is narrow
and ungilded. The New Testament was written by
men who were determined that we should fix our
eyes on the man. They wish us to catch the beat of
his heart, the swing of his mind, the orbit of his
ideas. Everything is minimized and subordinated
to that which is central and all important, the tex
ture of his spirit and the attitude of his personality.
With one accord they cry, " Behold the man ! " They
want us to know how he looked at things, how he
felt toward things, and how things affected him.
In a word, they want us to know his character.
Let us accept their invitation and come and see.
Some of us have studied this man Jesus for many
years. It is we who have the keenest desire to study
him again. We shall find in him now things which
we have never seen before. The eyes are always
changing and the heart expands with the increase
of the years. We climb to higher levels of knowl-

REASONS FOR OUR STUDY 23
edge through study and experience. The time will
never come when we shall not relish the study of
this man. He is the way to God. It is impossible
to become too familiar with the way. He is the ex
press image of the Father's person. The more we
study him the richer is our knowledge of the heart
of God. He has declared the Father. The more
fully we understand him the deeper we see into the
heart of Deity. If he and the Father are one, then
to know him is indeed life eternal. If he is the
author and finisher of faith, we need to see his un
clouded face if we are to run with patience the race
that is set before us. If we are to be changed from
character to character by looking at his character,
then every hour we spend in making that character
clear and beautiful to our heart is blessed. The be
loved disciple used to say, "We beheld his glory."
They gazed upon him as he worked and talked and
sang and prayed, and the very memory of what they^
saw lifted life to new altitudes and dimensions.
The ripest and most experienced Christians are
readiest to accept the invitation, "Come and see."
Some of us have studied this portrait only a little.
Jesus is a name, but as a person he is shadowy and
unreal. His face has become obscured. Our heart
does not feel his power. We are not indifferent to
him, but we have no keen sense of loyalty to him,
no purifying consciousness of adoration. We need
to study him afresh. It may be that as we study
him he will step out of the picture and take his

24 CHARACTER OF JESUS
place by Our side. Not until we know him as a
comrade do we get from him what he has to give.
Because his face is dim we are often depressed and
defeated. We are always faint in life's hard places
unless we are close enough to catch the light of his
eye and feel the strong beating of his unconquerable
heart. It may be that to some of us he has been
petrified into a dogma. It is a great day for the soul
when Jesus stands before it for the first time as a
man. Never shall I forget when for the first time
he became human to me. It was on a Saturday
evening when a great teacher was expounding the
words, "Father, save me from this hour." In a
flash I saw Jesus shrinking, and the fountains of my
heart were opened.
Some of us have scarcely studied him at all. All
we know we know by hearsay. We are prejudiced
against this Jesus of Nazareth. His face has been
distorted partly by the misrepresentations of others
and partly by our own idiosyncrasies. It may be
that during this study some of us shall see him for
.the first time as he is.
There are those who do not like metaphysics;
let them come and look upon a full-statured man.
They do not care for doctrine, let them study a life.
They are not interested in dogma, let them fix their
gaze upon a person. If the word "revelation" has
had to them a mysterious or theological sound, let
them contemplate the crowning revelation — the
revelation made in the character of a man.

REASONS FOR OUR STUDY 25
We shall not discuss the question how the Gospel
portrait got here. It is enough for our present pur
pose to know that it is here. It has been in the world
for nearly nineteen hundred years and through all
that period nothmg has been added to it and nothing
has been taken away. If any one should care to
point out minor defects in the workmanship, it is
enough to say that the portrait does its work. It
nourishes faith in God. It keeps the fires of hope
and gladness burning on the. altar. Men have
various theories of the portrait and make divers
criticisms of it, but the world is dominated by it.
I ask you to look at it. Other men are looking at it.
They are looking at it all' round the globe. Millions
feel while looking at it that in this portrait they get
the largest disclosures of the mind and purpose of the
Eternal. It is indisputable that this portrait draws
many hearts nearer to God. It may draw you.
Only look at it. Other things are passing, but this
portrait is a reality which abides. Many a treasure
has been melted in the crucible, but not this. In
many circles the Bible has been growing less and
the church also has been dwindling, but everywhere
the wide world over the character of Jesus has been
looming larger before the eyes of thinking men. By
looking at it, it may grow also upon you.
And may I ask you also to pray while you look.
The depth to which you see into a mind or heart
depends upon what you bring with you to the con
templation of it. You cannot appreciate the master-

26 CHARACTER OF JESUS
piece of a musician unless you have music in you,
or the painting of an artist unless you have in you
somethmg of the temperament which the artist has,
nor can you understand a character unless you are
akin to it in the deepest tendencies and aspirations
of your being. The masters of music and art and
life reveal themselves only to those who in some
measure share their spirit. Would you study the
character of Jesus with largest profit, you must
respond to that which was dominant in his life. He
was preeminently a man of prayer. His was the
reverent heart and his look was ever upward. They
who pray breathe the atmosphere in which he lived
and take the attitude by which they are best fitted
to understand his deeds and sayings. In studying
a person spiritual harmony is everything. James
lived under the same roof with Jesus but did not
understand him. Paul lived far from him but under
stood him completely. Understanding souls is not
a matter of physical proximity or intellectual effort :
everything depends on insight and spiritual sym
pathy. In studying Jesus men ought always to
pray and not to faint.

Ill
SOURCES

m
SOURCES
"These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God." — John xx : 31.
Where can we find a subject more interesting
than the Character of Jesus? It is fascinating to
every human being who has the slightest ambition
to advance in culture, or who has the smallest ca
pacity for apprehending things which are of deep
and enduring significance. Simply as a piece of
biography what a wonderful story this is, how ex
citing his life, how tragic his death! Whether a
man is a Christian or not he must, unless thoroughly
hardened by prejudice, take an interest in the life of
Jesus. No man or woman of intellect can remain
unmoved by the death of Socrates. The prison in
which he died is one of the holy places of history.
So long as men have minds to think and hearts to
pity, they will stand in awe before the old Greek
philosopher while he drains the fatal cup. But the
death of Jesus is more tragic than the death of
Socrates. Who is not interested in the death of
Julius Caesar? When will Mark Antony's speech
cease to stir the blood ? So long as men are human
they will stand awestruck in the presence of that
29

30 CHARACTER OF JESUS
great tragedy enacted in the Roman capitol. But
the death of Jesus is more tragic than the death of
Caesar. Moreover, Jesus of Nazareth is the start
ing point of a thousand influences. The whole
world of the last nineteen hundred years becomes
unintelligible unless one knows something about him.
How can you understand the great art galleries of
the world, filled as they are with pictures of his face,
and pictures of his mother, and pictures of his disci
ples, unless you know who he was and what he said
and what he accomplished? Step out of the art
galleries into the libraries and how will you under
stand the great books of history unless you are
familiar with his career, for every book is full of his
name. Step out of the world of books into the
world of men and things, walk along the streets,
how will you account for St. Patrick's Cathedral
and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; and all
the hundreds of churches and missions scattered
over this land unless you know something of the
man from whose heart they proceeded and by whose
name they are known. We have a theme that must
be of interest to every human being.
But as soon as we come to the careful study of the
life of. Jesus, we are subjected to a series of surprises.
The first surprise is that the biography of this man
is confined within such narrow limits. If you wish
to study the life of Abraham Lincoln, you must con
sult many volumes. The life of George Washington
cannot easily be put into one book. Hundreds of

SOURCES 31
volumes have been written about Napoleon and
Frederick the Great and Caesar. But the biography
of Jesus is confined to one little book that can be
bought for six cents and carried in the pocket. This
is the surprising thing that all the story of his life
is contained in this one book. There were many
Greek writers living in the days of Jesus, but not
one of them wrote his life, so far as any scholar
knows. Not a scrap of Jesus' biography at the hands
of a Greek poet or historian has come down to us.
There were many Roman writers living when Jesus
preached in Palestine, they were writing on many
different personages and on manifold subjects, but
not one of them so far as we know cared to sketch
this man Jesus. There were many professional
Jewish writers living in Jesus' day, but so far as we
know not one of them took the trouble to write the
story of Jesus' life. This is remarkable! To be
sure, there are apocryphal gospels and apocryphal
acts and apocryphal epistles and apocalypses, but
no one of these, nor do all of them together, throw
any light on the character of Jesus which is not
furnished by our New Testament. Everything that
is positively known of Jesus of Nazareth is con
fined between the covers of the New Testament.
For years men have been ransacking the libraries,
digging up the ruins of ancient cities, and delving
into the desert sands thinking that possibly a page
might be found that would throw additional light
upon this Man. Seven years ago two Englishmen,

32 CHARACTER OF JESUS
digging in the sands of Middle Egypt, brought up
two leaves of papyrus, one of them torn in two. A
thrill of delight ran through the world of Christian
scholarship at the thought that some new light
might be thrown on Jesus' life. Alas! the new
papyrus has nothing new to tell. The whole story
must be sought within the narrow compass of the
New Testament. But we can bring down the
limits to a still narrower area. You can write the
life of Jesus from the Book of the Acts, but it is a
meagre life and contains practically nothing not to
be found in the Gospels. You may also piece out a
life of Jesus from the epistles of the New Testament,
but the life is exceedingly defective and nothing of
importance is added to the things already told in
the Gospels. And therefore, so far as our present
purpose is concerned, we may throw away all the
other books of the New Testament and affirm that
all which is known of the character of Jesus must
be sought for inside the four Gospels. That the life
of the greatest and most important man who ever
lived upon the earth should be written on pages so
small and few is one of the surprises.
When we study these Gospels we are surprised
that they tell us so little, they do not give us a com
plete life of Jesus. They do not tell us how long
Jesus lived, but from scattered hints it would seem
that he lived something like thirty-three years.
Thirty of these years are passed over with scarcely
a word. They are deep sunken in a darkness into

SOURCES 33
which no rays of light enter. The men who wrote
the four Gospels did not attempt to deal with ten-
elevenths of the life of Jesus. They simply let the
larger part alone. Nor did they attempt to deal
even with all the three years of his public ministry.
They mention what he did or said only on from thirty
to thirty-five days. That is, they confine their atten
tion to one thirtieth of his public life, twenty-nine
thirtieths being a total blank. Or, in other words, if
he lived thirty-three years and the evangelists deal
with only thirty-five days, they limit themselves to
one three-hundredth part of his earthly career,
and allow two hundred and ninety-nine three-hun-
dredths to he hidden. These men have recorded
many things which he said, but his recorded sayings
can be spoken easily within five hours. They tell
many things which he did, but nearly all of them
might have been crowded into a day, so meagre
is their report of what Jesus said and did. It is
evident, then, that we do not have as much informa
tion as we want. The question is, Do we have as
much as we need? There is always a wide gap
between what we want and what we need, and
we need not be surprised that there is a gap here.
These Gospels attempt to give us nothing but his
words. They do not give us his facial expression,
the quiver of the lip, the glance of the eye. We
cannot see his smile or his frown. Facial expres
sion is a revelation, and that revelation is lost for
ever. Nor do the evangelists attempt to give us his

34 CHARACTER OF JESUS
gestures. Gestures are interpreters of thought. A
speaker speaks with his head, his shoulders, his
hands, and by means of these gestures the thought
is unfolded and made clear. Gesture is a revela
tion, and it is a revelation which has been lost for
ever. The New Testament does not give us the
voice of Jesus. The voice is the best of all inter
preters. By its modulations and cadences, by its
inflexions and emphases, it reveals and explains and
illustrates. The music of speech lies in the in
flections, and many a word takes on a new glory
from the way in which it is spoken. Intonation is a
revelation, but in the case of Jesus it is a revelation
which has been lost forever. And then there is an
other revelation to which we are denied access : the
revelation of his sighs and his tears. We cannot
see the tears on his cheeks as he looks down on
Jerusalem and sobs, "O!" If we could have
heard him weeping in the garden, we could have
seen down deeper into his heart. But this revela
tion is denied us forever. We have nothing but
words to deal with, and words are sometimes opaque
and ambiguous, stumbling interpreters of the heart.
But words are all that God has given us, and with
words therefore we must be content.
Right here there springs up a new surprise: we
are not to deal with Jesus' words. He spoke in
Aramaic, and there are not a dozen Aramaic words
left in the Gospels. He said to the little girl, " Talitha
cumi," which being interpreted means, "Damsel,

SOURCES 35
arise!" On the cross he said, "Eli, Eli, lama
sabachthani?" which being interpreted means,
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Besides these only an occasional Aramaic word has
been recorded for us, and with these slight excep
tions all the words that dropped from his lips have
passed completely away. We read the English New
Testament. Its words are not Jesus' words, they
are the translators' words, the words chosen by
scholars who have interpreted for us the Greek text.
But even the Greek words were not spoken by Jesus,
the Greek words were translators' words chosen to
interpret the meaning of the Aramaic words. It is
not unlikely there were Aramaic Gospels before the
Greek Gospels were written. But the Aramaic Gos
pels have long since fallen to dust, and so also have
the Greek Gospels. The first Greek copies were
written on papyrus, and the papyrus was so frail
and fragile that it perished probably in less than
a hundred years. We have no copies of the New
Testament that run back beyond the fourth cen
tury — and this also is a surprise.
Looking, then, at these words with which we have
to deal, will they tell us anything of the personal
appearance of the Nazarene? Nothing. The men
who wrote the Gospels were not mterested in the
stature of Jesus, in the color of his eyes or hair, in
the expression of his face, or the build of his body.
The New Testament has been often scrutinized
by men eager to get some hint of Jesus' personal

36 CHARACTER OF JESUS
appearance, but no such hint has been forthcoming.
Expressions here and there have been seized upon
and put upon the rack and tortured, in order to
compel them to give at least a suggestion as to what
Jesus looked like. But under torture every sen
tence of the Gospels remains absolutely silent on this
most interesting question. We must therefore at
the very beginning banish all pictures of Jesus from
our minds. We do not know what he looked like.
The artists have not known, they have simply painted
from their own imagination. When an Italian paints
the face of Jesus he puts a little of the Italian into it,
when a German paints him he paints a little of the
German into it, when a Spaniard paints him he
paints a little of the Spaniard into it. That ac
counts also for the variety of the Madonnas.
Raphael paints her as a lovely Italian girl, Murillo
paints her as an innocent Spanish maiden, Sichel
paints her as a German peasant girl. No artist can
overcome completely the predilections of his own
nationality. The artists then have simply painted
their ideal, and their ideal is the creation of their own
heart, and that is what you and I have a right to do.
Would you conceive of Jesus as he appeared in the
days of his flesh, you must form him according to
your own ideal. You have the same right the artists
have. This, then, is to be remembered, that we are
not to study the personal appearance of Jesus, but
the stamp of his mind and the bent of his spirit.
In other words, we are to study his character.

sources 37
But while the smiles and frowns, the intonations
and modulations, the glance of the eye and the ges
ture of the hand, have all been lost and lost forever,
we must not think that they were unimportant in
the history of the world. All those things helped to
make an impression on the men that stood nearest
to Jesus. They saw his smile, caught the expression
of his eye, heard him laugh, sigh, sob, drank in the
music of his voice — and the question is, How were
they affected? The New Testament tells us they
were affected in two distinct and opposite ways.
Some men were repelled. They disliked him,
feared, hated, detested, loathed him. Their loath
ing became so venomous that they murdered him.
They could not allow him to remain upon this earth.
That is the effect which he produced upon one type
of mind. There were other men who were attracted
by him, they liked him, loved, adored, worshipped
him, they were ready to die for him. It should never
be forgotten that every one of his disciples, with one
exception, laid down his life for Jesus, and that, too,
after Jesus was dead. The men who were the nearest
to him loved him with an adoration which was bound
less, and they communicated the impression to other
men, and the impression has come down to this
present hour, so that at the beginning of the twen
tieth century thousands of miles from Palestine men
are building churches in the name of Jesus, believ
ing that his name is above every name, and that
every knee should bow to him.

38 CHARACTER OF JESUS
At the very beginning then of our study of the
character of Jesus let us remember that Christianity
is rooted in a life that was lived upon the earth.
There is one part of the Christian creed which every
human being can repeat without question and with
out reservation. There are men who might refuse
to repeat the first article, "I believe in God the
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
God is spirit, and a man might refuse to acknowl
edge that He exists. There are those who might
stumble at the last clause in the creed, "I believe
in the life everlasting." That also reaches out be
yond the sweep of human sight, and there are men
who will not affirm beyond that which they can see.
But at the very centre of the creed there is one lit
tle paragraph to which no one can offer reasonable
objection, "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, dead, and buried." There are some who
object to the supernatural, they do not like the
extraordinary. Very well, let them begin with the
ordinary, let them take their stand on the natural.
Some of you may think that Christianity is in the air.
Its branches, to be sure, are in the air, but its roots
are in the earth. Its base is not in philosophy but
in human history, not in poetry but in mundane
experience. All that you see of Christianity in the
world to-day came out of this man who lived in
Palestine, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, dead, and buried.
May I make of you this one request, — that while

SOURCES 39
you follow my words you read St. Mark's Gospel
from beginning to end. It is probably the oldest
of all the Gospels, the shortest of them all, the
most graphic of them all, and seems to come the
nearest to Jesus as men saw him in the days of his
humiliation. If you will read this Gospel, you will
more easily follow me in these studies, and come to
know better the one supreme character of history.
It is a sad mistake for any man or any woman to
leave religious matters entirely to the minister. The
Roman Catholic who leaves everything to the priest
does not grow in grace and in the knowledge of
Jesus Christ our Lord. The Protestant who simply
comes to church and listens to the preacher speak,
and who makes no earnest effort to study for him
self the great literature in which are enshrined the
oracles of God — that Protestant fritters away his
opportunities and does not build up within himself
those deep convictions and that enduring knowledge
which will make him a power and blessing in his
day and generation. In other words, I cannot study
the character of Jesus for you, you must study it for
yourselves. All that I can hope to do is to drop
suggestions which may possibly assist you in your
study.

IV
THE STRENGTH OF JESUS

IV
THE STRENGTH OF JESUS
"And they were all amazed." — Mark i : 27.
We have seen that all the authentic materials for
a Life of Christ are to be found in the four Gospels.
When we study this material it turns out to be
fragmentary and scanty. The writers deal with
only three years out of thirty-three, and tell us of
less than forty days out of three years, and of these
selected days they deal only with shreds and frac
tions. Possibly somebody may say we cannot write
a life of Jesus at all, and that is true, if by life of
Jesus you mean a complete biography. But what
if it should happen that the men who wrote the
Gospels were not trying to write a biography of
Jesus, but had something entirely different in mind.
When Morley wrote the "Life of Gladstone" he
filled three ponderous volumes. When Carlyle
wrote the "Life of Frederick the Great" he wrote
over six thousand pages, filling twenty-one books.
When Nicolay and Hay wrote the "Life of Lincoln"
they filled ten good-sized volumes. These Gospel
writers evidently did not intend to write a biography
of Jesus, otherwise they would not have confined
43

44 CHARACTER OF JESUS
themselves within such narrow limits. We are
driven to the conclusion that they were writing not
the biography of Jesus but the character of Jesus.
A vast amount of material is necessary for a biog
raphy, but only a little material is needed for the
elucidation of a character. You do not need all
the words a man speaks, just a few of them will
answer — every word is a flash of lightning, and
like a flash of lightning lights up the world from
horizon to horizon. You do not need many deeds,
every deed is like a sunbeam touching a dark world
into visibility. Notwithstanding the Gospels are so
small, we know Jesus, his mind and heart and
spirit, better than we know any other man who has
ever lived upon the earth. Men who study the New
Testament carefully feel that they know Jesus of
Nazareth better than any other character of history.
Some one may say, "Ah, Jesus lived two thou
sand years ago, and therefore we cannot be sure
what his character really was." You are mistaken.
You can understand a great man better at a dis
tance than when standing near him. No truly
great man is ever appreciated at his worth by the
people in the midst of whom he lives. The world
did not appreciate Abraham Lincoln until he died.
His great figure has been looming higher each suc
ceeding decade, and the generations yet to come
will understand him better than we do. We under
stand Luther far better than his contemporaries.
We understand the apostles better than the fathers

HIS STRENGTH 45
did. We understand Jesus of Nazareth better than
has any other generation of men that has ever lived.
A great man is like a mountain, you cannot appre
ciate it when standing at its base. You must throw
miles between your eye and it before you can catch
the symmetry of its sides and feel the majesty of
its colossal dimensions. Just so it is with Jesus.
Each succeeding generation will understand him
better. He was so great that the men of Palestine
could not take his measure. We are far better able
to judge how great he was because we can see the
length of the luminous shadow which he has cast
across nineteen centuries and we can measure the
volume of the stream which has flowed from the
fountains of his heart. When you wish that you
had lived in Jesus' day, you are wishing for a great
misfortune. Had you lived in the first century you
would most likely have been found among those
who saw in Jesus nothing but a disturber of the
peace. It may be that you would have joined the
crowd that cried, "Crucify him!"
Let us look at Jesus across the distance of nine
teen hundred years. When you picture him, what
sort of face is it that stands out before you? That
will depend upon the painting with which you are
most familiar, or it will depend upon instruction
which you have received from teachers, or it will
depend upon the working of your own fancy or
imagination. We instinctively begin to form the
image of a person whom we have never seen, at the

46 CHARACTER OF JESUS
mere mention of his name. You have all tried it
again and again. The fame of some great man has
reached your ears, and your mind has gone to work
at once and conceived what sort of man he is.
Later on, it may be your eyes have looked upon
him and you have said, "I was altogether mis
taken in the image I had formed." It may be,
therefore, that you have been misled by the painters,
deceived by your teachers, led astray by your own
imagination. It will be better to do away with all
such images and try to see Jesus as men saw him
who touched him in Judea and Galilee. Those were
the men who heard his voice, saw the light in his
eye, caught the expression of his face — they are the
best witnesses therefore of what sort of a man he
really was, and therefore we shall not listen to any
thing which Jesus himself said, we shall pay atten
tion simply to the impression which he made upon
the people. He was not a hermit or recluse,
he pressed his life close to the lives of men, and
therefore we have abundant material with which
to deal in trying to find out what impression he
made upon the people of his time.
What was the first impression which Jesus made
upon his contemporaries? What has been his first
impression on you? Has he impressed you as sub
dued and meek, calm and effeminate? Have you
seen him always as many a painter has painted him.
pale and ghastly, sickly, emaciated? When you
think of him do you think of some one thin and

HIS STRENGTH 47
gaunt, weak and pallid? Not so did he seem to
the people of his day. Open the Gospel according
to St. Mark. In the very first chapter he tells you
in four different places what impression Jesus made
upon men. He first tells you of the impression he
made on John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a
mighty man, none mightier had ever appeared in
Judea; but John said there is coming one mightier
than I. When Jesus presents himself to be baptized,
a remarkable thing happens. John had called men
to repentance, he had faced the greatest men of his
day without flinching, he had baptized the great
and small, the high and low, the rich and poor, the
learned and ignorant; but when this man from
Nazareth appears, John falters and draws back
and says: "I cannot baptize you. I have need to
be baptized by you." Such was the impression
which Jesus made upon the intrepid reformer from
the desert.
Let us take another illustration : He walks one
day along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and
sees two men fishing; he says, "Follow me," and
straightway they left their nets and followed him.
A few steps farther on he sees two other men, he
says to them, " Follow me," and they left all and
followed him. Such was the impression he made
upon them. He goes into the synagogue and begins
to teach, and they are amazed, not at what he says,
but the manner in which he says it. He teaches
them as one having authority and not as the scribes.

48 CHARACTER OF JESUS
There is something in his voice that pierces and
cuts and thrills, a tone that they have never heard
before. It is the note of authority, the note of
strength. Or take another illustration: There is a
sick man in the synagogue, and Jesus heals him,
and again the people are surprised because God
has given such power to a man. In these four
instances the first impression of Jesus is the im
pression of authority, mastery, power, leadership;
he is a man of strength. And that, I think, is the
teaching of all the Gospels : they give us repeated
illustrations of the power of Jesus. He drew men
to him. Wherever he went he was surrounded by
a crowd. He goes down to the seashore, and the
crowd is so great they push him into the water and
he gets into a boat. He goes to the hilltop, and
immediately the hillside is alive with people. He
goes to the desert, and immediately a great crowd
surrounds him. Sometimes he dares not go into
the city because of the tumult which his entrance
will certainly stir up. Every city through which
he passes is turned upside down by his presence.
Only a man of strength draws to him great masses
of men. It is noteworthy that widely differing
classes of men are drawn : the publicans and sinners,
the great unwashed crowd, they are drawn, but
Nicodemus, a member of the supreme court of
Palestine, he also is attracted, and the Roman cen
turion, he also is drawn, saying to Jesus: "I know
what it is to command and so do you. There is an

HIS STRENGTH 49
enemy in my house which I cannot order out, you
speak the word and he will depart." Not only did
Jesus draw men to him but he stirred them when
ever they came near him. Have you ever noted
how many times the evangelists say in speaking of
the people: "they were astonished" — "they were
astonished with a great astonishment" — "they
were amazed" — "they were filled with amaze
ment" — " they marvelled " ? The evangelists never
say such things of themselves. Matthew never says,
"I was surprised." Mark never says, "I was
amazed." John never says, "I marvelled." They
write all of them with an arm of marble; there is no
feeling in the fingers that hold the pen ; they simply
write in cold blood the effect which Jesus had on
others. Probably no better illustration of the power of
Jesus can be found than that which is afforded in
the estimate which different classes of people put
upon him. One day when Jesus propounded the
question, " Who do men say that I am ? " the disciples
told him that men had different opinions in regard
to him. Some said he was John the Baptist, some
said he was Elijah, others said he was Jeremiah,
while others unable to give his exact name felt con
vinced he was one of the old prophets. This is
remarkable! They went to the grave in order to
find a man to whom they could liken him. There
was no man then living with whom he could be
compared. We do the same thing. When we want

50 CHARACTER OF JESUS
to stir men's hearts, we appeal to the dead ; when we
search for the great, we descend into the grave, we
talk of Shakespeare and Caesar, of Charlemagne
and Alfred the Great, of Lincoln and Webster, we
dare not use the name of a man living. That is
what the Jews did. The name of no man living
was great enough to convey their idea of the strength
which they felt resided in Jesus. He was one of
the giants of bygone ages who had come back to
the earth carrying with him powers augmented by
his sojourn in the realms of death. This tells us
clearly that to them he was a man of tremendous
power. And if the Jews felt this in regard to him,
what was the impression which he made upon the
Roman officials? He impressed them in the same
way. When the policemen came to arrest him and
asked him if he was indeed Jesus of Nazareth, he
turned upon them and simply said, "I am," and
they fell backward to the ground. What do you
suppose his eyes looked like that night when they
outflashed the Roman torches and outshone -the
Syrian stars? Pilate is afraid of him. He is the
representative of Caesar in Palestine. He is clothed
with authority. Jesus is nothing but a poor un
armed peasant. Nevertheless Pilate is afraid of
him, he draws back from him, he wrings his hands
in uncertainty, he washes his hands, he tries to get
rid of this man. He feels that there is a power in
him unlike any power he has ever come in contact

HIS STRENGTH 51
with before. But if you would have the finest
proof of his power, you can find it in the intensity
of the hatred and in the intensity of the love which
he excited. How many hated him! They could
not hear him talk without sizzling, hissing and boil
ing like a pot under which the fire roars. He stirred
tempests in the heart, he awoke serpents in men.
He drove them to madness until they cried out in
frenzy, "Crucify him!" Only a great man can do
that. You cannot hate a pygmy, a weakling, a
ninny. You can hate Nero or Napoleon or any
giant, but you cannot hate a nobody. Who was the
most detested man in England during the last cen
tury ? William E. Gladstone. We in America have
little conception of the venomous hatred that was
poured out upon that man. He stirred men to
hatred because he was so mighty. Who are the men
most detested in America to-day? Every one of
them a man of tremendous power. The men that
are loathed and feared are men of genius, who have
in them extraordinary capacity for bringing things
to pass.
But if Jesus drove some men to hate him,
he drove other men to love him. He kindled a
devotion that is superior to anything that has ever
been known in this world. He kindled a fire which
ran all over Palestine, and then around the edges
of the Mediterranean, and then into the German
forests, it then leaped over the English Channel, and
later on it leaped over the Atlantic Ocean, and now

52 CHARACTER OF JESUS
it has leaped over all the oceans and is burning more
brightly to-day than ever. And all this conflagration
was kindled by his hot heart. These torches which
are burning now have been carried down through
the blasts of nineteen stormful centuries, and they
have never gone out, because he lighted them. He
called forth a kind of reverence that has never
been granted to any other man who has ever lived.
He was so mighty that when men thought of him,
they thought of God. The man who stood the
nearest to him saw him in a vision after he was
gone, and he says, "When I saw him I fell at his
feet as one dead."

THE SINCERITY OF JESUS

THE SINCERITY OF JESUS
"Ye shall not be as the hypocrites."
— Matthew vi : 5.
All the graces are beautiful, but some have a
finer loveliness than do others. All virtues are im
portant, but some are more essential than others.
There are virtues whose absence leaves the charac
ter ragged and marred, and there are others whose
absence leaves the soul a hollow shell. Certain
virtues are conspicuously ornamental, whereas others
are plainly fundamental. If the former are not de
veloped, the edifice is not complete ; but if the latter
are not present, the whole structure comes tumbling
down in ruin. Such a fundamental virtue is the
virtue of sincerity. It is the keystone in the arch
without which the arch collapses. Or to change
the figure it is the mother of a noble family of vir
tues, all of which draw their strength and beauty
from it. Truthfulness, honesty, plainness, frank
ness, simplicity, these and many others are only
children of the Queen — Sincerity.
It is the virtue which the human heart instinc
tively craves and lo6ks for. It is a trait which a
SS

56 CHARACTER OF JESUS
parent's eyes seek for in his children. Anything
like deceit or trickery or sham in a child causes
the parental heart to bleed. "Do you mean what
you are saying?" "Are you telling me what you
really feel?" "Are you concealing from me things
which I ought to know?" There is nothing which
a parent desires so much in his children as the
unaffected simplicity of a sincere heart. This is
what we demand in all the higher relationships of
life. In the lower relationships sincerity is desir
able, but in the higher ones it is absolutely indis
pensable. A man may sweep the pavement or make
our garden, and do both well even though he is at
heart a cheat. But we like him better and we feel
more comfortable in his presence if he looks up at
us out of honest eyes. A servant may hold his
place and be insincere, not so a friend. There is
an adjective which the word "friend" will not keep
company with, and that is the adjective " insincere."
You cannot induce them to stay together in the same
room. They flatly contradict each other. The mo
ment we find out that a comrade is insincere with
us, he ceases to be our friend. Sincerity is the very
blood and breath of friendship. "Pure gold he is,"
we say with exultation, meaning that in our friend
there is no alloy. His nature is unspoiled and
unadulterated. We can rely upon him through the
twenty-four hours of every day. We are so con
structed that we look for sincerity in others, and when
we do not find it we are grieved and disappointed.

HIS SINCERITY 57
When what we have taken for sincerity turns out
to be nothing but an imitation, our heart sinks
within us and we feel- like a man who has been
stabbed. There is nothing which so takes the life
out of us as the discovery that some one whom we
have trusted has been other than what he seemed
to be. The very suspicion that some one whose life
is close to us is insincere renders us restless and
makes the universe seem insecure.
And yet how common insincerity is. What a
miserable old humbug of a world we are living in,
full of trickery and dishonesty and deceit of every
kind. Society is cursed with affectation, business
is honeycombed with dishonesty, the political world
abounds in duplicity and chicanery, there is sham
and pretence and humbuggery everywhere. Some
use big words they do not understand, and some lay
claim to knowledge which they do not have, and
some parade in dresses which they cannot pay for ;
the life of many a man and many a woman is one
colossal lie. We say things which we do not mean,
express emotions which we do not feel, we praise
when we secretly condemn, we smile when there is
a frown on the face of the heart, we give compli
ments when we ar-e really thinking curses, striving
a hundred times a week to make people think we
are other than we are. It is a penitentiary offence
to obtain money under false pretences, and so from
this we carefully refrain. But how many other
things are obtained, do you think, by shamming

58 CHARACTER OF JESUS
and pretending, for which there is no penalty but
the condemnation of Almighty God? Yes, it is a
sad, deceitful, demoralized world in the midst of
which we find ourselves ; but thank God there are
hearts here and there upon which we can evermore
depend. We have tested them and we know them
to be true. Life would not be worth the living if
there were no one on earth sincere. It is to the
honest heart that we return again and again, seek
ing rest and finding it. It is a fountain at which
we drink and refresh ourselves for the toilsome
journey. Beautiful, indeed, is the virtue of sincerity.
It is not a gaudy virtue. It does not glitter. It
has no sparkle in it. But it is substantial. It is
life giving. It sustains and nourishes the heart.
It is a virtue within the reach of the humblest of
us. There are some things we cannot be, and
many things which we cannot do. But this one
thing is within the reach of us all, — we may
pray God unceasingly to keep our heart sincere.
Would you see sincerity in its loveliest form, then
come to Jesus. Here is a man incapable of a lie.
Nothing was so abhorrent to him as falsehood. No
other people so stirred his wrath as men who pre
tended to be what they were not. The most odious
word upon his lips was the word " hypocrite." Have
you ever wondered why it is impossible to speak
that word without it falling from the lips like a
serpent — it is because his curse is resting on it.
It was not a harsh word before he spoke it, but he

HIS SINCERITY 59
breathed the hot breath of his scorn into it, and it
has been ever since a word degraded and lost. A
hypocrite is an actor. It is a word taken originally
from the stage. In the theatre we expect men and
women to be other than they seem to be. An
ordinary plebeian wraps round him the robes of a
king, talks like a king, and acts like one, and we
are not offended, because we are not deceived. It
is expected that on the stage no one shall seem to
be what he really is. But on the great stage of the
world God expects every man to be what he claims
to be. If we say things we do not believe, and profess
things we do not feel, and lay claim to things which
we do not possess, we are tricksters and deceivers,
causing mischief and confusion in the world. It was
the sincerity of Jesus which drove him into deadly
conflict with the hypocrites. A hypocrite and Jesus
cannot live together.
It was his constant exhortation that men should
speak the truth. The religious leaders of his day had
divided oaths into two classes, — one class binding,
the other not. If an oath contained the name of
God, it was binding on the conscience ; if for God's
name some other name was substituted, then the
conscience might go free. Jesus was disgusted by
the reasoning of the bat-eyed pettifoggers. "Do
not swear at all," he said. "Let your communica
tion be yea, yea, nay, nay." In other words, "If
you want to render a thing emphatic, simply say it
over again. If men doubt you, then quietly repeat

60 CHARACTER OF JESUS
what you have already declared." It was the
belief of Jesus that a man's word ought to be as
good as his oath, or as we say as good as his bond.
If the world were the kind of world God wants it
to be, then all the evidence that would be needed to
prove a certain thing true would be that a man had
asserted it. If it is necessary now in courts of jus
tice to make use of oaths, that is because of the Evil
One who has corrupted many hearts and rendered
the ordinary speech of humanity unreliable. In an
ideal world all oaths are unnecessary and unthought
of. It was because of Jesus' incorruptible sincerity
that we have from his lips such a remarkable out
pouring of plain words. You and I do not like
plain words. We dare not use them — at least
often. We water our words down. We pull the
string out of them. We substitute long Latin words
for plain, short, Anglo-Saxon words, for by multiply
ing the syllables we attenuate the meaning. For
instance, we say "prevarication' instead of "lie,"
because falsehood when expressed pompously loses
its blackness and grossness. But Jesus would not
use words of velvet when words of velvet flattered
and deceived. It was his work to help men see
themselves as they were. He characterized them
by words which accurately described their character.
One day he told a crowd in the city of Jerusalem
that they were of their father the devil, and that the
lusts of their father they were eager to do. He

HIS SINCERITY 6 1
went on to add that the devil was a murderer and
that he abode not in the truth because the truth
was not in him. We are shocked by such plainness
of speech. We do not like it. Is that because we
dare not express things as they are? Have we
gotten into the habit of hiding our eyes and trying
to make black things seem gray or even white?
Jesus was incorrigibly sincere, and it was sin
cerity which drove him to tell men the plain truth.
He said to these men, "If I should say I do not
know God, I should be a liar like you." There was
a strong inducement for him to conceal his extraordi
nary knowledge. A man makes himself odious by
claiming to know more than other men, and by
asserting that he can do more than anybody else.
It would have been easier for Jesus to adopt the
language of the professionally humble people who
are always saying that they do not know anything
and cannot do anything and do not amount to any
thing. But Jesus was a man of truth. He could
not disguise the fact that his knowledge was unique
and that his power was unparalleled. Because he
was true he could not hold back the fact that he
was the Good Shepherd and the Door, the Bread
of Life, and the Light of the World. Nothing but
sincerity would ever have driven him to outrage the
feelings of his countrymen by assertions so ex
traordinary. Had he kept silence or pretended to
be ignorant on matters on which he possessed full
knowledge, he would indeed have been a liar like

62 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the very men with whom he was struggling. All
these remarkable declarations of his in regard to
the nature of his personality and the range of his
power were forced from his lips by a heart un
swervingly loyal to the truth.
The warnings of Jesus have often aroused criti
cism and condemnation because of their severity
and the frightening words in which they are ex
pressed. He told certain men they were moving
onward to perdition and painted their loss and ruin
in phrases which have caused the human heart to
shudder. How will you account for such vigor of
language? It was certainly cruel to speak such
words if he did not know the possibilities and doom
of sin. If he knew, then he was bound to tell.
The awful parables of the New Testament are the
product of a heart that was uncompromisingly sin
cere. To speak soft words to men whose feet are
hastening down the road to ruin, how was it pos
sible to do it? His very sincerity drove him into
language which to our cold hearts seems exaggerated
and needlessly abusive. He called the leaders in
Jerusalem liars, blind men, fools, serpents, vipers.
If they were not all this, then Jesus stands condemned
for making use of such cutting words. But suppose
these men were precisely what such words described
— then what ? Suppose they were in very fact liars
and fools and blind men, was it not the duty of Jesus
to inform them of their pitiable condition? What
else could a sincere friend do? These men sup-

HIS SINCERITY 63
posed they could see and were wise, but if they were
mistaken was it not incumbent on an honest man to
deliver them if possible from their delusion ? If they
were venomous, and deadly and treacherous, why
should they not be likened to serpents and vipers?
There is not a trace of bitterness in Jesus' language.
It is the calm statement of a horrible fact. The
Lord of truth must of necessity use words which
accurately characterize the persons who are to be
instructed and warned.
The inmost heart of Jesus finds utterance in his
declaration to Pontius Pilate that he had come into
the world to bear witness to the truth. That was
his work. He never shirked it. He never grew
weary in doing it. He was surrounded all his life
by men who bore witness to falsehoods. They lied
about him in every city in which he worked. They
misrepresented his deeds and his words and his
motives. They filled all the air with lies. The wit
nesses who appeared against him at his trial were
liars. But in the midst of the despicable set of
false-minded, false-hearted maligners, and mur
derers he stood forth, calm, radiant, the one man in
all the' world whose lips had never been sullied by
a falsehood and whose heart had never been stained
by a lie.
In the centuries which have passed .since Jesus
died, many strange and uncomplimentary things
have been said about him ; but it is surprising how
loath men have been to accuse him of deceit. They

64 CHARACTER OF JESUS
have been willing to say he was mistaken, they
have called him a visionary, a fanatic, an enthusiast,
and dreamer ; but no man of sane mind or heart has
ever ventured to assert that Jesus of Nazareth was
an intentional deceiver. Men have claimed that
his apostles were rogues and falsifiers, that they
deliberately misrepresented both his person and his
teaching ; but no one has dared to argue that Jesus
himself was capable of a lie. There is something
so pure and frank and noble about him that to doubt
his sincerity would be like doubting the brightness
of the sun.
This unquestioned loyalty to truth gives his words
a value which no other words possess. When we
listen to the words of other men, we must make
subtractions and allowances. No man puts his
whole self into his speech. His words reveal him
and they also conceal him. There is a discrepancy
between the soul and what the mouth declares.
Not so with Jesus. He holds back nothmg. What
he thinks he says, what he feels he declares. He
tones down nothing, he exaggerates nothmg. He
declares all things as they are. He is not swerved
by sin within nor cowed by hostile forces from
without. His character is revealed in his speech.
A Chinese proverb says that words are the sounds
of the heart. This is certainly true of the. words
of Jesus. His words are simply the pulsations of
his heart. They are unlike any other words ever
spoken. They contain the full-statured spirit of

HIS SINCERITY 65
a man. In these words his great soul comes out
and stands before us, and in them we behold his
glory. This, then, is the man we want. A man like this
can be a refuge in the time of storm. To him we
can flee; when sick at heart, because of the decep
tions of the world, we cry out in wretchedness, "Who
shall show us any good?" When men disappoint
us and friends are few, we can come to one who
says, "I am the truth." When we are weary and
heavy laden, we can rest our souls upon one who is
as certain as the morning and as faithful as the
stars. The world is filled with jangling voices and
it is hard to know which voice to trust ; but his voice
has in it something which inspires assurance and
quenches uncertainty and doubt. What he teaches
about God we can receive. What he says of the
soul we can believe. What he declares of sin and
the penalty of sin we can accept. What he tells us
of the soul we can depend upon. What he asserts
concerning the principles of a victorious life we can
act upon, never doubting. When he tells us to do
a thing we can do it, assured that that is the best
thing to do. When he warns us against a course of
action we can shun it, knowing that in that direc
tion lie night and death. The path which he ex
horts us all to take we can take with boldness, con
vinced that if we take it we shall arrive safe at home
at last. When he says that him that cometh unto
him he will in no wise cast off, we are certain that

66 CHARACTER OF JESUS
if we come we shall be received. When he says,
"Behold I stand at the door and knock ; if any man
will hear my voice and open the door I will come in
and sup with him and he with me," we are certain
of a heavenly guest if we want him. This, then, is
why we feel so calm and satisfied with Jesus: he
soothes and heals us by being genuine. The heart
is always at peace when it rests upon a heart which
is sincere.

