The contest which should be the greatest, in spite of all his efforts, all his teachings, all his rebukes, had only smouldered, not been extinguished, and was ready at any moment to flame out again, and all the way up to Jerusalem when he came to die they walked behind him quarreling over this old point. As a dying mother calling her children around her confirms her life-teaching by some last act of love never to be forgotten, so this Master and Friend before the last supper knelt in humility at the feet of each disciple and washed and wiped them, and then interpreted the act as a sign of the spirit in which leadership in his church should be sought: "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet." In after years the disciples could not but remember that Jesus knelt at the feet of Judas and washed them as meekly as those of all the rest; and then they saw what he meant when he said, "Love your enemies."
From first to last the teaching of Christ was one long teaching of the doctrine and discipline of perfect love. When the multitudes followed him, and he went into a mountain to give his summary of the new dispensation, we hear of no high, mystical doctrines. We hear doctrines against censoriousness, against the habit of judging others. We hear men cautioned to look on their own faults, not on those of others. We hear love like the perfect love of God set up as the great doctrine of the new kingdom—love which no injury, no unworthiness, no selfishness can chill, or alter, or turn aside; which, like God's providence, shines on the evil and unthankful, and sends rain on the just and the unjust—this mystery of love, deeper than the mystery of the Trinity, was what, from first to last, the Master sought to make his little church comprehend.
This love to enemies, this forgiveness, was the hardest of hard doctrines to them. "Lord, how often shall my brother transgress and I forgive him?" says Peter; "till seven times?" "Nay," answers Jesus, "till seventy times seven." "If thy brother trespass against thee seven times a day, and seven times turn again saying, 'I repent,' thou shalt forgive him." The Master taught that no religious ordinance, no outward service, was so important as to maintain love unbroken. If a gift were brought to the altar, and there it were discovered that a brother were grieved or offended, the gift was to be left unoffered till a reconciliation was sought.
It is not merely with the brother who has given us cause of offense, but the brother who, however unreasonably, deems himself hurt by us, that we are commanded to seek reconciliation before we can approach a Heavenly Father.
A band of men and women thus trained in the school of Jesus, careful to look on their own faults, refraining from judging those of others, unselfish and lowly, seeking only to do and to serve, so perfected in a divine love that the most bitter and cruel personal injuries could not move to bitterness or revenge—such a church is in a fit state to administer discipline. It has the Holy Spirit of Jesus with it; and it may be said, without superstitious credulity, of a church in that spirit that its decisions will be so in accordance with the will of God that "whosesoever sins they remit are remitted, and whosesoever sins they retain are retained."
But where have we such a church?
The church of the Master was one of those beautiful ideals, fair as the frost-crystals or the dew-drops of morning. It required a present Jesus to hold it, and then with what constant watchfulness and care and admonition on his part was it kept! We can only study at his marvelous training, and gather some humble inspiration. It was this church of Jesus, the Master, this tried, sifted, suffering body of faithful men and women whose prayers brought down the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and inaugurated the Apostolic Church.