CHAPTER I
THE INNER WAY
I
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE
Every scrap of writing that sheds any light on the life of Jesus, and every incident that gives the least detail about His movements or His teaching are precious to us. One can hardly conceive the joy and enthusiasm that would burst forth in all lands, if new fragments of papyrus or of parchment could be unearthed that would add in any measure to our knowledge of the way this Galilean life was lived “beneath the Syrian blue.” But it may now probably be taken for granted that the material will never be forthcoming—and it surely is not now in hand—for an adequate biography of Him. The lives of Jesus that have been written in modern times have a certain value, as suggestive revelations of what the writers thought He ought to have been or ought to have done, but biographies, in the true sense of the word, they are not. The Evangelists performed for us an inestimable service, but they did not furnish us the sort of data necessary for a detailed biography, expressed in clock-time language.
Our “sources” are much more adequate when we turn our attention from external events to the inner way which His life reveals, though they still allow for free play of imagination and for much fluidity of subjective interpretation. It is possible, however, I believe, to look through the genuine words that are preserved and to see, with clairvoyant insight, the inner kingdom of the soul in that Person whose interior life was the richest of all those who have walked our earth. There are curious little playthings to be bought in Rome. If one looks through a pin-hole peep somewhere in one of these tiny toys, one sees to his surprise the whole mighty structure of St. Peter’s Cathedral, standing out as large as it looks in reality. Perhaps we can find some pin-hole peeps in the gospels that in a similar way will let us see the marvelous inner world, the extraordinary spiritual life, of this Person whose outer biography so baffles us.
Our first single glimpse of His interior life must be got without the help of any actual word of His. It is given to us in the gospel accounts of His discovery of His mission. How long the consciousness of mission had been gestating we cannot tell. What books He read, if any, are never named. What ripening influence the days of toil in the carpenter shop may have had, is unnoted. What dawned upon Him as He meditated in silence is not reported. What formative ideas may have come from the little groups of “the quiet ones in the land” can only be guessed at. We are merely told that He increased in wisdom as He advanced in stature, which is the only conceivable way that personality can be attained. Suddenly the moment of clear insight came and He saw what He was in the world for.
It was usual for the great prophets of His people to discover their mission in some such moment of clarified inward sight. Isaiah saw the Lord with His train filling the temple, felt his lips cleansed, and heard the call “who will go?” Ezekiel saw the indescribable living creature with the hands of a man under the wings of the Spirit and heard himself called to his feet for his commission. So here, there was a sudden invading consciousness from beyond. The world with its solid hills appears only the fragment, which it is, and the World of wider Reality floods in and reveals itself. The sky seems rent apart, the Spirit, as though once more brooding over a world in the making, covers Him from above, and gives inward birth to a conviction of uniqueness of Life and uniqueness of mission. He feels Himself in union with His Father.[1]
This experience of the invading Life, awakening a consciousness of unique personal mission, brought with it, as an unavoidable sequence, the stress and strain of a very real temptation. The inner world of self-consciousness has strange watershed “divides” that shape the currents of the life as the mountain ridges of the outer world do the rivers. No new nativity, no fresh awakening, can come to a soul without forcing the momentous issue of its further meaning, or without raising the urgent question, how shall the new insight, the fresh light, the increased power be wrought into life? The deepest issues turn, not upon the choice of “things,” but upon the choice of the kind of self that is to be, and the most decisive dramas are those that are enacted in the inner world before the footlights of our private theater. The temptation is described by the Evangelists in such conventional language and in such popular and pictorial imagery that its immense inner reality is often missed by the reader. This oriental, pictorial way of presenting the drama of the soul catches the western mind in the toils of literalism. The picture is taken for the reality. What we have here in the temptation, when we go into the heart of the matter, is the momentous choice of the kind of Person that is to emerge. It is the immemorial battle between the higher and the lower self within. It was the line of least resistance to accept popular expectation, to go forth to realize the dream of the age. A person conscious of divine anointing, fired with passionate loyalty to the nation’s hopes, gifted with extraordinary power of moving men to new issues would feel at once that he had only to put himself forth as the expected Messiah in order to carry the enthusiastic people with him. Let him but come with the spectacular powers of the Messiah that was eagerly looked for, the power to turn stones to bread, to leap from the pinnacle of the temple without injury, to break the Roman yoke and make Jerusalem once again the city of God’s chosen people—and success was sure to follow. God’s ancient covenant was an absolute pledge to the faithful that He would in His own time make bare His arm and deliver His people. As soon as the anointed one appeared all the forces of the unseen world would be at his command and his triumph would be assured.
The appeal of a career like that is no fictitious “temptation.” It is of a piece with what besets us all. It is out of the very stuff of nature. At some such crossroad we have all stood—with the issue of our inner destiny in unstable equilibrium.
Over against it, another “way” is set, another kind of life is dimly outlined, another type of anointed one is seen to be possible, another kingdom, totally different from the one of popular expectation, is descried. This kingdom of His spiritual vision cannot come by miracle or by power; it can come only through complete adjustment of will to the will of the Father-God. This anointed one of His higher aspiration will be no temporal ruler, no political king, no spectacular wonder-worker. He will rule only by the conquering power of love and goodness. He will venture everything on sheer faith in the Father’s love and on the appeal of uncalculating goodness of heart and will. This new kind of life that draws Him from the line of least resistance is a life of utter simplicity, which discounts what the world calls “goods,” which draws upon an unseen environment for its resources and which expands inwardly, rather than outwardly, after the manner of the green bay tree. The new “way” that opens to His sight, and that beckons Him from all other ways of glory, is a way of suffering and sacrifice, a way of the cross. It offers itself not because self-giving is a better way than an easy, happy path, but because it is the only way by which love in a world like ours can reach its goal; it is the only way by which the kingdom of God can be formed in the lives of men like us.