VI
THE REASONABLENESS OF JESUS

VI
THE REASONABLENESS OF JESUS
"In the beginning was the logos." — John i : i.
Let us think of the reasonableness of Jesus, of
his sanity, his level headedness, his common sense,
his soundness of mind. An illustrious Roman poet
was convinced that man's supreme prayer ought to
be for a sound mind in a healthy body. A sound
mind in a sound body has been the summum bonum
aimed at by all the great systems of education both
ancient and modern. The ideal was realized in
Jesus of Nazareth. Unsoundness of mind is far
more common than is ordinarily supposed. The
mind altogether sane is rare, and there are those who
declare that it is never found at all. The men and
women imprisoned in insane asylums are only a
fraction of the host of mortals whose mental oper
ations are deranged. Our very language bears
pathetic witness to the wide range of mental dis
turbance. Do we not speak of the crack-brained
and of the scatter-brained, and of people who are
daft? There are crotchety brains and freakish
brains, eccentric and erratic brains, capricious,
69

70 CHARACTER OF JESUS
whimsical, and hysterical brains, unhinged and un
balanced brains of many types and grades, and
when a man has a mind which works normally and
sanely, we pay him the compliment of declaring him
to be a man of common sense. We call it " common "
sense not because it is prevalent, but because it is a
combination of the qualities and forces which, scat
tered among many individuals, may be said to be
long to the common race of men. Jesus was a man
of unparalleled common sense.
Would you see how rational he is, study his at
titude to life. There is a widespread impression,
especially among young people of a certain age,
that Jesus is unreasonable, and that Christianity is
a religion which constantly makes war on reason.
Young men sometimes say, "I do not want to join
the church because I want to use my reason." How
strange such language when Jesus from first to last
pleads for the use of the reason. Christianity is the
one religion of the world which demands the con
tinuous and daring exercise of the intellect. Men
often think they are using their reason when in
fact they are exercising their prejudices or are suf
fering from paralysis of the brain. I have heard
men rail at Christianity asT unreasonable because a
certain Christian man had said a certain thing, as
though Jesus of Nazareth must be held responsible
for everything that every follower of his may think
or say. Other men have been hopelessly estranged
from Christianity because of certain statements they

HIS REASONABLENESS 71
have read in certain books. How unreasonable !
It surely is not fair to hold Jesus of Nazareth re
sponsible for everything which men who bear his
name may think and publish. If men want to
know whether Christianity is reasonable or not,
why do they not read the Gospels ? They are short
and can be read through at least once a week, and
yet men go right on refusing to read the Gospels —
the one source of all authentic information as to what
the Christian religion really is. Many think nothing
of reading a novel of four hundred pages who stag
ger under the task of reading the four Gospels. It
is just such persons who like to talk about the un
reasonableness of Christianity. Why not be reason
able? Christianity has but one authoritative vol
ume. Why not read it?
Open your New Testament, then, and see Jesus'
attitude to life. The word " life " was often on his
lips. He loved the thing and he therefore loved the
word. He wanted men to live. The tragedy of
the world to him was that human life was every
where so thin and meagre. "I came that they may
have life, and may have it more abundantly," thus
did he express the object of his coming. "I am the
resurrection and the life," "I am the way, and the
truth, and the life." It was in such phrases that
he endeavored to give men an idea of his mission
and his person. Men everywhere want to live, but
the tragedy of the world is that they do not succeed.
There is a path which leads to life, but there are

72 CHARACTER OF JESUS
only a few who find it. Tennyson expressed what
every heart feels in his lines : —
'"Tis life of which my nerves are scant,
More life and fuller that I want."
But, alas ! we do the very things which curtail the
capacity for living and dry up the springs of vitality.
We are imitative creatures, all of us, and we mimic
the habits and methods of those around us to our
hurt. We are cowards all of us, and we allow our
selves to be hoodwinked and browbeaten and cheated
out of our birthright. We are greedy, all of us, and
in our eagerness to secure the things on which we
have set our heart we become feverish and wretched,
losing out of life its richest satisfactions. We are
short-sighted, all of us, and in order to attain im
mediate ends we barter away the treasures of coming
years. Life is not full or rich or sweet for many of
us because we are handicapped by our doubts and
hampered by our fears and enslaved by the un
reasonable standards and requirements of a foolish
world. It is the aim of Jesus to break the fetters
and let life out to its completion. To do a thing
which reduces the volume and richness of a man's
life is foolish. We are reasonable in our conduct
only when we are doing things which give life fuller
capacity and power. Jesus was always reasoning
with men in regard to the right way of living. Life
to him was ever the treasure of transcendent im
portance, and his question, "What shall it profit

HIS REASONABLENESS 73
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his
life?" is one of the sentences which having once
dropped into the world's mind are sure to stay
forever. In order to expose the folly of men, Jesus had
the habit of asking questions. Foolishness can
never be made ashamed of itself unless it is com
pelled to look into its own face. Men do stupid
and silly things because they do not think. They
would cease doing them if they would take time for
reflection. Jesus was always saying, "What do you
think?" His only hope for men is in getting them
to think. His attitude from first to last is the atti
tude of God as pictured by Isaiah. He was always
saying, "Come, now, let us reason together."
The Sermon on the Mount is the part of the New
Testament which is nowadays universally praised,
and no wonder. Every sentence is a pearl, and
every paragraph is the classical expression of un
adulterated common sense. How sane is' his remark
on the subject of profanity ! Swearing was common
in his day as it is also in our own. But profanity
is always irrational and nonsensical, and this will
be admitted even by those who indulge in it. The
Hebrew had a deep-seated reverence for the name
of God, and therefore he did not use God's name,
but substituted the name of his city, or God's throne,
or the earth, or the heavens, or his own head, all
of which was puerile and absurd. And Jesus holds
the practice up to scorn. Say what you want to say

74 CHARACTER OF JESUS
and then stop. "All superfluous words are both
needless and mischievous." Is not this common
sense? If a man wants to express a feeling or a
thought, why does he drag in words which have no
connection either with the thought or Jhe feeling,
and if he is expressing a feeling which is low and
brutal, why should he pad his sentences with the
most sacred names of religion? Profanity is a sin
against reason. There is no sense in it. A man
swears because he is weak, his vocabulary is limited,
his power of self-control is stunted, his brain acts
abnormally. Profanity is utterly senseless and
ridiculous. A man who swears acts like a fool.
The soul of Jesus revolted against it because it was
so stupid and irrational.
It is this illumination^ of a mind altogether sane
which he brings to the discussion of prayer. Men
in the first century had overdeveloped the forms of
prayer. The body had outgrown the soul. Men
multiplied words but were poor in ideas and emo
tion. They said the same thing over and over again
and called it praying. They repeated pious words
on the street corners and were satisfied if their neigh
bors looking on called it praying. To Jesus all such
devotion was ridiculous. If God is an intelligent
Being, what is the use of any such mummery and
mockery as this? If God is Spirit, then to pray to
him is to come into communion with him, and you
can do that best when you are alone and have shut
all the world out. It is not necessary to multiply

HIS REASONABLENESS 75
words, the things essential being sincerity and
spiritual contact. How sensible, so reasonable that
it will never become obsolete. Equally sane is he
on the subject of fasting. The exercise of fasting
in Palestine had been elaborated into a system.
Men fasted by the clock. Precise, rules were laid
down and to obey these regulations punctiliously
was the ambition of the pious. Men fasted not only
once but several times every week, and all this was
supposed to be pleasing to God. But to Jesus the
whole system was mechanical and abominable.
There was no reason in it. It was utterly formal
and deadening and stupid. Moreover, to make a
display of it and flaunt the signs of it in the eyes of
the world was contemptible. Fasting if it is to have
value at all must be an exercise of the soul. It is the
spirit which is central and which must control. It
is not the abstinence from food which is pleasing to
the Almighty, but the condition of the heart of the
person who is doing the fasting. Moreover, fasting
cannot be done by the clock. Jesus refused to obey
the rules of the Rabbis. He did not ask his disciples
to obey them either. Many punctilious souls were
sorely distressed. They came to Jesus for an ex
planation. His reply carried them to the very centre
of the whole problem. " Can the sons of the bride-
chamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with
them ? but the days will come when the bridegroom
shall be taken away from them, and then will they
fast." How illuminating and sensible! Fasting is

J6 CHARACTER OF JESUS
a spiritual exercise. The body is to be controlled
by the spirit. There are seasons when the soul is
jubilant and then fasting is not in order; there are
seasons when the soul is depressed, and at such
times the body does not crave food. Fasting ac
cording to rule is irrational. Such fasting is not a
part of the religion of Jesus, but wherever it exists
in Christendom to-day it is merely a survival of
Judaism. Often Jesus illuminates an entire region of
moral action by a question. Many a bubble of
earthly vanity did he prick by the sharp point of a
piercing interrogation. "Is not the life more than
food?" Of course it is. Everybody knows that
it is, the moment he stops to think about it. And
yet thousands of mortals forget that life comes first,
and by putting eating first they rob life of its glory.
What a deal of fussing there is among people who
are reputed sensible, about the dishes and the knives
and the forks and the goblets and the number of
courses ! The simple act of eating is elaborated and
made more and more ceremonious and complex until
women break down under the burden, and life loses
its zest and its joy. "Is not the body more than
raiment?" Yes, it is, now that we stop to think
about it ; but it would seem, were we to judge from
the conduct of a considerable part of the world, that
the raiment is more than the body. Thousands
fashion their lives upon the principle that the clothes
are first and the body second. What the body needs

HIS REASONABLENESS Jj
in order that every organ in it may do easily and
healthfully its appointed work, is in many cases
not at all considered. Rather the question is:
What is the fashion ? What does the world of style
demand? The clothes are hung up and the body
is made to conform to the clothes, even though the
body may be made to suffer in the operation and the
volume of physical life be dangerously diminished.
Who can number the people who are dragging out
an existence pallid and nerveless, all because they
have made the raiment of more moment than the
body? To the clear eye of Jesus all such conduct
is insensate and wicked. Life comes first. Human
beings must dress in ways which shall best conserve
the physical resources of the body and make it
easiest for the body to live the life which God has
appointed it to live. That is reasonable, even
though the whole world should deny it. His ques
tions always pierce. "Is not a man better than a
sheep?" Of course he is, even though the foolish
world does not always act as though it believed it.
In the first century men were far more solicitous
about the well-being of their cattle than about the
welfare of men who were not linked to them by ties
of blood. This form of barbarism has not yet
entirely passed away. A horse cannot fall in the
street of any American city without men rushing
at once to its assistance and getting it again on its
feet. A horse down in the street is a sight intoler-

y8 CHARACTER OF JESUS
able. But a man down in the street dead drunk
in some nook or corner is a sight which makes
boys laugh, and even grown men pass by him with
out even so much as a thought of pity. Society is
not yet reasonable in its treatment of animals and
men. Jesus would not allow himself to be swayed
or daunted by institutions however sacred. Among
the Jews there was no institution held in higher
reverence than the Sabbath. So deep was the rev
erence that it degenerated into slavery. The day
was made so holy that there was no living with it.
The rules of Sabbath observance were so numerous
that one could not turn round without breaking
several of them. The reported discussions of the
most sensible men in Palestine on Sabbath observance
in the days of Jesus amaze us by their puerility and
senselessness. Jesus saw at once through all the
mass of rubbish which had accumulated round the
subject, and laid down a maxim which shed light
brilliant as the sun at noon. "The Sabbath was
made for man and not man for the Sabbath." The
life of man is the first thing to consider always.
The day is the servant of the man. Is it lawful to
do good on the Sabbath Day? Is it lawful to save
life on the Sabbath? It was with such questions
that he punctured the inflated reasonings of the
Jerusalem dunces, and set men free from a bondage
which had become intolerable. His view of Sab
bath observance is reasonable.

HIS REASONABLENESS 79
But time would fail to deal with all the evidences
of his matchless common sense. He put to flight a
whole troop of simpletons by the quiet remark,
"They that are whole have no need of a physician,
but they that are sick." He asked men to do great
things, but he always gave them a reason why they
should follow his instructions. The foolish heart
is always devising new objections to prayer, but he
overthrows all the objections which have ever been
offered or ever can be offered by his simple question :
"What man is there of you, who, if his son shall
ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? or if he
shall ask for a fish will give him a serpent? If ye
then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your Father
which is in heaven give good things to them that
ask him?" To be sure ! All that is best in us must
be rooted in the deep heart of God. The fact that
we love to give good things to our children is proof
that that same disposition exists in the heart of the
Eternal Father. We should never have had the
disposition had he not had it first. If we give, of
course He gives and will forever give. How reason
able! How unanswerable! All arguments against
prayer are unreasonable. There is one sentence in
the New Testament which by the vote of the world
has been counted golden: "All things, therefore,
whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,
even so do ye also unto them." What is this but
perfect sense?

80 CHARACTER OF JESUS
But some one may ask: Does not Christianity
insist upon a namby-pamby attitude to the forces
of the world? Does Jesus not virtually exhort his
disciples to lie down and let men walk over them?
No. You have gotten that idea from books other
than the New Testament. Jesus is sensible at every
point. " Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply
they trample them under their feet and turn and rend
you." Who are the dogs? A certain kind of men.
Who are the swine ? Another type of men. We are
to discriminate. All men are not alike. All men
are not to be treated alike. There were men on
whom Jesus turned his back. There were men
whom Jesus refused to answer. The High Priest
was amazed because he held his tongue. Pontius
Pilate was enraged because his prisoner would not
answer him. Here again we have common sense
perfected. Some of us are foolish enough to think
we must answer every dunce who chatters, reply to
every question which is asked. Such is not our duty.
When Jesus sent his disciples out to preach, he told
them if people were unwilling to listen to them, to
shake the dust from their sandals against them and
go somewhere else. He followed that plan himself.
No limp and sugary weakling was he. He faced
men when necessary with a flash of indignation that
frightened them and poured out upon them words
which raised blisters. Nowhere is he more sensible
than in his attitude to bad men.

HIS REASONABLENESS 8 1
But some one says, "Is he not unreasonable in
demanding that we believe a lot of doctrines which
we cannot understand?" Where does he demand
that? Put your finger on the place, for I cannot
find it. When I open the New Testament I hear
him saying: "Follow me! Follow me!" That is
his favorite exhortation. And when men wanted
to know how they were to ascertain whether or not
he was indeed a leader worthy of being followed,
his reply was, "If any man willeth to do His will,
he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God,
or whether I speak from myself." Is this not
reasonable? Jesus says if you want to understand
the Christian life, then work at it. If you desire
to know the truth, then live it. This is common
sense. How else could one find the truth of a re
ligion if he did not Work at it ? If you want to learn
to speak Italian, you do not simply think about it,
or read about it, but you go to work on it. It
requires a deal of work, but no matter. You can
not learn a language without making mistakes, and
the only thing to do is to keep on working. Just so
is it with the Christian life. Men imagine they can
become Christians by thinking about it, or by read
ing about it, or by hearing a preacher talk about it.
How absurd! You can never become a Christian
until you are willing to work at it. Are you willing
to begin now?

VII
THE POISE OF JESUS

VII
THE POISE OF JESUS
"No man after that durst ask him any question."
— Mark xii : 34.
By the poise of Jesus I mean the fine balance of
his faculties, the equilibrium of his nature. Every
boy knows what it is to balance a cane on his hand,
or to poise a cane by resting one end of it on the tip
of his finger. After a little practice it is possible
for him to hold the cane absolutely erect. This
equilibrium is a state of rest brought about by the
counteraction of two or more opposing forces. Just
so a man can poise himself in the midst of the storms
of this boisterous world. This equilibrium is due
first of all to a certain balance of faculty. How
rarely do we find well-balanced men ! The average
man is one-sided, unsymmetrical, unevenly devel
oped. When a man is unsymmetrical in his body,
we pity him. If one arm is much longer than the
other arm, or one leg is much shorter than the other
leg, or one ear is much larger than the other ear, we
say he is deformed, and his deformity calls forth our
pity. But this lack of symmetrical development in
8s

86 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the body is nothing compared with the lack of
symmetry in the mind. It is a rare thing to find a
man or a woman deformed in his body; it is a rare
thing not to find a man deformed in his spirit. We
are all overdeveloped on one side of our nature and
underdeveloped on the other. It seems to be well-
nigh impossible to keep our faculties in even balance.
If we are strong in certain characteristics, we are
well-nigh certain to be weak in the opposite char
acteristics. If we are enthusiastic, tremendously
enthusiastic, our enthusiasm pushes ahead until it
becomes fanaticism. If we are emotional, exceed
ingly emotional, our emotion degenerates into hys
terics. If we are imaginative, very imaginative,
unless we are on our guard we become flighty and
visionary. If we are practical, very level-headed,
we are always in danger of becoming prosaic and
dull. If we have courage in great abundance, our
courage passes readily into recklessness. If we are
prudent, our prudence is always on the point of
degenerating into cowardice. If we are original
and unique, our uniqueness is always in danger of
passing into eccentricity. If we are sympathetic,
our sympathy is likely to run into sentimentahsm.
If we are pious, our piety has a tendency to become
sanctimoniousness. If we are religious, our religion
tends to slip into superstition. Every virtue when
pushed beyond its appointed limit becomes a vice,
and every grace when overdeveloped becomes a
defect and disfiguration. Look around upon the

HIS POISE 87
men and women that you know, and in how many
of them can you say that their disposition is finely
balanced ? " Oh, if he did not have so much of that ! "
" Oh, if he only had a little more of this ! " That is
what we always feel when the characters of men
pass before us for judgment. " He would be an
ideal man — but — ," " She would be a queen among
women — but — ." There is always just a little
something lacking to make the character what
it ought to be.
But when we come to Jesus we find ourselves in
the presence of a man without a flaw. He was
enthusiastic, blazing with enthusiasm, but he never
became fanatical. He was emotional, men could
feel the throbbing of his heart, but he never became
hysterical. He was imaginative, full of poetry and
music, seeing pictures everywhere, throwing upon
everything he touched a light that never was on land
or sea, the inspiration and the poet's dream — but he
was never flighty. He was practical, hard-headed,
matter of fact, but he was never prosaic, never dull.
His life always had in it the glamour of romance.
He was courageous but never reckless, prudent but
never a coward, unique but not eccentric, sympathetic
but never sentimental. Great streams of sympathy
flowed from his tender heart toward those who
needed sympathy, but at the same time streams of
lava flowed from the same heart to scorch and over
whelm the workers of iniquity. He was pious, but
there is not a trace about him of sanctimoniousness.

88 CHARACTER OF JESUS
All the oily disgusting piety which has been carica
tured in the books is the product of undeveloped
hearts and minds far removed from the piety of his
robust soul. He was religious, the most profoundly
religious man that ever turned his face toward God,
but never once did he slip into superstition. And
because he is so well rounded and on every side so
complete, men have never known where to class
him. Of what temperament was he? It is im
possible to say. Every man on coming to him finds
in him what he wants. He had in him all the virtues,
and not one of them was overgrown. He exhibited
all the graces, and every one of them was in perfect
bloom. He stands in history as the one man beauti
ful, symmetrical, absolutely perfect.
Out of this balance of his powers comes his un
rivalled poise in conduct. He lived always in a
whirlwind, — men bent like reeds around him, — he
never so much as wavered. Men laid their traps
and tried to catch him, he walked bravely in the
midst of them and never was entrapped. The
intellectual athletes of his time tried to trip him —
they never did. His enemies did their best to upset
him — they never could. They flung their lassos
at his head — they never got a lasso round his neck.
They dug their pits — he never tumbled into them.
Wherever he went he was surrounded by enemies
waiting to catch him in his talk — they never caught
him. They asked him all sorts of questions, expect
ing that by his answers he would incriminate him-

HIS POISE 89
self — he never did. They brought out to him one
dilemma after another, saying we will catch him on
one horn or the other — but he escaped them every
time. After they had done their best they retired
vanquished from the field. He remained undisputed
conqueror. This wonderful poise came out in the temple when
he was only 'a boy of twelve. The old men in the
midst of whom he sat were astounded at his answers.
At the beginning of his public career he heard the
seductive voices sounding in his ears. Time and
again the evil one came to him with a new allurement,
but every time he hurled the tempter back by quot
ing just the passage of Scripture which that tempta
tion needed. Men tried to convict him of breaking
the law in regard to the Sabbath day, but instantly
he proved from Scripture and from reason that what
he did was right. Men interrupted him in the midst
of his preaching, but he was never disconcerted.
"Make my brother," cried a man, "divide the
inheritance with me." And quick as a flash the
answer came: "Who made me a ruler over you?
Let me tell you and everybody else to beware of
covetousness." When Peter at Philippi began to
protest against his going to Jerusalem where he
would be killed, Jesus said, " Get thee behind me,
Satan." He had heard that voice before. He recog
nized it even on the lips of his friend. It is one of
the devil's last resources to speak through the mouth
of a friend. Such a trick cannot deceive Jesus.

90 CHARACTER OF JESUS
On the last Tuesday of his life they determined
to undo him. All the different parties united their
forces and put their heads together and concocted
schemes by means of which this young prophet
should be brought to prison. The Pharisees go to
him with this question : " Is it lawful to pay tribute
to Cassar?" It was an insidious question. If he
said "yes," then that would make him hateful to
every patriotic Jew, for no Jew who had a patriotic
heart believed it was right to pay Jewish money
into a Gentile treasury. If on the other hand he
said "no," then he proved himself to be a traitor to
Rome, and the Roman officials could immediately
pounce down on him. What will he do? Holding
a piece of money in his hands he says, "Whose
superscription is this?" And when they say
" Caesar's," he hands the money back to them, saying,
" Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and
unto God the things that are God's." The Phari
sees were conceited people, but after that they durst
ask him no more questions. There was a scribe
who thought he would try his hand. "What is the
great commandment of the law?" he said, to which
Jesus replied, "Love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself." "But who
is my neighbor?" And then Jesus told him about
the priest and the Levite and the Samaritan who saw
the man by the wayside. After he had told the
story he thrust this question into the man's heart :
" Which one of the three was neighbor to the man

HIS POISE 91
who fell among the robbers?" After that the
scribes asked him no more questions. The time
comes when he is seized and carried before Caiaphas,
and the marvelous poise of the prophet disconcerts
and dumfounds the high priest. Unable to do
anything with him he sends him to Pilate. Pilate
questions him and becomes afraid of him. What a
picture! The prophet of Galilee erect, calm, im
movable, saying, "To this purpose was I born, and
for this end came I into the world, to bear witness to
the truth." See Pilate cringing, cowering, shuffling,
washing his hands and saying he does not propose
to have anything to do with such a man. Jesus has
poise, and Pilate, representative of the Eternal City,
servant of an empire of blood and iron — has no
poise at all. It is an interesting fact that notwith
standing Jesus was speaking constantly in public for
three years, not one of his enemies was able to catch
him in his speech, and when at last they convicted
him they had to do it on a trumped-up lie.
This also is noteworthy that not one of the
enemies of Jesus was able by unfairness or false
hood or hatred to push Jesus into a hasty word or
an unrighteous mood. Most men are so poorly
balanced you can push them with very little pressure
into an unmanly speech, into an unchristian dispo
sition. Jesus was so firmly poised that under the
pressure of the most venomous vituperation that
has ever been hurled against a man, he stood erect,
unmoved, and unmovable. His poise was divine.

92 CHARACTER OF JESUS
Because he is so well balanced and so finely poised,
each succeeding generation comes back to him for
inspiration. Is it not remarkable that the men of
the first century thought they saw in him the ideal
figure of what a man should be, and that men in
the fourth century looking at him felt the same,
and that men in the tenth century looking at him
felt the same, and that men in the sixteenth century
looking at him agreed with all the centuries that
went before, and that men in the twentieth century
looking at him feel that in him they find a perfect
pattern ? Men of intellect who live the intellectual
life look to him for guidance and instruction, men
of emotion who desire to replenish the springs of
feeling look to him for inspiration, men of high
aspirations who desire to lift the soul sit humbly
at his feet confessing that he has the words of life.
And now that new and complicated problems have
arisen in commercial life, and industrial life, and
social life, men are turning wistfully toward him,
feeling that he has the key which will unlock all the
doors, that he knows the secret of a complete and
perfect life. There is a grace about him which does
not fade, there is a sanity about him which compels
respect, there is a charm about him which wooes
and wins the heart, and we like preceding genera
tions fall down before him acknowledging that his
character is without a flaw and that his life is without
a blemish.

VIII
THE ORIGINALITY OF JESUS

vin
THE ORIGINALITY OF JESUS
"I make all things new." — Revelation xxi : 5.
The word "originality" does not occur in the
New Testament, for no one in Palestine ever raised
the question whether Jesus was original or not.
Every one took it for granted that he was. Wherever
he went the eyes of men opened wide. Judea had
become a drowsy place, but Jesus by his teaching
shook it out of its lethargy and sleep. Wherever
he went men were stirred to fever heat by what they
saw and by what they heard, and cried out in aston
ishment, " We have never seen it after this fashion."
His teaching itself struck Jesus' contemporaries as
novel. " A new teaching ! " was the exclamation
which followed many of his discourses. It was the
opinion of his severest critics that no man had ever
spoken as he was speaking. There was something
in the manner as well as in the matter which arrested
attention and threw a fresh light upon God and men.
There had been many a teacher in Palestine, but not
one of bis predecessors had spoken with his accent.
95

96 CHARACTER OF JESUS
The common people observed at once that his manner
was not the manner of the professional teacher of
the land. He taught them as one who possessed
authority. The man himself, men soon saw, was
different from other men then living. Sometimes
they imagined he might indeed be one of the giants
of the early centuries returned to the earth again,
and at other times they could offer no explanation
for his genius, simply exclaiming, "What manner
of man is this !" It was because Jesus was different
from all other men of his day and generation that
he created a sensation which left the nation quiver
ing. If he had repeated the old teachings in the
old fashion, he would not have infuriated the Scribes
and Pharisees, and brought about the tragedy of
Golgotha. He was too original to be endurable,
he advanced too many strange and revolutionary
ideas to make it safe for the land to hold him ; it was
because he made all things new that they nailed him
to the cross.
Strange to say, the world has come at last to ques
tion the originality of Jesus. This is one of the
fiercely debated questions of our day. Numerous
schools of Bible students have vigorously denied his
originality, and with industry and ingenuity have
demonstrated that everything he said had been said
before, and that to the world of thought he has not
contributed a single fresh idea. His language, even,
so these men assert, is taken from the poets and the
prophets, while every one of his conceptions can be

HIS ORIGINALITY 97
found in the literature of earlier days. To make
out their case these deniers of Jesus' originality
have ransacked the Old Testament in search of
phrases similar to those which Jesus used, and
through all the extant writings of the ancient Rabbis
they have made their way looking with keen and
eager eyes for evidence that Jesus' best ideas were
borrowed. Nor has the attention been confined to
Hebrew literature alone. The sacred books of
distant Oriental lands have been summoned to give
their testimony to prove that this Hebrew prophet
was after all a plagiarist or an echo. The supposi
tion has been advanced that possibly at some time
in his life Jesus may have traveled into India gather
ing up ideas there for the instruction of his people.
According, therefore, to certain writers, Jesus' dis
courses are a patchwork of quotations. He was a
repeater of the wisdom taught by men before his day,
an imitator of illustrious orators and poets, a shrewd
and talented eclectic who gathered together the gems
of many minds and times and dazzled the world by
the treasures which he had borrowed.
What shall we say to all this? Was Jesus really
original? This subject of originality is always pro
vocative of discussion. No man has ever claimed
to be original whose claim has not been disputed.
No genius has ever been placed among the thinkers
of the world without stirring up a host of critics who
have vehemently denied his right to a place there.
Moliere is probably the most creative and inventive

98 CHARACTER OF JESUS
genius which France has yet produced, but there were
Frenchmen in his day, and there have been French
men since his day, who have declared that he stole
half his works from the old bookstalls. England's
most original poet is Shakespeare, but by his con
temporaries he was accused of masquerading in
the brilliant plumage of other birds, and there are
those who, familiar with the French and Italian
writings from which the English poet drew his
material, are unwilling to concede the claim that his
mind was indeed original. No American writer
has been more suggestive than Ralph Waldo Emer
son, but to many students of literature he is little
more than a gleaner in the wide fields of thought,
his essays being counted strings of gems borrowed
from the kings and queens of other lands and times.
Was Jesus then original? It depends on what
you mean by originality. If to be original one must
coin words never heard before and speak in phrases
which no other tongue has ever used, then Jesus was
not original. He coined no new words and many of
his phrases have the flavor of the olden times. Nor
was he the proclaimer of ideas that had never entered
man's mind before. All his main ideas of God and
the soul, of duty, and of destiny had been if not
expanded in the writings of the Hebrew poets and
prophets at least suggested there, and the principles
of conduct which Jesus taught were for the most
part the very principles which had been proclaimed
by men of God before his day, This may be sur-

HIS ORIGINALITY 99
prising to those who have not given the subject
careful thought, but on reflection you will see that
this is just what might reasonably have been ex
pected. If there is a God who loves our race, it is
incredible that no correct idea of Deity or the soul,
of duty or of destiny, should have entered the human
mind before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Sad
indeed it would have been had Jesus, on coming to
the earth, found no conceptions in men's minds which
corresponded to the truth, and no feelings in their
hearts which God could take delight in. The fact
is that God has never left himself without a witness.
The Son of God has always been in the world. He
is the light that lights every man who is born. From
the beginning he has been giving men right ideas
and right feelings and helping them to reach right
conclusions and decisions. We ought, therefore,
to expect nothing in Jesus' teaching absolutely
unthought of before his incarnation. We ought to
expect to find just what we do find, that everything
he taught had been anticipated, and that all his
cardinal ideas had existed in germ in the writings of
holy men who at divers times had been moved by
the Holy Spirit. Jesus instead of suggesting ideas
never before heard of, and expounding truths of
which no man had ever conceived, picked up the
ancient writings, declaring that they contain the
word of the Almighty and that he had come to inter
pret their meaning and to fulfil -what the poets and
prophets had dreamed. He did not come to destroy

IOO CHARACTER OF JESUS
the old ideas or the old truths. He came to fill full.
There had been foreshadowings and anticipations
and approximations, and now in the fulness of time
God is going to speak His full-toned message through
His Son.
It is at this point, then, that we are to look for the
originality of Jesus. We shall not find it in his
phrases or even in his conceptions, but rather in his
emphasis and his manner of reading life and the
world. He began by reading an old chapter in
Isaiah, but he gave it an emphasis which it had
never known before, the result being that it burst
upon the congregation in Nazareth with the force
of a fresh revelation. Men were reading the Scrip
tures, but they did not know which words to empha
size. Jesus understood. The result was that the
Scripture became. new. Religion is partly ceremony
and partly ethics. Like all things else on earth, it
must have a body and also a spirit. But the leaders
of the Jewish church had forgotten the point of
emphasis. Jesus knew. By emphasizing mercy in
stead of sacrifice he made religion new. Men had
forgotten how to read the world. There were insti
tutions and there were human beings, and the wisest
men of Israel had forgotten which is most important,
— an institution or a man. Jesus threw the em
phasis on the individual soul and by so doing opened
a new epoch in the history of the world.
There was also an accent in his teaching which
men had never heard before, not even in the voice of

HIS ORIGINALITY ioi
Moses or Elijah. It was the accent of assurance,
certainty, authority. It is not the words which a
man speaks, but the way in which he speaks them
which determines their effect upon the life of the
world. No such an accent as that of Jesus had
ever before been heard in Palestine. There was
never a quaver in his voice. In no discourse was
there anything problematic. He never hesitated,
speculated, made use of intonations which indicate
a wavering mind. He was always positive, certain,
infallible. "Verily, verily, I say unto you." Such
was the manner of his speech, and it was a manner
which he caught from none other.
The new accent and the new emphasis were the
product of a new personality. No personality like
that of Jesus had ever been encased in flesh before.
He was a new man. Even Roman soldiers could
feel that he was different from every other man they
had ever known. He had all the faculties and pas
sions of our common humanity, and yet no one
had ever had them in the combination and in the
strength in which they were found in him. Some
one has said that in all schools of art an artist is
praised not for what is different in him from others,
but only for doing most strongly what all are en
deavoring. Jesus was man completed. What a
fulness of life there was in him ! What a power he
had. The world of nature responded to the gentlest
touch of his finger-tips. He was different from all
other men that had ever been, and he said so. He

102 CHARACTER OF JESUS
lifted himself into a unique position and claimed for
himself privileges and rights which he denied to all
others. He claimed to be the light of the world, the
bread of life, the water of life, the only good shepherd,
the way, the truth, the life, the only mediator between
God and man, the only one who knows deity com
pletely and who can save the world from its sins.
Here we strike something which is unique and in
every sense original. No other man had ever
spoken after this fashion either in Palestine or out
of it. No language like this was ever heard in India
or anywhere else. There is nothing even resembling
this in the greatest of the Hebrew poets or prophets.
It is when Jesus speaks of himself that we catch a
note original in the music of our world. When you
hear some one challenging the originality of Jesus
and talking about the parallel passages to be found
in the rabbinical writers, ask for a few parallel
passages corresponding to the paragraphs in the
Gospels in which Jesus declares what he is.
John, who knew him best, heard him saying,
"Behold I make all things new." He could say
this because he was new himself. Not having our
infirmities and fears, our frailties and our sins, his
eyes see things as ours do not see them, and his heart
has feelings which we but dimly understand. He
says, "Come unto me and I will make all things
new!" He does it by giving us a changed attitude
to life, by teaching us how to shift the emphasis from
words unimportant to words important, and by

HIS ORIGINALITY 103
showing us the insignificance of show and form
compared with the qualities of a loving heart, by
taking away our fears which stand round us like
grim Kings of Night, and substituting in their places
the angels of Faith and Hope, by striking off our
fetters and bringing us into the light and liberty
which belong to the sons of God. It is an original
work, and only he can do it. He did it for Paul.
Paul was a scholar and was familiar with those
wonderful rabbinical writings in which certain
modern scholars find such stores of treasures. But
for some reason these wonderful writings even when
taught by the greatest of rabbis did not reach the
core of Paul's need, and he kept on crying, "O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?" And then one day he
met Jesus, and behold, all things became new.
From that day to the day of his death Paul urged
men to put off the old man and to put on the new
man, which after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness.
It may be that for some of you life has grown irk
some and the world drab and commonplace. Life
has lost its sparkle and its zest and the world is
no longer to you what Charles Lamb said it was to
him, "a very pretty place." The days are thread
bare and everything has lost its bloom. What
will you do ? This is' the wise thing to do : Go to
Jesus and give yourself afresh to him. Sink your
life deeper into his life and catch his ways of seeing

104 CHARACTER OF JESUS
things and serving God Take his standpoint,
assume his attitude, catch his emphasis, drink in
the accent of his voice, and undoubtedly he will do
for you what he did for Saul of Tarsus, and what he
has done and is doing still for many, — he will make
all things new. He unifies human life and simplifies
it and elevates it and transforms it and transfigures
it, all because he is the Master and the Saviour of
the heart. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature: .old things are passed away: behold all
things are become new."

