But we explain all this away.
Jesus was not indulging sentiment when he taught his disciples that following him meant a self-renunciation that would brave all things. He distinctly told them to expect persecutions and tribulations. And some persuade themselves that he was speaking only for those who were then his disciples; that such ideas do not fit civilized times and countries. An apostle, being a mere man, might well enough give his “judgment” as to what best suited an existing condition of life and society; but Jesus, who belongs to all times, speaks no word of simply local and temporary significance and importance.
It was so certain that suffering and persecution of some sort would follow fidelity that Jesus gave his disciples and all who should come after them a test by which they might judge of their personal fidelity to him: “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.” Can we imagine that Jesus did not mean such words for all men, of all times and countries?
He knew how his friends would need to stand firm, and how fearful the pressure of temptation would be to deny him.
He told them they would “for his sake” be “brought before kings,” and that “some of them would be killed.” But he told them not to be afraid; they were to fear God and no other whatever.
One day Jesus was urging his disciples to be faithful and courageous in proclaiming his whole truth to the world, and thus he encouraged and exhorted them: “And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, Fear him.”
Instead of trusting in any wise to self-interest Jesus demands its crucifixion. When he says, “If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me;” when he demands self-renunciation absolute; when he says that no interest possible in this world—whether houses, lands, father, mother, brother, sister, child, or wife—must come between him and his disciples; when he raises a cross by his own upon which selfishness must die, he stands apart from all men. His method is not a man’s. His plans are as different from a man’s as the end he proposed is above a man’s thought and different from it.
If no man ever spoke like Jesus no man ever planned like him.
In considering further some things in the methods which Jesus adopted for doing the work he proposed to himself we may mention, as different from a man’s method, that Jesus excludes from his plans for discipling the world reliance upon mere argument and force of intellect.
Jesus left no room, not the least, for the fanatical superstition that his cause is to be advanced by ignorance. His doctrine furnishes every inspiration for the very highest development of mind; and the best educational work of the world is the outgrowth of Christian institutions.