Thus we see how the thought of Christ and the thought of the age need and complement each other. The thought of Christ is spiritual, the thought of the age tends to become material. In this world we are neither wholly spiritual nor wholly material. And we must bear in mind that the two elements should not exist over against one another in our thought. We must not hold the two conceptions, however opposite they may appear, as two. In life the spirit and the body do not exist as two but as one. As soon as they exist as two, there is death. So must the truth of Jesus and the truth of this present age be blended in one thought. We must not say love and law, but love in law. We must not see the divine power setting at work forces that by their natural operation shall reward or punish the spirit. We must see the divine power working in and through these forces. Then, as science makes us feel that we are encompassed by law, the words will not need translating to us; for we shall feel that we are encompassed by God.
The relation which we have found to exist between the intellectual teaching of Christ and the thought of the age is no less marked between the moral teaching of Christ and the life of the age. The moral teaching of Christ is absolutely true. It is as true as his thought of God; yet like that it needs its complemental truth. Further, the moral teaching of Christ needs instrumentalities. Love, however strong, cannot work without means. The heart needs the hands and the feet.
In both of these respects the age brings its offering to Christ. Christ teaches love and self-sacrifice. He bids us do for others as we would have them do for us. He bids us give to him that asks, and lend to him that would borrow. These principles are the very life of society. They are the very truth of God. But yet these principles carried out, without explanation and qualification, would produce harm as well as good. The church of every age, in striving to carry out these precepts, has done much good; but it has done much harm also. It has done good by bringing succor to the lives that needed it. It has done immeasurable good by keeping alive on the earth the spirit of Christian love. Men have been blest by the power of the spirit, even more than by its specific acts of mercy. But, while it has relieved the poor, it has too often tended to perpetuate poverty. Indiscriminate alms-giving, mere alms-giving, is the very mother of pauperism. We see in some Catholic countries how the alms-giving which the church has taught in the very words of Christ has degraded whole populations, has taken from manhood its real dignity and strength. We need, then, not only the principle of love, but also a knowledge of all social laws. The science of political economy must be understood; but this, like physical science, cannot be taught in a day. Ages must teach the lesson. The present age has only half learned it. But it has learned enough to bring a magnificent contribution to Christ. Christ bids us help men: the age, in its poor blundering way, is just beginning to tell us how to help them. It teaches that the best way to help the poor is to strike at the root of poverty. No less does the age furnish means for carrying out the principles of Jesus. It brings the ends of the earth together. Christ bids us love our neighbor. This age has made those from whom the sea parts us our neighbors. There is famine, or some more sudden calamity, on the other side of our continent, or in a foreign land. Christ bids us help those who need. How shall we carry sudden help unless we hear at once the story? How shall we send prompt help if there be no strong and swift messenger waiting at our door? But now the lightning tells the story the moment in which there is a story to be told, and the unwearied steam bears our gifts as soon as they can be gathered. The commands of Jesus are absolute. The power of the age to fulfil these commands is approaching absoluteness. Thus does the age add to the teaching of Christ the completeness that it needs.
But does not the age in turn need this teaching? Materialism and mechanism in thought are bad enough: they are worse in life. The life of the age has a tendency to materialism and mechanism. The science of political economy tends to become a hard system of rules, in which the spontaneous sympathy of the helper and the individuality of the helped are lost together. The eagerness of the world after material prosperity tends to a practical absorption in these ends. Thus we have the greed, the excitement, the madness, the display, the corruption that to so great an extent characterize the age. We have seen that there is a deeper life beneath this superficial one; but these evils, however superficial, need prompt and constant care lest they eat into the very heart. The body needs the spirit, or it will sink into decay.
I have spoken of the two elements which we are considering as if they stood simply over against one another. This is in some respects true. The thought and life of the age are, indeed, largely indebted to the stimulus of Christianity; but they are not, like the painting and architecture of the Middle Ages, the direct outgrowth of it. The science of the present day is self-developed and self-sustained. The machinery of the world has been invented for the world's uses. Its political economy has been thought out to facilitate its own ends.