IX
THE NARROWNESS OF JESUS

IX
THE NARROWNESS OF JESUS
"Narrow is the way." — Matthew vii : 14.
Let us think about the narrowness of Jesus. I
know it is a disparaging word in our modern speech
and damaging to a person's reputation. We often
hear it used in a sinister and condemning sense, we
sometimes use it so ourselves. We say, "Oh, yes,
he is narrow," meaning that one side of his nature
has been blighted, blasted. His mind is not full
orbed. His heart is not full grown. He is a dwarfed
arid stunted man, cramped by a defective education
or squeezed out of shape by a narrowing environ
ment. In no such sense as this was the man of
Galilee narrow. But what word will better express
one of the conspicuous traits of Jesus than just this
word "narrowness"? He set definite boundaries
for himself, he shut himself up within contracted
limits ; in this sense he was narrow.
How narrow was the circle inside of which he did
all his work ! He lived his life in Palestine, a little
country no larger than Connecticut. It was not a
prominent country either, but only a little province
tributary to mighty Rome. It cut no figure in the
107

108 CHARACTER OF JESUS
eye of the world, and the lords and ladies of the
world's capitals knew little of it and cared less. It
was an obscure and rural country, small in territory
and insignificant in prestige, and yet the Prince of
Glory confined himself to this little corner of the
earth. He might have traveled across the world as
many an illustrious teacher had done before his day.
He might have taught in Athens and lifted up his
voice in the streets of the Eternal City. He might
have given his message to a wide chcle of men whose
influence covered many lands ; but he rather chose
to stay at home, to give his time to the cities of
Galilee, to pour out his strength on the villages of
Judea. For thirty years he remained in the dingy
obscurity of a carpenter's shop, and the country
upon which he poured out the full wealth of his
brain and heart was only a carpenter's shop among
the palaces of the earth.
If his field was contracted, so also was the character
of his work. He only tried to do one thing. There
were a thousand good things which a good man in
Palestine might have done, but he left nine hundred
and ninety-nine of them unattempted and confined
himself to the one thing which he believed his Heav
enly Father had given him to do. Men did not
understand such narrowness. They were always
urging him to swing into a wider orbit and do
somethmg which would create a greater stir. A
man one day interrupted him while he was speaking,
saying, "Make my brother divide the inheritance

HIS NARROWNESS 109
with me!" But his reply was, "That lies outside
my province — come and listen to me and I will
do for you the service which God has appointed
me to do." It was a noble piece of work which this
interrupter asked the prophet of Nazareth to per
form. An injustice had been perpetrated, and what
is nobler in this world than the redressing of a wrong ?
Wrongs ought to be righted and injustices ought to
give way to justice. It was a righteous piece of
work which the man wanted to have done, but it
was not Christ's work, and therefore he would not
do it. No one man can do everything, no one man
should attempt everything. There are a thousand
things which need to be done and yet which no man
however industrious and noble can perform. Jesus
set Hmits to his activity, and beyond those limits no
man ever persuaded him to go. One day his broth
ers wanted him to go to Jerusalem and make an
impression on the big men there, but he refused to
listen to their exhortation, telling them that they
might go any time they chose, but that it was different
with him. He could not go until it was time for
him to go, until his work compelled him to go. He
could not go until his hour had come. When the
hour arrived he set his face steadfastly to'go to Jeru
salem. All along the way men tried to divert him,
but he could not be diverted, to Jerusalem he must go.
He had a baptism to be baptized with and he was
pressed in on both sides and there was no relief
until his work had been accomplished. He always

IIO CHARACTER OF JESUS
speaks like a man whose feet are on a narrow path.
Men all around him have the enjoyment of large
liberty. They wander hither and thither, going
whithersoever they wish, but it was not so with him.
He could not dissipate his energy, he could not waste
a single hour. It was always, "I must," "I must,"
"I must." There were broad roads on his right
and left, and along these roads thousands of his
countrymen were travelling, but he could not go
with them. It was for him to walk along the narrow
path, for this alone led to the glorious life which
was to cheer and save the world. When he talks
to men about the two ways, one of them narrow and
the other one broad, he is speaking out of his own
experience; and when he urges men to choose the
narrow one in preference to the one which is broad,
he is only saying, "Follow me!"
In the realm of the intellect he chose the way
which was narrow. There is a feeling now preva
lent that it is unwise for a man to confine himself
to any one religion or any one particular statement
of belief. It is better — so men say — not to pin
your faith to the sleeve of any one idea or truth, but
hold yourself in readiness to accept every idea which
may come your way. Keep the windows and doors
of your mind wide open and let everything blow
through which the winds may be able to catch up,
but do not settle down upon any definite concep
tions of God or the soul, of duty or destiny, because
in so doing you narrow yourself and may ultimately

HIS NARROWNESS in
degenerate into a bigot. With this sort of philosophy
Jesus of Nazareth had no sympathy. To him cer
tain conceptions of God were true and others were
false, certain estimates of man were correct and
others erroneous, certain standards of duty were
uplifting and others degrading, and with all his
mind and soul and strength he clung to the true
and combated the false. He never shrank from
holding clean-cut opinions and from expressing
them with vigor and emphasis. He was not afraid
of being called intolerant or a bigot. He made a
distinction between falsehood and truth, and was
not ashamed to stamp upon the former and proclaim
boldly the latter. Errors he struck no matter who
held them, and hallucinations he repudiated no
matter by how many accepted. In many a modern
circle he would have been counted a narrow man,
for he made no compromises, and he would not
bend, and he maintained with unflinching per
sistency the things which his heart knew to be true
and good. If to be dogmatic is to be positive, then
he was the most dogmatic teacher who ever brought
men to his feet. He swept other leaders and teach
ers out of the way with gorgeous sweeps of scorn.
"Other men," he said, "have taught you this and
that, but I say unto you." And when his hearers,
amazed by the boldness of his speech, lifted their
eyes, they saw that he had placed himself above
even Moses and the prophets. He would not allow
his followers to roam at their will through the realms

112 CHARACTER OF JESUS
of thought, accepting everything or nothing at their
own whim or fancy; but he taught them day after
day certain definite and positive conceptions and
principles to which they must cling or else lose their
souls. He came to bear witness to the truth, and
for that reason he was not broad enough to give a
place in his heart to falsehood.
This same narrowness comes out again in the
limited range of his approbations. There were
some things he could praise and there were other
things he was obliged to condemn. There were
some men he could eulogize, and there were other
men fit for nothmg but burning condemnation. He
did not wear a universal smile. He did not group
men together as though they were all alike. He
made distinctions, and he taught other men to make
them too. There is a weak and sentimental way of
lumping men together and trying to make it appear
that men are all substantially alike and that one is
not so much better after all than another. Jesus'
estimate was the product of severe discrimination.
He had eyes which saw through the exterior of
men's hearts, and he judged them with a fearless
ness which made them crouch in terror. The gang
of thieves who carried on their business in the
temple were driven out in bewilderment and con
sternation. To some of the most influential men
of Jerusalem he said,. "You are fools and blind
men, you are serpents, you are vipers!" Between
some men and other men there was a great gulf

HIS NARROWNESS 113
fixed. He did not minimize the heinousness of sin
by treating all men alike. It makes no difference
to some of us whether men are honest or not, or
whether they live filthy lives or not ; but it made a
difference to Jesus. No mean and contemptible
scoundrel ever felt in Jesus' presence like holding
up his head. He was so narrow in his judgments
he refused to let bad men feel that they were good.
In all his judgments on the lives and homes of men
he pursued the narrow way.
It is in his habit of drawing distinctions and
setting boundaries that we are to find the cause of
many things which might otherwise remain inex
plicable. One of the notes of Jesus' life was joy.
He was a man acquainted with grief, and yet his
joy was without measure. It was one of the things
he had so much of that he could bequeath it to his
disciples. Could he have been happy had he not
walked within narrow limits? What period in any
man's life is so wretched as that which lies in the
later teens or early twenties in which he does not
know what he is going to do ? The big wide world
lies stretched out before him with uncounted possi
bilities, and the young man full of vigor and ambi
tion, capable of doing a hundred different things, is
wretched. There are a hundred doors which he
can open, but he does not know which one to try.
There are a hundred fields in which he can expend
his strength, but he cannot decide which field to
enter. There are a hundred enterprises he feels

114 CHARACTER OF JESUS
sure he could lead to victory, but he cannot decide
which one is most worthy of his leadership. And
of all mortals such a youth is most miserable. No
man can be happy with an entire world to roam
over. It is only when a man picks out some par
ticular little sphere and says, "Inside of this I pur
pose to work," that real life begins and his heart
learns the art of singing. So long as the world's
work lies in a mountain mass, there is only depres
sion and hopelessness ; it is when a man picks up in
his hand a definite, tiny task and says, " This is the
thing to which I shall devote my life," that the
shadows vanish and life becomes worth living. It is
the narrow path that leads to life. Jesus' work was
definite. At twelve he knew the business to which
he must give himself. There never was a day on
which he allowed himself to be inveigled into doing
something else. Right here is where we are prone
to blunder, and it is at this point that we should
look for the root cause of much of the disquiet in
our souls. We start out to do a certain work and
immediately people begin to say:' "Why don't you
do this?" "Come and do this!" and before we
are aware of our folly we have dissipated our energy
in trying to do things which God never intended us
to attempt. It is here that we blunder in our be
nevolences. We try to give to many causes, and the
result is we have little joy as the result of our giving.
It is no man's duty to contribute to every good
cause that passes his way, and it is only when we

HIS NARROWNESS

"5

draw a circle around our beneficence that we be
come what God likes to see — a cheerful giver. If
you want to see a man who sings at his work, look
for him inside of a narrow chcle.
Not only was Jesus joyful, but he was mighty.
He made an impression because he stayed in one
place, and hit the same nail on the head until it
was driven completely in. Had he wandered over
the earth speaking his parables, they would have
fallen into more ears but would have moulded fewer
hearts. By staying in Palestine and keeping his
heart close to a few chosen hearts, he became in
creasingly influential so that the authorities were
frightened, fearing that he might overturn the nation.
The men who were the nearest to him became so
passionately in love with him that they were ready
to die for him. He made himself thus mighty by'
limiting himself. It is with men as it is with rivers :
a river becomes a river only by the assistance of
its banks. The difference between a river and a
swamp is that a river has banks and a swamp has
none. Take away its banks and the river becomes
a swamp. Many a river becomes mightier and
more majestic because the mountains press in upon
it. Left to sprawl out over the plains it had become
shallow, muddy, feeble; but when the mountains
pressed in upon it, narrowing its channel and crowd
ing the waters in upon themselves, the river took on
a new depth and strength of current, girding itself as
it were to turn the wheels of mighty mills and to

Il6 CHARACTER OF JESUS
carry the ships of commerce to the sea. "Thou
hast enlarged me when I was in distress," the He
brew poet cries, and many a man can say the same.
It is when our life by some sorrow or calamity or
fresh responsibilities is compressed within a nar
rower channel that it takes on interior richness and
gains a significance which it never had before.
By limiting himself our Lord came off conqueror.
He succeeded. What is it to succeed? It is to do
the thing for which we were created. The most
galling of all experiences is the failure to do that
which is most worth while. Jesus attempted to do
one thing only, and that was to perform the work
which his Father had given him to do. At the end
of his life he could look into his Father's face and
say, "I have finished the work which thou gavest
me to do." It was indeed time that the Father
should glorify the Son ! Jesus' life on earth covered
only thirty-three brief years, and yet he did the
greatest piece of work ever accomplished on the
earth. It is wonderful what a stupendous task can
be accomplished in a little time if a man is only
willing to keep at it. We mourn unwisely when we
mourn disconsolately over lives that seem to be cut
off at noon. Let a man strive not to live long but
to do his work, and if he does it why should we
lament because he dies at noon?
We have been touching upon a great principle, —
the principle which lies at the basis of all the fine
arts. The arts which are called fine become fine

HIS NARROWNESS 117
because of the narrowness of the limitations which
they impose. They all subject the soul to a dis
cipline which is severe, and insist upon a bondage
which cannot be broken through. In music there
is no leeway left to the singer. He cannot sing a
little sharp or a little fiat and still produce music.
In music everything is precise, exact, severe, and all
the tones must take accurately the precise points
assigned them by the master, else the music does
not have in it that indescribable power which lifts
and entrances the soul. The artist cannot dip his
brush as he pleases into this color or that, careless
as to how much of this or how little of that he
spreads on the canvas. He is held in the grip of
laws which he cannot violate even a little without
marrmg the picture. It is the narrow way on which
artists must forever walk. Why is it so much more
difficult to write poetry than prose? It is because
poetry subjects the soul to a severer bondage. The
poet must submit to a discipline of which the prose
writer knows nothing. The rules of accent and
rhythm and melody are inexorable and only genius
has strength enough to obey them all. Poets must
walk the narrow path. But the most difficult of all
the fine arts is the high art of living as God would
have a mortal to live. Singing is easy and so is
painting compared with this exacting, soul-taxing
art of living. One cannot think anything he pleases,
or feel as he wants to, or act as he is inclined to.
He must walk the narrow path. Jesus walked it,

Il8 CHARACTER OF JESUS
and he calls men everywhere to become his followers.
He is rigorous in his demands. He is inexorable in
his commands. He is despotic in the limitations
which he imposes. He says, "Come unto me!"
We ask, cannot we go to others? His reply is,
There are no others. Come to me ! And when we
come he says, "Follow me !" We hesitate and ask,
"Is this really necessary, can we not choose an
easier way?" His reply is: "Follow me." "If
you do not take up your cross and follow me, you
cannot be my disciple, and no one comes to the
Father except through me." He says, "Abide in
me!" and we demur and wonder if after all it is
necessary to shut ourselves up in what seems to be
so narrow and limited a sphere. But he says to
us with that strange, dogmatic, compelling accent
which stirred the hearts of the people long ago in
Galilee, "Verily I say unto you, unless you abide
in me, you have no life at all in you !" This, then,
is the narrowness of Jesus. He is narrow for a
purpose. He limited himself, emptied himself of
his divine glory, was found in the fashion of a man,
walked the narrow path which led from the carpen
ter's shop to Golgotha, all because of his great love
for us, and in order that we might each one of us
have life and have it more abundantly.

X
THE BREADTH OF JESUS

THE BREADTH OF JESUS
"Preach the Gospel to the whole creation."
— Mark xvi : 15.
Theke is a sense in which Jesus of Nazareth was
lacking in breadth. He had apparently no desire to
see the world, and was content to spend his life
in little Palestine. He walked a path which was
narrow, and refused to give his approbation to men
and measures which won the esteem and praise of
thousands of his countrymen. But there was a pur
pose in this narrowness, and a reason for it. His
narrowness was a product of his breadth. He
walked the narrow path because he carried in his
heart the dream of an empire which was vast. By
standing in one place and striking repeatedly the
strings of the same set of hearts, he started vibra
tions which have filled the world with music. By
carefully tending the fire which he had kindled, he
made it hot enough to change the spiritual climate
of many lands. By saturating a little circle of
chosen followers with his spirit, he made them capa
ble of carrying on their shoulders a lost race to God.
By persistently treading a single path, he made that
path so luminous that every eye can see it ; by dis-

122 CHARACTER OF JESUS
carding false ideas and by opposing wicked men, he
has made it easier for truth seekers and the soldiers
of God in each succeeding generation to fight a
good fight and to win the crown. By being faithful
in a few things, he won the place of Lordship over
many cities ; and by limiting himself, and by making
himself of no reputation, he founded a kingdom
broad as humanity and of which there shall be no
end. If you study the New Testament, you will see
that this man from the beginning carried the world
in his eye and the race on his heart. What strange
paradoxes one finds in the realm of the soul. If you
would be broad, then be narrow. Jesus was nar
row because his breadth, was immeasurable.
It was the breadth of Jesus' ideas and sympathies
which first brought him into conflict with his coun
trymen. The Jews as a people were proverbially
narrow and bigoted. They divided the world into
two parts and placed an almost impassable gulf
between themselves and all other races. Inside of
Palestine people were divided into classes by lines
which were straight and unchangeable. Hearts
were narrow, and feelings were bitter and hard.
Samaria was counted accursed, and men of Galilee
on their way to Jerusalem crossed over the Jordan
in order that their feet might not be contaminated
by treading the Samaritan soil. The Jews were an
exclusive and haughty and aristocratic race, con
stantly thanking God that they were superior to all
other nations. But the spirit of Jesus was different.

HIS BREADTH 123
In his very first sermon in Nazareth he called atten
tion to the fact that in the days of Elijah, God had
picked out a widow outside the promised land for
special consideration and honor, and that in the
days of Elisha, although there were many lepers in
Israel, God had passed by them all, and healed a
Gentile leper, Naaman, the Syrian. It was all
written down in their Scriptures, but the good people
in Nazareth, like many other good people since their
day, did not pay attention to many things written
in their own Scriptures, and when Jesus began to
eulogize the widow of Sidon and the Syrian king,
their hearts became so hot within them that they
broke up the meeting and tried to mob the preacher.
They hustled him down through the narrow street
and out along a road which ran near the brink of
a precipice, fully intending to crowd him over the
edge, but he foiled their nefarious intentions and
made his escape to Capernaum. This is really the
beginning of Jesus' conflict with the world. It is
worth while to remember that the first antagonism
was occasioned by his effort to push out men's horizon.
The narrow-headed villagers of Nazareth were driven
to the edge of murder by the breadth of a mind
which went beyond them.
The amplitude of Jesus' ideas is evidenced by
their perennial freshness and applicability to all
kinds of men and conditions. How wonderful it is
that Jesus' ideas are broad enough to cover all the
nations and all the centuries. Many ideas shrivel

124 CHARACTER OF JESUS .
and dry up with the lapse of time. Political ideas
have a strange fashion of passing away, and so do
scientific ideas. One century has no interest in the
political teachings of the century which preceded it,
and no generation is willing to accept the science
of the generation that went before it. But the ideas
of Jesus have such breadth that they can cover the
world and the ages, and although nineteen cen
turies have swept away almost everything which
was believed and taught in Jesus' day, his ideas are
still alive and the very words in which they are ex
pressed seem destined to outlive the stars. This is
indeed strange, that we people of the twentieth cen
tury should be a part of the Nazareth congregation,
listening to the very ideas which interested Jews
nearly two thousand years ago, and so broad are
these ideas and so universally applicable to the de
mands of the mind and the needs of the heart that
each succeeding generation down to the end of
time will take its place in the congregation of the
prophet of Nazareth, so that if one could see the
whole history unrolled before him, he would dis
cover the countless millions of humanity gathered
round a single teacher, and that teacher none other
than the teacher whom the people of Nazareth tried
to kill. Broad, indeed, must be the ideas which can
cover all peoples and kindreds and tongues through
out all the eras of their existence.
And his heart was as far-reaching as his brain.
The social sympathies of Jesus were to his country-

HIS BREADTH 125
men a surprise and a scandal. He felt with every
body. He seemed to be ignorant of the proprieties
and the etiquette of well-bred people. His heart
went out to all sorts and conditions of men in a
way which was reckless and shocking. There were
men in Palestine who were under the ban of public
opinion. Every right-thinking man despised them.
They were treated like the dogs in the street. They
had feelings, but nobody felt with them. Every
door of society was slammed in their face. These
men were known as Publicans. Jesus' heart went
out to these men. He talked with them, ate with
them. Not content with this he took one of them
into the inner circle of his intimate friends and
allowed him to go out and teach and work in his
name. Even in Jericho, the narrowest of all
Judean cities, because for centuries it had been the
home of the priests, this big-hearted prophet took
dinner with one of the most notorious of all the
Publicans, to the consternation of the best people
in the land. And not content with thus showing
the breadth of his sympathies by his deeds, he
painted a picture which hangs in the great art
gallery of the world. Its colors will never fade, and
no thief can ever destroy it. It is the picture en
titled, "The Pharisee and the Publican." The
lesson of the picture is that God's heart is more
responsive to a penitent Publican than to a vain
glorious Pharisee. There was only one set of men
lower than the Publicans, and they were the Samari-

126 CHARACTER OF JESUS
tans. Every man's hand was against them. Every
heart was hard as flint toward them. And Jesus
befriended them. He felt with them. He gave
religious instruction even to a Samaritan woman,
and healed even a Samaritan leper. So wide was
his heart that there was room in it for a Samaritan
outcast whose flesh was rotten. And as if deter
mined that all the world down to the end of time
should know the width of his sympathies, he painted
a picture which men will look at as long as they have
eyes to see and hearts to feel, and the name of the
picture is, "The Good Samaritan." What havoc
this man made with the traditions and customs of
his countrymen ! The land was crossed in all direc
tions by dividing walls and estranging barriers, con
structed by narrow-hearted teachers, and after Jesus
had walked through the land, lo, the barriers and
walls were a mass of ruins. His great, loving heart
burst asunder all the regulations and restrictions.
There was room in his soul for everybody.
It is in the width of his love that men have found
most to wonder at. His love was unbounded. It
was an ocean without a shore. He was not willing
that his followers should set boundaries to their
love, because all such barriers were contrary to his
habit and foreign to his spirit. When Peter asked
him how often a man ought to forgive another who
has trespassed against him, and suggested seven as
a number almost grotesquely large, being more than
twice the number suggested by the most liberal of

HIS BREADTH 127
the rabbis, Jesus said: "Do not set any limits at
all. There are no boundaries in the realm of love.
You cannot calculate in the empire of the heart.
Mathematics is foreign to affection." Whenever he
spoke about love he said something which amazed
his hearers. One day he said, "Love your enemies;
bless them that curse you ; do good to them that
hate you; and pray for them that despitefully use
you and persecute you." And when men stood
aghast showing by their faces that only God could be
expected to have a love so broad, Jesus went on to
add that God is to be the model of all men who
want to live right, and that one's constant aim shall
be to bring his life up to God's style, and to imitate
Him in the unbounded reach of His good will. Nor
was this simply exhortation. It was not only preach
ing but practice. Jesus taught forgiveness because
he knew the blessedness of a forgiving heart. He
himself was forgiving always. He had no grudges,
no retaliations, no revenges. Some men forgive be
cause they have not eyes to see the heinousness of
wrong, and not heart to feel its devihshness. Jesus
saw the loathsomeness of vice, knew the odiousness
of vulgarity, felt the hideousness of sin. His heart
was so sensitive that it blazed against evil, but
while he loathed the sin he could love the sinner,
and so when his executioners nailed his hands and
feet to the cross, the only word which escaped his
lips was, "Forgive," "Forgive," "Forgive." That
great word contained the blood of his heart.

128 CHARACTER OF JESUS
It is this abounding love which accounts for the
immeasurable reaches of his hope. He was the
most hopeful of all teachers. No matter how dull
the pupil, he still believed that he would learn.
Men had grown cynical and pessimistic in Palestine
nineteen centuries ago. .They had lost confidence
in humanity, and had settled down in the convic
tion that for many mortals we can expect nothing
but perdition. To the religious teachers of Pales
tine certain classes were beyond redemption. They
were lost and were labeled "Lost." It was known
throughout the city that to certain sinners no ex
hortation could be directed, no promise could be
offered. The Jewish church turned its back upon
all such, and confined itself to men who could be
saved. But Jesus, because he loved, also hoped.
His hope was as immeasurable as his love. He did
not reject the refuse of society. He saw promise
even in the scum. The dregs of society are not to
be carelessly tossed away. There is a chance for
the man who is supposed to have no chance, there
is hope for the man whom men have doomed to
perdition. You cannot tell what is in a man by
what he says or even by what he does. There is
more in him than comes out in his words and his
deeds. And so Jesus proceeded to show that the
so-called lost men were not lost, and that even in
blasted Samaria the fields were white to the har
vest. He did not hesitate to direct his most earnest
exhortations to men who were supposed to have no

HIS BREADTH 129
heart, and even when the world's cruelty was cutting
into him like steel, he said, "I, if I be lifted up, will
draw all men unto me." So boundless was his
confidence in man, that he set no limits to his
expectations. He could not accomplish the redemption of the
world in the few years of his earthly career, but he
would form a society, baptize it with his spirit, and
through this society God from His throne in heaven
would redeem the race. The formation of this
Christian society is one of the great events of the
New Testament. The character of the men built
into it has a wealth of suggestion. If you were
going to form an organization for the purpose of
carrying out your ideas after your death, what kind
of men would you select ? You would — I suspect
— choose men like yourself, of your own social
circle, and of your own type of mind, and of your
own general temperament and make-up, and in
so doing you would have a society which would
come to nothmg. Mark the method of Jesus. He
chooses men of all grades and from all classes.
No man in the group is like any of his comrades,
and no one of them is like Jesus. There is a mer
curial man, Peter; and there is a lymphatic man,
Thomas. There is a fire-eater, Simon Zelotes, a
member of the fieriest political party in Palestine ;
and there is the prosaic and slow-going Philip.
There is a man of' good family and spotless reputa
tion, John; and by his side is a man with a tar-

130 CHARACTER OF JESUS
nished name, Matthew, the Publican. All tempera
ments are here, and all combinations of mental
faculties, and here are representatives from various
classes and divers social strata. In doing a wide
work you must have a broad instrument, and the
Christian church as it left the hands of Jesus em
braced in its membership the types of men which
would be able to open all the doors. Never does
the breadth of the mind of Jesus come out with
more startling clearness than in the manner of his
choices in the formation of the society which was
to bear his name and carry on his work. It was a
great work, the vastest which has ever entered into
the heart of man. He had constantly the ends of
the earth in his eye. The narrowness of the petty
men who administered the affairs of the Jewish
church distressed him. "Many," he said, "shall
come from the East and the West and from the
North and the South and shall sit down with Abra
ham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God."
At an early stage he told his apostles not to go
outside the limits of their own people in their work,
but this limitation of field was only educational, and
with their increasing strength was to pass forever
away. Men should stay in Jerusalem long enough
to secure strength sufficient to grapple with the
problems of Judea, and they should tarry in Judea
until they were capable of grappling with the more
difficult conditions of Samaria, and they should
work in Samaria until they had acquired the en-

HIS BREADTH 131
durance which would enable them to travel to the
uttermost parts of the earth. In the earlier stages a
teacher does not communicate to the pupil his plans
for the years which lie far ahead. Jesus did not
talk to his apostles about the world and the ages on
the day of their baptism or even in the upper cham
ber, but before he left the earth he poured into theh
ear the great message which had been in his heart
from the beginning, and it ran thus, "Go preach
the Gospel to the whole creation." All national
boundaries are now obliterated and the horizon
thrown round the apostles is not less narrow than
the large circle of the world. "Go disciple the
nations." It was in this manner that he spoke to
them before the cloud received him from their
sight, and whenever from that day to this the fol
lowers of Jesus have been closest to him, they have
been found to be dreaming of conquests wide as the
world. He that hath seen this man hath seen the Father.
In Jesus of Nazareth we get a revelation of . the
breadth of the heart of the Eternal. How did it
happen that Jesus was so spacious in his ideas and
so broad in his sympathies and so far-reaching in
his plannings? It was because God was in him
revealing Himself to men. That is what God al
ways is — broad in His sympathies, wonderful in His
expectations, boundless in His love. He so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son — and
this Son came to earth and tasted death for every

132 CHARACTER OF JESUS
man — and the Spirit whom He sent and also the
bride who is His church, they keep on crying through
the centuries: "Come! Let him that is athirst
come. Whosoever will, let him take the water of
life freely."
This, then, is a message for us all. No matter
who you are, you have a sure place in the mind
and heart of God. No matter how you have sinned,
you are inside the boundaries of His sympathy. No
matter what you have said or felt or thought or
done, you are still the object of His love. No matter
how often you have disappointed Him, He is still
expecting of you better things. Whoever you are,
and wherever you are, and whatever you are, you
are included in His plans. When He laid down the
lines of His vast scheme for humanity, you were
not overlooked or forgotten. When He framed His
church, a place inside of it was assigned to you.
That place wil l remain vacant until you fill it.
You cannot escape Him. His arms are all-embrac
ing. The width of His heart is infinite. His love
is everlasting. "I know not where his islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond his love and care."

XI
JESUS' TRUST IN GOD

XI
JESUS' TRUST IN GOD
"He trusted on God." — Matthew xxvii : 43.
We are trying to see Jesus as he was. It is sur
prising that we do not know him better when his
image is so vividly portrayed for us in the Gospels.
The very familiarity of the story has a deadening
effect upon the mind. We have heard so much of
Jesus ever since the days of childhood, have heard
so many teachers and preachers speak about him,
that the mind has hardened and refuses to be im
pressed by him. Many of us have had faulty
methods of Bible study. We have studied the Bible
piecemeal, in scraps and patches, getting a knowl
edge of isolated passages and never putting together
the various parts so as to see Jesus as a man among
men. We have caught, it may be, one trait of his
lovely character; we have fixed our gaze upon one
bright particular star, and have missed the sweep
and swing of the constellations ; we have picked up a
pebble now and then and have failed to take in the
curve of the vast shore and the swell and surge of
i3S

136 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the sea. Our object in all these studies is to see
him as he was seen by the men of his time.
We have already found in him the note of strength
and the note of gladness,, and now let us get a little
deeper and find out if we can the spring from which
strength and gladness flow. How does it happen
that this man was so masterful in every situation,
and how did it come to pass that he was joyful in
the midst of so many shadows? The answer to
the question lies written broad on all the pages
of the New Testament. His strength and gladness
came from his steadfast trust in God. If you were
to ask me what is deepest and most fundamental in
the character of Jesus, I should say, it was his trust
in God. I see not how any one can read the New
Testament without feeling that this to him was the
Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. It
was the heaven above his head, the earth beneath
his feet, the atmosphere he daily breathed, the
spirit in which he was saturated, the music that ran
through all his conversation, the inspiration of all
his life. Possibly no better testimony upon this
point can be found in all the Scriptures than that
taken from the lips of his deadliest foes. We have
already found these enemies of Jesus valuable wit
nesses, and they will not disappoint us here. When
he was dying on the cross many people laughed at
him and wagged their heads, saying derisive and
spiteful things. Among these people, strange to
say, there were members of the Sanhedrim, chief

HIS TRUST 137
priests, scribes arid leaders — they all ridiculed and
scorned him, and the climax of their vituperation
was this, "He trusted on God!" No blacker jeer
ever was belched forth from the jaws of hell than
that. It is incredible that human beings could be
so diabolical as to sneer at a man in the hour of
death; but that is what the religious leaders of Pal
estine did when the Prophet of Galilee was dying.
The dark and terrible sentence throws a blaze of
light upon the teaching and the conduct of Jesus.
His whole course of action had made upon the
people among whom he moved the impression that
he trusted in God.
Should you ask me for illustrations of this trust,
I should be embarrassed not because there are so
few but because there are so many. One can dip
into the Gospels where he will and find things which
bear testimony to Jesus' trust in God. When only
a boy he said to his mother, "Wist ye not that I
must be about my Father's business?" His last
words upon the cross were, "Father, into thy hands
I commend my spirit." From that first point to the
last point the music of his trust was never broken.
He is everywhere and always a man of prayer. At
the crises of his life we find him praying. At his
baptism and the transfiguration, in the garden, on
the cross, he is pouring out his soul to God. Before
every important action, in the midst of every diffi
cult situation, at the completion of every stage of
work, we find him praying. It was a common thing

138 CHARACTER OF JESUS
in Palestine for men to pray, but no man had ever
prayed like this man, with such simplicity, with
such earnestness, with such boundless trust. Men
gathered round him awestruck and said, "Master,
teach us how to pray." All Hebrew children were
taught to pray from earliest infancy. Prayer was
an indispensable feature of Hebrew piety, but men
who had prayed from earliest youth felt when they
heard this man pray that they had never prayed at
all. The word which he applied to God was Father.
Only occasionally in the long sweep of the ages had
a soul here and there ventured to apply to Deity a
name so familiar and sweet, but Jesus of Nazareth
always thinks and speaks of God as Father. He
names Him this in his own prayers, he tells other
men that they also may use this name. To trust in
the goodness and mercy of the good Father was his
own intensest and fullest delight; to induce others
to trust in Him also was his constant ambition and
endeavor. How much Jesus has to teach us at this point.
It is often supposed that it is easy to believe in God.
The fact is, nothing is more difficult to do at certain
times and in certain circumstances. It is easy, in
deed, to say that one trusts in God, but really to do
it when justice seems dead and love seems to have
vanished, that is difficult indeed. Who can study
Nature without finding things in it which make it
difficult to believe in the good Father? Does not
Nature seem to be cruel? Does she seem to have

HIS TRUST 139
any heart? Do not fire burn and water drown
and volcanoes cover cities without mercy? Does
Nature not carry on her vast operations with abso
lute indifference to the wishes or welfare of men?
All of the great thinkers who have gazed into the
face of Nature have been appalled by her heartless-
ness and her indifference. Jesus of Nazareth found
in Nature fresh evidences of God's love. Other men
noting how the sunshine falls upon the heads of the
good and the bad had come to the conclusion that
God does not know — God does not care. Whereas
Jesus looking on the same phenomenon sees in it
fresh evidence of the great heart of the good Father.
The rain falls upon the farm of the man who blas
phemes and also upon the farm of the man who
serves God, not because God is indifferent to the
difference in character, but because he is so good
that his mercy covers all of his children. Just as
the earthly parent allows the disobedient son to sit
down at the table with his obedient brothers and
sisters, so it is the good God who feeds the good and
the bad, the just and the unjust, unwilling to show
resentment, hoping still that every heart will sur
render. To Jesus Nature is a great witness, clothed
in light, bearing continuous testimony to the width
of the eternal mercy.
But if Nature seems indifferent and cruel, what
shall we say of history — the arena in which has
been played out the tragedy of human life? What
a jumble of mysteries ! What a mass of woes !

140 CHARACTER OF JESUS
All of the centuries groaning with agony, all of the
ages dripping with blood ! Who can look upon the
sufferings of the innocent, or hear the cries of the
oppressed, or witness the slaughter of the pure and
the good without asking himself: Does God know?
Does God care? Right fprever on the scaffold,
wrong forever on the throne, — so it seems to the
man who reads history. Vice triumphs over virtue,
dishonesty tramples upon honesty, injustice lords
it over justice, hate defies and defeats love. This
happens not once but ten thousand times. Some
men read the dark and terrible story and give up
their faith in God. Jesus looks upon the same
scene and gives to it a different interpretation. He
sees good men come and offer their services to the
world only to be rejected and repulsed. One of
them is stoned, another is beaten, another is killed.
Their dead bodies are piled up in sickening heaps,
but to Jesus this is not evidence of the indifference
of God — it is the proof of his long-suffering patience ;
it is because he is not willing that any should be
lost that he keeps on century after century, sending
into the world prophets and apostles, heroes and
saints, who shall proclaim the message of heaven
to bewildered and sinful man.
But if the processes of Nature and the courses of
history make war upon one's trust in God, much
more terrible is the conflict which is often necessi
tated by one's own personal experience. Many a
man has for years trusted in God only to discover

HIS TRUST 141
when evil fortune came that his trust was not strong
enough to stand the shock. The very best and
strongest of men when overtaken by misfortune are
obliged to readjust their faith. For a while they are
stupefied and dazed, scarcely knowing whither to
turn or what to think. So it was with Job. His
faith in God was complete, so he thought ; but when
his children were taken and his fortune was swept
away and his health vanished, he lay upon the ground
in his misery crying to God in his pain, unable to
see Him either on the right hand or on the left, either
behind or before. Many things conspire to blot
out one's trust in God. Disappointment may do it,
a man's fondest dream may come to nothing, his
central ambition may fail. One disappointment
after another may come upon him until he sinks
down vanquished and hopeless, his torch extin
guished. Persecution may break a man's faith in
God, the inhumanity of man may turn sour the
juices of the heart ; the misunderstandings and mis
representations of men, their hostility and faithless
ness, their contempt and their scorn, may render it
well-nigh impossible to believe that God rules the
world. Other men are overcome by failure. Nothing
to them was so sweet as success. To win suc
cess they give the best of their years and all theh
powers, but in spite of all they can do success does
not come. At the end of the day they confess them
selves defeated. In the bitterness of their defeat

142 CHARACTER OF JESUS
they cry out, "Where is God?" Jesus of Nazareth
had all the dark experiences which it is possible for
the soul to have. He had a work to do to which he
gave all the energy of his brain and his heart. He
had a dream which filled him with enthusiasm, he
had a message to communicate which he was certain
would drive away the gloom and the woe of the
world. He went to Jerusalem to annourice it —
the door there was slammed in his face. He an
nounced it in the synagogues of Galilee, but the
people there would not receive it. He then preached
it on the street corners of the great cities, but the
crowds melted away like snow banks in June.
There were at last only twelve men who stood by
him, and the hearts of these were so fluctuating that
he said, "Will ye also go away?" To these twelve
men he gave himself with passionate devotion, pour
ing into their souls his own very life. But the bold
est of them turned out a coward, and one of the
most trusted of them became a traitor, and when
the crisis in his life came they all forsook him and
fled. But notwithstanding his disappointment, his
trust in God was unbroken. In the midst of the
tempest his torch kept on burning, and he cried,
"Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
He was persecuted as no other man before his day
or since ; he was maligned, abused, execrated. Men
called him crazy, others said he had a devil. He was
accused of blasphemy, of treason — but his heart

HIS TRUST 143
remained sweet. Men buffeted him and abused
him, hissing at him their ingratitude and hatred,
but he said, "The cup which my Father has given
me to drink, shall I not drink it?" And then
finally he failed. He failed to do the thing to which
he had devoted all of his powers — the thing for
which he had steadfastly prayed. We do not often
enough ponder this — that the earthly life of Jesus
was a failure. We dwell upon the things which
have happened since his death, and dwelling upon
these we see that he has succeeded; but it should
never be forgotten that his life on the day of his
death was a terrible and heart-breaking failure.
Injustice was stronger than justice, unrighteousness
was mightier than righteousness, hate was stronger
than love. He had tried to induce the world to
accept a beautiful truth, but the world spurned
him. In the hour of his great defeat he still looked
to God saying, "Not my will but thine be done."
Defeat itself could not daunt him or make him draw
back. If it is necessary, he said, that I should be
sacrificed, that I should be trodden under the feet
of the men who are thirsting for my blood, if that is
the will of the Infinite Father, then to that I gladly
submit. Never was there a man like this man. Other
great and strong men have lived and labored, but
never a man like Jesus of Nazareth. John the
Baptist was mighty, but when the wind blew he
bent like a reed. Simon Peter was a giant, but when

144 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the storm raged he began to sink. But Jesus of
Nazareth, in the midst of the wildest storm that ever
blotted out the heavens and caused the earth to
quake, looked steadily toward God, saying, "Not
my will but thine be done." Look down across the
ages and see the great men, how they are swayed
and tossed by the winds and storms ; but there above
them all there rises this man of Galilee like some
majestic mountain, his peaceful head outlined against
the blue.

