"Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh—
"Woe unto you that are full; for ye shall hunger.
"Woe unto you that laugh now; for ye shall mourn and weep."[2]
[2] Luke, VI Chap.
And the next world according to Jesus was not really a better world, but the reverse of this. Some are hungry now, some are full. In the world of Jesus, those who are full now, will be hungry, and those who are hungry now will be full. Here Lazarus is suffering, and Dives is in comfort; there, they will change places. That is not a world worth looking forward to. It is not even a new world, but the old world turned about and actually made much worse. The suffering, the misery, the pain, in the world, now, are at least temporary, but there, they will be eternal. Here, the rich man, at least, gives of the crumbs of his table to Lazarus, but in heaven Lazarus refuses even a drop of water to moisten the lips of Dives in hell. No healthy and optimistic soul could have dreamed so prosaic a dream. The future is a place of revenge according to Jesus. Such a future as he describes, with thrones for his friends, and hell everlasting for the stranger, would, if really accepted, smite humanity with the worst kind of pessimism. We could pardon Jesus for wishing the destruction of this world, if he only offered a better one in its place.
It is in the light of this belief in a vanishing world that the teachings of Jesus should be interpreted. "If any one," says Jesus, "take away thy coat, let him take thy cloak also." Of course. Of what use is property in a world soon to be set on fire? Besides, according to the Sermon on the Mount, the way to have property in heaven is not to have any here. To Jesus, the world was like a tavern—good only for a night's lodging; or to change the simile, the world was like a sinking ship from which, to save ourselves, everything else must be thrown overboard. Who would care to accumulate wealth, who would care to marry, or rear children, on a sinking ship? Could such an alarmist be a sane moral teacher? Yet, Jesus must have been sane enough to realize that the command not to resist evil,—to give to everyone that would borrow; to turn also the other cheek to the aggressor; and to let the robber bully people out of their belongings,—would upset the very foundations of human society and create a chaos unspeakably injurious to the moral life; but what is the difference if we are on a sinking ship! In the same spirit, Jesus advises his disciples to let the tares grow up with the wheat. It is not worth while trying to separate them now, the time is so short. And when he says that we must "hate father, mother, and children for his sake," he means that to escape this great, this hastening calamity which he predicts, would be better for us than to cultivate the affections and the friendships that will soon be no more. It is really impossible for anyone believing in a heaven to be quite just to the world that now is. The other world looks so important to the believer that this one becomes, as John Wesley expressed it, "A fleeting show."
The position of Jesus on the important question of marriage and the relation of the sexes is also to be studied in the light of the belief that the world is not going to last very long.
It certainly would be absurd to have any weddings, as it would be cruel to have children, or to accumulate property, or to acquire knowledge, in such a world. Tolstoi, in his Kreutzer Sonata, which is a terrible story, interprets the real Christian attitude toward marriage. He shows conclusively that it is inconsistent for a follower of Jesus to marry. Even as the believer must give up all property, he must also give up the family. If he is single, he must not marry; if he is married, he must live as though he was not married. Tolstoi proves his contention by quoting among other texts, the following from Jesus: "And everyone that hath forsaken wife or children or lands for my name's sake"—which words are a direct recommendation to forsake kith and kin, wife and husband, in fact everything. To be a Christian, according to Count Tolstoi, is to follow the example of Jesus who abstained from marriage. What is the use of talking about divorce when marriage is forbidden? Jesus said that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of men's hearts; and marriage is permitted, according to Paul, as a concession to human weakness. The Christian ideal, however, is celibacy. Jesus is very positive on this point. You will not blame me if I quote his own words, just as I find them in the New Testament. In the gospel of Matthew, chapter nineteen, verse twelve, Jesus speaks of three kinds of eunuchs: first, those who were born deformed; second, those who have been mutilated by men; and third, those "who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." This is an invitation to all who can to emasculate themselves. Is not this pernicious teaching? A man could not teach such a doctrine in America to-day without laying himself open to the contempt of his fellows, but when preached by Jesus, hypocrisy and cowardice combine to extol it as divine wisdom. Fortunately, such teaching is admired—not obeyed. That is as far as hypocrisy cares to go. It is owing to the healthy manhood of the occidental nations that this Asiatic superstition has not altogether bankrupted civilization. In the early centuries many of the followers of Jesus mutilated their bodies "for the kingdom of heaven's sake." There is in Russia a sect called Skopskis, with a membership of six thousand, which follows the practice recommended by the founder of Christianity.
The vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, lead practically to self-destruction. Poverty is helplessness, or nothingness; chastity is self-mortification; obedience, by which is meant, absolute surrender of the will to another, is the stamping out of the mind. Goodness! It is not only the world that Christianity wishes to destroy, but also man. Annihilation—the Buddhist Nirvana, seems to be its goal. How to make a man a mere zero—poor, emasculated, and a mental slave, seems to be the ideal of this Asiatic cult. After two thousand years of modern education, such is the hold of Jesus upon the Christian world, that in our churches is still sung the hymn:
"O, to be nothing, nothing!"
With this doctrine of celibacy in view, the indifference of Jesus to the rights of women as human beings is not a surprise. It has been well said that "those who trample upon manhood can have no real respect for woman." Jesus never spoke of God except as a father. If the highest principle or being in the universe is a "he," of course woman can never hope to be on an equality with man. Motherhood will always occupy a secondary place as long as the father is a god. If God is a father, what mother can be on an equality with him? He must rule; she must obey. Women do not stop to think that religion—Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism—is the most stubborn obstacle in the path of their advancement. Jesus ignored women in all the essentials of life. He did not love any one of them sufficiently to share his life with her. He had no place for the love of woman in his heart. He kept twelve men as his constant companions. Suppose Jesus had invited some gentle and devoted woman to the honor of apostleship,—what an example that would have been! But he was not great enough to rise above the bigotry of his age. Surely, there were women in his circle of acquaintance better than Judas Iscariot, who sold him for a paltry sum of money. Women may wait upon Jesus at the table, they may give birth to him, and nurse him; they may fall at his feet to bathe them with their tears and wipe them with their tresses—but to be his apostles—not that. Had Jesus been really a great genius he would have understood that in the work of saving people, the co-operation of woman is indispensable. There are no better saviors than women. How many a husband has been saved from drink—from the gutter even, by his wife. How many sons have been shielded from a prodigal's fate by a mother's all-conquering devotion. Yet for this splendid force or agency of reform, Jesus had no appreciation whatever.
If I were hanged on the highest hill
Mother o' mine;
I know whose love would follow me still
Mother o' mine.
Jesus failed to see in woman that which inspires the poet, the painter, the hero, to do their best. He took the Asiatic view of woman. "Can man be free," sang Shelley, "if woman be a slave?" Suppose Jesus had said that!