The Real Jesus of the Four Gospels

by John Birdseye Atwater

In fact, the two utterances of Jesus—"he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John VIII:7), and "why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye" (Matt. VII:2)—cut at the very root of the non-compromiser's position. For, in carrying on his crusade against his pet evil-doers, it would be fatal to be obliged to stop to answer objections that he may not be infallible in deciding what is evil, and that he may himself have habits considered by others as evil as the one he is denouncing. For instance, many a prominent non-compromiser among the clergy is living in comparative ease, if not luxury. When he reads the standard of living set by Jesus for the ministers of His Word (Matt. X:9; Mark VI:8; Luke IX:3; X:4; XXII:35), he must admit that he is every day compromising with the ideals of Jesus—with the evil of riches.

Compromise is the rule of human life. Each individual, as he tries to follow the Socratic advice, "know thyself," finds that most of his actions are a compromise between his good impulses and his evil impulses. Few men are a Dr. Jekyll during the day and a Mr. Hyde during the night. Most men are partly Jekyls and partly Hydes all the time. As the individual makes his way in business and society, he learns more and more every day, if he has common sense, the wisdom and advisability of compromise. He that is always bent on "having his own way" will usually find that his way does not go far, and results in unhappiness for himself and others. Happy marriages are founded on a compromise of individual tastes, habits and opinions. Parents win and retain the affection of their children, not by imposing on them their own inflexible laws of right and wrong, but by modifying these laws to meet the different tastes, habits and opinions of the children. Success in business, in law, in politics, is usually associated with the faculty of making reasonable compromises. The wisest legislation is usually a compromise between conflicting interests and opinions.

It is not too much to say that compromise is the corner stone of every modern democratic society. It is a necessary consequence of the "rule of the majority," since the majority of today may be the minority of tomorrow. To find a society of his taste, the non-compromiser should seek some negro tribe in darkest Africa, where the witch-doctors permit no deviations from the prescribed theological cult. Or, in matters political, he might find much to admire in the administrative system of Louis the XIVth, with his famous aphorism, "L'Etat, C'est Moi."

In international affairs every treaty of peace, unless its terms are dictated by a strong power to a weak one, is a compromise between the opposing views of right and wrong held by the parties. Logically, the non-compromiser should be generally opposed to treaties, as involving necessarily some sacrifice of his principles of right to the demands of the other party. In the period from 1844 to 1846, we narrowly escaped war with England in the dispute over the boundary between ourselves and Canada, because a strong Jingo, non-compromising party started the popular cry of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight." This class of thinkers would undoubtedly have opposed the celebrated compromises of Henry Clay, which, whatever might have been said against them at the time, have, in the light of history, the incalculable merit of having postponed the inevitable conflict between the North and the South, until the former had so grown in population and resources that it could preserve the unity of the nation. Considering the hard, and sometimes doubtful struggle, which the North went through in winning victory in the sixties, there can be little doubt that the result would have been two divided nations if the issues between the two sections had been submitted to the arbitrament of arms in 1820, in 1832, or even in 1850.

As the intolerance of the non-compromisers will lead some of them to oppose treaties of peace, so the same quality in others will lead them to make nuisances of themselves in war.

During the Great War, the nations, especially England and the United States, had considerable trouble with the "conscientious objector," who is really a non-compromiser under a different name. Supposing him to be honest in his opinions (as some of them were), the logic of his position was unanswerable from the view-point of the non-compromiser. War is unquestionably a great evil, and most obnoxious to the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount. If there is to be no compromise with evil, then a Christian magistrate has no warrant to compel the conscientious objector to go out and slaughter, or give his help, directly or indirectly, towards the slaughter of his fellow Christians.

The true answer to this argument is, of course, obvious, although the magistrates, themselves infected with this pernicious, non-compromise doctrine, did not always make it.

In this fallible, imperfect human life, it is often necessary to compromise with evil—that is, as between two evils, to choose the less. Jesus both preached and practiced the doctrine of choosing the less evil, even in the extreme case of war. For He urged the spreading of His Gospel, although He foresaw that it would divide father from son and bring "fire" and a "sword" upon earth (Matt. X:34; Mark XIII:8; Luke XII:49). Now, in the case of this war, the vast majority of the nation has decided that it is a less evil to go to war than to be enslaved by Germany. So, war it is to be. But it is unjust—an evil of the greatest magnitude—that a few individuals should reap all the benefits of preserving the nation from German slavery, without bearing the corresponding burdens. Consequently, the conscientious objectors must either submit to the decision of the majority or seek some other country, following the example of the Puritans, Huguenots and other "conscientious objectors" of past times.

It is apparent that if the door is once opened to allow people to shirk the civil duties imposed upon them by the society in which they live, the exemption cannot be limited to the case of war alone on the ground of their conscientious convictions. In the Supreme Court records of one of our States (possibly in several), there will be found a case where a man and woman (apparently respectable and generally law-abiding citizens) suffered a criminal conviction, because they had "conscientious objections" to legalizing their union by a conventional marriage ceremony. It is easy to imagine a man having conscientious objections to jury duty—the condemning men to death or imprisonment, or the transferring of property from one to another on account of the "technicalities" of the law. Or, why should a man not have conscientious objections to paying his taxes if they are to be used, in part at least, for a purpose which he considers evil? Evidently the field for evasion is a large one, and the only protection for society is to rigidly insist that the "conscientious objector," whether the case in hand be war or something else, either submit himself to the will of the majority or seek some other country more congenial to his peculiar ideas.