XII
THE BROTHERLINESS OF JESUS

XII
THE BROTHERLINESS OF JESUS
"First be reconciled to thy brother."
— Matthew v : 24.
We are trying to see Jesus as his contemporaries
saw him, and desire to understand if we can the
secret of that fascination which he exerted over thqse
that knew him, and to fathom if possible the heart
of that magic by which he has thrilled and held
nineteen Christian centuries. We have found that
the secret of his joy and strength lay in his implicit
trust in God, and now I wish to think with you about
another trait for which it is difficult for me to find
a satisfying name. I should say that it is the love
of Jesus were not the word " love " so ambiguous and
so liable to misinterpretation; I should say it was
the service of Jesus were it not for the fact that ser
vice is rather cold and has long since been worn
into shreds ; I should say the pity of Jesus, but pity
is loVe looking downward, and that does not convey
all the truth ; I should call it the humanity of Jesus,
but that is a vague and indefinite word that does
not tell the story vividly ; I should say the kindness
of Jesus, but the word does not carry with it force
147

148 CHARACTER OF JESUS
enough. Possibly we cannot do better than to take
the word "brotherliness," for this word contains
two elements, both of which are essential if we
would understand the kind of man Jesus was.
Brotherliness carries in it not only a sense of kinship
but likewise a disposition to render help. There is
a relationship and likewise a helpfulness, and both
of these blended into one constitute the quality to
which I invite your attention now.
That this trait in Jesus made a profound impres
sion upon his contemporaries is evidenced not only
by what his friends have said about him, but also
by the criticisms and sneers which he drew from
his foes. It was a common taunt of the Scribes
and Pharisees that he was a friend of Publicans and
sinners, and when he hung dying on the cross the
leading men of the Jewish church gathered round
him saying with a jeer, "He saved others, he can
not save himself." Both of these accusations are
as devilish as anything to be found in the literature
of the world, but they are valuable to us in this that
they show conclusively what impression this man of
Galilee made upon the people of his time. It had
been his practice all the way through life to help
men. He had been a friendly, brotherly man even
to the lowest and the basest of society. That was
a characteristic which had created a great scandal
and made him hateful to many of the respectable
people of his day. The same trait is characterized
in a famous phrase written by one of his dearest

HIS BROTHERLINESS 149
friends, "He went about doing good." What more
beautiful eulogy has ever been written about a man
than that ? With what more lovely wreath of roses
could you cover a man's career? In these three
sentences — "The friend of Publicans and sinners,"
"He saved others, he cannot save himself," "He
went about doing good " — we get eloquent testi
mony to the fact that Jesus had a brotherly heart.
Let us look into this accusation, that he was the
friend of Publicans and sinners, and find out what
it meant. The word "publican" means nothing to
us because we have no class of men corresponding
to the Publicans of Palestine. They were the tax-
gatherers of the country, gathering taxes for the
Roman government. They were the hirelings of
great capitalists into whose hands it was necessary
to turn over a certain sum of money each year, and
by extortion and other dishonest measures they could
make as much more money for themselves. To
every pious Hebrew these men were traitors to theh
country, and wherever they went they were an object
of abhorrence, hatred, and scorn. Theh money
was tainted money, it would not be accepted in the
synagogue. Their oath was absolutely worthless,
they could not be a witness in any court of law. If
a man promised to do a thing for a Publican under
oath, he was not bound to keep his oath. They
were set up in the pillory of scorn and execration,
and pelted with sneers by every passer-by. They
were looked upon as wild beasts in human shape.

150 CHARACTER OF JESUS
They were outcasts, vagabonds, worse than the
homeless curs that roamed the streets. No decent
man would have anything to do with them,
no religious teacher took any interest in them.
They were simply the offscouring and dregs of
society. But even with these Jesus made friends. Not
only did he speak to them but he ate with them,
went into their houses and sat down to the table
with them — the very climax of audacity ! It is
one thing to throw money to depraved men as we
would throw carrots to bears in a bear pit, it is
another thing to eat with them. It is one thing to
talk down to bad men, giving them good advice,
and quite another thing to associate with them. No
one found fault with President Roosevelt so long as
he spoke to negroes in the street ; it was when he sat
down with a negro in the White House that the
South blazed with indignation. But this man Jesus
sat down and ate with Publicans, he crossed the
chasm over which no man of his day or generation
was willing to pass. By doing this he lost his repu
tation. In the words of an apostle he made himself
of no reputation, he took his good name and tore
it into shreds and threw it away and all because he
was determined to be brotherly. Notwithstanding
these men were so base he recognized in them his
brothers. They belonged to him and he belonged
to them. They were members of the human race,
children of the great family of God, and therefore

HIS BROTHERLINESS 151
in spite of all that they had done, and notwithstand
ing all that they were, he treated them as brothers.
Not only did this conduct make a profound impres
sion upon the men of Jesus' day, but it has made
such a deep impression on all succeeding generations
that it has blinded us to a fact that should never be
forgotten — that Jesus was the brother of every
body. Christianity has often been conceived as a
religion that is interested chiefly in the outcasts of
society, in the poor, the sick, the depraved. There
are many who always think of Jesus as the friend of
poor men, and of sick men, and of bad men, who
never think of him as the brother of those that are
rich and strong and good. It should never be for
gotten that Jesus was brotherly toward good men
as well as bad men, rich men as well as poor men,
respectable men as well as disreputable men — he
was the brother of every man. For instance, a rich
man in Jericho once climbed into a tree in order
to see the prophet pass. Jesus at once told him to
come down, and that he wanted to take dinner with
him. On a certain occasion near the end of his life,
while he sat at meat in the home of one of his friends,
a member of the household poured five hundred
dollars' worth of ointment on his feet and head,
giving us proof that the family was by no means
poor. If more is said in the New Testament about
poor men than rich men, it is because Jesus was
able to come nearer to poor men than he was to

152 CHARACTER OF JESUS
rich men. Rich men are always inaccessible. Here
in New York you can go into the homes of the poor
anywhere, but from the homes of the rich you are
barred out. Rich men always surround themselves
by barriers, by cordons of servants, and therefore we
must not be surprised that in Palestine it was neces
sary for this man of Galilee to deal largely with the
poor. But it must not be forgotten that he was just
as friendly toward the rich Nicodemus as he was
to the poor woman at the well ; that he was just
as brotherly toward rich Zaccheus as he was to the
poor beggar in Jerusalem. Nor was he lacking in
brotherly interest in the respectable people of his
day. If the New Testament makes the impression
on us that he was more interested in the outcast and
debased, it is because this interest in them was so
exceptional that it made a greater impression upon
those who wrote the story of his life than any other
feature of his conduct. A very large part of all his
work was done for respectable people, good people,
the leading people of his day. The pious Hebrews
of Palestine were tied hand and foot with the cords
of tradition. They were bound round and round
with laws like an Egyptian mummy with embalming
cloths, but Jesus gave himself to the work of setting
them free. The cords were tied tight and he at
tempted to untie the knots, but in his effort to give
men emancipation he stirred up animosities and
awakened hatreds which led speedily to his death.

HIS BROTHERLINESS 153
It was in his effort to untie the knots that men seized
him, crying, "Crucify him!"
Let us notice a few illustrations of his brotherli
ness. When John the Baptist was baptizing in the
Jordan, Jesus came down from Galilee to be bap
tized. John, when he saw Jesus approaching, cried
out : " O, no, I cannot baptize you, you are too good.
There is reason why I should be baptized of you.
This baptism is intended for sinners. I will not,
therefore, baptize you." But Jesus would not
listen to him, he insisted upon being baptized. He
would identify himself with his brethren. "I want
to be counted," he said, "a man among men."
It was not a question whether he was good or not,
it was a question of being brotherly. He refused
to hold aloof from any movement that promised
good to his country. He subjected himself to the
same ceremony of which his fellow-citizens were in
need. He took his place at the very beginning of
his ministry among his brethren. Nowhere does
his brotherliness come out more clearly than in his
treatment of the sick. He could not pass a sick man
without his soul going out to help him. Pain in its
every form appealed to him, misery drew virtue
from his heart. A large proportion of all the re
corded miracles are miracles of healing. He could
not look upon the deaf or dumb, the palsied, the
blind, without putting forth his power to help them.
No finer illustration of this brotherliness is afforded
in the New Testament than that which St. John

154 CHARACTER OF JESUS
gives in the story of the impotent man at Bethesda.
Here was an invalid who for thirty-eight years had
lain in helplessness without a friend in all that great
city. He needed only a lift in order to bring him
within the reach of influences that were healing,
but no one would lend a lifting hand. No other
incident in the Bible throws such a strong light upon
the inhumanity of the world nineteen hundred years
ago. We are living in a day when the spirit of Jesus
is working everywhere. Everywhere there is an out
stretched hand, and everywhere human hearts are
beating in sympathy with the helpless and the sick.
Travelers through the Orient tell us that we people
of the West have no conception of the indifference
of the Oriental heart to human woes and miseries.
Jesus, by being brotherly, has set an example after
which the life of the world is being patterned, and
in every land through which his name has been
carried the hearts of men are gentler and theh hands
more eager to render help.
His brotherliness is also manifested in his teach
ing. He could not look into men's faces without
being pained by their confusion, their perplexity,
and their misery. He could not see men passing
on to the judgment day without telling them some
thing about the great God in whose world they were
living. Whenever he saw men fainting and scat
tered abroad like sheep having no shepherd, his
heart was moved with compassion on them. When
he looked into the tired faces of the Galilean peasants

HIS BROTHERLINESS 155
his heart cried out, "Come unto me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
What a sob there is in the words, "O Jerusalem!
Jerusalem!" There is in the words the moan of a
brotherly heart. And not only was he brotherly
himself, but to him brotherliness is the very essence
of religion. Without brotherliness there can be
no religion that is pleasing unto God. The old law
had said that one man must not kill another, but
Jesus went far beyond the requirements of that law
— he said that calling a man names was also wicked
and would bring him into judgment. To use ad
jectives that pierce and cut, to throw out mean
epithets full of contumely and scorn, to speak of
men in ways that degrade them — that is wickedness
and will bring the severest retribution. One of the
greatest of his parables is the parable of Dives and
Lazarus. A rich man fares sumptuously every day,
and at his gate there lies a poor sick beggar, his body
covered with ulcers, with no friend to bring relief.
Only the dogs that prowl the streets lick the loath
some man's sores. Jesus says when that thing
happens in this world, something happens in the
next world. You can almost feel the heat of his
indignant soul. You can hear him asking, "Do
you suppose that inhumanity like that will go un
punished in the universe of God?" It was not
because the rich man was rich and dressed in fine
raiment and fared sumptuously every day, that later
on he lifted up his eyes in torment. Abraham also

156 CHARACTER OF JESUS
was rich and fared sumptuously every day, but
Abraham went to heaven because he had a brother's
heart. This rich man Dives went to hell because
his heart was not tender, his sympathy did not go
out to a brother's need.
And how did Palestine receive this brotherliness?
It did not like it. Jesus was too brotherly, men
misunderstood him. They misinterpreted him, they
maligned him, they laid theh plans to kill him ; but
they could not make him anything else than brotherly.
In spite of all their ugliness and vindictiveness he
went on helping them all he could, and when they
laid their plots to kill him, he went bravely forward
giving help, saying : "If I cannot help them with my
life I will help them with my death. By dying I will
convince them that I wanted to do them good. I,
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. When
hanging on the cross they will understand me as
they cannot understand me now. When they hear
me praying for them .with my dying breath, they will
be convinced that I am indeed their brother."

XIII
THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS

XIII
THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS
"Be of good cheer." — John xvi : 33.
By optimism is not meant that jaunty, brainless,
happy-go-lucky buoyancy which so often calls
itself by this pretentious name. If you insist upon
defining an optimist as a man who plays only with
sunbeams, and who can hear nothing but harmonies,
and who is slightly concerned with the world's
agonies and tragedies because of his fancy that no
matter what he or any one else does everything is
certain to come out all right, then Jesus was not an
optimist. There is a sentimental optimism which
is irrational and immoral. It is the product of a
shallow brain and a stupid heart. It shuts its eyes
to all hideous facts and stops its ears to all horrible
sounds, and insists that in spite of appearances all
is well with the world. This sort of optimism faces
the future with a confidence born not of courage
but of moral indolence. It assumes that there is
in the nature of things an irresistible tendency
upward, and that irrespective of the conduct of
any man or any set of men, all will be well in the end.
159

160 CHARACTER OF JESUS
No such optimism as this is known in the New
Testament. If we have our superficial optimists, we have also
our shallow and short-sighted pessimists. There
are men who have a genius for seeing shadows.
Their ears are keen for discords. They keep theh
eyes wide open and see in a lurid light the tragedy
of the world's life. Its masses of suffering and
wretchedness and woe, its sorrows and vices and sins,
lie like a great weight upon the mind and the heart
until the former is dizzy and the latter is sick. These
men listen to the world's sighing and sobbing and
agonizing until history seems a hideous nightmare
and existence itself a curse. If such a man were to
speak to you to-night, he would tell you a story which
would lacerate and darken your heart. He would
remind you of what the thieves and the robbers, big
and little, have been doing. He would call your
attention to the stories of greed and lust, cruelty and
lawlessness, which have recently come in from all
parts of the world. He would pile up before you
the sickening record of a single month's outrage and
atrocity and crime, and then ask you if it is not clear
that everything is going to the dogs. These pessi
mists lift up their voices on every side. They tell
us that republican institutions are in a process of
decay, that our cities are hopelessly corrupted and
sunken, that the days of the republic itself are
numbered. As for society there is no health in it.
From its head to its feet there is nothing but fester-

HIS OPTIMISM 161
ing sores. Babylon never matched our, luxury, and
Rome never touched the depths of our infamy.
The church like everything else is decaying and is
fit only for the bonfire. We may whistle if we wish
to keep up our courage; but after us — the deluge!
The world is running down a very steep place toward
the edge of the abyss. Not a few men are thus think
ing and speaking. Two of the greatest writers of the
nineteenth century, Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin,
were pessimistic in theh temper and outlook. The
Scotchman filled the world with his shriekings and
the Englishman filled the world with his sighings.
Innumerable smaller men are filling the world
with theh snifflings and whimperings. But from
the grinning optimist and the hysterical pessimist,
we can expect little. They have nothing to offer
toward the solution of the great world problems.
Let us open our New Testament and listen to a
man who in these confused and distracting times can
give us confidence and hope. Jesus of Nazareth
was not a man who could shut his eyes to the sorrow
and the heart-break of the world. Never were eyes
wider open than his. He saw everything. He saw
things which the world had passed by unnoticed.
He saw suffering in its every form — it tugged at his
heart strings. The tired, sad faces of human beings
haunted him, they spoke to him of the tragedy of
the world's disordered heart. He had ears which
caught every shriek of agony, every cry of distress,
every sigh of want. He saw with eyes which pierced.

1 62 CHARACTER OF JESUS
Underneath the tragedy of suffering he saw the
blacker tragedy of sin. Down underneath the sur
face of the world's life he saw the cancer which was
eating up its strength and its hope and its joy. He
recognized as none other the tremendous power of
evil. He saw with open eyes the roads which lead
to death. He knew, as no other has ever known so
well, that evil must be resisted, that sin must be
faced and grappled with, that it is only by struggle,
suffering, and death that the victory can be won.
But he remains nevertheless undaunted. He never
loses heart. He sees all, and he hears all, but he
never gives up hope. He faces facts as they are,
and he predicts grander facts which are to be. He
sees both sides — the bright side and the dark side
— and having seen both sides his face has light on
it. He sings and he also sobs. His singing is some
times broken by his sobbing, but he is never over
whelmed, he never surrenders, his head is always up,
and his unfailing exhortation is, " Be of good cheer ! "
This is the dominating note of the New
Testament. It comes up out of the heart of the
blackest tragedy which our world has known.
What a sad and depressing book the New Testa
ment ought to be considering the dismal story it has
to tell ! It gives us the life of one who was a man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief. It portrays
his sufferings through the cruel, disappointing years
to his horrible death upon the cross. It narrates
his awful predictions of coming woe and loss and

HIS OPTIMISM 163
ruin. It tells us that the leading cities of Galilee
are rushing to destruction, and that even Jerusalem,
glorious with the triumphs of a thousand years, is
irretrievably doomed and that not one stone of all
its stately edifices shall be left standing on another.
Its destruction shall be complete. And yet not
withstanding this heart-breaking story, the New
Testament does not depress us or leave a shadow
on the heart. It is a jubilant, exhilarating book,
and the words which linger longest in the ear are,
"Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
The New Testament is a gospel, a bit of glorious
news, .because at the centre of it there lives and
works the world's greatest optimist.
Here is the optimist whom we have been looking
for. This is the man who can inspire our confidence
and give us hope. We need a man with open eye
and open ear and open heart, a man who sees things
as they are and knows the thickness of the belt of
night. We cannot follow a leader who keeps cry
ing, "Peace," when we know that there is no peace;
nor can we trust a teacher who asserts that all is
well, when his assertion is contradicted daily by the
experience of the world. Give us a man who feels
the fury of the storm, and is also certain of the calm
which is going to follow. Give us a man who can
measure accurately the dimensions of the night, and
who also sees the dawning of a glorious morning.
Jesus is the prince of optimists — his optimism is
the optimism of God Himself,

1 64 CHARACTER OF JESUS
Let us try to find • the secret of Jesus' optimism.
The secret is written large across the pages of the
Gospel. It was a secret too good to keep — he
gave it to everybody who had ears to hear. It was
an abiding confidence in God. We are sure of Him
— sometimes. Our faith is clouded and it is inter
mittent. It floods and ebbs like the tide. Jesus
never doubted. His vision was unclouded. His
trust was absolute. To him God was an ever-
present Father. This was his new name for God.
The prophets and poets of Israel had only seldom
ventured to think of God as father, and then only
by way of dim surmise. With Jesus, God was always
Father. This is the name he carried on his lips
when a boy of twelve, it was on his lips when he passed
from this world into the other. He placed it on the
lips of every man who followed him. It constantly
amazed him that men had so little faith in God.
"Have faith in God!" This was the exhortation
with which he braced the hearts of those who wished
to live his life and do his work. The words came
with the power of a revelation, because warm with
the blood of a heart which knew the secret of per
fect trust.
Along with unswerving trust in God there went
an unshakable confidence in man. Jesus believed
in human nature. He saw the possibilities and
capacities of the human heart. He saw men's
littlenesses, frailties, vices, sins, but underneath all
these he saw a soul created in God's image. The

HIS OPTIMISM 165
deepest thing in man he saw to be not animalism
but Godlikeness. He called Simon the son cf
Jonas a rock, when Simon was counted the most
fickle and fluctuating man in all the town. Jesus
saw that which was deepest in him. He had con
fidence not only in people who went to church, but
also in people who never went. He had hope of the
Publicans and sinners. He knew thaLZaccheus could
repent and that Matthew could become a preacher.
He believed that men and women who have fallen
all the way to the bottom can climb back again,
"The harlots are going into the kingdom before
you!" — thus he spoke to a company of hard
hearted pessimists who had lost confidence in the
recoverableness of human nature. Man, in spite
of his aberrations and stumblings and fallings, is a
being on whom you can rely, he has in him the very
essence and nature of God. And so Jesus said to
Simon Peter, "Thou art rock and upon this rock I
will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall
not prevail against it!" What sublime confidence!
Can an unconquerable institution, one against
which no forces in the univer.se can possibly pre-
vail, be constructed out of men? Can impregnable
walls be built of human nature? Can eternal
foundations be laid in human hearts? Yes, says
Jesus, and without a doubt of the fidelity of his
apostles, he rolled the huge world upon theh shoul
ders and went away.
Nor could any experience break down this trust

1 66 CHARACTER OF JESUS
in the divine capacities of human nature. When
has a man had greater reason to abandon faith in
men than this optimist of Galilee? He lived in a
corrupt and demoralizing age. Government was
both tyrannical and rotten. Its officials were for
the most part cynics and grafters. The Jewish
church was formal, lifeless, and hypocritical. Its
leaders, many of them, were dead to the movements
of God's spirit. Society was disgustingly corrupt.
Men had grown sceptical everywhere of the honesty
of man or the virtue of woman. But Jesus trusted
men. He did this in the teeth of experiences which
swept over him like a dark and devastating flood.
His entire career was a tragedy. He was suspected,
misrepresented, hated. He was surrounded by liars
wherever he went. No matter what he said his
sentences were twisted, and no matter what he did
his motives were impugned. Such treatment is apt
to sour the heart of any one who is long subjected
to it. Jesus was mistreated all the way. The in
human wretches who tortured him in the courtyard
of Pontius Pilate were doing only what men had
done to him from the beginning. His life was one
long-drawn crucifixion. Men were always jamming
thorns into his brow, jabbing spears into his side,
driving spikes through his hands and feet. But
he never gave up faith in human nature. When he
saw that men were determined to take his life he
said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto
me!" He felt that no matter what cruel and

HIS OPTIMISM 167
devilish things human nature might be guilty of,
there was after all down deep in the heart that which
would respond to forgiveness and love. The ene
mies of Jesus were the meanest, most unprincipled,
diabolical set of human hounds which ever tracked
an innocent man to death; but they never broke
down his confidence in the divinity of the human
heart. It was not only his enemies but his friends who
caused him unspeakable anguish. Among his own
disciples, in the innermost circle of his trusted friends,
there was a man who in return for all his confidence
and all his goodness became a traitor, and betrayed
him into the hands of the men who had agreed upon
his death. And this traitor did not betray him in a
manner decent even among traitors, but in a way of
which a devil might have been ashamed. He be
trayed Jesus with a kiss. Hell itself can produce
nothing viler than sugar-coated treachery. But no
matter what individual men may do, man is to be
trusted still. When he comes to his true self, he
will say, "I will arise and go to my Father!"
The faith of Jesus is in marked contrast to the
scepticism of many individuals whom we have
known. There is nothing so staggering to one's
confidence in human nature as an unfortunate ex
perience in early life. A young man starts out,
hopeful and trustful, falls in with men of good repu
tation and high standing who gouge him and skin
him, and for the rest of his life the man is sceptical

1 68 CHARACTER OF JESUS
and possibly cynical. A young woman begins life
with a heart which trusts everybody. She is de
ceived and betrayed, either by man or by woman,
and she carries a wound which time does not heal.
There are in every community men and women,
soured on the world, suspicious of everybody, cling
ing to the conviction that there is nobody in whom
one can trust. Would that all such cynics might
come to Jesus and learn from him to expect large
things from human nature everywhere. He sees
the shallowness, the paltriness, the frailty of the
heart ; but he also sees its capacities, its possibilities,
the mustard-seed germs of virtues and graces which
the Spirit of God can unfold. We measure men too
much by their powers, and not enough by their
capacities, by what they are to-day and not by what
they may become later on. It was because the eyes
of Jesus swept the future that he could stand around
the wreckage of a race in ruins and say, "Be of
good cheer!"
This indomitable Optimist has confidence in you.
You have no hope for yourself. He has. You see
your weakness, sordidness, vileness ; he sees deeper,
and seeing deeper he has hope for you. He sees
your capacity of God. He knows what you can do
when you have come to yourself. He sees deeper
also into God. You have no adequate conception
of the patience or the mercy of the Infinite Father.
He has. You do not know what Infinite Love can
accomplish. He does. Because of your transgres-

HIS OPTIMISM 169
sions you have lost faith in yourself. He has not.
Because you have failed a thousand times you say
there is no use trying any more. He says, "Try
again !" If you give yourself to him, he will make
of you an optimist !

xrv
THE CHIVALRY OF JESUS

XIV
THE CHIVALRY OF JESUS
"And touched him." — Matthew viii : 3.
I HAVE found difficulty in finding a word to ex
press the quality of Jesus to which I now desire to
invite your attention. This quality is courage, but
it is something more than courage. Courage is a
temper of the heart, a firmness of spirit in the pres
ence of difficulty and danger. But there are many
kinds of courage. There is first of all bravery, an
intrepid sort of courage which has in it a certain
daring which ordinary courage does not have.
Bravery steps ahead of courage and takes risks which
the latter does not invite. Moreover there is forti
tude or courage in its passive form. If bravery
rushes forward to attack, fortitude holds its ground
and endures. And then again there is valor which
we have consecrated for service on the battlefield,
and gallantry which is an adventurous and splendid
variety of heroism — heroism as it were with a halo.
But not one of these words is rich or wide enough
to express all that is in my mind when I contemplate
a certain side of the courageous heart of Jesus.
'73

174 CHARACTER OF JESUS
[ He was heroic but he was more than that. His
: heroism was a superb gallantry and something
more. There was in it a delicious courtesy, a beau
tiful and gentle graciousness toward the weak and
helpless. Possibly we can find no better word to
cover this rich characteristic of the heart of Jesus
I than the word "chivalry." It is a word taken from
the world of knighthood. The very sound of the
' word has magic in it, and calls up before the eyes
splendid troops of heroic men who went forth in the
mediaeval times to protect the weak, maintain the
right, and live a stainless life. In a world from which
'justice had been largely banished and in which
might had usurped the place of right, the knight
arose to defend the weak and to bring just causes
through to victory. Woman especially was the
object of his care. By her weakness she appealed
: to that which was deepest in his heart. By defend
ing her and all others who like her were at the mercy
of the brute powers of a barbaric world the knight
won for himself a shining place in history and gave
to chivalry a splendor which will never fade. Jesus
. of Nazareth was a knight. On foot he travelled
forth, clad in the armor of a peerless manhood, to
shield the weak, maintain the right, and live a life
which should charm and win the world. At the
head of the great company of knightly souls by
whose bravery and prowess the world has been made
better, stands this knight of knights, this chivahic
Man of Galilee.

HIS CHIVALRY 175
His gracious courage first manifested itself at the
river Jordan on the day on which he was baptized.
John did not want to baptize him. There was no
reason why he should be baptized. His heart was
unstained by sin and the baptism of John was a
baptism of repentance. To be baptized, therefore,
might lead to misunderstandings and give rise to
misrepresentations. There were many risks in this
yielding of himself to baptism, but he accepted them
all because his great soul yearned to identify himself
with his countrymen, with the common race of men.
Men were sinners, they needed repentance, they
needed just the baptism to which the prophet of
the desert was calling them, and this young car- 1
penter from Nazareth, with no need in his own
soul for the baptismal water, goes bravely forward
saying, "I too must be baptized." Strong himself,
he will identify himself with this reformatory move
ment. Lifted above the sins of ordinary humanity
he will link himself at the very start with those who
carry on theh hearts the burden of transgression
and who cry out day and night for deliverance. A
knight he was at the beginning ; a knight he will be
to the end.
Mark how his soul goes out to those who suffer.
Physical distress pierced him and wrung his heart.
Sickness in the first century did not receive the
attention which it receives in ours. The poor were
allowed to suffer unattended and to die unrelieved.
There were no hospitals such as ours, and no earnest

176 CHARACTER OF JESUS
bands of philanthropic men and women giving their
lives to the alleviation of pain and to banishing the
terrors of the dying hour. Insane people were not
housed and cared for. Supposed to be possessed
by devils, they were driven out of the town and
allowed to wander in cemeteries and desert places,
a terror to all who heard theh shrieks and cries.
Jesus pitied them. No one else reached out to them
a helping hand. The Evangelists take delight in
telling us how again and again he healed those who
were afflicted with demons. If there was a man in
Palestine more dreaded than a maniac it was a leper.
But even the leper was not beyond the reach of
Jesus' heart. Men turned theh backs upon him.
Laws prescribed the distance which he must keep
from every other human being. Between him and
all others there was a deep gulf fixed, but this
Knight of Nazareth crossed the chasm and to the
consternation of all Palestine not only spoke kindly
to the leper, but laid his hand upon him.
His heart was ever open to the neglected and for
lorn. Between Galilee and Judea there lived a
tribe of people, half Jewish and half Pagan, who in
their religion as well as in their blood exhibited a
degeneration from the high ideals of the early times.
Degenerates and apostates, they were held in deep
abhorrence by Hebrews whose hearts were true to
the high traditions of theh country. It was only
in cases of necessity that a Jew could be induced to
pass through the region inhabited by these people.

HIS CHIVALRY 177
Jesus not only passed through Samaria, but he tar
ried there and taught the people just as he taught
the men of Judea and Galilee. They were outcasts,
but they were also human, and if they had no pro
tector or friend, he at any rate would befriend them.
Some of them might not understand how to receive
him, but such churlish conduct could not dampen
the ardor of his interest in them. The disciples
with blazing hearts might want to burn up a Samari
tan village, but the Knight of Galilee came not to
destroy but to save. No man could take his place
on the side of the Samaritans without paying an
awful penalty, and Jesus paid it. Men gnashed
their teeth and hissed, "You are a Samaritan."
That was the most cutting thing it was possible for
them to say, but he never swerved from his course.
He healed Samaritan lepers as freely as any others,
and when he painted a man who represented his
ideal of goodness he painted him with the features
and dress of a Samaritan. The parable which has
probably taken the deepest hold on the heart of the
world of all the parables which Jesus spoke is the
parable of the " Good Samaritan." The creation of
that parable was a sublime act of chivalry.
There were outcasts even in Galilee and Judea.
There were people who were estranged from organ
ized religion. They neglected the observances and
regulations of the synagogue, and were labelled
"sinners" by the pious. They were not in all cases
profligates or vagabonds, but simply men and women

178 CHARACTER OF JESUS
who had no liking for the ceremonies of the church
and who took no interest in the Rabbis or their
teachings. The Rabbis in return took no interest
in them. They were counted renegades and apos
tates, from whose society it was well that all decent
people should hold aloof. In many of these people
there were aspirations after better things, and in all
of them there were the deep hungers and warm feel
ings of our common humanity. But they were out
casts. The church had laid a ban upon them.
They were dangerous. Their example was de
moralizing, theh ideas were poison. No one who
cared for his reputation as a God-fearing man dared
to associate with them. No Rabbi in all Palestine
would risk his good name by dining with any one
of them. But Jesus was not a man to be deterred
by the execrations of polite society. The so-called
'sinners were human beings, and because children
of God they were not to be despised. If no other
religious teacher would go among them, he would.
He did. He made himself of no reputation. He
sat down with sinners and ate with them. The
Pharisees never forgave him. His courtesy to the
unchurched masses hastened the day of his cruci
fixion. Among the so-called sinners there was a group of
men lower than all the others, known as Publicans.
These were tax collectors whose business it was to
collect Jewish money and send it up to Rome. The
tax collector is never a popular personage, and if he

HIS CHIVALRY 179
collects money to send to an outside and tyrannical :
power he is not only unpopular but execrated. The
Publicans of Palestine were hated with a fury of
detestation which modern society cannot parallel.
Publicans were counted lower than street dogs.
The Jewish church would not allow them even to
contribute to its treasury. But Jesus made friends [
of these men. They were friendless, and in many
cases of unsavory character, but he was a physician,
and like all true physicians he was especially inter
ested in those who were dangerously ill. Not only,>
did he go into their homes and eat with them in a'
cosmopolitan city like Capernaum, but he dined i
with a prominent leader of the Publicans in the old \
priestly city of Jericho. Not only did he eat with
them, but when the time came to select twelve men
who should be his most intimate friends and most
conspicuous workers, one of them was a Publican. ¦
And then as if to push his chivalry to a climax he
painted a picture of two men praying in the temple
— one a Pharisee and the other a Publican. One
need not wonder that the Pharisees cried : " Crucify
him! Crucify him!" When was a knight ever
so reckless in throwing his protection round the
weak? But as is the case with all true knights, it is in his
attitude to woman that Jesus' chivalry reaches its
finest expression. Woman has never been fairly
treated in the Orient. She has always been counted
inferior to man. Sometimes she has been a toy, most

180 CHARACTER OF JESUS
frequently a drudge, and always something a little
higher than an animal but far lower than a man.
The degradation of woman in such countries as
India, for example, is a shock and a bewilderment
to all observing travellers. The Hindu treatment of
woman is a tragedy the full blackness of which
has never been realized by the people of the West.
Those who best understand the Indian problem
assert that there is no hope for India until woman is
given there her rightful place. It is with such facts
in mind that we are able to appreciate the grotesque
folly and the ludicrous ignorance of those American
women who have an inextinguishable craving for
the religions of the distant East. These women, not
satisfied with Christianity, and being somewhat
weary of the teachings of Jesus, sit spellbound at the
feet of sundry Hindu teachers, who without authority
or standing in their own country come to America
to expound the beautiful ideas of Oriental religion.
These teachers have much to say in poetic phrases
about ideas exquisitely nebulous, and conceptions
which are so vague that they cannot be grasped even
by the minds to which they bring rapture, but they
have nothing to say about the place of woman as
that place is taught in orthodox Hinduism or as that
place is established in the best Hindu society. It is
both farcical and pathetic — this trailing of American
women after these Eastern teachers, and the quickest
way to end it is to let the West know just what India
has to teach and show in regard to the place and rights

HIS CHIVALRY 181
of woman. It is amazing that any informed mari
should ever leave Jesus for any other teacher, but it
is tenfold more astounding that any woman in her
right mind should ever turn her back on the one
man who has done more for woman than all the other
men who have ever lived. Of all the knights who]
have risked their lives for the protection and honor,
of womanhood not one is worthy to unloose the
latchet of the shoes of this gracious and gallant Man
of Galilee. How boldly he spoke on the subject of \
divorce. Woman's position in Palestine was su- i
perior to that of woman in surrounding nations, j
but even in Palestine she was at the mercy of the
man. A man could divorce his wife when he chose, .
and all that the law required was that he should ',
write out a statement declaring that whereas this j
woman was once his wife she was now his wife
no longer.
But against such arbitrary and dangerous au
thority the chivalric soul of Jesus protested. Men
reminded him that such liberty had been granted
to man by Moses, but he immediately replied that \
Moses would never have allowed any such license ',
had he not been dealing with barbarians, and that '
no matter what Moses or any other lawmaker had
ever said or decreed, the law of God is that a man
has no right to cast a woman off as soon as he is \
thed of her. Marriage is ordained by God. It \
lies in the very structure and formation of human
nature. The union is not one which can be dis- '

182 CHARACTER OF JESUS
solved by Moses or anybody else. God intends that
one man shall live with one woman and that they
shall live together until death parts them. No
greater words than those have ever been spoken on
behalf of woman since the world began. Even now
men's hearts are too hard to hear and heed them,
and the result is degradation, heartbreak, and misery.
High above all the clamorous voices of the world
there rings the clear and authoritative tone of Jesus
saying to men: "You have no right to use women
and toss them from you. Man and woman belong
together, and after marriage the twain are one
flesh." There were many degraded women in Palestine
as there are to-day in America. Woman being
weaker than man is the first to suffer from 'the in
justices of every social and economic system. Our
modern world has created a dozen places for women
where one place existed in the olden world. Unable
to earn their livelihood by honest means women
then, as women now, became the prey of brutal men.
And men then, as some men now, insisted on two
standards of morality, — one for men and one for
women, the second standard being higher than the
first. One of these degraded women was caught
one day by a lot of men who dragged her into the
presence of Jesus just to see what he would say and
do. According to the Palestinian law a woman
guilty of adultery could be stoned to death. As
soon as the men had made their accusation, Jesus

HIS CHIVALRY 183
paused a moment and then said, "The man among
you who has not committed the same sin may throw
the first stone." Not a stone was lifted. No one
said a word. Those who were on the outskirts of
the crowd one by one disappeared. By and by
they all had gone. All had slunk away like curs.
Woman is not to be condemned and man let go free.
In the scales of God's eternal justice a woman's siri
is not heavier than that of a man. Here is a teacher
who does not hesitate to defend the rights of woman
even though by so doing he incurs the deadly hatred,
of all foul-hearted men. Even women of the street
shall not be denied the privilege of repentance, for
they are capable of remorse, and may long to find
theh way back to the Father's house. A woman
has a mind, a conscience, a soul, even though she
lives in Samaria and has broken the moral law, and
is worthy of careful instruction at the hands of the
greatest of teachers. What a piece of gallantry it
was — that conversation at Jacob's well !
Here, then, we have a knight who is a knight in
deed. The mediaeval knight went forth seeking for
adventures: our knight of Palestine went forth in
search of forlorn and friendless human beings.
The knight of France and Germany was clad in
metal, this knight of Nazareth had no protection
but the white innocence of an unspoiled heart. His
was the skill of a physician and not that of a soldier.
His was the prowess of a friend and brother and not
that of a warrior fighting to lay his antagonist in the

1 84 CHARACTER OF JESUS
dust. He had all the graces and virtues of mediaeval
chivalry and none of its superficiality or its foibles.
He had the nerve, the mettle, and the intrepidity of
the bravest of the knights, and along with this he
ihad a sweet winsomeness, a divine graciousness
which history cannot match. Many a knight pro
tected the distressed and maintained the right but
failed to live the stainless life. This prince of
knights, this king of all the hosts of chivalry, con
quered on every field and came- off without a ,stain.
He liked people. He was interested in human
beings. He loved a crowd. The populace appealed
to him. The masses were dear to his heart. Igno
rant people attracted him. Bewildered and mis
taken people had a fascination for him. Wicked
people had a place in his heart. He could not look
at a great crowd without feeling the tragedy of human
life and crying out: "Come unto me! Come unto
me!" His invitations were always generous. They
were wide enough to cover all. He always said that
no man who came would ever be cast out.
In Jesus we have a revelation of the heart of God.
In speaking of the chivalry of this man of Nazareth
I have been speaking of the chivalry of the Eternal.
God is knightly in His disposition, chivalric in His
temper. It is His work from all eternity to protect
the weak, maintain the right, and live a stainless life.
His heart goes out unceasingly toward the weak,
the helpless, and those who have no friend. If you
are conscious of your weakness, cry out to Him, for

HIS CHIVALRY 185
He is swift to answer such a cry. If you feel some
times absolutely helpless, altogether forlorn and
forsaken, do not despah, for the heart of Jesus is the
heart which beats in and behind all this world, and
you can never be forsaken so long as God is God.
In your moments of depression and in the days
when the world seems cold and cruel, think of the
chivahic God, whose heart beats in sympathy with
weakness, and who goes out with alacrity and with.
gladness to meet every soul in need of succor.

