The man who took the life of Jesus for a model would hate father and mother, brother and sister; he would have neither wife nor child; he would live from place to place; he would be a lawbreaker and an idler; he would live the life of a wanderer and die the death of a criminal.
Have I put a false color in this picture which I have painted? Have I misrepresented the life of Jesus? Read the four Gospels and see. I find this character sketched in the New Testament, and it is there called Jesus, and it is this character which we are adjured to imitate if we would be perfect.
To the man or woman who declares that the life of Jesus is the way to salvation, I have only this to say, "Why then do you not imitate it?"
Now, I wish to ask, "What kind of morals would such a man as we have sketched naturally teach?"
You will answer, "The morals he lived." At least, we find such morals taught in the New Testament.
My point here is: If the life of Jesus was an honest, faithful exponent of his moral teachings, then such a morality as he practised is not wanted today—and that such a morality is not wanted is shown by the fact that no one practises it.
I know that it is considered respectable and pious to profess great admiration for the doctrines taught by Jesus, and the world has paid them the outward compliment of profession, saying that the moral code of the New Testament was the despair of man; but it has never seriously set to work to reduce this code to practise, which proves that such profession is only a part of the universal accomplishment of fashionable hypocrisy.
Do not understand me as saying that there is no moral precept contained in the Gospels which is worthy of being practised. I make no such declaration, and wish no such construction put upon my words. What I desire to enforce is this: That the morality of Jesus sprang from a philosophy which has passed away, and therefore, that it is, for the greater part, obsolete and worthless. That Jesus shared the general belief of his age that the world was soon to be destroyed, is shown by his estimate of earthly things; and that a morality founded upon such a belief should survive and outlast the faith which inspired it reveals a condition of things that is not flattering to our intellectual perception or to our moral sense.
The morals of the New Testament are founded upon a theory of the universe which is found now only in creeds—those epitaphs of religion. The most superficial observation is sufficient to enable us to perceive that theology can no longer be the basis of morality, and that the authority of the New Testament can not be accepted on this question.