But though the two elements, to some extent, stand over against one another, yet each, by its natural development, is approaching the other, and each is becoming penetrated by the other. On the one side, religion is catching the spirit of the age, and is approaching the clearness and accuracy of scientific thought. On the other side, science is becoming conscious of truth which is unattainable by its methods, and which is to it therefore the unknowable. Already does Herbert Spencer, who represents the foremost thought of the time, feel the awe of this mystery, and see gleaming through it something of the presence of the infinite love. The life of the age, also, by bringing men near to one another, tends to produce the sense of human brotherhood. Its vast business enterprise, in some of its aspects, does more for the cause of humanity than many a professed charity. Further, the age is, to some extent at least, directly inspired by Christianity. Its zeal for humanity, its sympathy with the oppressed and suffering everywhere, its gigantic and unparalleled charities, show it to be more truly Christian than any age that has preceded it.
If however, in spite of all this, we are sometimes tempted to doubt whether the power of the truth which Christ represents is to win the mastery, or whether it is destined to be lost in the great struggle, we must remember that its authority is that of elements that are fundamental in human nature. The spiritual instincts may be repressed: they cannot be exterminated. As in every little creek and inlet along the shore the water answers to the call of the ocean, and feels the might of the outgoing and the incoming tide, so in human life deep answers unto deep.
We must remember, too, that Christ is not a mere teacher. His power is not alone that of the truth he utters. It is no mere accident of history that the higher truth and life which we have been considering confront the age as Christian truth and life. They receive a power from their union with Christ which they could not have received, even had the thought of men attained to them, without this. We have looked at the external form of his life and at his teaching in their relation to the age. There is yet another step to take. There is still an inner reality to be unveiled. Behind the power of his teaching is the power of his personality. In this is found the climax of the antithesis in which he stands to the present. The tendency of the present age is, consciously or unconsciously, to disown personality. The laws which make the substance of its thought, the mechanism that makes the framework of its life, both tend to assert themselves against the power of a free personality. We may illustrate this by the modern method of warfare. In ancient times the victory depended on the strength of the individual arm and the courage of the individual heart. Now it depends more upon the drill of the army and the clear head of the general.
This tendency of the thought of the age is not based on error. It brings to our thought of personality the correction that it needs. The tendency of the past has been to look upon personality as existing by and for itself. It has recognized no limits to the power of freedom. Each individual stood by and for himself in the universe. Now we see a common element in all lives. All lives are entwined together. We see limits which freedom cannot pass. We understand something of the limits of each individual. We understand something of the laws of descent and of the power of education. Even the personality of Jesus does not stand by itself as it seemed to once. We see in him the power of the common nature. We see in him the effect of forces which had been in operation since the world was. He was no stranger upon the earth. He was the Son of God, but he was no less the Son of man. He was the flowering of a nation's history, the flowering of humanity. The flower is drawn forth by the sun, but it is drawn out from the plant. Even the sun can kindle the flame of no rose upon the bramble's stalk. While, however, the age teaches us what is the background out from which the power of personality stands forth, and what are the elements that are fused together in it, personality itself remains too much unrecognized. But, I repeat, the integrity of human nature can never be violated; and personality is the culmination of human nature. The power of a modern army, we have seen, depends largely on its drill; yet even here the impetuous courage of a leader may infuse a life into this vast machine that shall decide the victory. Mere signals, it is found, upon a ship will not answer the purpose of communication between the captain and the men. In times of peril, in the midst of the fury of the storm, the sailor needs the inspiration of the captain's voice, ringing with a force that is mightier than the tempest; namely, the force of human will and courage. No matter how mechanical the age may become, no matter how the idea of freedom may be eliminated from its thought, the great heart of humanity beats still in its bosom, and the voice of a strong, free personality will sooner or later arouse it to an answering consciousness. The very bands which it sets about personality will make its power more strongly felt when it is perceived. Its very knowledge of the elements that are united in it will make it feel more really the might of the force which can fuse these into one burning point.