XV
THE FIRMNESS OF JESUS

XV
THE FIRMNESS OF JESUS
"Get thee behind me, Satan."
— Matthew xvi : 23.
Let us think to-night of the firmness of Jesus.
Of his tenderness we think often, and also of his
gentleness and graciousness. To these lovely graces
the heart is joyfully responsive, and in dwelling upon
them we are likely to overlook other traits no less
beautiful and praiseworthy. Gentleness of nature
is not a virtue but a defect unless it is accompanied
by tenacity of will. Sweetness of disposition is not
enough to make a man useful and noble. Along
with the sweetness there must go strength, and under
neath the moods soft as velvet there must lie a reso
luteness hard as steel.
The weakness of men under the play of social
forces is one of the outstanding tragedies of history.
To build a will strong enough to resist and control
these forces is the central and crucial task of educa
tion. It is an ancient adage that evil companionships
corrupt good morals. All men are more or less
moulded by the society of which they form a part.
The child yields readily to the ideas and habits of
his fellows, and no matter what his ancestry may
189

1 90 CHARACTER OF JESUS
have been, his environment if corrupt may bring
him speedily to ruin. This impressionability is not
a trait peculiar to childhood, but is carried with us
through every stage of life. The young man in
college is powerfully influenced by those of his
classmates who are the nearest to him, and some
times a few bold, masterful spirits will set the pace
for a thousand men. Business men are as sus
ceptible as college students and yield in crowds to
the influence of a few dominating minds. The
slavery of the social world has long been a theme
for moralists and satirists. He is indeed a strong
character who dares run counter to the traditions
and fashions of the world in which he moves. Even
the strongest and most independent often bow down
before standards against which conscience revolts
and submit to customs against which the heart
protests. Humanity goes in crowds and droves,
and no bondage is too absurd or galling to be sub
mitted to. The majority of mortals are not strong
enough to be themselves: they become echoes of
theh neighbors and walk in paths marked out by
others. There is a spirit of the age which leaves its
impress on every mind. Even the mightiest men
cannot free themselves entirely from it. As Lowell
says, "Every man is the prisoner of his date."
We apologize for Cromwell and Calvin and Luther
and Hildebrand and Augustine, saying, " Remember
the times in which they lived !"
But when we come to Jesus of Nazareth we are

HIS FIRMNESS 191
in the presence of a man whom nobody swerved or
dominated, who is so free from the bias of his race
and so clean of the spirit of his age that he seems
to belong to all races and all ages. He is not the Son
of David but the Son of Man, just genuinely, su
premely human. He is not a citizen of the first
century only, but the contemporary of each succeed
ing generation. Immersed in an ocean of mighty
forces which beat upon him furiously through every
hour of his career, he resisted them all successfully
by the indomitable energy of a victorious will, living
a life unique in its beauty and achieving a work
unmarred by the limitations either of time or place.
That he was not insensible to the dominant forces
of his time, he himself has told us in the story of the
-v temptation. His countrymen had formed definite
} ideas of the Messiah. He was to be a wonder worker
and the manifestations of his power were to be
spectacular and overwhelming. He was to trample
opposing forces under his feet and make Palestine
the centre of the world. This was the dream, this
was the expectation. The best men expected this,
as did also the worst men. ^_It is a dangerous thing
to baffle popular expectations. It is almost cruel
to extinguish the fire of a nation's hope. Good and
great men have found no difficulty in every land and
generation in bringing themselves to yield, at least
up to a certain point, to the wishes and demands
of their countrymen. It all seems plausible enough.
The argument is familiar, for we have heard it even

192 CHARACTER OF JESUS
in the present generation. Who is a man that he
should set himself against the expressed wish of a
nation? Is it not through the people that God
makes his wishes known, and what is it but egotism
or insanity which would lead an individual to set his
judgment against the judgment of the people ? This
is the argument whose sharp edge many a leader
has felt, and Jesus of Nazareth felt it too. {Wherever
he went he heard the people clamoring for a king, a
king who should rise to supremacy over the wrecked
empire of Caesar. The nation was ripe for revolu
tion. A word from him would, like a spark, have
kindled a mighty conflagration. Expectations had
been built up by men anointed by Jehovah, and these
expectations were glowing hot, and how could Jesus
hope to win the attention of his people or control
the current of their life unless he fell in with their
ideals and attempted to carry out the program on
which their hearts were set ? It was a great tempta
tion, so terrific that he told his apostles all about it.
He assured them that in this temptation he had been
wrestling with the very prince of infernal powers,
but that notwithstanding repeated assaults he had
come out of the conflict victorious. In choosing the
road which led to supremacy by way of Gethsem
ane and Golgotha, he renounced the ideals of his
countrymen and disappointed their dearest expecta
tions, but so firm was he that the hosts of hell speak
ing through God's chosen people could not move
him from his place. The nation hurled itself with

HIS FIRMNESS 193
frantic force against him, but he did not budge.
He was the Rock of Ages: ^J
When we study his life with attentive eyes we see
it was one long resistance to the forces of his age.
He was a patriot, but he could not go with his
countrymen in any of theh patriotic programs or
expectations. He was a churchman, but he could
not go with the members of the Jewish church in
theh favorite teachings and ceremonies. The re
ligious teachers taught doctrines of the Sabbath
which he could not accept. They presented forms
of worship which he could not submit to. They
laid down lines of separation which it was impossible
for him to observe. It is not easy to run counter
to the deep-seated feelings of the most religious
people of one's day, or to cut across the grain of
the prejudices of the most conscientious men in the
town. There were many reasons why Jesus should
have conformed to the ideas and customs of the
church, but he firmly resisted all the voices which
urged him toward conformity, standing out alone
in defiance of what the best men were doing and
saying, notwithstanding his nonconformity seemed to
the majority impiety and to many blasphemy. For a
godly man to be classed among blasphemers is one of
the bitterest experiences which the heart can know.
But Jesus paid the price and continued firm.
Men of light and leading have an influence sur
passing that of ordinary men. There were men in
Palestine who by learning and position had won

194 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the confidence and esteem of their countrymen. As
leaders and teachers of the people they had theh plans
and systems and into these they attempted to work
this young man from Galilee. They recognized in
him a man of force, and to manipulate him and
make use of him was a natural ambition. No man
with a noble cause to promote will lightly antagonize
the most influential men of his day. He will bend
to them so far as he is able, he will yield to their
whims and caprices so far as conscience will permit,
he will go with them so far as this is possible ; but
if he is a man of strength, he will not compromise his
principles, and he will never jeopardize the victory
of his cause by playing into the hands of men whose
faces are toward a different goal. Jesus could not
be manipulated. He refused to be used. One
party after another tried to work him into its scheme,
but he was incorrigibly intractable and went on his
way independent, unshackled, free. All the seduc
tions offered by the men who sat on thrones could not
swerve him from his course, and although his stead
fastness made him enemies and finally nailed him
to the cross, he was everywhere and always a man
who could not be moved.
There are men who are too strong to be manipu
lated by theh foes, but in the hands of theh friends
they are plastic as wax. Jesus could not be manipu
lated even by his friends. He had many friends
in Nazareth, but he never gave up his principles
to please them. They had theh prejudices and

HIS FIRMNESS 195
superstitions, but he never surrendered to them.
He knew their bigotry and narrowness, and so in his
opening sermon he read the story of God's com
passion on a Syrian leper, and also on a Sidonian
widow. His sermon raised the storm which he had
anticipated, but he bore the fury of it without
flinching. He would not keep silence when he
knew he ought to speak, nor would he turn aside
from the path he knew he ought to travel even though
by sticking to the path he made himself a lifelong
exile. The respect and good-will of neighbors are
sweet indeed, but these must not be bought by
bending. But probably no neighbor in Nazareth was ever
so near to Jesus' heart as his dear friend Simon
Peter. At a crisis in Jesus' life Peter did his best
to dissuade him from a certain course, but the loyal
and loving friend succeeded no better than the most
hostile Pharisee. This man of Nazareth could not
be moved by friend or foe. It was his Father's
business he was attending to, and therefore all
efforts to draw him aside were made in vain. " Get
thee behind me, Satan," he said to the astonished
Peter, recognizing in him the same evil sphit he
had contended with years before in the desert. To
defy the threats of powerful enemies is hard, but to
turn a deaf ear to the expostulations of loving friends
is harder still. Only a man of unconquerable will
is equal to a test so taxing. Jesus met it and did not
fail.

196 CHARACTER OF JESUS
It was a test he faced in his own home. His
brothers did not understand him. Their lack of
understanding curtailed their sympathy with him.
From theh standpoint he often did the injudicious
thing, and refused to do the thing which would have
forwarded his reputation. They were always ready
with advice. He could not take it. They urged
him to go to Jerusalem at a time when he could not
go. They exhorted him to go home at a time when
his duty was to be somewhere else. Only a man
who has been driven by conscience to go contrary
to the wishes of members of his own family can
enter into the experience which Jesus suffered or
can measure the strength of will which one must
have to resist successfully the importunities of
love. This test of will power reached its climax in Jesus'
conflict with his mother. She loved him and he
loved her, but he could not always carry out her
wishes. There comes a time in many a man's life
when even his own mother's exhortations must go
unheeded in order to obey a higher call. Such an
experience came to Jesus. It was a sword through
Mary's heart, and it was a sword also through
the heart of Jesus. The painful experience in the
Temple at the age of twelve was probably not the
first of the kind in Jesus' life, and it was certainly
not the last. The ties to Mary were not so deep as
the ties which bound Jesus to the heavenly Father,
and when Mary's wish conflicted with the Father's

HIS FIRMNESS 197
will, the wish of the woman was pushed aside to
make room for the will of God.
Here, then, we have a situation which is distressing
indeed. The most tender and gracious and obliging
of men is compelled to resist not only the prayers of
his countrymen but the wishes of his family and
friends. He stands like a rock in the midst of a
troubled sea, and all its billows dash themselves
against his feet in vain. There was something
inflexible in his will, something granitic in his soul.
When he found a man whom he thought worthy to
be the first member of his church he called him
"rock." Are we to infer from this that it is the rock
like quality which is indispensable in the building
of an institution which shall endure? It is certain
that Jesus loved stability in others, and what he
loved in others he had superabundantly in himself.
Firm himself, he loved men who could not be
moved. Unconquerable himself, he intrusted his
Gospel to men who would endure and never flinch.
Men who having put theh hand to the plough looked
back were not men he could make use of in the saving
of a world. Men who started to build a tower and
then gave up the undertaking were only objects of
mirth and mockery. Salvation could not be offered
to any one who did not endure to the end.
It is in this tenacity of will that we find an indis
pensable element of Christian character. Men are
to resist exterior forces and form their life from
within. They are not to be swayed by current

198 CHARACTER OF JESUS
opinion, but by the sphit of the Eternal in theh
heart. They are not to listen to the voices of time,
but to live and work for eternity. We like this
steadfastness in human character, and we also crave
it in God. Men have always loved to think of Him
as the unchanging and the unchangeable, the one
"with whom can be no variation, neither shadow
that is cast by turning." And what we deshe in God
we find in Jesus of Nazareth. He also is unchang
ing and unchangeable A writer of the first century
encourages the hearts of his readers by reminding
them that " Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and
to-day, yea and forever.' Jesus never called him
self the Rock, but the Christian heart soon gave him
that appellation, and few hymns have proved so
popular in the English-speaking world as —
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me!
Let me hide myself in thee."
What Jesus was in Palestine he is to-day and shall
be for evermore. All his promises stand unshaken,
all his warnings remain unchanged. His attitude
to sinners is to-day what it has been from the be
ginning and what it will be to the end. You cannot
discourage him by your ingratitude, you cannot
make him other than he is by your disobedience.
He is not broken down by human folly or driven
from his plan by human perversity. From age to
age he is about his Father's business, and in the
midst of all nations and kindreds and tongues he
goes about doing good.

XVI
THE GENEROSITY OF JESUS

XVI
THE GENEROSITY OF JESUS
"It is more blessed to give than to receive."
— Acts xx : 35.
Paul is speaking farewell words to the officers of
the church to which he has given more time and
love than to any other. He reminds them of things
he has often said to them before, and in closing calls
to their minds one of the rnost illuminating and help
ful of all the sayings of the Master, "It is more
blessed to give than to receive." These words
express with rare fulness one of the finest of the
traits of Jesus, his generosity.
If one were asked to mention a half dozen key
words of Christian duty, he would be sure to place
the word "give" high in the list. One cannot
read the New Testament without being halted by
that word, for it occurs repeatedly, and always with
an emphasis which arrests the heart. Indeed, it has
been often claimed that the Man of Galilee is wild
and reckless in his theory of giving. His saying,
"Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that
would borrow of thee turn not thou away," has been
to many a mystery and an offence. But the exhor
tation need stagger no one if it is remembered that

202 CHARACTER OF JESUS
all action is to be subjected to the limitations of
love. Mortals are urged to give as God gives, and
God's giving is always fashioned and conditioned by
his love. He does not give to every man the pre
cise thing which the man asks for. He says to all
of us not once but many times, "No," "no," "no !"
Love can never give where giving would work
hurt. The mother cannot give the razor to the
little girl who pleads for it, nor can the father grant
his son every favor which he asks. The man half
drunk who begs for a quarter on the street corner
must be refused, and in every case the petitioner
must be dealt with according to the requirements of
the law of love. But to write down all the considera
tions and qualifications which must be taken into
account in dealing with a world which is always
asking, was for Jesus a plain impossibility. It was
better to throw out the great word "give," un
qualified and naked, allowing it to speak unhindered
to the human heart, as a word which holds in it a
revelation of the mind of God. St. Luke tells us
that one day when Jesus was unfolding his idea of
generosity, he said: "Give, and it shall be given
unto you ; good measure, pressed down, and shaken
together, and running over shall men give into your
bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete
withal it shall be measured to you again." To
understand this you must have been some time on
a farm and watched the farmer measure grains or
small fruits. The pressing down and the shaking

HIS GENEROSITY 203
together and the running over all are graphic and
meaningful expressions intended to picture to the
mind the kind of measure in which the king of
heaven takes delight. A man who does not skimp
or dole out with a niggardly hand is, says Jesus, a
man whom the universe likes and blesses. He will
lose nothing by his liberality, for the world is con
structed on a generous principle, and by surrender
ing himself to the divine spirit of giving he will be
in tune with the Infinite, and shall by no means lose
his reward. He need not be anxious about the
precise time when such action shall bring its recom
pense. It is enough to go forward, giving and ask
ing nothing in return, assured that somewhere and
somehow his recompense shall be forthcoming.
Let him therefore when he makes a dinner or supper
not invite simply his friends or his brethren, or his
kindred or his rich neighbors, expecting that they
will invite him again. Let him feast the poor, the
maimed, the lame, the blind, men who cannot give
anything in return, and then let him expect from
God the blessing which is provided for the generous
heart. That blessing may not come in all its ful
ness in the world that now is, but there will be a
complete recompense at the resurrection of the just.
What Jesus said to his disciples he says to all,
"Freely ye have received, freely give."
Jesus' dislike of the stingy and parsimonious heart
comes out in several of his parables. When he
speaks of Dives in his fine linen at his banquet-

204 CHARACTER OF JESUS
table while the sick beggar eats crumbs at his gate,
we can feel the hot flame of an indignant soul.
When he tells of the rich man who thought of noth
ing but his overflowing barns and his own selfish
enjoyment, there is a scorn in his language which
scorches. In the parable of the Hours recorded in the
twentieth chapter of Matthew, he passes condem
nation on men who are so penurious and mean that
the beauty of a generous act does not appeal to them.
The owner of the vineyard pays the men who worked
longest all that he agreed to pay them, and then
because of the generosity of his heart he pays the
men who have worked only one hour as much as if
they had worked an entire day. He does this be
cause he wants to be generous. But selfish and
mole-eyed men began to murmur. An act that
should have charmed them by its loveliness excited
only their envy and ill-natured grumblings. The
story is told in a way which reveals clearly what
Jesus thinks of a man who is generous. Where in
the New Testament will you find more exuberant
praise than that which he lavishes upon the woman
who poured four hundred dollars' worth of perfume
on his head and feet ? Miserly souls near him were
offended by such extravagance, but he liked it. He
appreciated the lavish expenditures of love. When
he sees a poor widow throwing her two bits of cop
per into the treasury in the temple, all the money
she had in the world, he does not criticise her for
doing a foolish thing as most of us would have done,

HIS GENEROSITY 205
but he cries out in a shout which has in it the music
of a hallelujah, "She has given more than they
all." In a world so filled with grudging and close-
fisted men, it cheered his great heart to see now
and then a person who had mastered the divine art
of giving. He liked givers because he himself was
always giving.
When he said it is more blessed to give than to
receive he was speaking from personal experience.
He had not read that in a book. He had found it
out in life. When he urged men to give freely,
abundantly, lavishly, gladly, continually, he was
only preaching what he himself practised. He had
no money to give, but he gave without stint what
he had. He had time and he gave it. The golden
hours were his and he gave them. He gave them1
all. So recklessly did he give them that in order
to find time to pray it was necessary to use hours
when other men were sleeping. He had strength
and he gave it with a liberality which astonished
and alarmed his friends. He poured out his energy
to the last ounce. At one time we see him seated,
exhausted, on the curbing of Jacob's well ; at an
other time we see him falling asleep as soon as his
head touched the pillow on the little boat which
was carrying him back to Capernaum. When on
the last day of his life they laid a beam of timber
upon his shoulder he staggered under it and then
fell, so completely had he been exhausted by the
arduous labors of the preceding months and years..

206 CHARACTER OF JESUS
He saved others but himself he did not know how
to save. He had thought and he gave it. He had
ideas and he scattered them. He had truth and he
shared it with men. Behold a sower goes forth to
sow! It is Jesus. Look at him. Watch the
swing of that arm. What a generous arm! He
scatters the seed upon the beaten path. No matter.
He scatters the seed on the soil that is rocky. What
of it? He scatters the seed in brier patches and
thorny corners. He does not mind that. The seed
is abundant, and he will scatter it with a prodigal
hand, hoping that some of it will find the soil which
is fertile and which will bring forth a harvest to make
glad the heart of God. Many a teacher has saved
his best ideas for a chosen few. Jesus scattered his
broadcast. He had often ignorant and prejudiced
and unresponsive hearers, but he threw his pearls
by the handful wherever he went. What glorious
ideas he scattered over the crowds of Galilean
farmers, what heavenly truths he unfolded to men
and women of whom the world took no notice !
Never was a teacher such a spendthrift in
the squandering of ideas, never did a great thinker
pour out his treasures in such wild and immeasurable
profusion. Freely he had received, and therefore
freely he gave. It was not merely the work of the
intellect, but also the blood of the heart which he
gave. His affection toward men flowed in a stream
constant and full. His sympathy covered all classes,
and no individual, however low and despised, ever

HIS GENEROSITY

207

appealed to him in vain. Blind men on hearing of
his approach lined themselves along the road cry
ing as he passed, " Have mercy also on us." Lepers
who were counted unclean and treated worse than
dogs ventured to push theh way into his presence
and ask for a healing touch. Samaritans, the very
offscourings of the world in the estimation of the
orthodox Jew, knew that in this new rabbi they
had a benefactor and friend. When he drove the
traders out of the Temple it was the blind and the
lame who came to him, knowing that they would not
be cast away. Sympathy eats up the blood of the
nerves, and he who sympathizes draws heavily on
the fountains of energy. This Jesus always did.
He was a man with a loving heart. He loved both
his friends and his enemies. He loved them at the
beginning and he loved them to the end. The love
which he lavished upon his disciples purified them
and bound them to him with bonds which nothmg
could break. But his love went out also to those
who hated him and schemed to bring about his
death. "Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do," it is in such a prayer that the loving
heart of Jesus is clearly revealed. He poured out
his love with a generosity which reminded men of
the generosity of God. Having given time and
strength and thought and sympathy and love, he
finally gave up his life. More than this can no man
give. He was not an unwilling victim of circum
stances, or the helpless prey of ungovernable politi-

208 CHARACTER OF JESUS
cal forces, or a martyr like Caesar, or William the
Silent, or Lincoln. He gave his life consciously and
deliberately. It was not snatched from him by
accident or fate, but freely surrendered by a heart
willing to pay the great price. Again and again he
endeavored to make this plain. "I have power to
lay down my life," he said, "and I have power to
take it again." It was his conviction from the
beginning that he came into the world to minister
to men's needs, and to give his life a ransom for
many. It was only by the giving of his life that he
could soften men's hearts and bring a lost world
back to the Father's house.
This, then, was the earthly career of Jesus — one
continuous manifestation of generous and bound
less love. In his character we see not only what is
possible for man to be, but we also behold a revela
tion of the character of the Eternal. " He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father," so said Jesus to
those who were the nearest to him, and it is a say
ing which should be often in our thoughts. In
studying the character of Jesus we get light not
only upon the possibilities of man, but also upon the
disposition and the will of God. The God revealed
by Jesus is the same God revealed by Nature. The
God of Nature has always been known as a generous
God. The days and nights, the sky and sea and
land, the changing seasons, all bear witness to His
amazing generosity. He is prodigal in all His doings.
He is lavish in all His benefactions. He scatters

HIS GENEROSITY 209
good things with the bountiful munificence of a
King. He scatters the stars not in paltry thousands
but in countless millions. He creates flowers not in
numbers which we can count, but in a profusion
which confuses and confounds the imagination. He
always gives more than can be accepted. He throws
sunsets away on eyes which do not care for them.
He gives fruit trees more blossoms than the trees
can use. At every feast which He spreads there are
fragments remaining filling twelve baskets. He is a
munificent, free-handed, bountiful, and extravagant
God. He runs constantly to profusion and exuberance
and overflowing plenty. He fills the measure,
presses it down, shakes it together, and causes it to
run over. The measure is full of beauty apparently
going to waste. He breaks the alabaster box
upon our head every day we live. He spreads a
table before us, He makes our cup run over. There
are a thousand toothsome things to eat, and a thou
sand lovely things to see, and a thousand exquisite
pleasures to experience, and a thousand sublime
truths to learn, and a thousand good opportunities
to seize — more than we can ever make use of in
the short span of life allowed us. In the realm of
nature He is assuredly a lavish and bewilderingly
bounteous God, and what He is in the world of
nature He is likewise in the realm of the spirit.
Jesus says, "Ask and ye shall receive." Do not
hesitate to do it. No matter who you are, you may

2IO CHARACTER OF JESUS
do it. "For every one that asketh, receiveth." It
is an eternal principle, deep-seated in creation and
deep-rooted in the heart of God, that gifts rich and
royal may be had for the asking. It is the purpose
of the Christian religion to bring us to a God who is
willing to give us above what we are willing to ask
or able to think. The generosity of Jesus is in
tended to remind us of the measureless beneficence
of the all-Father. His message thrills with the
thought that we constantly get not what we earn
or what we deserve, but what an ungrudging and
open-handed God is delighted to give.
If you ask why was Jesus generous, the answer
is, God is love. When was love anything but
liberal? When has love ever dealt out good things
with a scant and skimping and miserly hand?
When Peter suggested a certain number as being
enough to indicate the limits of forgiveness, Jesus
told him not to count at all. Love never counts.
When did a mother ever count the number of times
she kissed her baby, and when did a friend ever
catalogue the number of favors toward his friend, or
when did a parent ever make a list of all the good
things he gave his children? Love never counts.
It is the nature of love to give, and to keep on
giving, and then to devise new ways of larger giving,
and to imagine still additional needs which may be
supplied. Speaking to fathers, Jesus says: "What
man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him
for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask

HIS GENEROSITY 211
for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then
being evil know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your Father which
is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"
If you are ever tempted to question the generosity
of the heart of God, look at Jesus! Once in the
world's history there has lived a man whose supreme
joy was ungrudging giving. He knew as no other
man has ever known how much more blessed it is
to give than to receive. He lived not to be minis
tered unto, but to minister; not to receive, but to
give; not to save his life, but to pour it out for others.
If generosity so great has appeared in Time, it must
be because there is a generous heart in Eternity;
if a grace so beautiful has blossomed on our earth,
we have a right to expect the same grace in heaven.
"There's a wideness in God's mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea:
There's a kindness in his justice,
Which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner,
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Saviour;
There is healing in his blood.
"For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more simple,
We should take him at his word;
And our lives would be all sunshine
In the sweetness of our Lord."

XVII
THE CANDOR OF JESUS

XVII
THE CANDOR OF JESUS
"If it were not so I would have told you."
— John xiv : 2.
The word "candor" has a modern sense. In
earlier times it meant whiteness or brightness, coming
as it does from the old Latin word candidus, meaning
"white," the word from which we get our word "can
didate," signifying a man dressed in white, because
aspirants for office in ancient Rome always dressed
in white togas. But in modern speech candor is
openness, fairness, outspokenness, sincerity. It is a
rare virtue, one of the most winsome of all the
virtues. Many a man does not possess it. He is
taciturn, reserved, secretive. He keeps the door
of his heart shut. When he says a thing you can
not tell how much he means, for you do not know
the extent of his reservations. When he does a
thing you cannot tell what he is going to do next,
because you do not know how fully his act has em
bodied all which exists in his heart. He gives him
self fully to no one. He is the man with the barred
lips and the bolted heart. Such a man may be
respected and even admired, but he cannot be
215

216 CHARACTER OF JESUS
loved. Jesus was loved. Men loved him so in
tensely they were willing to die for him. One rea
son was that he was a man with his heart open.
One obtains a hint of a man's disposition by
noting the men whom he admires and praises. The
trait which one sincerely likes to see in others is
likely to be a feature of his own character. John
in his Gospel tells us of a eulogy which Jesus passed
one day upon a man named Nathaniel. Nathaniel
was a citizen of a small Galilean village, Cana,
situated not far from Nazareth. As soon as Philip
had gotten a little acquainted with Jesus he was
desirous of bringing Jesus and his friend Nathaniel
together. Seeking Nathaniel he said enthusiastically,
"We have found him!" to which came back the
frigid answer, "Can there any good thing come
out of Nazareth?" The two villages, Cana and
Nazareth, were close together, and as frequently
happens neither village saw much good in its neigh
bor. Great cities have been known to be bitterly
jealous of one another, and this rivalry is sometimes
more intense in the lives of competing towns. Na
thaniel had a deep-seated contempt for dingy little
Nazareth, and all that was in his heart came out in
the cynical question, "Can there come any good
thing out of Nazareth?" He was nothing if not
frank. His friend, not at all daunted, mildly said,
" Come and see." Whereupon the cynic immediately
obeyed. He had his presuppositions, but he would
not be enslaved by them. He had his prejudices,

HIS CANDOR 217
but he would not be held back by them. It was
only reasonable that he should act on his friend's
suggestion, and this he forthwith did. He was will
ing to investigate for himself. He had an open
mind, an ingenuous heart. Jesus had been struck
by his frank and noble face not long before when
he had seen him praying under a fig tree. As soon
as Jesus sees him coming toward him he exclaims
in a tone musical with praise, "Behold an Israelite
indeed in whom is no guile." This was the sort of
man which won at once the heart of Jesus. There
was no craft nor cunning in him, no duplicity nor
deceit ; he was a man of frank sincerity, and Jesus'
heart immediately goes out to him, assuring him
that over his open soul there is going to be an open
heaven. Outspoken and frank himself, Jesus was
en rapport with souls which were free from guile.
And here we find one of the reasons why Jesus
always extolled the disposition of a child. Without
the child heart no man can enter heaven. And
why? Because the child heart is always the open
heart. Where can you find such candor, such
beautiful frankness, such surprising and sometimes
discomfiting outspokenness as in a little child? He
will tell you just what he thinks, all he thinks, noth
ing will he hold back. He will make known his
feelings, all his feelings, and will melt and overcome
your heart by the fulness of his naive self-revelation.
One of the reasons why Jesus set a child in the
midst of the disciples, saying, "This is what you

2l8 CHARACTER OF JESUS
ought to be," is because a little child is the embodi
ment and personification of candor.
A man reveals, himself in his dislikes as truly as
in his prepossessions and praises. Whom did Jesus
most dislike? The Pharisees. They were hypo
crites. A hypocrite was an actor, a man who wore
a mask, the mask representing a personality other
than the one inside of it. "Do not be like the
actors," this was his constant exhortation, and he
never lost an opportunity of holding up the hypo
crites to contempt and scorn. On one occasion he
faced them in Jerusalem, calling them to their face
"vipers." It was a harsh word, and yet it expressed
the inmost spirit of the men to whom it was applied.
They were as venomous and deadly as vipers. It
is an awful thing to tarnish the name of God and
render religion odious, and to poison the heart of
the world. And yet all this these hypocrites were
doing, and to the guileless heart of Jesus there were
no men so repulsive and deserving of scorching
condemnation. He was himself so genuine and
open-hearted that the craft of these treacherous
actors stirred him to blazing indignation.
He never held back the truth when it was time
that the truth should be spoken. His loving heart
told him when the hour had come. At the marriage
feast in Cana he said to his mother who had come
with imploring eyes and pleading tongue asking
him to help the host out of the distressing predica
ment in which he found himself, "Woman, what

HIS CANDOR 219
have I to do with thee?" It had been predicted-
long before that a sword was to pass through Mary's
heart, and here is surely one of the times when the
sword passed through. The time has come when
the mother's wishes can no longer be allowed to
control the actions of the son. Her importunate
requests can no longer determine the course of
Jesus' action. The old days in Nazareth are for
ever gone, and a new epoch in Jesus' life has dawned,
and in this larger realm the mother is nothing but
a woman whose thoughts and feelings and wishes
must be subordinated to the will of the man whom
she has thus far called her son. What pain Jesus
suffered in speaking thus we can only imagine. But
he was the man with the open heart, and the wound
ing word had to be spoken.
The Gospels teem with illustrations of this sur
prising and daring frankness. One day in talking
with some Sadducees — representatives of the aristo
cratic and influential classes of Palestine — he told
them bluntly that they were always falling into
error because they were so ignorant. They were
ignorant both of the Scriptures and of the power of
God. It was a needed word, for people who know
little and think they know much are sometimes
helped by having their attention called to the limi
tations of their knowledge; but to give such repri
mand is not an easy thing to do. It was by his
outspokenness that Jesus attempted to cure some
of the infirmities of men.

220 CHARACTER OF JESUS
His love of fairness comes out clearly in his warn
ings both to the twelve and to all who wanted to be
numbered among his followers. He will hold back
nothing. The whole terrible truth must be told.
No man shall ever follow him without first knowing
what risks and dangers discipleship involves. Read
the tenth chapter of Matthew as a shining illustra
tion of his candor. He wants the twelve to do his
work, but before they start they shall know what
sort of experiences they may reasonably expect.
"Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves," a figure which meant much to the men
addressed who knew both sheep and wolves. Be
ginning thus he goes on to paint a picture black
enough to daunt the heart of the bravest, and the
only encouragement he has to give them for facing
such awful dangers is the promise that he will con
fess them at last before his Father in heaven. No
disciple shall ever say to him, "I did not know
what it meant!" or shall ever chide him with the
question, "Why did you not tell me?" When men
came rushing to him saying, "Master, I will follow
you," he flashed on them the gloom of a dark sen
tence, unwilling to accept the allegiance of any one,
even in times when he most needed support, without
having first revealed to the volunteer the full sig
nificance of a place in his ranks. Men's heads were
filled with dreams of supremacy and sovereignty
and glory, and more than one heart was chilled by
the searching question, "Are you able to drink the

HIS CANDOR 221
cup?" His candor reduced the number of his fol
lowers, but it was just like him to hold back nothing
which men had a right to know.
But it is in his confessions that his candor reaches
its climax. Among his confessions there are three
which must here have our attention. He admits
without hesitation that there was a limitation of his
authority. One day a man interrupted him with
the cry, "Speak to my brother that he divide the
inheritance with me," and the reply was, "Man,
who made me a judge or a divider over you?"
There was a realm then in which Jesus was not
ordained to act. This was a surprising confession
for the Messiah to make. It had been the dream
of the prophets that the Messiah should have au
thority over all the kingdoms of life, that every
form of injustice should be trampled under his feet.
The nation had long pictured a king who should
put an end to the cruel inequalities with which the
world was cursed, and measure out justice with an
even hand. And now the Messiah deliberately turns
his back on a man who is pleading for justice, saying
that into that realm he cannot now enter. Only a
strong man is brave enough to disappoint his friends
by candidly admitting that it is impossible for him
to do what they have expected of him. Not only
did Jesus confess a limitation of his authority, but
also of his power. When two of his disciples asked
for the chief places in the new kingdom, he frankly
told them that he did not have the power to select

222 CHARACTER OF JESUS
his own prime ministers, because all such matters
were hidden in the deep counsels of God.
More surprising was his confession of ignorance.
An ignorant Messiah was to the pious and instructed
Hebrew an impossible conception. The Messiah
was not only to be able to do everything, he was
also to know everything. The tradition was firmly
lodged in the hearts of the Samaritans as well as
of the Jews, as we see in the words of the woman of
Samaria, "I know that Messiah cometh: when he is
come he will tell us all things." But Jesus frankly
admitted that there were things which he did not
know. For instance, one day he was talking in
graphic phrase about the end of ,the world. He
spoke of it so definitely and positively that it was a
natural inference that he knew just when it would
take place. To the amazement of his hearers he
said, " Of that day and that hour knoweth no man,
no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the
Son, but the Father." There is nothing which so
weakens the authority of a teacher with the public
as the discovery of his ignorance in regard to a
matter on which it is generally considered his busi
ness to be informed. There is no confession which
a teacher makes so reluctantly and with such hazards
as that of ignorance on a point which lies within his
province. It shatters popular confidence, and robs
his words of authority, and cripples all his subse
quent work. Candid, indeed, is the teacher who
confesses his ignorance. Jesus confessed his. He

HIS CANDOR 223
knew the risks and he took them. He knew his
words could be misconstrued and that they would
become to thousands a stumbling-block, but he
spoke them.
Again and yet again his friends and followers,
less candid than theh Master, have shrunk back
from his bold confession and have watered down
his words, trying to make them mean less than
they carry on their face. Many a tricky interpre
tation has been given to his declaration by those
who have not been willing to think of Jesus as
being anything but omniscient, and have feared
that men if once told of one deficiency in Jesus'
knowledge might hesitate to give him the fulness of
their trust and refuse to bow before him as King of
kings and Lord of lords. But men who thus try to
evade the plain language of Scripture are not candid.
Let us be thankful that Peter was frank enough to
tell Mark just what Jesus said, and that Mark was
sincere enough to write down just what Peter re
ported, and that Matthew in a book written espe
cially to prove that Jesus was the long-expected
Messiah and King of Israel, did not shrink from
writing down the great confession of Jesus' igno
rance as to the day and the hour of the end of the
world. The New Testament is like its hero, glori
ously candid. It points to Jesus saying, "This is
the Messiah, the Son of God," and then it tells us
that men spat upon him.
Nothing inspires confidence in a man like candor.

224 CHARACTER OF JESUS
If a man is frank and open in nine points, we may
safely trust him in the tenth. Jesus makes his
candor a reason why his disciples ought to trust
him in those realms of thought and life which lie
beyond their sight. "In my Father's house are
many mansions, if it were not so I would have told
you." Of course he would. It was his nature to
tell men everything it was necessary for them to
know. He would not allow his friends to go on
holding delusions when a word from him would set
them free. These men had in them an instinctive
belief in the life to come. Like all normal and un
spoiled men they believed that death is not the end.
They looked forward to a life of larger scope and
rapture than any which this world can know. Jesus
allowed them to nourish these expectations. He
saw the direction in which their faces all were set,
and he did not tell them they were swayed by an
illusion. He let them go on thinking of heaven,
hoping for heaven, working for heaven, and now
that the end of his earthly life has come, he tells
them more plainly of the nature of this vast world
just beyond the shadow.
Carry this thought with you in your reading of
the New Testament, and it will give you fresh confi
dence in many things which we believe about Jesus.
We believe that he was sinless. Why ? Because of
a sentence here and there like, "Which one of you
convinceth me of sin?" That foundation might
prove somewhat precarious. Shall we think he was

HIS CANDOR 225
sinless because he never committed a sinful act?
But how do you know, how can you know, about
his thoughts and feelings and motives, and what
proof have you that his motives and feelings and
thoughts were always altogether just what God
would have them to be? The best reason we have
for believing in the sinlessness of Jesus is the fact
that he allowed his dearest friends to think that he
was. There is in all his talk no trace of regret or
hint of compunction, or suggestion of sorrow for
shortcoming or slightest vestige of remorse. He
taught other men to think of themselves as sinners,
he asserted plainly that the human heart is evil, he
told his disciples that every time they prayed they
were to pray to be forgiven, but he never speaks or
acts as though he himself has the faintest conscious
ness of having ever done anything other than what
was pleasing to God. This is remarkable, unpar
alleled. All the saints beat their breasts saying,
" God be merciful to me a sinner." The purer the
heart the lower it bows before infinite holiness.
Jesus never by word or by act indicates that he is
conscious of falling short of the wishes of God. If
he had been, would he not have said so? His was
the open heart. Would he deceive men on a matter
of such cardinal moment? Is this like him to be
conscious of transgression, and conscience-stricken
because of his sins and never indicate by a word
that he like the disciples must pray to be forgiven?
They thought he was sinless. Would this man with

226 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the open heart and the open mouth allow his dearest
friends to be deceived? He was without sin even
as the apostle said he was. We are sure of it for
the reason that if he had not been he would have
told us.
On his candor, then, we have a right to build both
for time and eternity. When he says that if we do
not repent we shall perish, and that only those who
are born from above enter the kingdom of light, we
have every reason for believing that these statements
are true. And when he says that his disciples are
going to do greater things than were ever done in
Palestine, and that he will be with us always even
unto the end of the world, why should we not believe
him? And since he is so frank and open with us why
should not we be open-hearted and frank with him ?
If he tells us truly the things in his heart, why
should we not tell him truly the things which are in
our hearts? He has given himself to us: why do
we not give ourselves to him?

