Mohammed’s success and disciples we can understand. He succeeded by the ordinary methods by which men succeed. He appealed to men’s love of fame, conquest, wealth, power, pleasure. He offered men, as a reward for their fealty to him, a great earthly kingdom, and such a heaven beyond the grave as would regale the senses, please the fancy, and gratify the appetites. He simply organized and applied the latent earthly forces already existing in his countrymen. His success is in line with that of Cæsar and Bonaparte. The kingdom which he proposed to establish was merely an earthly, sensual kingdom. His methods were carnal, the motives to which he appealed were sensual, and the hopes which he inspired were carnal. Christ, on the other hand, condemned men’s love of conquest, power, fame, riches, and pleasure. He made the conditions of discipleship to consist in the denial of self and in the relinquishment of all earthly hopes, gratifications, and prospects. “If you find your life in my kingdom,” said he, “you must lose it in this.” He proposed to build up a kingdom as wide as the world, and as lasting as eternity, without adopting a single method or utilizing any of the means ordinarily relied on for success. Not only did he propose a new kingdom, but to populate it with new men, motives, hopes, conceptions, and opinions. Hence, to come into his kingdom, men were to be made over. They were to die to self, to the world, to pleasure. So Christ’s work and influence in the world not only forms an exception to the principle of the correlation of forces, but here we have an unparalleled amount of force rising up when, to all human appearances, none subsided at all.
VI.
A poor young carpenter dies. He goes down in ignominy. Amid the jeers and contempt of the multitude, he goes down into the grave. But from that moment, commotion begins. Forgiveness of sin in the name of Christ is preached; disciples are won; books are written; civilizations are touched; movements are inaugurated; persecutions, bloody and relentless, are waged. The fires of hate are kindled; storms from all round the social, political, and religious sky gather, and howl, and empty their fury upon the new movement. Nothing impedes it; fire cannot hinder it; persecution intensifies it; death does not alarm it. Now, we submit, does not such a movement, starting from such a source, and moving out with such vigor, and becoming intenser and deeper as it is extended, form a remarkable and singular exception to the principle we are considering? Is there any rule among men by which it may be estimated and classified and labeled? Can any human, or logical, or philosophical formula or principle measure the multiform and widely diversified facts in this case? Does it not form an exception to all rules and human methods of measurements? Do we not augment the difficulties of accounting for the work of Christ by minifying him, and calling him a mere man? Is not the easier way to account for Christ’s work, to accord to him all that he claims for himself and all that his disciples claimed for him. He said, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.” If we accept this as true, we can account for his work. But in this view, we will see that his life was divine and one with the Father of us all. Then we will see that he was the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the incarnation of the divine mind and wisdom and power. It is impossible to account for the life and work of Christ by the principles with which physical force and merely human force and thought are measured. The sun is the center of the system of nature, a system destined to end. Any system, the center of which is gradually losing its force, cannot last. Christ is the center of a spiritual system totally different from the system of nature. By all the force the sun parts with to the worlds about it, by so much less has it. It is gradually losing itself, to find itself no more forever. Christ is pouring his force into the system of which he is the center, but by such a process he is not losing his force, but increasing it. By losing himself he finds himself. The universal law of the system of which he is the center, is the law of communion. The force he gives away comes back to him augmented by the personality of all who partake of it. Instead of becoming poorer by giving, he becomes richer. This great truth St. Paul saw when he said: “All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”
VII.
One life has appeared among men, then, that was all love. Jesus Christ is the only original, absolutely unselfish life that has been lived on earth. The saints have found the secret, and strength, and inspiration of their unselfishness and love in him. The love which matches and meets the illimitable nature of the human spirit is embodied in a life that cannot be measured by the ordinary rules and standards of men. The object of which hunger is the subject, is bread; the object of which intellect is the subject, is truth; the object of which will is the subject, is law; the object of which the æsthetic sense is the subject, is beauty; the object of which the spiritual nature is the subject, is Jesus Christ. The spirit of man which has for its correlate in time, the race, has for its correlate in eternity, the life of one in which is summed up all power, all truth, all law, all beauty, and all love. As the embodiment of love the human spirit finds in Christ the climate and the conditions exactly adapted to its own realization. The plan and pattern, the invisible framework and ideal of every man’s life is Christian. To be an oak is to be a perfect acorn, to be an apple is to be a complete flower, to be a Christian is to be a complete man.
IMMORTALITY.
“How does the rivulet find its way?