He came forth from those momentous days of inner struggle with the issue settled, and with the first step taken in the way of the Kingdom.
II
MAKING A LIFE
Our present-day age has a kind of passion for the study of developing processes. We do not feel quite at home with any subject until we can work our way back to its origin or origins and then follow it in its unfoldings, explaining the higher and more complex stages in terms of the lower and more simple ones.
That method, however, cannot be successfully used to unlock the secret of the gospels. We do not find beginnings here; we cannot follow genetic processes; we are unable to discriminate higher and lower stages of insight. We must launch out at the very start in mid-sea. Whatever words of Christ one begins with indicate that He has already arrived at an absolute insight—I mean, that He has found a way of living that is no longer relatively good, but intrinsically and absolutely good.
It is an inveterate habit with men like us to estimate everything in terms of relative results. We are pragmatists by the very push of our immemorial instincts. Our first question, consciously or unconsciously, is apt to be, what effects will come, if I act so, or so? Will this course work well? Will it further some issue or some interest? And this deep-lying pragmatic tendency—this aim at results—appears woven into the very fiber even of much of the religion of the world.
Sometimes the results sought are near, sometimes they are remote; sometimes they are sought for this world, sometimes they are sought for the next world; sometimes the pragmatic aim at results is crudely and coarsely selfish, sometimes it is refined, or altogether veiled, but religion has no doubt often enough been an impressive kind of double-entry bookkeeping, the piling up of credits or of merits which some day will bring the sure result that is sought.
Just that entire pragmatic attitude Christ has left forever behind. His inner way, His interior insight, passes on to a new level of life, to a totally different type of religious aspiration and to another method of valuation. For Him the beyond is always within. The only good thing is a life that is intrinsically good; the only blessedness worth talking about is a kind of blessedness which attaches by a law of inner necessity to the character of the life itself. It makes no difference what world one may eventually be in—if only it is still a world of spiritual issues—goodness, holiness, likeness to God, will still constitute blessedness as they do in this world.
When once this insight is reached, it affects all the pursuits and all the valuations of the soul. All “other things” at once become secondary, and “entering into life,” “seeking life,” “finding life,” becomes the primary thing. “Making a life” overtops in importance even “making a living”—the life is more than meat, more than raiment, more than gaining the whole world. It is better to enter into life halt and maimed—with right hand cut off and eye plucked out—than bend all one’s energies to preserve the body whole and yet to miss life. The way to life is strait, the entering gate is narrow. One cannot enter without facing the stern necessity of focusing the vision on the central purpose, without getting “a single eye,” without letting go many things for the sake of one thing.
Sacrifice, surrender, negation, are inherently involved in any great onward-marching life. They go with any choice that can be made of a rich and intense life. It is impossible to find without losing, to get without giving, to live without dying. But sacrifice, surrender, negation, are never for their own sake; they are never ends in themselves. They are involved in life itself.
One great spiritual law comes to light and becomes operative, as soon as the interior insight is won, as soon as the inner way is found: The law that the soul can have what it wants. This law of the interior life, of the inner way, Christ affirms again and again in varying phrase. The inner attitude, the settled trend of desire, the persistent swing of the will, are the very things that make life. The person who cherishes hate in his soul forms a disposition of hatred and must live in the atmosphere which that spirit forms. The person who longs for deeds that are wrong, and allows desire to play with free scope is inwardly as though he did the deed. He is what he wants to be. And so, too, on the other hand, the rightly fashioned will is its own reward and has its own peculiar blessedness. The person who hungers and thirsts for goodness will get what he wants. He who seeks, with undivided aspiration, will always find. He who knocks with persistent desire for the gates of life to open will see them swing apart for him to go through to his goal. He who asks, with the ground swell of his whole inner being, for the things which minister to life and feed its deepest roots, will get what he asks for. The very pity of the Pharisee’s way of life is that he has his reward—he gets what he is seeking. The glory of the other way is the glory of the imperfect—the glory of living toward the flying goal of likeness to the Father in heaven.