XVIII
THE ENTHUSIASM OF JESUS

XVIII
THE ENTHUSIASM OF JESUS
"I came to cast fire upon the earth." — Luke xii : 49.
Strange to say, the word " enthusiasm " does not
occur in our English New Testament, nor is it to
be found in the Greek Testament ; and yet the New
Testament is the most enthusiastic of all books, and
Jesus is the most enthusiastic of all men. The word
"enthusiasm" is avoided, and for a reason. In the
first century it had unsavory associations. Enthu
siasm in the Pagan world was an ecstasy, or divine
possession. An enthusiast was one who was in
spired or possessed by a god. Often the enthusiast
was a fanatic, sometimes he was a madman. The
evangelists and apostles did not like the word, and
so they kept it out of their writings. In the speech
of to-day, enthusiasm is a noble word. It is fervor
of mind, ardency of spirit, exaltation of soul. It is
passion, heat, fire. Though the word is absent, the
thing itself is present. Jesus burns with fervent
heat. His very words are sparks which kindle
conflagrations. When a boy he visited Jerusalem with his parents,
and slipping one day into the Temple to hear the
229

230 CHARACTER OF JESUS
scholars discussing the great problems of religion,
he lost himself. He forgot what day of the week
it was, and what hour of the day it was. His father
and mother and brothers and sisters and friends
all passed completely from his mind. He plunged
headlong into the discussion of the doctors, gave
himself up completely to the subject of the hour,
allowed himself to be swept along on the tide of
thought and discussion, until all at once his mother's
face appeared at the door and he was reminded of
the place he had left vacant in the caravan which
had started toward Galilee. In this temple expe
rience we see a nature sensitive and impressionable,
capable of being heated to high temperatures.
When as a young man of thirty he next appears
before us we see him at the river Jordan being bap
tized by the mighty preacher John. Immediately
after the baptism, St. Mark tells us he was "driven"
by the Spirit into the wilderness. The word
"driven" has in it a significance which is revealing.
Jesus is so full of feeling after the experience which
came to him in his baptism that he cannot linger
near the homes of men, but must at once rush away
into unfrequented and desert places where he can
meditate upon the strange thing that has happened
to him, and ponder the steps which he must next
take. From this time on we have a man before us
who is being driven. Even when a boy he used a
word which expressed the intensity of his feeling,
" Do you not know that I must be about my Father's

HIS ENTHUSIASM 23 1
business?" He never ceased to use that word
"must." They wanted him to stay in Capernaum,
but he could not do it. "I must preach the gospel
of the kingdom of God to the other cities also."
They wanted him to stay away from Jerusalem,
knowing that it was dangerous there, but he said :
"I must go to Jerusalem. I have a baptism to be
baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be
accomplished ?" He felt that his life would be short
and so he kept saying, "I must work the works of
Him that sent me while it is day : the night cometh
when no man can work."
How intense his life was we can see in what is told
us of his habit of praying. He was always praying.
He arose early in the morning in order to find more
time to pray, he stayed up late at night in order to
increase the hours in which he might speak to God.
Sometimes he did not go to bed at all, remaining all
night long upon some hilltop under the stars pouring
out his soul to God. He was enthusiastic in prayer,
and therefore he was zealous in work. Men were
astounded by the magnitude of his labors. Some
times he did not take time to eat. Even when he
went away for a season of relaxation he gave himself
up to the crowds which pursued him. His words
have in them an energy which burns. Again and
again we catch expressions in which we can feel
his great heart beating : " I have not found so great
faith, no, not in Israel," "O woman, great is
thy faith!" "I thank thee, O Father!" "O

232 CHARACTER OF JESUS
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often!" All these are
out of the throat of an enthusiast, a man surcharged
with feeling. At the distance of nineteen hundred
years from the day on which they were spoken our
heart leaps when we listen to them. The rains
of the centuries have not put out their fire.
But it is not simply what Jesus says, but also what
those who touched him say which lets us look into the
molten centre of his glowing heart. Mark frankly
tells us that there was a time in Jesus' life when his
labor was so excessive that his friends said, "He is
beside himself." Expressive, indeed, is the phrase.
A man is beside himself when he is a little "off."
He is not "away off," for then he is out of his head,
or insane. But when a man has swung just a little
from his balance he is beside himself. He is in the
borderland which is between sanity and insanity.
Such burning earnestness in the work of doing good
had never been seen in Palestine. No wonder men
said, "He is beside himself!" But this was the
judgment of his friends. His enemies did not hesi
tate to say boldly, "He has a devil, he is mad."
Jesus made this impression not once, but often.
Such zeal for righteousness, such enthusiasm for
helping men seemed to the cold-blooded scribes the
fury of a maniac. It was when Paul was burning
with the same kind of heat that Festus cried, " Paul,
thou art mad!" Nothing seems so crazy as enthu
siasm to a man incapable of feeling it.
The crowds also bear witness to the fire which this

HIS ENTHUSIASM 233
man had in him. He stirred men up wherever he
went. They crowded him off the land upon the
water. They pushed him off the plain up the hillside.
They crowded the houses in which he tarried, they
pressed round him as he walked through the streets.
Again and again the excitement rose to fever heat,
and Jesus slipped away and hid himself. Near the
close of his career the crowds went wild in their
tumultuous joy, shouting, singing, casting their
clothing in the dust that the animal which Jesus
rode might have a carpet for its hoofs like unto that
furnished for triumphal processions of kings. No
man can set a crowd blazing unless his own soul is
ablaze. When we see some men hurrahing and
adoring and other men gnashing theh teeth and
cursing, some boiling with love, others seething with
hate, it is evident we are in the presence of a man
whose heart glows like a furnace and whose soul
radiates heat wherever he goes.
A still finer evidence of this is found in the charac
ter of the men whom Jesus attracted to him as his
intimate friends. The apostles were all men of fire.
Do not believe the pictures wheri they paint the twelve
as limp and pallid men. They were full-blooded,
virile, mighty men, full of fire and passion, drawn
to Jesus because in him they saw a man who satisfied
them. Peter had a seething soul, his words roll out
of him like molten lava. John and James were
called Sons of Thunder. The disciple whom Jesus
loved was so passionate that he wanted to burn up

234 CHARACTER OF JESUS
a whole town which had insulted his Master. One
of the disciples was a zealot, a member of the most
radical political party in Palestine. Men of this
party could scarcely sleep, so intense was their hatred
of Rome, and no man among the zealots could ever
have been attracted by a cold-blooded, limp-handed
man. It was because Jesus had in him the fire
which the zealots loved that Simon enrolled himself
among the apostles. Judas also was a man made
of inflammable stuff. His remorse sets him on fire
and there is nothing more thrilling in history than
his shriek: "I have sinned! I have sinned!" If
there was a lethargic temperament in the apostolic
company, it was that of Thomas ; but even he was
so devoted to Jesus that at a crisis in his life he said
to his comrades, "Come, let us go and die with him."
That was the feeling of them all. They loved Jesus
with such an intensity of devotion, such a passionate
self-abandon, that they were ready at any moment
to lay down their lives for him. No man can win and
hold the ardent devotion of strong men unless he
has a soul which is hot. Jesus from first to last was
surrounded by enthusiasts because he himself was
enthusiastic. If you ask for the cause of this enthusiasm, you
will find that it has three roots. In the first place,
Jesus had a sensitive nature. He was finely or
ganized, his nerves were delicately strung. There
is a vast difference in the make-up of men. Some
men are coarse, stolid, heavy. They have sensations

HIS ENTHUSIASM 235
but not intense ones. They have the emotions of
vegetables. There are other men who are as deli
cately adjusted as an aeolian harp. Every breeze
that blows over them causes them to vibrate and
wooes from them music. Such a man was Jesus.
No finer clay was ever organized around a soul
than that which formed his body, and this body was
never coarsened or calloused by sin. On the Mount
of Transfiguration his soul so shone through his
body that his disciples were awed and overwhelmed.
In the Garden of Gethsemane his agony was so
great that the perspiration on his brow looked in
the moonlight like huge drops of blood. When his
soul at one time came into his face men fell backward
to the ground.
Along with this nature capable of burning there
existed a vision of God and a vision of man which
set the nation on fire. Jesus saw that the maker of
the universe is a Father, that at the centre of things
there beats a Father's heart, that over all there ex
tends a Father's care, and that to all there flows
a Father's, love. Other men have seen this dimly,
as it were through a glass darkly, but Jesus saw it as
it had never been seen before and as it has never been
seen since. It was to him the one clear and lumi
nous fact of the universe and everything else was
seen in the glory of this stupendous truth. Since
God is the all-Father, then all men are His children.
He created them all, He loves them all, He desires
to save them all. No matter who they are or what

236 CHARACTER OF JESUS
they are or where they are, they are His children,
and they cannot drift beyond His love and care.
Men everywhere are brothers, and for one brother
to help another, this is the supreme joy in living.
Other men see this dimly, but to Jesus it was all
clear as the sun at noon. With such a vision of God
and such a vision of man is it to be wondered at that
his soul burned like a star? Out of such a nature
heated hot by such a vision there came forth a pur
pose, steadfast and full of passion. To the clear
eye of Jesus a mighty battle was raging on the earth.
There was a terrific conflict between right and wrong,
light and darkness, good and evil, God and the Devil.
There was nothing to do at such a crisis but to throw
himself whole-heartedly into the contest, fighting
indomitably for the glory of the Father and the wel
fare of his brethren. Put these three things together
— a sensitive and inflammable nature, a clear and
glorious vision, and a fiery and indomitable purpose
— and you have the ingredients which go to produce
the divine flame which is known as enthusiasm.
What a beautiful thing it is, enthusiasm ! Moses
turned aside to see a burning bush, everybody turns
aside to see a burning man. Glance across the
centuries and you will note that every time the race
has turned aside from the beaten path it has been
to see a man who was burning. Enthusiasm is of
different kinds, but every kind is fascinating. There
is what we may call physical enthusiasm, the enthusi
asm of the nerves and the blood. It is this enthu-

HIS ENTHUSIASM 237
siasm which was kindled at the great athletic contests
in Greece, and which blazes at our modern foot
ball contests. To be one of forty thousand people
watching a few strong men engaged in a strenuous
game stirs the nerves and sets, the corpuscles in the
blood to hurrahing. It is not a high form of enthu
siasm, but it is glorious, and men will go miles to
experience the thrill. Much higher than this is
intellectual enthusiasm, the fervor which men feel
in the pursuit of truth. This is the enthusiasm of
explorers and discoverers and inventors and scholars
— men who devote their lives to the sublime work of
snatching a new kingdom from the clutch of the
unknown. Men count not their lives dear in the
pursuit of knowledge. When we read of an explorer
dying in a wild and desert land, or of a physician
giving up his life in the laboratory in search of a
secret which will diminish pain or lengthen life, we
are awed into silence. The heart knows that it
stands in the presence of something divine. Above
this is the aesthetic enthusiasm, fiery zeal in the
pursuit of beauty. There are men and women in
whose eyes there is a hunger after beauty which we
who do not have it cannot understand. The man
with the artistic eye is seeking everywhere for beauty.
When his eyelids fall, his soul still sees forms, colors,
lights, shadows, scenes of loveliness and perfection.
What a history it is, the history of art. What a line
of heroes and martyrs have travelled the steep and
thorny road.

238 CHARACTER OF JESUS
Many a man has painted day by day until his
eyes began to fail, and then he has painted on and
on amid the deepening shadows, never faltering,
never surrendering until the final darkness falls.
Others have in their ears a hunger after harmony.
All through life they thirst for fuller measures of
lovely tones. There is no temple for them but the
vast and glorious temple of music, and melodies
and divine sequences of ordered tones flow in a con
stant tide through the soul. What biographies they
are, the biographies of musicians. For many of
them it has been a life of labor, privation, sacrifice,
disappointment, poverty ; but all things precious have
been counted dross by souls in pursuit of higher
strains of the heavenly anthem. Before all such
martyrs the soul takes off its shoes, knowing that the
ground is holy. But higher than all enthusiasms is
the fire that burns in souls in love with God. To
know Him, to serve Him, to glorify Him, this is the
highest ambition of which the soul is capable, and
the soul when possessed with this ambition burns
with a fire that cannot be quenched. This was the
enthusiasm of Jesus. In him the highest of the
enthusiasms reached its climax. He lived and moved
and had his being in the presence of the Eternal.
From the beginning to the end he saw the majesty
of righteousness, loved the beauty of holiness, and
lived for the glory of God.
It is not to be wondered at, then, that the religion
of Jesus likes the word " fire." John the Baptist de-

HIS ENTHUSIASM 239
clared that he could baptize only with water but that
one was coming who would baptize with fire. From
John's hands men came dripping, from Jesus' hands
they came blazing. St. Luke tells us that on the Day
of Pentecost there seemed to be a flame on every
forehead, fit emblem of the new religion's heart.
John on the isle of Patmos thinking of Jesus sees
him with eyes like flames of fire and feet of bur
nished brass. He hears him talking to the Laodice-
ans, and this is what he says : " I would thou wert
cold or hot. Because thou art lukewarm, and neither
hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth." One
can drink' cold water with a relish. He can also
drink water heated to a certain temperature. But
against tepid water the stomach rebels. The be
loved disciple does not hesitate to represent Jesus
saying, "Lukewarm Christians are nauseating to
me!" And alas ! how many lukewarm Christians there
are, men who are mdifferent, neutral, neither hot nor
cold. They do not oppose, they approve, but appro
bation cannot set the world on fire. Approbation
is a nod of one corner of the intellect, enthusiasm
is the smile of the soul. What is the matter with
Christians that they are so lacking in enthusiasm?
The answer is that the nature is saturated, soaked by
the chilling drizzle of worldliness, and along with
this deterioration of nature comes a diminishing of
the vision of the Fatherhood of God and the Brother
hood of man, and because there is a shadowed vision

240 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the glowing purpose is also lacking, and the soul
does not catch fire. What, then, shall we do ? Let
us go back to Him who is a zealous God, so eager
and ardent in His love that He gave His only begotten
Son. If we are not ablaze in the presence of such
a gospel, it is because we have a heart of stone ; but
He who knows our frame and who remembers that
we are dust has promised to remove the heart of
stone and to give us a heart of flesh.

XLX
THE GLADNESS OF JESUS

XLX
THE GLADNESS OF JESUS
"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad."
— Matthew v : 12.
We are trying to see Jesus of Nazareth! Our
one question is: What kind of man was he? We
are not studying his personality or considering his
ideas — all we want to know is what kind of a man
he was, how did he impress the people, who saw
him in Galilee and Judea. We are trying to get
rid of impressions which have been made upon us
by painters and our own imagination. It is by no
means easy to see him as he was, the mists blow in
between us and him, and blur the features of his
face. The dust settles upon the picture which the
evangelists have painted and the man becomes dim
to our eyes. All sorts of men — poets, philosophers,
painters — have like so many human spiders woven
cobwebs over the picture, so that until we brush the
cobwebs away it is impossible to see him. In the
words of the familiar hymn, "We would see Jesus,"
we would bring him out of the shadows and see him
as he is. It is an interesting enterprise in which
we are engaged, because all the Christian churches
take their name from this man. The churches
243

244 CHARACTER OF JESUS
differ widely from one another in worship, in govern
ment, in teachings, — Protestants of many kinds are
separated from one another, and Catholics of many
classes are also separated from one another, — but
this one thing is remarkable, that all the Christian
churches of the world are clinging tenaciously to
the garments of this man. They all without excep
tion call him Master; they all hold him up as the
pattern of a perfect life. "He," they say, "is our
example. We are to reproduce the characteristic
notes displayed in him." And therefore it becomes
not only an interesting enterprise, but one of tre
mendous importance, this effort to find out what kind
of man he was. If we get a distorted image of him,
we harm ourselves and rob the world. Just in
proportion as we see him clearly and understand
precisely what sort of man he was, do we become
able to pattern our lives after his and become the
men God would have us to be.
Pushing then all the poets and philosophers aside,
let us ask ourselves the question: Did Jesus of
Nazareth impress men as glad or sad, solemn or
radiant, jubilant or melancholy ? There is no doubt
about the answer which the painters give. They
nearly always paint him sad, they love to paint him
on the cross, they picture him dying with a great
melancholy in his eyes — or if they do not paint
him on the cross, they paint him on the way to the
cross with the crown of thorns on his head, bending
under the burden as he staggers up Golgotha. In

HIS GLADNESS 245
all the Catholic churches of the world you see the
twelve stations of the cross. The Jesus of Christian
history is a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief ; there is sadness in his face and a great pang
in his heart. Christianity is the religion of sorrow,
said Goethe, and Carlyle declared that Goethe's
judgment was correct. And not only do the painters
paint him sad, but so also does our imagination.
When we think of him we think of him as crucified.
In that wonderful painting of Holman Hunt the
cross on which Jesus died casts a shadow out across
Jerusalem to the end of the world, and that is what
the cross does in the pictures which our mind paints
of Jesus and the world in which he lived — we always
see him with the shadow of the cross upon him,
we always think of him as severe and sad. But
we cannot afford to follow the painters. They
paint Jesus with a halo. Nobody in Jerusalem ever
saw the halo. They paint him with a shadow on
his face — do you suppose the men in Palestine
saw the shadow ? We want to see him as he was.
In order to find out what impression he really
made upon the people of his day, it will be worth our
while to listen to what his enemies had to say. Of
course his enemies will not speak the ungarbled
truth, they will deal in falsehoods ; but even false
hoods are of great advantage in trying to make one's
way toward the truth. There is nothing that so
dumfounds a lawyer in the questioning of a witness
as unbroken silence. If a witness will only speak,

246 CHARACTER OF JESUS
if he will only speak falsehoods, his speech is more
illuminating than continuous silence, for falsehoods
when arranged in a row have a curious fashion of
pointing in the direction of the truth. When a man
begins lying, if you can only keep him lying long
enough, he will by and by put you on the track of
discovering what the truth is. And so it is with the
enemies of Jesus. They have said certain things
which are invaluable to us in our search after au
thentic knowledge of the character of Jesus. Among
other things which they said, they declared he was a
glutton. Of course he was not, but they said he
was. Now a glutton is never a glum and sour-
faced man. Gluttony is a form of pleasure. Men
overeat because overeating gives enjoyment. A
glutton is likely to be round and rotund. When the
men of Jesus' day said he was a glutton we may
rest assured he was not an ascetic in his looks or hab
its. They also called him a wine bibber. Of course
he was not, but the very fact that they accused him
of guzzling wine points in the direction of the kind
of man he was. A wine bibber is usually a jolly man.
Wine unlocks the lips and gives temporary brilliancy
to the mind. A man under the influence of wine is
exceedingly social and talkative and genial. The
enemies of Jesus would never have called him a wine
bibber if he had been as glum and sad as some of
the artists have painted him. They called him also
the friend of publicans and sinners. By publicans
and sinners we are to understand non-churchgoers.

HIS GLADNESS 247
This man not only went to church and associated
with pious people, but he associated with people
who had no piety at all. When they declared he
was a friend of these non-churchgoers, they implied
that he was of the same stripe as they — " Birds of
a feather always flock together." He would never
have associated with such godless people if he himself
had not had a godless heart. So his enemies declared,
and if Jesus had been taciturn and sullen, grim and
morose, his enemies would never have declared he
was a boon companion of light-hearted men. Their
lying would have taken another form. Put, then,
these three bits of falsehood together, and what is
the direction in which they point? They are the
most precious bits of slander that ever slipped from
slimy lips. They prove indisputably that whatever
Jesus was or was not, he was not morose or sour or
melancholy. Having listened to the testimony of his enemies,
let us now study one of the words Jesus applied
to himself. There were pious people in Palestine
who were greatly scandalized because Jesus never
fasted, nor did he teach his disciples that it was their
duty to fast. Fasting was a recognized feature of
the Jewish religion. Every person of orthodox
piety in Palestine fasted twice every week. Fasting
had been prescribed by the greatest of the rabbis;
it had also been the requirement of John the Baptist
himself. Some people came to Jesus one day in
disgust, saying, "Why do your disciples not fast?"

248 CHARACTER OF JESUS
The reply of Jesus is illuminating. He said, "How
can the children of the bridechamber fast when the
bridegroom is with them?" Did you ever mark
the use of that word ' ' bridegroom ' ' ? Jesus says that
he is a bridegroom. He seized upon a word that is
the symbol of human joy. If ever a man is happy
in this world, it is on his wedding day. Jesus says
that he lives in an atmosphere of wedding joy, and
so also do his disciples. It is impossible therefore
for either him or his disciples to take up any of the
old fashions of the grim and solemn piety of the past.
He told the men who criticised him that his life
was different from the life of John the Baptist and
also from the life of the Pharisees. You cannot mix
the two kinds of piety, the two forms of life will not
mingle. Let me give you an illustration or two, he
said: "A man does not put a new patch on an old
garment, because the new patch will tear out and
the rent will be still worse. Neither can you put
my form of life on to the old form of piety, the two
will not hold together, the strength that is in my
form of life will simply tear the old form of life to
pieces. Or, to give you another illustration, men
do not put new wine into old wine skins, for there is
too much life and movement and sparkle in new
wine for the old skins. If you attempt to put the
new wine into the old skins, the old skins will burst
and the wine will be lost. So do not think that you
can put the new life which I live and which I want
all my followers to live into old forms of pharisaic

HIS GLADNESS 249
piety, for this cannot be done. I am living a new
kind of life, and I want a new kind of man, a new
spirit, a new form of religion."
It would seem, then, that Jesus was a man abound
ing in joy. Gladness was one of the notes of his
character. Listen to him as he teaches, and again
and again you catch the notes of happiness. He was
all the time saying, "Unless you become like a little
child, you cannot enter the kingdom of God" — and
what was it in the little child that attracted him?
One thing which attracted him was the child's
sunny heart. What would we do in this world
without the children laughing away the cares and
sighs? Have you ever listened to their laughter
in the streets while the funeral procession was pass
ing by? Have you ever seen a golden-haired little
child with beaming face at the centre of a room in
which there was a casket around which broken
hearted men arid women were gathering ? Look at
that child in the centre of the chamber of death —
that is the picture of the Christian amid the shadows
of this darkened world. Or listen again to what
he says about worry. He defines it as one of the
deadliest of all sins. We are not to worry about the
present, about the necessities of existence, about
to-morrow, about what we ought to do or say in
the great crises which lie ahead of us. It is not right,
he says ; it is contrary to the law of God. Look at
nature: see the lilies and the birds, there is not a
trace of solicitude in all nature's lovely face. Listen

250 CHARACTER OF JESUS
again to the exhortations which he gives his disciples.
He tells them that when men persecute them and
say all manner of evil against them falsely, they are
to rejoice and be exceeding glad. The English
translation does not do justice to the Greek. He
says, "Rejoice and leap for joy." Let your joy
express itself. When matters are at their worst,
then you ought to have the happiness which leaps.
Certainly a sad-hearted man could never give advice
like that. Listen to him again as he says to the
great crowds, " Come unto me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; for my
yoke is easy and my burden is light." A glum-
faced prophet could never speak so. He was glad
even to the end. Even in the upper chamber, with
death only a few hours away, he goes right on speak
ing of the joy that is bubbling up in his own heart
and he prays that the same joy may abound in the
hearts of those that love him. He tells his disciples
that all of his teaching has been granted unto them
because of his desire that his joy might remain in
them and that their joy might be full. There was
no shadow on his face that night in the upper cham
ber. The cross is near, but it casts no shadow.
But does not the New Testament say that Jesus
wept? It does. And does the New Testament
ever say that Jesus laughed? It does not. Are
we therefore to infer that Jesus often wept and never
laughed? The inference is unfounded. Why does
the New Testament say that Jesus wept ? Probably

HIS GLADNESS 25 1
because it was so exceptional. It is the exceptional
thing that is written down. There are four million
people in New York City, let one of them kill another
— he gets at once into the papers. Murder is
exceptional and so it is always noted. Thousands
of people walk the streets, let one of them fall and
break his leg and that accident is noted — no atten
tion is paid to the thousands who meet with no acci
dent. Jesus laughed so frequently it was not worth
while calling attention to it. He wept so seldom
that when he did weep it struck the disciples with
consternation. John could never forget it. He
remembered the day at the tomb of Lazarus when
Mary was weeping and her sister and all the relatives
and friends, and it was then that Jesus wept, so tender
and sympathetic was he that he broke down — that
great strong, radiant, exuberant man wept. John
says that the world itself could not contain the books
that could be written if he attempted to put down
all the things which Jesus said and did. He will
crowd back a million things to make room for that
one surprising fact that at the grave of Lazarus
Jesus wept. The sentence instead of proving that
Jesus was lachrymose and doleful bears eloquent
witness to the fact that Jesus was buoyant and
exultant. A Christian must then, if he would follow Jesus,
be a joyous and jubilant man. Some one says at
once, "Ah, I know many Christians who are any
thing but happy, they are the most doleful creatures

252 CHARACTER OF JESUS
in all the world, they whine and whimper, they sob
and cry, their very faces are images of woe — how
will you explain that?" The explanation is that
all such persons although they profess to follow
Jesus, follow him afar off. You may be tempted
to say that glum and dismal Christians are not
Christians at all. That is probably somewhat too
severe. It would be nearer right to say that they
are not developed Christians, mature or ripened
Christians. The very finest apples, you know, in
the earlier stages of their growth are sour and green.
It is not until the sun has done his perfect work that
they are golden and luscious. Just so it is with souls
in the earlier stages of development — they are often
green and sour, crabbed, and full of acid. But if
they will only subject themselves to the shining of
the sun, the great joyous, exuberant, laughing sun,
all the juices of their nature will grow sweet and
mellow, and they will find themselves at last in the
kingdom of peace and joy.
It is the tragedy of this world that there are so
many people in it who find it impossible to rejoice.
What is the matter with you that you are not happier
than you are ? Certainly there is something wrong !
What a pity it is to live in a world like this and not
enjoy living ! It is amazing that any one should live
in a universe so glorious, and not feel like shouting !
If you are lachrymose and drooping it is because there
is something wrong. You are not well in body or
in mind, or it may be you are sick in both. You have

HIS GLADNESS 253
not yet learned the high art of living, you have not
yet come to Jesus. Why not come and sit at his
feet? Why not take his yoke upon you and learn
of him, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

XX
THE HUMILITY OF JESUS

XX
THE HUMILITY OF JESUS
"I am meek and lowly in heart."
— Matthew xi : 29.
Let us begin with that wonderful verse in the
eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden; and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek
and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your
souls." That sentence is unique in the Gospel.
There is nothing else at all like it. It is a bit
of autobiography which is immeasurably precious.
Nowhere is Jesus recorded as having said, " Come
unto me, for I am patient — for I am courageous —
for I am self-sacrificing;" but here for the first
time he calls attention to one of his characteristics.
He has allowed other men to call attention to this
virtue or that grace, but he himself will bring out
the fact that he is humble. At this point he takes
the brush in his own hand, saying, "I will put this
color on myself." So unusual is the sentence that
some men have been scandalized by it. They have
257

258 CHARACTER OF JESUS
declared he never said it, that it is not like him, that
he could not say it, that if he did say it, it reveals a
defect in his character. These men tell us that a
man cannot eulogize himself, that it is always im
proper for a man to sing his own praises. AU of
which may be true, but this is a fair question : Is
it right for a man ever to describe himself? Is it
proper for a man to give a reason why men should
come to him and take lessons of him? I think it
is. That is all Jesus does in this mstance. He
says, "Come unto me, I have something to teach
you, I should like to teach you humility."
Possibly no other virtue in the catalogue of Chris
tian virtues is so misunderstood as this one. No
other one has been so often erroneously defined, no
other grace has been so persistently counterfeited
and caricatured. What do we mean by humility?
If you should have asked that question in the streets
of ancient Athens, men would have told you that
humility is something mean, it is cowardly, cring
ing, groveling ; humility is meanness of spirit, it is
something low and selfish, it is a characteristic of
slaves. If a Greek had called another Greek
humble, the Greek would have been insulted by the
epithet. In all the Pagan world there was no virtue
known as humility. Humility was always and every
where a defect, a blemish, a vice.
But what do we mean by humility? The ques
tion is not so easily answered as it might seem.
Humility is a Christian virtue — everybody says it

HIS HUMILITY 259
is. We know that Jesus was humble, we know also
that he demands humility of us, we know that he
took the ancient word and cleansed it and made it a
lovely word, and yet when asked to define the mean
ing of it, how difficult it is to do. What a variety of
answers we have in answer to the question what
humility is ! One person says it is taking a low esti
mate of one's deserts; another says it is making
one's self small. Another says it is a sense of in
feriority in the presence of others. Another says it
is a sense of imperfection, or of ill desert. Another
says that it is softness, passivity, a willingness to
submit. Now all of these definitions are proved to
be erroneous the moment we carry them into the
atmosphere of the New Testament. The humility
which Jesus requires of those who follow him is the
humility which he had himself, and certainly his
humility was not meanness of spirit. There was
nothing cringing or crawling in him. When has
there walked the earth a man who held his head
higher than did he? When has the world known
a man of such lofty, regnant sphit? Nor did he
take a low estimate of himself. On the other hand,
no man ever estimated himself so highly. Hear
him saying to the astounded crowd: "It was said
to you by them of old time — but I say unto you,"
thus putting himself higher than Moses. Listen to
him as he says: "A greater than Solomon is here,"
"I am the good shepherd," "I am the light of
the world," "I am the way, the truth, and the

260 CHARACTER OF JESUS
life," "I am from above," "No man knows the
Father but the Son," "No inan comes to the
Father save through me," " I, if I be lifted up, will
draw all men unto me." Certainly humility on the
lips of Jesus does not mean a low estimate of one's
powers. Let us then come close to him in order to
understand just what he means when he says, "I
am meek and lowly in heart."
Jesus gave his disciples three great lessons on the
subject of humility, and to these I invite your atten
tion. You will find the first of them recorded in
the eighteenth of Matthew, the first five verses. On
a certain occasion Jesus takes a little chfld, and
putting him in the midst, says: "Whoever shall
humble himself as a little child the same shall be
great in the kingdom of heaven. Except ye become
as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the
kingdom of heaven." The words have been re
peated to us so frequently they fafl to surprise the
heart. This is one of the great scenes in the history
of the world, one of the original scenes. Nothing
like it was ever known in the history of Assyria, or
of Babylonia, or of Egypt, or of Persia, or of Greece
or Rome. It is unique, absolutely original. " Who
soever shall humble himself as a little chnd" — and
what is the crowning characteristic of a little child?
It is teachableness, docility, willingness to learn. A
child is eager for knowledge, he is everlastingly ask
ing questions, he is always bent on investigation,, he
pries into everything. , He wants to go to the roots

HIS HUMILITY 26 1
of everything. He always wants you to tell him one
more story, he will wear a half dozen grown people
out simply by the questions which he asks — so
hungry is he for knowledge. This teachableness is
humUity. Not only is he free from self-sufficiency, but
he is free from vanity. A little child is not vain
of the belongings of its parents. It cares nothing
for diamonds or sUks, brown stone, or carriages.
It plays with perfect contentment with a child in the
street whose parents have no carriages and who are
too poor to own diamonds. Free from vanity it
also knows nothing of ambition, it knows nothing
of social aspirations. Place before it the queen of
England and its own mother, and it will choose its
mother every time, though she be nothing but a
washwoman — so simple, so human, so beautiful
is the heart of a chUd. It is this characteristic of
the child heart that Jesus loves. It was because the
Pharisees did not have it that he criticised them and
condemned them. They were not teachable, they
knew everything. Nobody could tell them any
thing. They were vain, they blew trumpets and
called attention to theh decorations. They loved
salutations. They were ambitious, they were always
pushing themselves forward, taking the chief places
at the feasts. He could do nothing with them be
cause they were not humble. He, on the other
hand, had the heart of a child. The evangelists do
not tell us about the first twelve years of his life,

262 CHARACTER OF JESUS
but in imagination we can see him sitting at the feet
of his mother drinking in knowledge from her lips.
We can see him in the little school in Nazareth,
studying, hungry for knowledge. We get just a
glimpse of him at the age of twelve, so hungry for
knowledge that he will not go home, but lingers
behind to ask the big teachers in the Temple just
one more question. Always was he teachable.
There is no trace of arrogance in him, no sphit of
assumption. He is constantly talking to God, ask
ing him questions, praying for new light. He can
not live without prayer. Prayer is the language
of humUity. Only the docile in heart ever pray.
When we say that Jesus was a man of prayer, we
say he was meek and lowly in heart.
Let us now turn to the twentieth of Matthew,
verses twenty-five to twenty-eight. His disciples, in
spite of all his admonitions and teachings, are filled
with the ambitious spirit. They all want to be first.
They want to be high up. Two of them ask
for chief places in his kingdom. He tells them that
he cannot grant their request. When the ten other
apostles heard of the request which the two had
made, the ten were indignant. This was because
they themselves were ambitious — they wanted the
places themselves. Jesus calls the twelve around
him and says: "You know that the princes of the
Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that
are great exercise authority upon them. But it
shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be

HIS HUMILITY 263
great among you, let him be your minister; and
whosoever will be chief among you let him be
your servant." Here we get another note in
the grace of humility. It is not only teachable
ness, freedom from vanity and ambition, but it is
also a willingness to serve. A humble man is a man
who is ready to make himself useful. A man of
lowly spirit is a man who wUl help his brethren, and
here again Jesus in substance says : " Come unto me,
for I am meek and lowly in heart. Whosoever will
be chief among you let him be your servant, even as
the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."
Does this not paint the picture of his life? As an
inspired apostle puts it, "He went about doing
good." He * never patronized, nor looked down.
He made himself of no reputation if only he could
help those that needed help. He did not under
estimate his powers, or make himself small, or feel
himself to be unworthy; he simply came down to
where men were in order to do them good. That is
Christian humility.
The third lesson in humility was given his disciples
on the very night of his betrayal, in the upper cham
ber. You wUl find the incident recorded in the
thirteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St.
John. The disciples are still filled with the ambitious
spirit. They have not yet learned the joy of serving,
for all have nettled hearts because they have not
gotten the places which they wanted, and Jesus

264 CHARACTER OF JESUS
unwilling to allow the feast to go forward arises
from the table, and taking a basin and girding him
self with a towel proceeds to rinse the dust from the
disciples' feet. Knowing their dulness of under
standing he goes on to explain the meaning of his
action, telling them, just as he has been willing to do
the work of a slave in order to serve them, so they
also must be willing to serve one another. Here,
again, we see what humility really is. It is laying
aside one's dignity, it is making one's self of no repu
tation, it is a willingness to come down, it is a delight
in rendering service. And why was it that Jesus
was able to do this ? St. John gives the explanation
in the wonderful words, "Knowing that he came
from God, and was going back to God." It was
not because he had mean ideas of himself, nor beL
cause he desired to make himself small; it was
because he knew his divine origin and his divine
destiny, and was conscious of his lofty position that
he was willing to take the basin and the towel and
do the work of a slave. This is the secret of hu
mility everywhere and always. A man is never
humble except by coming close to God. It is by
thinking of the Eternal that man becomes willing
to do the things which otherwise would be difficult
or impossible. It is because we do not know that
we have come from God, and forget that we are
going back to Him that we make such an ado about
our dignity, and prize so highly our reputation, and
are so lordly and so lofty minded, and take' such

HIS HUMILITY 265
delight in putting on airs. Only he who is sure of
God possesses the secret of humility.
How far Christian humility is removed from the
miserable caricature of humility of which we have
seen more than enough. Much of the so-called
humility of the world is not humility, at all. It is
a slimy, crawling, despicable, snaky thing, a com
pound of vanity and falsehood. People who say
they do not amount to anything, they cannot do
anything, they have no talent, they do not know
anything — never speak the truth. They do not
try to speak the truth, they know they are not speak
ing the truth. It is theh egotism which is mas
querading under the form of humility. There is no
vainer form of vanity than just that vanity which
apes humility. The humility which Jesus wants,
and which he exemplified in his life, is a form of
strength. Only the strong man can be really hum
ble. It is willingness to lay aside one's rights, it is
a refusal to use one's power, it is a readiness to
come down and to make one's self of no reputation.
Jesus was always giving up his rights, he was always
refusing to use his power. Repeatedly he had the
opportunity to wreak vengeance on his enemies,
but he would not do it because he was so humble.
Hanging on the cross his enemies taunted him, say
ing, "Let him save himself." When they saw he
would not save himself they supposed of course he
did not because he could not, and they broke out in
hateful jeers, "He saved others, himself he cannot

266 CHARACTER OF JESUS
save." But they were mistaken. He had the power
to save himself, he would not use it. He could have
called twelve legions of angels, but he would not call
them. He was meek and lowly of heart, and was
willing to give his life a ransom for many. St. Paul
when he thinks, of that which is most divine in Jesus
thinks Of his grace of humility. Notwithstanding his
exalted position, Paul reminds his Philippian con
verts that Jesus "made himself of no reputation
and became obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross. And therefore hath God highly exalted
him and given him a name which is above every
name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall
bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord
indeed."

XXI
THE PATIENCE OF JESUS

XXI
THE PATIENCE OF JESUS
"A bruised reed shall he not break."
— Matthew xii : 20.
Let us think about the patience of Jesus. It will
be better to deal first with the word. Of course
everybody knows what patience is — at least he
thinks he does — and yet somehow the very simplest
words, and those with which we are most famUiar,
have a fashion of being misunderstood and of elud
ing us when we try to catch them and compel them
to give up their meaning. Patience is one of the
common words of every man s vocabulary, even
though it may not be one of his most conspicuous
virtues. Do we not say: "My patience was com
pletely exhausted, " "I have no patience with such
a man,' "My patience was never so tried in all
my life," and of course we always understand what
we mean when we use such language. What, then,
does patience mean? We may discover that this
old famUiar word has more than one meaning.
Words are sometimes like stars. You see a star
shining in the sky, and to your eye it is a single star.
The astronomer brings his telescope and to your
amazement it is not a single star but a double star,
269

270 CHARACTER OF JESUS
two blazing suns have united their forces to produce
that shining point of light in the blue. Just so there
are words which shine like stars in the firmament of
speech, single stars they seem until we subject them
to scrutiny, when we discover that two meanings burn
within the limits of theh narrow syllables. This
word "patience" is not a single but a double star.
First of all it means : calmly waiting for something
hoped for. In this sense even the animals are en
dowed with the virtue of patience. See the cat
watching hour after hour, waiting for the appearance
of a rat. She scarcely moves a hah and hardly winks
an eye, waiting calmly for that happy moment when
her victim shall appear. And just that virtue of
imperturbable waiting is one of the great virtues of
the human soul. Men have it in greater or less
degrees, and sometimes it mounts to the level of
genius. Blessed is the man who knows how to
possess his soul in patience, waiting with unruffled
mind for something hoped for. We find this virtue
in every department of human life. Men make use
of it in the building of their fortunes. A man in
vests his money in a piece of timber land which will
bring him no returns for many years. The trees
are small, and it may be that a third of a century
must elapse before the trees are ready for the saw-
mUl. But the man invests his money and calmly
waits through the years, knowing that at the end of
life he will be rich.
But this meaning does not exhaust the significance

HIS PATIENCE 271
of patience. See yonder woman tortured by disease,
she has been an invalid for years and in all this time
she has never cried aloud, never complained, never
rebelled against her fate. Here, indeed, we have
something different from what we had in the pre
ceding cases — and yet we call this patience, we
look upon the woman in admiration, almost in awe,
saying, "I never saw such patience in aU my life."
Or look at yonder man at the head of a great re
formatory movement. He is endeavoring to bring
to pass some mighty change in church or state or in
society, and he has met with opposition at every
step. For a while he makes progress, and then the
way is blocked. Enemies multiply, friends forsake
him, hearts grow cold, he is misunderstood, mis
represented, maligned, and hated. But, neverthe
less, he goes bravely on, unsoured by opposition,
undaunted by vituperation, never complaining,
always hoping, bearing rebuff and reproof and criti
cism without a whine or a protest. Here again is
patience. What is patience ? It is the uncomplain
ing endurance of tribulation. These, then, are the
two ideas which burn within the Units of our word
"patience." First, it is the calm waiting for some
thing hoped for; second, it is the unruffled endur
ance of pain and trouble. It is a temper of the soul,
a temper that endures, waits, holds on. A man may
have one sort of patience and not the other He may
have the ability which calmly waits for something
hoped for, and be quite impatient under the affliction

272 CHARACTER OF JESUS
of bodily pain or social persecution. On the other
hand, he may be calm as a marble statue under
physical infirmities, and may stand undaunted against
all forms of social opposition and still be unable to
wait steadfastly through the years for the accom
plishment of a vast design. Patience exists in all
degrees and grades. You have heard of the patience
of Job. His is one of the immortal experiences of
history. But how imperfect it was. His patience
was the waiting for something hoped for, but it was
not calm waiting ; his patience was the endurance of
tribulation, but it was not an endurance that refused
to complain. He bewailed his fate, he groaned, he
shrieked, he cursed the day on which he was born,
he plunged and bellowed in his agony; but never
theless he endured, he held on, he never surrendered.
And it is this temper of endurance which constitutes
the very heart and soul of patience, so that not
withstanding his manifold imperfections, Job stands
among the heroes whose names shall never die.
But would you see patience in both its forms raised
to its highest power without a defect and without a
flaw, you will find it in Jesus of Nazareth.
If patience means the calm waiting for something
hoped for, then Jesus had this in a superlative degree.
Was any waiting ever like his ? He waited in a little
country town in Galilee for thhty years before he
entered into the work he felt God had given him to
do. We do not always stop to ask ourselves how
much this must have cost him. We Americans are

HIS PATIENCE 273
among the most impatient of all people. It is
difficult to induce many of our young men to wait
long enough to prepare themselves adequately for
the business of life. Thousands of boys drop out of
school in the grammar grades not because they
could not finish their education, but because they
are impatient to go to work. Of the young men
who go to the universities many drop out at the end
of the Freshman year, others at the end of the
Sophomore, others at the end of the Junior. Only a
fraction of those who matriculate ever receive their
diplomas, so impetuous are American youths, so
eager are they to plunge into life's tumult and battle.
It is an ever present question, therefore, in America
how to shorten the curricula and how to devise short
cuts to success and fortune. All sorts of schools and
institutions have sprung up which give but partial
training. These schools are patronized by young
men who are impatient to get on. Now this im
patience is often indicative of extraordinary vitality
in the blood. Men are so full of life, so eager to
help in doing the world's work, they cannot submit
to the interminable delays which the traditional edu
cation involves. Think of what delay must have
meant to Jesus. How his blood must have boiled
in little sleepy Nazareth as he dreamed of the mighty
things which ought to be done and which he felt he
could do in the great arena. As man after man
brushed by him on his way to success and renown his
soul must have been agitated, he too must have felt

274 CHARACTER OF JESUS
the fever to hasten on. Think of what his dream
was and you will understand how it must have
tugged at him and made the years seem intermi
nable in drowsy, prosaic Nazareth. But he waited.
At twenty-one he said, Not yet. At twenty-five,
Not yet. At twenty-eight, Not yet. It is in the
twenties that the blood is hottest and the soul is
most eager to get on. Through all the blazing years
of youth Jesus waited in Nazareth. It was not until
he was in his thirtieth year that he said to himself,
The time has come.
A man at thirty is more than one-third of the way
through life, and since Jesus has so much to do,
certainly now that he has been baptized he will
plunge into his work with alacrity, and push his
projects with a vigor which will startle his con
temporaries. Not so. He will calmly meditate on
the best ways of helping his day and generation.
The leaders of the people were looking for a man
who would imitate the methods of the men who
had hitherto proved themselves masters of the
destinies of nations. It was clear to every eye that
by means of the sword the finest execution could be
done; that by military power the greatest results
could be most speedily achieved; that by political
genius established wrongs could be unthroned and
defeated, and rights could be exalted. Jesus listened
to these voices, they came up from all directions
thundering in his ears. In imagination he saw him
self on the top of a lofty mountain with the kingdoms

HIS PATIENCE 275
of the world lying stretched out below him. He
saw how he might gain possession of them by adopt
ing methods employed by those who had lived before
his day.
But having considered the whole situation he
said, "No, I wUl not do what others have done,
I wiU choose the slow and toilsome way; I will not
cut the knot, I will untie it; I wUl not push the
world, I will draw it; I wUl not subdue the world
by mUitary methods, I wUl heal it by the sympathy
of human hearts." With this conviction firmly es
tablished in his soul he began his ministry in Gali
lee. To the men who stood around him he was
always slow. ' Why don't you go on? Why don't
you hurry? Why don't you bring things to pass?
Why don't you say everything you are going to say ?
Why don't you do everything you are going to do?
Why don't you do it now?"- — those were the ques
tions which were thrown at him by friends and
enemies all along the way. But when they urged
him to hurry, his reply was, " Are there not twelve
hours in the day?" or, "My hour is not yet come."
And instead of setting all the land afire he tried, so
it seemed, to suppress himself, to hold his disciples
back, to keep his name from becoming glorious.
When he healed sick men he said to them, 'Tell no
man." When his disciples saw him all radiant on the
mountain he cautioned them to keep still. The
result was that at the end of his life he had made

276 CHARACTER OF JESUS
only one hundred and twenty disciples. What a piti
ful outcome of a life so arduous, of work so strenuous
and so unceasing ! But the sight of a hundred and
twenty men did not daunt him, he died with content
ment in his heart. "Be of good cheer, I have over
come the world.' When? Not then, not a hun
dred years after his death, nor a thousand years, nor
ten thousand years after. Nevertheless he has the
tone of victory in his voice, knowing that in spite of
all the obstacles, delays, and retrogressions, the out
come is absolutely certain. Before Pontius Pilate,
the Roman procurator, he says, "To this end was I
born and for this cause came I into the world, that
I should bear witness unto the truth.' He did his
work and died. The progress has been slow, but
his patient heart is stUl untroubled, and from his
throne of glory he looks upon the slow-moving ages,
patient with the feeble efforts of his followers, willing
to wait for the reluctant submission of rebellious
hearts, knowing that by and by, sometime, some
where, the kingdom will be established and all his
dreams fulfilled. That is patience at its climax.
But this does not exhaust the patience of Jesus.
The way of a reformer is never smooth, and the way
which Jesus traveled was the thorniest which human
feet have ever trod. It was literal truth that he
came unto his own and his own received him not,
the light shone in the darkness but the darkness
comprehended it not. With a love that caused his
heart to glow he knocked at the door in Jerusalem,

HIS PATIENCE 277
but the men who kept the door refused to open it.
He knocked at the door in Nazareth, the door was
opened and then shut in his face. He traveled
throughout Galilee, and in city after city he met with
nothing but repulse ; but he was never discouraged,
he never complained. Wherever he went he was
pursued by men who were his enemies. They
watched him in order that they might trip him.
They questioned him in order that they might get
him into a trap. How difficult it is to speak if one
is speaking in the presence of people who are watch
ing each sentence, determined if possible to catch
the speaker in an error. Wherever he went his con
duct was scrutinized by eyes that were green with
envy. Everything he did was criticised, every action
called forth a storm of fresh abuse. His enemies
gathered around him like a swarm of mosquitoes
biting him, like a swarm of hornets stinging him —
but he never complained. They nagged at him,
pelted him with abusive epithets, sowed the land
with lies about him, but he never grew bitter. We
have known many a good man to grow sour simply
because he had been misunderstood by a few people.
Many a good woman has grown bitter because of
unfortunate experiences with those who were her
fellow-workers in the church. This Man of Galilee
knew little but misunderstanding and ingratitude
and criticism and abuse; but he never complained
and at the end of the day he was as sweet as at
dawn. Long before he came somebody had said

278 CHARACTER OF JESUS
that when the supreme man arrived he would sub
mit to tribulation without complaining. As men
looked upon this Man of GalUee they were reminded
of the great line of the prophet, "As a lamb before
the shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth."
And if Jesus was patient with his enemies he was
equally patient with his friends, and probably his
friends tried him no less sorely than his enemies.
His friends did not understand him. His own
mother and brothers were not in sympathy with him.
The disciples to whom he gave himself with a devo
tion that has never been equalled were constantly
failing to catch the import of the things he told them.
They were slow and stupid, petty and selfish, unable
to take in the great things he had to say — but he
was patient with them. Even on the last night of
his earthly life, when he met them in a private house
in Jerusalem to have a last talk witli them, they
quarrelled among themselves as to their places at the
table. But even this brings from him no more than
an affectionate rebuke. He simply takes a basin of
water and performs the work which was ordinarily
performed by slaves, rinsing the dust from their
unsandaUed feet, — by this act teaching what he had
been trying to teach them from the beginning, that
he who would be greatest must be the servant of all.
There is a beautiful quotation in the Old Testament
which the apostle Matthew has put at the centre of
his Gospel, throwing a flood of light upon the im
pression which Jesus made upon those who came

HIS PATIENCE 279
nearest to him. After he had vanished from their
sight, the beauty of his character came up before them
as they had never been able to see it in the days of
his humiliation, and among the beautiful portraits
which men in preceding generations had sketched
of an ideal character Matthew felt that not one more
fully portrayed Jesus of Nazareth than this one,
"A bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking
flax he shall not quench." This was his temper
whether he was dealing with foes or friends. He
demanded much of his disciples, but he did not
demand it all at once. He kept saying if a man has
even a little faith, even so small as a grain of mustard
seed, he has enough to start with, and by means of
this he will be able to work wonders. Great men have
oftentimes been notoriously impatient with their
weaker and more incompetent brethren; strong
themselves they could not sympathize with weakness ;
clear in their own conceptions they could not endure
the stupidity of those who floundered in mist and fog.
The bruised reed they had no use for, the smoking
wick they despised and quenched. But the patient
Man of Galilee had a temper altogether different.
He sympathized with weakness, he was considerate
of mental dulness, he was long-suffering in the
presence of moral awkwardness. Even a bruised
reed he would not break, and even a smoking wick
he would coax back into flame.
And ever since Jesus lived and taught, men have
loved to think that God is patient. To every fol-

280 CHARACTER OF JESUS
lower of Jesus the Almighty is a long-suffering God.
He has vast plans running through the ages, and He
is willing to wait for their fulfilment. Men look
around them at the woe and havoc, the suffering and
the tragedy, and say: "How could God ever make
a world like this ? How can He endure it to have
these things go on? " They do not understand that
He is patient, infinitely patient, and is willing to
wait until human hearts surrender, and by their
obedience bring the long and bitter night to an end.
Not only does He wait, but He also suffers indignity
at our hands without blazing up in anger and con
suming us. We may be ungrateful, insolent, irrev
erent, rebellious ; we may refuse to do the things He
asks us to do, and persist in doing the things that
are contrary to His will ; we may injure ourselves
and hurt others, nevertheless He will not strike us
down. He will give us yet another day, and still
another, saying, "Perhaps to-morrow the sin will
be repented of and the prodigal will come home."

XXII
THE COURAGE OF JESUS

XXII
THE COURAGE OF JESUS
"Fear not." — Luke v : 10.
He who speaks of courage speaks of a live sub
ject. It is a virtue which everybody admires and
which everybody has admired from the beginning.
There has never been a nation which did not admire
courageous men. There is not an age known to
history in which heroism has not been deemed a
lovely and a precious thing. The old Egyptians
gloried in their bravery, and so also did the Assyr
ians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedo
nians, the Romans, and the Greeks ; and the very
quality which was rated so highly thousands of
years before Jesus came is also gloried in by the
Boers of the nineteenth century and the Japanese of
the twentieth. When we deal, therefore, with cour
age we are dealing with a vhtue which is not peculiar
to any race, or confined to any generation, or deemed
a vhtue by any one religion. It is one of the ele
mental tempers of the human spirit, one of the foun
dation stones in the great structure of character, one
of the shining qualities of the wonderful being who
is known as man. Is there a man so base that he
283

284 CHARACTER OF JESUS
does not covet courage? Is there one so low he
would not be proud to be counted brave? There
are only three words in our English speech which
pierce the heart to the very centre : one is thief, the
second is liar, the third is coward. Coward is the
most damning of them all.
When we come, therefore, to the study of the
ideal man we might expect to find him giving us a
wonderful exhibition of courage. And this is indeed
what we find : in Jesus of Nazareth we find brav
ery at its best, courage at its loftiest, heroism at its
climax. There are different kinds of courage. There is a
courage which we may call physical. It runs in the
blood, it is a kind of instinct. This sort of courage
is not peculiar to man, it is possessed also by the
brutes. The bulldog has it and so also has the
weasel. It is possessed by man in all the stages of
his development. It is an indifference to danger,
a contempt for suffering and for death. But the
courage of Jesus was not this. His was a higher and
nobler possession. His was the courage of the mind,
the heroism of the heart. It was a sober and rea
soned thing. He deliberately counted the cost and
paid it. Nor was his courage military. Military
courage is the most common of all forms of cour
age in the world, and one of the earliest developed.
Military courage is the courage which the soldier
has in the time of battle. In time of battle men
move in masses, the very momentum of the move-

HIS COURAGE 285
ment carries them onward. There is an excitement
in battle which thrUls the nerves and heats the blood ;
men are beside themselves, and are carried forward
by forces which are not their own. The courage of
war is spectacular, appealing to the eye because the
paraphernalia of war is splendid, the waving flag,
the fife and drum, the glittering steel, the measured
tread of marching men — all this assists the heart
to scoff at danger and to mock at death. But splen
did as this is it is common and has always been
abundant. The lowest races possess it as highly
developed as the highest. You never can get courage
going beyond the military courage which the Japanese
displayed in the recent war. And that courage was
not a whit superior to the courage displayed at
Gettysburg, and the courage at Gettysburg was not
a bit finer than the courage at Bunker HU1 and
Waterloo, and that did not surpass the courage at
Thermopylae, nor did that outstrip the courage mani
fested by the Indian braves who laughed at death on
this island before Henry Hudson saUed up the river
which now bears his name. There never has been
an advance in military courage since the world
began. From the very beginning the courage of
battle has been full-statured and complete. The
courage of our Lord was not military, it was the
courage which manifested itself in isolation. There
was nobody to march with him. He marched alone.
Palestine was filled with evils, he alone was brave
enough to strike them. Injustice lifted its hideous

286 CHARACTER OF JESUS
head, and he alone resisted it. Hypocrisy made a
mockery of religion, and he alone stabbed it. He
trod the winepress alone. Even the men whom he
succeeded in attracting to him left him and fled at
the final hour. But even then he did not wince or
falter, saying, " I am alone and yet not alone, for
the Father is with me."
There is also such a thing as occasional courage,
— courage that is born of some feverish moment,
drawn from the heart by some overwhelming dis
aster. This is the courage which we see displayed
in time of a great fire, or of a great flood, or of a
great wreck on the sea. What splendid deeds of
daring firemen do in rescuing men and women from
burning buildings at the risk of their own lives !
How it thrills the blood to see men leap into the
life-boat, and make their way out over the angry
sea and rescue the sailors clinging to the rigging of
a sinking ship ! This is courage which is indeed
sublime, but it is not equal to the courage of repose.
Disaster heats the blood and kindles a fire in the
mind which makes it easy for the soul to dare great
things ; but the courage of Jesus of Nazareth was the
courage of the quiet and commonplace days, courage
that had to be manifested hour by hour along the
dusty road when there was nothing to heat the blood
or stir the mind to lofty moods.
If you were to paint Jesus as a hero, in what situa
tion would you sketch him? Would you think of
him on that great day on which he cleansed the

HIS COURAGE 287
Temple; driving out the cattle, overturning the tables
of the money-changers, saying to sellers of doves,
"Take these things hence"? Would you paint
him as he appeared when in the streets of Jerusalem
he stood up and faced his implacable foes, the Scribes
and Pharisees, and hurled at them sentences which at
the distance of nineteen hundred years stil smoke like
thunderbolts ? Or would you paint him as he came
from the Garden of Gethsemane and startled the band
of men who have come to arrest him by saying, " I
am the man you seek" ? Or would you picture him
going to Golgotha saying to the women who be-
waUed his fate, "Weep not for me, but for your
selves and your chUdren weep" ? All these situations
I admit are picturesque and thrilling. Every reader
of the New Testament catches them up and holds
them forever in his memory. In each one of them
we see heroism in a high and lovely form, but these
are not the scenes to which I call your attention at
the present moment.
Would you ask me to give you an illustration of
the courage of Jesus' heart, I would take you first
of all to Nazareth on that day on which for the first
time he announced his mission to the men and
women who had known him from boyhood. It was
necessary for him to say things which would offend,
and he said them. He was to preach the truth, but
he could not preach the truth without cutting across
the grain of the prejudices of these people. He went
calmly onward, however, and preached the truth.

288 CHARACTER OF JESUS
To estrange the hearts of those who have known and
esteemed us for many years, to cut one's self off from
the respect and sympathy and love of those in whose
friendship we have found solace and delight — that
is hard indeed. And that is what Jesus did on that
awful day in Nazareth. By the simple speaking of
the truth he alienated from him the minds and hearts
of the people in whose midst he had grown to man
hood and whose high regard had been one of the
most valuable of all his earthly treasures. He was
a courageous man that day, and equally courageous
was he in the streets of Capernaum when he talked
to that crowd of five thousand men whom he had fed
a little while before in the desert beyond the Sea of
Galilee. He came into the world to bear witness
to the truth, but men were not willing to receive it.
At the beginning of his address every one was en
thusiastic, but as he spoke the great crowd began
to melt away. The five thousand dwindled down
to four thousand, the four thousand decreased to
three thousand, the three thousand sank to two
thousand, the two thousand became one thousand,
the one thousand fell to five hundred, the five hun
dred to one hundred, the one hundred to fifty, the
fifty to twenty-five, and these at last became twenty,
the twenty dwindled to fifteen, and at last only
twelve men stood beside him, and these twelve had
such doleful, wavering faces that he said to them,
"WUl ye also go away?" What is there harder in
this world than that ? A religious teacher finds his joy

HIS COURAGE 289
in the ears and hearts of those who hear him. To hold
them, to teach them, to inspire them — this is indeed
his glory, his all. But to teach the truth and go on
teaching it even though the congregation grows less
and less and less, that requires the forthputting of
the very highest temper of the soul. It was just that
kind of courage which Jesus had. The courage
which he manifested in Capernaum was manifested
everywhere.
w It is not an easy thing to offend society and to
offend it in such a way as to lose caste and stand
ing. The people in Jesus' day were great stick
lers for forms of fasting. Jesus minimized the
value of them. They were exceedingly scrupulous
in regard to sabbatical laws. Jesus could not keep
them, he did not believe in keeping them. They
were punctilious in regard to the number of times
they washed theh hands before they sat down to eat.
Jesus had no time for such elaborate foolery. The
best people of his day divided things into clean and
unclean, people into clean and unclean — Jesus
could pay no attention to these distinctions. All
men were his brethren, and so he associated with
people who had lost caste. By so doing he lost his
own reputation. Has any one courage enough here
to do that? He went contrary to the established
usages of the best society of his day; he trampled
on conventionalities which were counted sacred as
the law of the Eternal. And the result was he was
suspected, shunned, and abhorred. But he did even

290 CHARACTER OF JESUS
more than this: he surrendered the good opinion
which many of the people had formed of him.
When he first appeared the ah was filled with ap
plause, men looked upon him as the promised Mes
siah. The land blazed with enthusiasm. The
people had certain ideals, and Jesus could not con
form to them. They had fixed ideas, and Jesus
could not carry them out. He threw cold water
upon these fires of enthusiasm and they died down
lower and lower, until at last there was nothing but
a great stretch of smoldering ashes, and he stood
in the centre of the ashes the most forsaken and
hated of men. It takes tremendous courage to lay
aside one's reputation, and also to forego the bliss
of popular applause. But he did a braver thing
even than this : he gave up the good opinion of the
best people of his day. He was reverent, religious,
sensitive, but there were certain things it was neces
sary for him to say because they were true things,
and he said them. By saying them he exposed him
self to the charge of being a blasphemer, but he said
them. He was wUling to do his duty even though
by the doing of it he won for himself the ignominy
of being counted a blasphemer, a lunatic, and a
traitor.
¦¦ Only the very loftiest heroism can meet such a
test as that. But we have not yet reached the
climax. If it is difficult for a man to withstand his
enemies, much more difficult is it for him to with
stand his friends. There are many men who can

HIS COURAGE 29 1
resist the people who are opposed to them who
cannot withstand the opinions and wishes of their
friends. Many of us can pour denunciation on the
men who hate us, but we succumb at once to the
gracious words of those who wish us well. Peter
was Jesus' dearest friend ; but when Peter on a
certain occasion says to hiiri, " Far be it from thee,
Lord, this shall never happen unto thee," quick as
a flash the reply comes, "Get thee behind me,
Satan." James and John present what seems to
them a most reasonable request — Jesus says, "I
cannot grant this." Judas was one of the most
trusted of the apostolic company — so trusted that
he was made the treasurer of the band ; but Jesus
by the simple telling of the truth and the living of
a perfect life estranged the affections of this man
untU at last he became his betrayer. Many of you
have courage sufficient to stand against your ene
mies, how many of you can resist the influence and
wishes of your friends?
i_ But if you want illustrations of the courage of
Jesus, you must take the enthe New Testament, for
all the Gospels are a portrait of a hero. The story
of Jesus' life is the most heroic record ever written,
and any man who wishes to increase the bravery of
his heart must read this book day and night. See
him as he sets his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem,
where he knows they are going to scourge him and
spit upon him and kill him. His friends endeavor
to dissuade him, they strive to hold him back. He

292 CHARACTER OF JESUS
keeps steadily on, knowing that at Jerusalem he will
give his life a ransom for many. Lord Randolph
Churchill, one of the most distinguished of English
men of the last century, in the year 1891 wrote a
letter to his wife telling her that he had quit politics
once and forever. He said: "More than two-
thirds, in all probability, of my life is over, and I
wUl not spend the remainder of my years in beating
my head against a stone wall. There has been no
consideration, no indulgence, no memory or grati
tude — nothing but spite, malice, and abuse. I am
quite tired and dead sick of it all, and will not con
tinue political life any longer." How natural, how
human that sounds ! Haven't you heard men say
it ? Possibly some of you have said it yourself. You
have engaged in some reform, and have been mis
represented and abused. You have turned away,
saying, "I am thed, I am sick." Maybe you were
a worker in the church; you were misrepresented,
you were thwarted ; you cast up your work, say
ing, "I am tired, I am sick." Why do men talk
thus? Because they are cowards. Only cowards
surrender, only cowards get thed and sick. Jesus
steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem and never
turned back until he reached the cross. See him
as he goes onward, trampling on all the precious
things of earth, putting under his feet the ambitions
by which the hearts of other men are fired, tram
pling into the dust the prizes and the joys of life.
Make out a list of the things which you count most

HIS COURAGE 293
valuable and worth while, and you will see that Jesus
placed every one of them beneath his feet. With the
tread of a conqueror he goes on to his death, saying,
"I do always those things that are pleasing unto
Him." And yet his courage never overleaps itself
and becomes audacity or recklessness. Some men
have found fault with him because on certain occa
sions he escaped and hid himself. He rethed into
out-of-the way places, not because he was a coward,
but because he was so brave. It is easier to die than
to live a life such as Jesus lived. He hid himself
sometimes to escape the fury of his enemies, because
he deshed to remain a little longer in order that he
might establish in men's hearts the truths that would
redeem the world. Thousands of men every year
leap off this planet by self-destruction. They do it
because they are cowards. Jesus bore the burden
and endured the cross until his work had been com
pleted. And so with such a temper we are not
surprised to find him at every stage of his trial act
ing like the hero that he was. When the soldiers
buffeted him and cuffed him, cursed him and spat
upon him, he never said a word. He was so cour
ageous that he dared to be silent. As a sheep before
her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
When he comes at last to stand before Pontius
Pilate, he stands so erect that Pilate is afraid of him,
and the heart of the Roman procurator flutters when
Jesus says to him, " For this cause was I born, unto

294 CHARACTER OF JESUS
this end came I into the world, to bear witness to the
truth." And when at last they nail him to the cross
the only thing he will say is, " Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do." Rousseau was
right when he wrote his immortal line, "If the
life and death of Socrates were those of a sage,
the life and death of Jesus are those of a God."

XXIII
THE INDIGNATION OF JESUS

XXIII
THE INDIGNATION OF JESUS
"And when he had looked round about on them with anger."
— Mark iii : 5.
There are certain moods and feelings which we
are reluctant to ascribe to Jesus, because they are so
common and so human. Characteristics which are
conspicuous and disconcerting in ourselves, we do
not readily associate with him. For instance, was
it possible for Jesus to be angry? If it was, he was
amazingly like ourselves. The humblest and least
gifted of us are adepts in the realm of indignation.
Our capacity for wrath was manifested in us early,
and we have developed it by constant use. No emo
tion is more nearly universal and none is more easily
aroused. The very universality of the experience
makes us reluctant to attribute it to one who is at
so many points above us, and whose life, however
like our own, has in it so many things which are
unique. Moreover, anger is associated in our mind with
infirmity. Much of our own anger has been of the
earth earthy. It has been a boiling of the blood, full
of sound and fury, having no ethical significance.
Sometimes it has been a burst of petulance, an
297

298 CHARACTER OF JESUS
explosion of nervous energy, a sort of madness bor
dering on the frontiers of insanity. While the fever
was upon us we felt our wrath was justifiable, but
on the cooling of the blood we repented in sackcloth
and ashes. We have also noticed what anger does
for others. It has not escaped us that when men
and women are angry they usually make fools of
themselves. This fact has made a deep impression
on us. Most of the indignation which we have
known has been so childish or so brutish, so full of
fury and of bitterness, that we find it hard to give
it place in the experience of a strong and holy man.
So prone is anger to mix itself with base and un
lovely elements, and so frequently does it stir up
the mud at the bottom of the soul, that it has been
often classed among the vices as a passion which is
always ignoble, and therefore to be condemned,
resisted, strangled. It was thus that the Stoics
taught, contending that ever to be moved by anger
is a sign of weakness and unworthy of a full-grown
man. The philosophy of the Stoics is not consciously
accepted by us, but the considerations which led
them to their estimate of anger are still operative in
us all. It is not easy to free one's self from the feeling
that anger has something sinful in it, or that if anger
is not actually sinful, it is at any rate unlovely, a
defect or flaw in conduct, a deformity in character
from which the lovers of the beautiful and good may
wisely pray to be delivered. It is because of this
assumption that anger is in its essence sinful that

HIS INDIGNATION 299
many persons find it impossible to think of Jesus in
an angry mood. When the New Testament says
that he was angry they glide over the sentence hur
riedly, giving the words a Pickwickian sense, and
breathe more freely when they have come out again
into a paragraph which portrays his tenderness and
love. Once decide that anger is a sinful or an animal
passion, and you must deny it a place in the portrait
of an ideal man.
But the evangelists were not Stoics, and they were
not handicapped by the notions which bewilder us.
They felt that they must write down clearly what
they saw and heard, and prompted thus to tell
a round, unvarnished tale they do not hesitate to
inform us that Jesus sometimes blazed with anger.
The blast of his scorn was so hot that it frightened
and scorched those on whom it fell. They tell us
that it was inhumanity and insincerity which always
kindled his heart to furnace heat. When he saw
men — ordained religious leaders, of the people —
more interested in theh petty regulations than in the
welfare of their fellow-men, his eyes burned with holy
fire. Those who were present never forgot the
flash of his eye as he slowly looked round upon the
pedants whose hardness of heart he held in abhor
rence. He despised the lying superstitions which
had accumulated around the idea of death, and
loathed the mummery which attended the burial of
the dead. The hollow howlings of paid mourners
in the presence of the holy mystery of death aroused

300 CHARACTER OF JESUS
his soul to indignant protest. Any darkening of the
world by cruelty or craft brought his soul to its feet
fiery-eyed and defiant. He was angered by the
desecration of the Temple. The sordid wretches
who cared nothing for anthems and prayers and
everything for money, kindled a fire in him which
well-nigh consumed him. The miscreants who fled
before him had never seen such a flame as darted
from his eyes. That a building erected for the pur
pose of adorning the name of God should be con
verted into a market was so abhorrent to his great
soul that he was swept onward into action which
astounded his disciples and which has been to many
a scandal ever since. No one can understand the
cleansing of the Temple who has never experienced
the force and heat of righteous indignation. There
are many sentences from his lips which after the
lapse of nineteen hundred years still burn with
fervent heat. Who can read the parable of Dives
and Lazarus without feeling the fire of a holy scorn ?
Who can read the denunciation of the Pharisees
without realizing that he is in the presence of a
volcano belching molten lava ? No one could speak
language like that which the evangelists have re
corded who was not capable of tremendous indigna
tion. It is a wrath which leaps beyond the wrath
of man. It is the very wrath of God Himself. One
of the purposes of the New Testament is to give
us a new revelation of anger. Take away Jesus'
capacity for indignation and you destroy the Jesus

HIS INDIGNATION 30 1
of the Gospels. His anger was one of the powers
by which he did his work. His blazing wrath is
one of the most glorious features of his character.
Had he been less emotional, he would not have stirred
men as he did. Had his passion been less intense,
the world would never have called him "Master."
Here, then, we have in Jesus what seems to some a
contradiction. He is a Lamb and at the same time
he is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. He caresses
like a mother and he also strikes like a thunderbolt.
He is tender but he is also terrible ; he is loving but
he also smites with a blow which crushes. How
can we reconcile the indignation of Jesus with his
love? Nothing is easier. His indignation is the
creation of his love. His wrath proceeds from his
holiness. His mercy would have no meaning were
it not for his immeasurable capacity for anger.
Take away his indignation and you destroy the basis
of his holiness, his righteousness, his mercy, and his
love. Love and indignation are not antagonists
or rivals. They ever go together, each one unable
to live without the other. Only those who have
never loved have difficulty in understanding the
heart's capacity for wrath. Did you ever see a lover
stand calm-eyed and gentle-tempered in the presence
of the villain who had dared insult the queen of his
heart? When since the world began has love ever
maintained a quiet pulse in the presence of the
assailant of the loved one ? A mother, all gentleness
and sweetness as she moves among her children,

302 CHARACTER OF JESUS
passes into an avenging fury in the face of a foe who
attempts to harm them. The dimensions of her
indignation will be determined by the depth and heat
of her love. It is the hottest love which when
enlisted in the welfare of others scorches opposing
forces to cinders. The power of loving and the power
of hating must always go together. There is right
and there is wrong, the first must be approved, the
second must be condemned. The condemnation
must not be cold but vehement. It must carry with
it all the energy of the soul. It must have at the
heart of it that heavenly fire which is known on
earth as indignation.
In Jesus, then, we see what a normal man is and
feels. He is full-orbed, complete. He gives sweep
to every passion of the soul. He will not admit that
in the garden of the heart there are any plants which
the Heavenly Father has planted which ought to be
rooted up. All the impulses, desires, and passions
with which the Almighty has endowed us have a
mission to perform, and life's task is not to strangle
them but to train them for their work.
Jesus was angry but he did not sin. Anger because
of its heat readily passes beyond its appointed limits.
Like all kinds of fire, it is dangerous and difficult
to control. But Jesus controlled it. "Thus far,"
he said, "and no farther." No sinful element
mingled in that indignation which burned with a
white and resistless heat. The irritation which we
so often feel, the exasperation which lacerates and

HIS INDIGNATION 303
rends the heart, the bitterness of which we are
ashamed — all these were absent from Jesus' anger.
His wrath was the hottest ever known upon our
earth, but the heart in which it burned was sinless.
Our anger is frequently a manifestation of our
selfishness. We become indignant over trifles.
The street-car does not stop, or somebody carelessly
knocks off our hat, or a servant disappoints us, and
we are all aflame. Our comfort has been molested,
our rights have been entrenched upon, our dignity
has been affronted, and we are downright mad.
Ravellings and shavings can set us blazing. But in
the presence of gigantic outrages perpetrated on the
helpless and the weak, some of us are as calm as a
summer morning. Bad men do not make us angry
unless they interfere with our own personal affairs.
If they wrong others we will make excuses for them,
and cover them all over with the down of extenuating
syllables, saying, "Poor men, they are more sinned
against than sinning, they are the products of the
age, the victims of the system," and thus do we take
from guilt its heinousness by the flattering smile of
a placid face.
Our indignation then is quite different from
that of Jesus. His anger never had its roots
in selfishness. When men abused him, he was
unruffled. When they lied about him, his pulse
beat was not quickened. When they nailed his
hands to the cross, no trace of anger darkened his
face. His calm lips kept on praying, "Forgive

304 CHARACTER OF JESUS
them, for they know not what they do." It was when
he saw his brother men abused that his great soul
rose in wrath. The more helpless the person who
was mistreated, the hotter was the fire of his indig
nation. Against rich people who imposed upon the
poor, and against clever people who took advan
tage of the ignorant, and against strong people who
mistreated the weak, and against crafty people who
laid traps for the- innocent, his soul blazed with a
heat which became an imperishable and awe-inspir
ing memory in the apostolic church. It was when
he saw cruelty perpetrated on the defenceless that
his indignation rose to the fury of a tempest. The
thought of bad men leading innocent souls to sin,
converted him into a furnace of fire. What a
whirlwind of flame sweeps through a sentence like
this, "Whoso shall cause one of these little ones
which believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for
him that a great mill-stone should be hanged about
his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth
of the sea." Tender, indeed, must have been the
heart from which could come such forked lightnings !
If, then, we have ever been scandalized by the
account of Jesus' indignation, we should examine
ourselves and find out why we shrink from the
thought that a man like him should burn with anger.
Whenever we find in Jesus a word or deed which
seems to us to be a departure from what we conceive
to be the standard of absolute rectitude, it is well
to pause and study our standards of rectitude afresh,

HIS INDIGNATION 305
for it may be that what we conceive to be a defect
in him may reveal to us a limitation in ourself. If
we find fault with him because he blazed with anger,
it may be that our criticism springs from blood which
has become impoverished. If we fail to burn in
the presence of cruelty and injustice, it is because the
higher faculties of the soul have become atrophied by
sin. If wood does not burn, it is because it is green or
rotten. If hearts do not burn with holy fire against
wicked men and their wicked deeds, it is because the
heart is too undeveloped to feel what manly hearts
were meant to feel, or because the core of the heart
has been eaten out by the base practices of a godless
life. It is one of the lamentable signs of our times —
our incapacity for anger. Many of us are lukewarm
in the presence of evils which are colossal. Some of
us are indifferent. Indifference to wrong-doing is
always a sign of moral deterioration. If we do not
flame against villainy, it is because there is so much
of the villain in ourself. We would despise graft
with a consuming detestation if our own palms were
not so itching. . The healthy soul resents and resists
every form of wrong. The unspoiled heart goes out
like a man in wrath against the forces of iniquity.
Nothing is more needed in our day than enlarged
capacity for moral indignation. Nothing so clears
the atmosphere as the heat of hearts heated by holy
anger. There are evUs so gigantic and so deeply
rooted that nothing less than a thunderstorm will

306 CHARACTER OF JESUS
overwhelm them. Bad men wUl abound more and
more unless good men hurl thunderbolts. Criminals
become brazen, wrong-doers walk insolently, rascals
take possession of high places, untU good men,
aflame with indignation, arise and sweep them from
the seats of power. Society would be cleansed of
much of its poUution if we had more men and women
capable of becoming genuinely angry. Let us pray
then every day that a new indignation may sweep
through the world. As Plutarch put it long ago,
"Anger is one of the winds by which the sails of the
soul are filled." Many a belated bark would have
reached port long ago if anger had been allowed to
do its perfect work. It is the devil's trick to keep
good men from becoming angry. Not only are we
permitted as Christians to be angry, but it is our
duty on occasion to allow this billow of fire to roll
through the soul. Martin Luther is not the only
man who has worked better when he was angry,
and many of us limp to our task because we have
lost one of the elements of moral power. He was a
wise Englishman who wrote, "Anger is one of the
sinews of the soul ; he that wants it hath a maimed
mind, and with Jacob sinew-shrunk in the hollow
of his thigh must needs halt."
In the indignation of Jesus we get light upon the
character of God. This man's anger flows from a
fountain in the heart of the Eternal. The 'wrath
of the Lamb" is, as we have been often reminded, a
figure of speech, but like all Biblical figures of speech,

HIS INDIGNATION 307
it is a window opening out on the infinite. The anger
of Jesus is a revelation of the anger of God. It is
significant that it is the beloved disciple and the
man to whom tradition has ascribed a heart unusually
loving and tender, who has most to say about the
"wrath of the Lamb." As. he brooded over the
years of his intercourse with Jesus, there was one
trait which rose before him again and again, and
that was the anger of Jesus. When he speaks of it,
it is always with syllables which hush the heart.
The man who declares that "God is love" is the
man who exhorts us to flee from the "wrath of the
Lamb." The New Testament is a glorious book. Its lines
are straight, its discrimination is fine, it rings true.
It is absolutely free from sentimentahsm. It has
no sickly fondness for bad people. It does not deal
in excuses and in extenuations. It has no abnormal
tenderness. The world is full of sentimentalists, —
men and women who gush of love, and who do not
know what love is. After listening to their flimsy
talk it is refreshing to get into a book where every
bad deed is held up to scorn and every bad man,
if unrepentant, is overwhelmed with shame. No
where in the Gospels is there a soft or flabby thought,
a doughy or mushy feeling. All is high and straight
and fine and firm and true. Under such a sky, life
becomes august, solemn, beautiful. It is worth
while to strive, to work, to suffer. One feels sure
that God is in His heaven, and that though wicked-

308 CHARACTER OF JESUS
ness may flourish for a season, God's heart burns
with quenchless fire against it, and that at the end of
the days every impure man, and every cruel man, and
every man who loves and makes a lie, will find him
self outside the city whose streets are gold and whose
gates are pearl.

XXIV
THE REVERENCE OF JESUS

XXIV
THE REVERENCE OF JESUS
"Hallowed be thy name." — Matthew vi : 9.
No analysis of the character of Jesus would be
complete which failed to recognize his reverence.
It is one of the traits which contribute most largely
to his loveliness, a characteristic which attracts the
notice of every observing mind. To write a defini
tion of reverence is not easy. There are some things
which the heart can sense but which the intellect
cannot easily define. We know what reverence is,
and yet we stumble in trying to define it. It is
respect, regard, esteem, and honor; yes, and it is
more than these. Those thin and pallid syllables
do not express all which the heart feels when the
word "reverence " is spoken. The basis of reverence
is respect or honor, but it is respect or honor work
ing with unwonted energy. It is a deep movement
of the soul. It is respect or honor squared and
cubed. And then again there is an elevation in the
word "reverence" which respect and esteem do not
have. Reverence is respect and esteem moving at
high altitudes. It is one of the loftiest of all the
311

312 CHARACTER OF JESUS
emotions of the soul, and that is why it eludes us
when we try to capture it in the meshes of a defini
tion. What is it ? It is homage and obeisance and
devotion, yes, and something more. It is awe and
fear and adoration; yes, but even these do not tell
the full-rounded story. The fact is, reverence is a
complex emotion, made up of mingled feelings of
the soul. There is in it respect and also affection
and also fear, and along with these an abiding con
sciousness of dependence. There is probably no
expression which defines what we mean by reverence
so well as the Old Testament phrase, "The fear of
the Lord." The wise men of Israel were convinced
that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Their effort was to make men conscious of the
existence of a God of infinite power and wisdom and
goodness. He was the High and Holy One who
inhabits eternity, and is therefore not to be ap
proached carelessly or thought of lightly. The
Temple in Jerusalem was built in such a way as to
establish the fear of the Lord in the hearts of the
people. Its architecture was continually reminding
them that to be reverent is to be wise. Into the
outer courts of the Temple every Hebrew might go ;
into the inner court or holy place only one particular
class of men could enter; while into the innermost
sanctuary or holy of holies only one man was per
mitted to make his way, and that man only on one
great day of the year. In this way the cardinal truth
was promulgated that God is majestic and holy and

HIS REVERENCE 313
can be approached only by a humble and prostrate
heart. This fear of the Lord was mighty in Jesus.
God was continually before his eyes. His soul was
pervaded with the sense of His presence, and all
that he said and did was bathed in an atmosphere
created by this consciousness of the fellowship and
favor of the Eternal.
To illustrate this is not easy. Jesus' entire life
is an illustration of it. One cannot pick out isolated
words or acts and hold them up, saying, "Behold,
how reverent he was !" A man cannpt be reverent
at intervals. He must be reverent all the time or not
at all. If he is reverent on Monday and not on
Tuesday, then his Monday reverence was a pretence
and a sham. Reverence is not a vesture which can
be put on and laid off, it runs in the very blood of the
soul. It is impossible to localize it. It is rather an
atmosphere in which the personality is enveloped.
It is a settled habit of the sphit, a fixed attitude of
the heart, an unchanging trend of all the currents of
the being toward God. No matter what Jesus is
saying or doing, we feel we are in the presence of a
reverential man. Would you see illustrations of his
reverence, read the Gospels !
The earnestness with which he was always plead
ing for reverence in others is proof that in him
reverence was a divine and indispensable possession.
He could not have so loved it in others had he not
possessed it himself. "When you pray, say, Our
Father, hallowed be thy name." Probably no other

314 CHARACTER OF JESUS
words in the Lord's prayer have been so frequently
slurred and overlooked as "hallowed be thy name."
They lie, as it were, in the valley between the great
name of God and the glorious Kingdom for which
we are looking and waiting. We slide over them as
though they were only a parenthesis, and hasten
on to ask for bread and deliverance from our great
est foe. But Jesus is careful to place this petition at
the very forefront of all our praying. Unless this
desire is uppermost in our heart we are not in the
mood of prayer. If our first thought is of ourselves
and not of God, then we are not praying after the
fashion of Jesus. When he tells us to put this peti
tion first it is because he always put it first himself.
It was his supreme ambition that his Father's
name should be kept beautiful and holy. "When
you pray, then," he said to his disciples, "pray that
God's name may be consecrated, reverenced, kept
holy ; hedge it from the contaminating influences of
an evil world, separate it from all other names which
the lips speak or the mind thinks." Any low or
unworthy thought of God was to Jesus' mind ab
horrent and degrading. Living always with an eye
single to the glory of God, he urged men everywhere
so to speak and act and live that others seeing their
good works might glorify their Father in heaven.
Holding God continually before his eyes he saw
everything in relation to the Eternal. His respect for
men was due not to what men were in themselves
but to what they were in the eyes of God. They

HIS REVERENCE 315
were God's children and therefore no matter how
poor or degraded, they were worthy of respect and
honor. Any cruelty in word or inhumanity in action
toward a human being caused the heart of Jesus to
flash fire, because such treatment of God's chUdren
was in his mind an insult to God Himself. His
reverence for his Father made the whole world
holy, and because of his adoration for the Creator
he could not turn his back upon any created being.
"Honor all men" was one of the earliest exhortations
of the apostles. It had its roots running down into
Jesus' immeasurable reverence for God.
How careful he was for the fah name of his
Father is illustrated in what he says in regard to
oaths. The religious leaders of his day had a cer
tain form of reverence, but it was circumscribed
and shallow. They reverenced the letters which
speUed God's name so highly that they would never
take them upon their lips. But they had no hesi
tation in filling the empty spaces with other words.
If they would not swear in the name of God, they
would fill their oaths with the names of things which
God had made. Jesus' reverence for his Father
was so intense that it extended also to the things
created by his Father. The Jews were in the habit
of swearing by heaven, but this to Jesus was profane
because heaven was made by God. They sometimes
swore by the earth, but this was to him also shock
ing because the earth belongs to God. Sometimes
they swore by Jerusalem, but this also could not be

316 CHARACTER OF JESUS
permitted for it was a city dear to God. If they
swore by their own heads, they were also in the
wrong, for their head was created by the Almighty.
Here is indeed a sensitive heart. He feels so keenly
the majesty and dignity of the Eternal Father that
all created things shine in the reflected glory of His
face, and therefore nothing is to be treated irrever
ently, dragged down into vulgarity, or converted into
a joke. His reverence for the Temple was unfaUing.
Every stone in it spoke to him of God, and every
ceremony celebrated within its courts had in it a
meaning which soothed and comforted his heart.
Any desecration of a building erected to promote
God's glory was to him horrible and unendurable.
It was in this building that eyes were to be opened
and hearts cleansed to behold the King in His beauty.
Around it clustered sacred associations and sweet
memories of many years. It was to Jesus indeed a
holy place. But not so to many of his' countrymen.
In the process of moral degradation reverence is
one of the first of the virtues to disappear. It is a
flower of paradise which cannot blossom in the chill
atmosphere of sordidness and vulgarity. The love
of money had eaten out the hearts of many of Jesus'
countrymen. They cared more for gain than they
did for God. Caring nothing for God, why should
they care for God's temple? They converted the
temple courts into a market-place and drowned the
anthems and the prayers with the clink of money and

HIS REVERENCE 317
the bellowing of steers. Jesus could not endure it.
Other men had endured it — he could not. Irrev
erence is a sword through the heart of a reverent
man. Never did Jesus show such a tempest of
emotion as in the cleansing of the Temple. To the
onlookers he seemed to be beside himself. He
became all at once an avenging fury, and before the
miscreants knew what was happening theh coins
were rolling over the temple floor and theh flocks
and herds were in the street. The explanation of the
tempest lies in these three words, — " My Father's
house." It was not an ordinary house. It was the
house of God. It was erected for God's worship.
It was a shrine for the adoring heart. It was in
tended to be a solace for men's woes and troubles, the
very gate of Heaven. "Take these things hence;
make not my Father's house a house of merchandise."
It was his reverence which kindled a fire in his eyes
and gave his words an energy which pierced like
daggers. Jesus believed in the worship of God. He was
careful always to maintain the forms which nourish
and guard the high sentiments of the heart. His
attitude to forms has often been misunderstood by
persons who, glancing at the surface, have not caught
the significance of what he did. He made unre
lenting war upon the Pharisees who were the anointed
custodians of form. He criticised their ways of fast
ing and giving and praying and dressing and held
up their entire life to condemnation. And because

318 CHARACTER OF JESUS
of this it has been sometimes said that Jesus did not
believe in forms. This is an error. Jesus did not
believe in formalism. Formalism is the corpse of
form — form after the spirit of life has gone out of
it. Jesus hated death wherever he found it. He
hated it most of all in the form of worship. Wor
ship is the body in which reverence enshrines itself.
So long as the spirit of reverence lives the worship is
meaningful and beautiful; but when the spirit dis
appears, then the worship becomes demoralizing and
corrupting. The worship of the Pharisees had lost
out of it the spirit of adoration. It was cut and
dried, dead, mechanical, without a heart and without
a soul, and therefore odious to God and all right-
thinking men. Reverence is beautiful and renders
beautiful whatever form it chooses in which to express
itself; but when reverence dies, then the forms of
reverence become corpse-like and contaminate all
who handle them. Jesus believed in forms. They
are, when rightly used, the conservators of life. If
you want to keep alive the spirit of courtesy and
politeness, then do not cast away the forms of polite
ness and courtesy. If you wish to keep the fires of
love burning, do not banish the forms in which love
delights to express itself. If you desire to maintain
the spirit of friendship, be sure you treasure all its
forms. He was a wise man who advised us to keep
our friendships in repair, and they who do not do
this find at last that their friendships have decayed
and passed away. Would you keep alive the spirit

HIS REVERENCE 319
of reverence, then make use of the forms which are
best adapted to feed and develop that spirit in the
soul. Jesus made fierce war on formalism, but he
ever was a scrupulous observer of form. He was
always in the Synagogue on the Sabbath day. He
followed faithfully the order of the service. He re
peated the prayers, he sang the psalms, he listened
to the reading of the Scriptures. When he fed the
five thousand men on the other side of Jordan he
was careful to return thanks to God before the meal
proceeded. When he stood at the grave of Lazarus,
he first looked to God in prayer before he spoke
the words, "Come forth!" In the upper chamber
he observed the forms of the Passover, omitting
nothing from the ritual, sacred because transmitted
through so many generations. The soul of Jesus
was reverent. He found it easy to bend the knee.
It was natural for him to look up. He looked into
his Father's face, saying at every step, "Lo, I come
to do Thy will, O God!"
Here, then, we have a vhtue. upon whose beauty
we should often fix our eyes. We do not have as
much reverence as we ought to have. We are not
by nature or by training a reverent people. There
are those who say we become less reverent as the
years go on. The older people are constantly la
menting that they miss a certain beautiful respectful
ness, a lovely reverence which were more common
many years ago. There are wide areas of American

320 CHARACTER OF JESUS
society from which the spirit of reverence has been
banished. Men and women in many a circle are
clever, interesting, brilliant, but they lack one of the
three dimensions of life — they have no reach
upward. Their conversation sparkles, but it is
frivolous and often flippant. Their talk is witty,
but the wit is often at the expense of high and sacred
things. He has come far down in the scale of being
who in order to display his powers finds it necessary
to ridicule those things which have been prized by
all good men. When one enters the world of our
present-day reformers he is impressed by the large
number who lack the upward look. Many of these
men are tremendously in earnest, they see the crying
evils of the world; their sympathies are wide and
their zeal is hot, but they have no sky above their
heads. They aim to glorify no Father who is in
heaven. Some of them claim to admire the Man
of Nazareth. They extol his character and his
teachings. Yet, strange to say, they do not imitate
his reverence, or cast a single glance in the direction
in which his eyes were always looking. One finds
this lack of reverence even in the church. In every
community there are those who treat the house of
God as they treat a street-car, entering it and leaving
it when they please. Even habitual church attend
ants often surprise and shock one by their irreverent
behavior in the house of prayer. Those persons
are not ignoramuses or barbarians ; they are simply
undeveloped in the virtue of reverence.

HIS REVERENCE 32 1
Why is it that reverence is apparently in a state
of decadence? Is it due to our improper reading?
The press is constantly exploiting the sordid side of
human nature, calling our attention to moral col
lapse and degradation, and it may be that our fa
miliarity with vice in its varied forms is taking off
the edge of our sensibility so that we no longer re
spond readily to the things which are noble and high.
What has the stage to do — do you think — with our
loss of reverence ? It is lamentable that so large a
proportion of plays move in that border-land which
lies between decency and indecency. The openly
immoral play cannot as yet be endured, but the
play that is most popular is often a play which skirts
the edges of the realms of the indecent. Theatre
audiences seem to like a sentence now and then
which looks in the direction of the unclean, and to
relish an occasional insinuation or remark which
leads down to the mud. Our imagination may be
so coarsened by the realms through which it travels
as to lose the capacity for feeling the rapture of the
sense of awe.
Possibly we are becoming less reverent because
we are ashamed of being afraid of anybody or any
thing. Fear is one of the elements in reverence, and
there is a popular impression that all fear is de
grading. Fear is of two kinds, — there is a godly
fear and a fear which is ungodly. The latter has
terror in it and throws a shadow and brings a chill.
But there is a fear which all unspoiled spirits feel

322 CHARACTER OF JESUS
in the presence of the high and holy. If mortal
man, stained and marred by sin, is not awed by the
thought of a Holy God, it is because he has lost the
power of feeling. If there is a fear which degrades
and paralyzes, there is also a fear which cleanses
and exalts. The fear of the Lord is not only a virtue
to be coveted by men, it is a grace lacking which
angels and archangels would be incomplete. Rev
erence is the atmosphere of heaven. Let us come
often then to the reverent Man of Nazareth who
by his awe-struck obeisance to his Heavenly Father
shames us out of our irreverence and makes it easier
for the heart to kneel.

xxv
THE HOLINESS OF JESUS

XXV
THE HOLINESS OF JESUS
"Which of you convicteth me of sin?"
— John viii : 46.
Here for the first time in this course of sermons
I use a word which belongs to another vocabulary.
Courage, humility, patience, poise, brotherliness,
indignation — these all belong to a common class,
but you pass the boundaries into another region
when you use the word "holiness." All the other
words which I have used can be applied to many of
the great men of the earth; the word "holiness" can
be applied to one only. Write the word "holiness"
before the names of the great poets. Speak these
words: "The holiness of Homer," "of Dante,"
"of Shakespeare," "of Tennyson." The heart
revolts against it. Write the word "holiness" before
the names of the great philosophers : " The holiness
of Socrates," "of Plato," "of Kant," "of Herbert
Spencer." There is something which offends the
soul. Write the word "holiness" before the names
of the great scientists: "The holiness of Newton,"
"of Kepler," "of Pasteur," "of Huxley," and the
word does not fit those illustrious names. Speak
325

326 CHARACTER OF JESUS
of the holiness of the Duke of Wellington, of General
Gordon, of Ulysses S. Grant, of Stonewall Jackson,
and here again there is something in us which takes
offence. Try the word now before the very greatest
statesmen of the world: "The holiness of Pitt,"
"of Cavour," "of Gladstone," "of Webster," and
here again we have not used the proper word. But
when you say the "holiness of Jesus," that seems
altogether proper. There is but one name in human
history with which we can link that glorious noun.
What do we mean by holmess ? We mean whole
ness, full-orbed perfection. A holy man is a man
without a fleck or flaw, a character without a blemish
or a stain. Let us think about the sinlessness of
Jesus. When we speak of the sinlessness of Jesus
a thoughtful man might ask the question: "How
do you know that he was sinless? You have only
an account of his words and deeds, and while these
may be above all criticism, how do you know what
took place in the chambers of the heart? How
do you know that every feeling was free from sin,
that not a single thought was stained, that every
motive, even the deepest, was according to the will
of God? Do you not pass into the region of con
jecture when you say that here was an absolutely
sinless man?" And the further fact might also be
urged that we have the story of only a fraction of his
life. He died at the age of thirty-three, and of this
period thirty years are well-nigh a total blank. Even
if you grant that his public life was perfect, how can

HIS HOLINESS 327
you speak with authority concerning the life which
he lived before he appeared at Jordan to be baptized
by John ? How do you know what his life was as a
boy, as a youth, as a young man ? Of all this period
scarcely a syllable is told us, and yet how many sins
may have been committed in those seething, tem
pestuous years? And one might go on to say:
"How can you be sure that all that he did and said
recorded in the New Testament was absolutely
right in the sight of God ? When he denounced the
Pharisees and hurled his cutting epithets at them,
can you be sure there was no excess of passion?
When he drove the traders from the Temple, can you
be certain that he did not overstep the boundaries
of righteous indignation? When he cursed the fig
tree, was there no impatience in his words ? When
he drove the Syro-Phcenician woman away with the
remark that it was not fitting to take the children's
bread and cast it unto dogs, was he not guilty of the
very sin which disfigured and disgraced so many of
his countrymen? And then again how can you be
sure that he fulfilled every duty? Even granting
that we cannot charge him with any sins of com
mission, how do you know there were no sins of
omission? Duty is infinite. There are duties tow
ard God and toward one's fellow-men and toward
one's own soul, and who in this world is competent
to say that Jesus fulfilled every duty to himself and
to men and to God up to the level of perfection?"
These are natural questions, and questions which

328 CHARACTER OF JESUS
deserve an answer. They will occur to thoughtful
minds whenever they approach the question of
Jesus' holiness.
In answer to these questions it may be said in
the first place that so far as we can discover /there
is nothing in Jesus' consciousness which indicates
that he was guilty of any sin. There is no trace
anywhere of regret, no indication anywhere of re
morse. From first to last he is serene, jubilant,
confident, free, so far as we can see, from that shadow
which the consciousness of sin always casts. Now
everybody agrees that Jesus was a good man, ex
ceedingly good, extraordinarily good. Everybody
admits that he was the best man that ever lived.
But if we once admit this, we are bound to go a
great deal farther, for just in proportion as a man
is really good does he become sensitive to sin ; just
in proportion as his spiritual sense is keen does his
consciousness of sin become disturbing and appalling.
\ If you want the saddest confessions of shortcomings,
I do not go to the worst men, but to the best. The
higher a man rises in spiritual attainment, the more
is he cast down by the knowledge of his sins. Run
through the Scriptures, and you will find that all
the saints have theh faces in the dust. Isaiah has
a vision of God and his first cry is, "Woe is me, for
I am undone!" Job has a vision of God, and he
casts himself upon the ground, saying, "I abhor
myself and repent in sackcloth and ashes." John
the beloved disciple says, "If we say we have no

HIS HOLINESS 329
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
Paul the greatest of all the apostles cries out in an
agony of remorse, "I am the chief of sinners."
Peter says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man, O Lord." There is no exception in the whole
list from Abraham down to the latest of the apostles.
Every heart cries out in the language of the Psalmist :
"Have mercy upon me, O God, and blot out my
transgressions," "Wash me from mine iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin, for my sin is ever before
me." If, therefore, Jesus is indeed the best man that
ever lived and still a sinner, he must have been
conscious of his sin ; and if he had been an honest
man, conscious of his sin, he would not have con
cealed the fact from those that were nearest to him.
He would have given signs of repentance and shown
traces of regret. There would have been many an
evidence of contrition and compunction. But so
far as any of the apostles knew there never escaped
his lips a cry for pardon. On the other hand he
was always giving utterance to words like these:
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," "I
do always those things which are pleasing unto
him," "Which one of you convicteth me of sin?"
And even when in sight of the cross, with death
only a few hours away, he looks into God's face
saying, "I have finished the work which thou
gavest me to do." Other men looked into the un
stained splendor, the white radiance of the world

330 CHARACTER OF JESUS
eternal, and fell back abashed and condemned;
Jesus looks into that same unspotted glory and says,
"I have finished the work which thou gavest me to
do." This is remarkable, altogether unique. Here
\ is a man who told others to say when they prayed,
{ "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,"
\but he never prayed that prayer himself. Other
men, even the strongest, have asked others to pray
for them — he never asked prayers of any man. If
then we are willing to listen to the consciousness of
Jesus, we are bound to confess that here was a man
without sin. If he was not without sin, then he
was not a good man at all, for he carefully con
cealed from his companions the stained parts of his
life, and led them to think that he was better than
he was, in which case he was a hypocrite and our
hero has vanished.
But this is not all. Not only did he hold himself
immeasurably above the heads of all other men,
but he forgave sins, he spoke as one having au
thority. No other man had ever exercised such a
prerogative. Even the worst sinners when penitent
at his feet received from him authoritative assurance
of forgiveness. Moreover he was a man without a
human ideal. All good men have looked up to
some man better than themselves; Jesus looked up
to no man. He placed himself above Moses. He
said, "A greater than Solomon is here." He said
to men, "Follow me, I am the ideal." And at the
same time he said, "Be ye perfect even as your

HIS HOLINESS 331
Father in heaven is perfect." How will you put
these two exhortations together? "Follow me!
Be ye perfect !" He was inexorable at this point, —
he would not allow any one to get between him and
the soul. It was worth while for a man to die for
his sake — the very dearest friend a man had was
to be given second place. He claimed to be first.
If he were indeed perfect, all this was right ; but if
he were a sinner concealing his sin or unconscious
of his sin, then aU such exhortations as, "Follow
me," are demoralizing, and his pretensions are
blasphemous. If he was good at all, he was sinless.
Attention ought to be called to the impression
which he made upon others. The men who were
nearest to him got the idea that he was without sin.
When he came to John the Baptist asking to be
baptized, John drew back from him, saying: "I
cannot baptize you. You ought to baptize me."
And why? Because John was baptizing men for
their sins. He ,could not baptize Jesus, because
Jesus had no sins. And when Jesus makes his
reply, he does not say, "I am a sinner, therefore I
must be baptized," he says, "Suffer it now, for it is
becoming that we should fulfil all righteousness."
There was a reason why the baptism should be per
formed, — there was another element in baptism
besides confession of sin. John was the beloved
disciple, coming the nearest to the Master's heart.
In the third chapter of his first letter he says this,
"He was manifested to take away our sin, and in

332 CHARACTER OF JESUS
him is no sin." That was the impression which the
Lord made upon him. Peter was one of his most
loyal friends. He was with him day and night
through three years. In the second chapter of his
first letter he says, "He did no sin, neither was
guile found in his mouth." Now these men were
with Jesus. They ate with him, drank with him,
slept with him, they saw him in all conditions and in
all moods, and under varying circumstances. They
saw him hungry, angry, stern, Surprised, disap
pointed, amazed, yet they believed that in him
there was no sin. The writer to the Hebrews in
the fourth chapter reminds his readers that while
Jesus was tempted in all points as we are, yet he
was without sin. That was the impression then
which was made upon the church. After the resur
rection — they worshipped him as God. It is incon
ceivable that in so short a time a great body of
intelligent men and women should have been wor
shipping him as God and singing hymns of praise to
him if he had not made upon them the impression
that he was holy.
Here, then, we have reached the crowning charac
teristic of Jesus. It is this which differentiates him
from all other men who have ever lived. Every
other man has known the pang of remorse, every
other man has cried for pardon. Simon Peter was
hounded by memories ; he was a good man, a great
man, a tireless worker in the church, but condemn
ing memories pursued him down through the years,

HIS HOLINESS 333
and when at last the time came to die he said,
"Crucify me with my head downward." He said
this because he remembered his sin. Paul was a
good man and a great man, but he was hounded
by condemning memories. He filled the days and
nights with work for God, but he could never for
get that he had been a persecutor of the church,
and so he entered heaven feeling that he was the
chief of sinners. Never has there been but one
white soul, never but one life unspotted, never but
one mind without a stain, never but one heart per
fect. It is this sinlessness which gives Jesus his
power. You cannot understand the New Testa
ment unless you acknowledge that he was holy.
His life was one of suffering, persecution, ending in
a horrible death, but yet the New Testament is a
joyous book. There is no gloom in it because there
was no gloom in him. His soul was radiant. Noth
ing creates gloom in this world but sin. All the
things which we count terrible are insignificant and
have no power to cast a shadow. There is only
one thing which makes the spirit droop, and that is
sin. His sinlessness explains his joyf ulness.' He
said, "No man knows the Father but the son" —
and why. Because "Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God." Because his heart was
stainless, his vision of the Eternal was unclouded.
He knew God as no other man has ever known
him. And it was this sinlessness which was the
secret of his fascination. He drew men to him,

334 CHARACTER OF JESUS
they hung upon his words, they were fascinated by
him even when they hated, they were drawn to him
even when they feared him. Simon Peter expresses
the conflicting emotions of the heart in, "Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." When
Jesus asks him whether he is going away he says,
"To whom shall we go; thou hast the words of
eternal life." The reason we are drawn to him is
not because of his courage, his sympathy, his pa
tience, or his brotherliness; it is because we feel
instinctively that he is far above us, a man without
a sin. It is this which gives the Christian church
its power. The Christian church has but one per
fect possession, that is Jesus. The creed of the
church is not perfect, its phrases were formed by the
blundering mind of man. The Bible is not perfect,
it is not inerrant, it has many a flaw. The church
itself is imperfect, stained through and through with
sin ; but Jesus of Nazareth, the head of the church,
is stainless. And because he is without sin the
church will come off triumphant.
If you ask why it is that men are separated from
Jesus, it is because he is sinless and they are not.
Some of you are not interested in him ; it is because
he is so far above you. Some of you have no sym
pathy with him ; it is because you are not at all like
him. Some of you do not understand his words;
that is because you are disobedient. Some of you
have no disposition to do his will ; it is because you
are the prisoners of sin. But the sinless Christ does

HIS HOLINESS 335
not turn away from us, no matter how sinful we are.
He says: "Come unto me. He that cometh unto
me I will in no wise cast out." Without sin himself
he can pity us in our sin, and is willing to wash
away the stains. He is the Lamb of God that
taketh away the sin of the world.
But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poet's Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, —
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's —
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?

XXVI
THE GREATNESS OF JESUS

XXVI
THE GREATNESS OF JESUS
"His name shall be called Wonderful." — Isaiah ix : 6.
What is greatness ? Who is a great man ? What
is the distinctive element in a man which gives him
this proud distinction? The dictionaries will not
help us. We find it difficult to draw a verbal line
between the great man and the man who is not
great. And yet the muse of history has no difficulty
in picking out individuals here and there on whose
heads she places crowns. With a bold hand she
inscribes certain names upon the shining list, and
bids coming generations revere these names as those
of the world's immortals. If it is difficult to write a
definition of greatness, there seems to be no diffi
culty in finding men whom the heart persists in
counting great.
When we scrutinize the faces of this immortal
company, we are struck by the variety of gifts and
graces. No two of these men are alike. Homer
is not like Phidias, nor is Phidias like Pericles, nor
is Pericles like Plato. Virgil is different from Caesar,
who is different from Dante, and Dante is not at all
339

340 CHARACTER OF fESUS
like Scipio or Raphael or Justinian. Goethe is dif
ferent from Frederick the Great, and the latter is
different from Kant and Hegel, and these two are
not like either Mendelssohn or Bismarck. Na
poleon and La Place and Racine and Pasteur are
all different types of men. William the Conqueror
is not like Shakespeare, nor is Bishop Butler like
Newton, nor is the Duke of Wellington like Glad
stone. Franklin is different from Washington, and
Lincoln is different from Longfellow, and Fulton
and Morse are different from all. And yet all these
are enrolled among the mighty dead. In what re
spect were they alike ? What characteristic is com
mon to all? In such a heterogeneous company is
it possible to find any mark which makes them
akin ? It is possible, and the quality which is com
mon to all is an extraordinary capacity for achieve
ment. These men all did things, enduring things,
so that the world was not the same after they had
gotten done with it. They carved statues or painted
pictures or led armies or ruled states or composed
music or framed laws or wrote poems or made dis
coveries or inventions which enriched the lives and
homes of men. They achieved something worth
while. They made a mark on the mind of the
world. The product of their genius is an imperish
able possession of our race. •
Was Jesus great? What did he achieve? What
did he ever do ? He never chiseUed a statue or
painted a picture or wrote a poem or composed a

HIS GREATNESS 341
piece of music or constructed a philosophical system
or published a book or led an army or controlled a
senate or framed a law or made a discovery or con
trived an invention or did any one of the things
which haye made the names of other men illustrious.
He never, wore a crown or held a sceptre or threw
round his shoulders a purple robe. He never held
an office either in church or state. He did abso
lutely nothing in art, literature, science, philosophy,
invention, statesmanship or war, the seven king
doms in which the world's great men have won their
crowns. And yet everybody calls Jesus great. No
informed man in any part of the world would to-day
deny him that exalting adjective. Not only is he
counted great, but in a large part of the world he is
counted greatest — so great that no one else can be
compared with him. Charles Lamb gave expres
sion to the feeling of us all when he said, "If
Shakespeare was to come into this room, we should
all rise up to meet him; but if Christ was to come
into it, we should all fall upon our knees." His
greatness is greater than that of all others, and it is
also different.
Other men are great artists or poets or generals
or statesmen, whereas Jesus is a great man. His
greatness lies in the realm of personality, in the
kingdom of character. His achievement was not
wrought with paint or with chisel or with sword or
with pen, but by the heavenly magic of a victorious
will. There is nothing of him but his manhood.

342 CHARACTER OF JESUS
He wore none of the spangled robes of earth. We
do not say, "Behold the poet, the orator, the philoso
pher, the general, the statesman, the sovereign, we
say, Behold the Man!" A man may be a great
general and still not be a great man. Alexander
the Great got his title from his genius for massing
phalanxes of soldiers and hurling them with irre
sistible fury against the army which opposed him.
As a man he was a weakling. Passion wrecked
him before noon. Napoleon the Great was great
as a leader of armies, but as a man he was petty
and vain and despicable. As a murderer and rob
ber he was great, but as a man he was a pygmy.
Great statesmen have not always been great men.
Sometimes they have been unscrupulous and
cowardly, their whole interior life degraded by ap
petites and passions which have made them under
lings and slaves. The great artists of the world have
not all been kings and queens in the graces of man
hood and womanhood. It is one of the saddest of
all surprises to discover on reading the biographies
of the world's immortal workers how many of them
have been narrow and superstitious, selfish and
envious, sordid in their ambitions and groveling in
theh aims, achieving one significant or beautiful
piece of work in the glory of which the shabbiness
of their character has been swallowed up. Jesus
was great in his soul. The dimensions of his mind
and his heart were colossal. His spirit was regal,
august, sublime.

HIS GREATArESS 343
How he looms above the heads of his contempo
raries ! There were men of distinction in Palestine
nineteen centuries ago. Jesus measured his strength
with the greatest men of his land and generation.
But how lacking these men were in insight the
Gospels everywhere disclose. They fumbled cardi
nal questions and stumbled at points which were
critical. They lost themselves in the mazes of
problems which they could not see through or master.
Jesus had eyes which saw to the core of every prob
lem and to the centre of every situation. He never
missed the essential point or was misled by a sub
ordinate issue. He stripped off the accidental from
the soul of the essential, and no matter how tangled
or complicated a matter was he seized the dominant
principle and made all things plain. Compared
with him the Scribes and Pharisees were owls batting
theh stupid eyes in the glare of noon. Insight is a
trait of greatness. Only great men see deep into
things. It was his insight which made him formi
dable to the men who tried to trip and trap him with
theh questions. Again and again they tried it, but
they never succeeded. He always outwitted their
subtlety, and always discomfited them at their favor
ite game. Whenever they dashed at him with a
question intended to roll him in the dust, he seized
it, turned its point upon the man who asked it, and
went on his way triumphant. Never did they get
the advantage of him in a discussion or an argu
ment. No more clever man ever lived. He beat

344 CHARACTER OF JESUS
his assailants into silence every time they attacked
him. His cleverness was too much for the acutest
intellect which wrestled with him. He was quick,
dexterous, adroit, and yet when we think of him
we do not think of his cleverness because cleverness
is a scintillation of the intellect, and while intel
lectual brilliancy dazzles us in other men, we are
not impressed by it in Jesus because his cleverness
is only one of many talents and endowments which
combine to add lustre to his princely, transcendent
personality. In ambition and ideal he was in com
parison with the leaders of his people what Mont
Blanc is to the chalets which farmers have erected
at its base.
His greatness comes out in his fellowship with his
disciples. They were strong and able men, all of
them, able later on to turn the world upside
down ; but they cut a sorry figure in the presence
of the man they acknowledge to be theh master.
They are pitifully and incorrigibly stupid. They
cannot understand some of the simplest things the
Master says. He is so high above them that they
cannot climb to where he is. There is pathos in his
oft-repeated question, "Do you not yet under
stand?" But it is in their temper and ambition
that the disciples are at theh worst. They were
petty, envious, selfish men. They wrangled among
themselves as to which one of them should hold the
highest place, and even on the last evening of Jesus'
life they squabbled as to the places they should

HIS GREATNESS 345
occupy around the table. No wonder he calls them
"little children," for that was all they were. They
were childish in their temper and ambitions just as
most men are. They were as old in years as Jesus ;
but in thought and aim, in hope and ideal, they were
as compared with Jesus only a company of babies.
When we leave the New Testament and walk
among the nations of the earth where shall we find
a man with whom we should be willing to compare
Jesus of Nazareth? Can you think of an Italian
or a German or a Frenchman or an Englishman or
an American whose name is worthy to be linked with
his ? The heart draws back shuddering at the sug
gestion of such a thought. Great men have come
and gone, doing theh mighty deeds and leaving
behind names which shall not die, but what race or
nation would dare even in its most egotistic and vain
glorious moments to suggest that the most illustrious
of all its sons has a right to sit on a throne so high
as the throne of Jesus ? His soul is like a star and
dwells apart. He is unique, unapproached, unap
proachable. He is the incomparable. His name is
Wonderful. How great Jesus is can be told by the length arid
width and depth of his achievement. Greatness is
measured by the effect which it produces. Men can
not be judged by stature or physical characteristics.
You cannot tell whether a man is great or not by
looking at his body. All men are in body sub
stantially alike. They have the same appetites,

346 CHARACTER OF JESUS
passions, organs. If you tickle them they laugh, if
you prick them they bleed. Nor can you find a
man's greatness always in his words. For all men
use substantially the same nouns and adjectives,
verbs and adverbs. The same sentence spoken by
two men may have totally different results. One
man speaks it, and it produces no impression. It
dies in the moment of its birth. Another speaks it
and it sets hearts blazing and is remembered for
evermore. Greatness does not lie in words but in
souls. Not even do a man's actions reveal com
pletely what he is. In theh conduct great men act
much as do ordinary men. It is for this reason that
no man is ever a hero to his valet. The valet hears
his master's words, sees the clothes he wears, the
things he eats, the engagements which he keeps, and
knowing these he cannot believe that his master is
a hero. A valet's eyes do not see to the ends of
things, nor can a valet's mind weigh effects or trace
the track of influence. He does not know what his
master is accomplishing in the world, but it is by
the total effect of a man's life that we are to tell
whether or not he is great. Great men are all alike
in this, that they bring things to pass. Things take
place when they are present which do not take place
in their absence. They change the currents of men's
thoughts and set a new fashion in the world. Men
gather round them and criticise them, point out where
they fall short, and show how the thing could have
been better done in some other way ; but the critics die

HIS GREATNESS 347
and are forgotten and the great man lives on forever.
How he accomplishes his results he never tells. Why
he exerts such an influence, we never know. The
secret of greatness is incommunicable. It lies hidden
in the abysmal deeps of personality.
If Jesus is to be judged by the effects which he
produced and stUl produces, then his name is indeed
Wonderful. Upon the men of his time he exerted
a power so marvellous that it seemed uncanny,
magical, and some people thought he must be in
league with the mighty powers of the under world.
When he spoke men overflowed with ideas and feel
ings — feelings of love or feelings of detestation. No
man ever stood stolid in his presence. Men went
wUd over him, some in adoration and some in hatred.
Wherever he went he left men seething and bubbling.
There were a few men — his apostles — who came
close to him. Upon these he exerted an influence
which extended to the roots of theh being. One
of these men — Thomas — was unusually slow and
cool. He was not made of inflammable stuff. He
was not easUy carried away by emotion, for the tides
of emotion in him were not strong. But this man
when Jesus one day suggested going to a certain
place beset with danger exclaimed, "Let us go and
die with him." It is not easy to die at thirty. No
normal man in his ordinary mood wants to die
before the sun has reached the meridian. But this
man Thomas had been so wrought upon by the per
sonality of Jesus that he was ready to die with him.

348 CHARACTER OF JESUS
And so were all the apostles. Peter in the upper
chamber declared with emphasis that he was ready
to go with Jesus to prison and to death. A few
hours later his courage oozed out, but that cowardice
was only temporary, and Peter later on did the very
thing which he declared to Jesus he would do. And
what Peter did all of the apostles did, John alone
excepted. He has indeed something extraordinary
within him who can so work upon the minds and
hearts of men as to make them glad to give up their
lives for him. There is only one greater thing than
dying for another and that is living for another,
living a life of obloquy and persecution, suffering aU
things for his sake. Here is the climax of power.
Jesus changed men. He changed their habits and
opinions and ambitions, he changed theh tempers
and dispositions and natures. He changed their
hearts. They were never the same after they gave
themselves up to him. God and man, the. world
and duty, were different to them after they had looked
steadily into his face. Wherever he went he trans
formed human lives. He transfigured human faces
by cleansing the fountains of the heart. This is
greatness indeed.
And what he did in Palestine he has been doing
ever since. Wherever the story of his life is carried
the climate of thought and feeling changes. Every
land across which his name has been heralded has
been transformed in ideals and institutions. The
forward-looking portion of the world numbers the

HIS GREATNESS 349
years from the date of his birth. Richter was not
writing poetry but prose when he declared that
Jesus' pierced hands lifted empires off their hinges
and turned the stream of history into a new channel.
You cannot account for the difference between Occi
dent and Orient without a consideration of the in
fluence of this one Man. Fifteen hundred years ago
the civilization of China was what it is to-day. The
social and industrial orders have through all this
period remained there unchanged, and Chinese so
ciety is no more highly embellished and the Chinese
character is not a whit more cultivated than they
were a millennium and a half ago. Fifteen hundred
years ago northern Europe was a wilderness, and
so also was the island of Britain. In these wUder
nesses there lived various tribes of barbarous people,
whose pastime was to make war on one another.
Many of them were but little above the rank of
savages. Through fifteen hundred years northern
Europe and the British Isles have been coming up,
up, up, until to-day there are no higher summits
in the world. While China has remained exactly
where she was, western Europe has been ascending ;
and when you endeavor to interpret this wonderful
phenomenon, you cannot lose sight of the fact that
China has been gazing into the face of Confucius
while western Europe has been gazing into the face
of Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth has lifted Europe to
the seats of power. It is one of the supreme miracles
of the world's history.

350 CHARACTER OF JESUS
Some men are great in their influence for a genera
tion, and then their power begins to wane. They sit
on thrones for a season and then abdicate. Will it be
so with Jesus ? We only know that through nineteen
hundred years he has been climbing to a supremacy
increasingly spacious and august. His name has been
rising, swallowing up the glory of other names as the
sun mounting the eastern sky swallows up the stars.
To-day his name is above every name. Ours is the
greatest of all the centuries. Never have men been
so impatient to get on as they are to-day, and never
have they been so indifferent to the past. And yet
the most thrilling cry of our day is, "Back to Jesus !"
It is heard all around the world. Men once cried,
"Back to the Reformers!" but the Reformers did
not satisfy, and then the cry was, "Back to the
Fathers !" but the Fathers could not help, and then
the cry was, "Back to the Apostles !" but the Apos
tles were found to be shining only with a reflected
light, and so now the world is saying: "Back to
Jesus!" "Let us go back to him for the sake of
getting on, in order to get light for our darkened
pathway, and to find principles with which to solve
our complicated problems!" More lives of Jesus
have been written within the last fifty years than of
any other historic character. More pages are printed
about him every week than about any hundred of the
world's greatest men. He exerts a power which is so
phenomenal that many feel he must be more than
man, linked in some way or other with the Eternal.

HIS GREATNESS 351
He must be — men say — the Son of God. In this
land alone men contribute two hundred million
dollars every year to support the institutions which
bear his name. They are not compelled to do this.
They do it voluntarily because they want to do it,
and because he so, works upon them that they count
such giving a privilege and pleasure. , As Napoleon
Bonaparte once said, " This man vanished for eighteen
hundred years still holds the characters of men as
in a vice." The little Corsican sat dumfounded as
he compared his greatness with the greatness of the
Man of GalUee. Napoleon's last biographer de
votes two volumes to the rise of his hero and two
volumes to his decline and fall. All the volumes of
the life of Jesus record the story of , his ascent. He
goes on and on from victory to victory, from glory to
glory, and as men's eyes become cleansed and their
hearts purified they see with increasing certainty
that God has indeed so highly exalted him that some
day every knee shall bend to him and every tongue
confess that he is King indeed.
His greatness is full-orbed. He was complete, and
in his completeness we find an explanation of his
beauty. Men who stood nearest to him were charmed
and swayed by his loveliness. He was full of grace
and truth. He had a charm about him which wooed
and fascinated. Children liked him, boys sang for
him, publicans hung upon him. He had the heart
of a child, the tenderness of a woman, the strength
of a man. The three dimensions of his life were

352 CHARACTER OF JESUS
complete. He had eyes which looked along ex
tended lines running intp eternity ; he had sympathies
wide enough to cover humanity to its outermost
edge; he had a purpose which included all lands
and ages, his kingdom is to be universal and it shall
have no end. He is at every point complete. His
virtues are all full-statured, his graces are all in
fullest bloom. You can no more add anything to
him than you can add something to the sky. He
pushed every good trait of human character to its
utmost limit. His forgiveness was unbounded, his
generosity was untiring, his patience was inex
haustible, his mercy was immeasurable, his courage
was illimitable, his wisdom was unfathomable, his
kindness was interminable, his faith removed
mountains, his hope had no shadow in it, his love
was infinite. And so it is impossible to go beyond
him. We can .never outgrow him. He will be
always ahead of us. We shall always hear him
saying, "Follow me !" He is the ideal of the heart.
He is the goal of humanity. It is this completeness
of his character which accounts not only for his
beauty but for his perennial and increasing power.
He is the lily of the valley, the fairest of ten thousand,
the one altogether lovely. He is the image of God !
"If Jesus Christ is a man,
And only a man, I say,
That of all mankind I cleave to him,
And to him will I cleave alway.

HIS GREATNESS 353
"If Jesus Christ is a God,
And the only God, I swear,
I will follow him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air."