The Inner Life

by Rufus M. Jones

We have seen that religion cannot be sundered from the intellectual currents, or from the moral undertakings, or from the social tasks of the world. It cannot be merely inward. It can preserve its inward power only as it lives in actual correspondence with its whole environment and becomes also outward. But the primary thing for Christ, we saw, was the attainment of an inner spirit, the seed-spirit of the Kingdom, the spirit of the beatitudes—the attainment of a type of life to which blessedness inherently attaches.

The question at once arises, how shall this inner spirit be spread and propagated? How is religion of the inner type to grow and expand? There are two characteristic ways of propagating religious ideas, of carrying spiritual discoveries into the life of the world. One way is the way of organization; the other way is the way of contagion. The way of organization, which is as old as human history, is too familiar to need any description. Our age has almost unlimited faith in it. If we wish to carry a live idea into action, we organize. We select officials. We make “motions.” We pass resolutions. We appoint committees or boards or commissions. We hold endless conferences. We issue propaganda material. We have street processions. We use placards and billboards. We found institutions, and devise machinery. We have collisions between “pros” and “antis” and stir up enthusiasm and passion for our “cause.” The Christian Church is probably the most impressive instance of organization in the entire history of man’s undertakings. It has become, in its historical development, almost infinitely complex, with organizations within organizations and suborganizations within suborganizations. It has employed every known expedient, even the sword, for the advancement of its “cause,” it has created a perfect maze of institutions and it has originated a vast variety of educational methods for carrying forward its truth.

But great as has been the historical emphasis on organization, it nevertheless occupies a very slender place in the consciousness of Christ. There is no clear indication that He appointed any officials, or organized any society, or founded any institution. There are two “sayings” in Matthew which use the word “Church,” but they almost certainly bear the mark and coloring of a later time, when the Church had already come into existence and had formed its practices and its traditions. And even though the great “saying” at Cæsarea Philippi were accepted as the actual words of Jesus, it is still quite possible to see in it the announcement of a spiritual fellowship, spreading by inspiration and contagion, rather than the founding of an official institution. It is, no doubt, fortunate on the whole that the Church was organized, and that the great idea found a visible body through which to express itself, though nobody can fail to see that the Church, while meaning to propagate the gospel, has always profoundly modified and transformed it, and that it has brought into play a great many tendencies foreign to the original gospel.

Christ’s way of propagating the truth—the way that inherently fits the inner life and spirit of the gospel of the Kingdom—was the way of personal contagion. Instead of founding an institution, or organizing an official society, or forming a system, or creating external machinery, He counted almost wholly upon the spontaneous and dynamic influence of life upon life, of personality upon personality. He would produce a new world, a new social order, through the contagious and transmissive character of personal goodness. He practically ignored, or positively rejected, the method of restraint, and trusted absolutely to the conquering power of loyalty and consecration. It was His faith that, if you get into the world anywhere a seed of the Kingdom, a nucleus of persons who exhibit the blessed life, who are dedicated to expanding goodness, who rely implicitly on love and sympathy, who try in meek patience the slow method that is right, who still feel the clasping hands of love even when they go through pain and trial and loss, this seed-spirit will spread, this nucleus will enlarge and create a society. If the new spirit of passionate love, and of uncalculating goodness gets formed in one person, by a silent alchemy a group of persons will soon become permeated and charged with the same spirit, new conditions will be formed, and in time children will be born into a new social environment and will suck in new ideals with their mother’s milk.

Persons of the blessed life, Christ says, are the saving salt of the earth. They carry their wholesome savor into everything they touch. They do not try to save themselves. They are ready like salt to dissolve and disappear, but, the more they give themselves away, the more antiseptic and preservative they become to the society in which they live. They keep the old world from spoiling and corrupting not by attack and restraint, not by excision and amputation, but by pouring the preservative savor of their lives of goodness into all the channels of the world. This preservative and saving influence on society depends, however, entirely on the continuance of the inner quality of life and it will be certain to cease if ever the salt lose its savor, i.e. if the soul of religion wanes or dies away and only the outer form of it remains.

But such lives are more than antiseptic and preservative; they are kindling and illuminative. They become “candles of the Lord.” Candles emit their light and kindle other candles by burning themselves up and transmitting their flame. When a life is set on fire, and is radiant with self-consuming love, it will invariably set other lives on fire. Such a person may teach many valuable ideas, he may organize many movements, he may attack many evil customs, but the best thing he will ever do will be to fuse and kindle other souls with the fire of his passion. His own burning, shining life is always his supreme service.

“The greatest legacy the hero leaves his race

Is—to have been a hero.”

Such a person will be eager to decrease that his kindling power may increase. He will not care to save himself, or to reap a reward for his service. He may not even know that he is shining, like the early saint who “wist not that his face did shine.” But for all that, men will see the way by his light and will catch the glory of living because he exhibits it. He can no more be hid than can a hill-top city, or the headlight of a locomotive, or the newly risen sun.

That is Christ’s way of spreading the life of the Kingdom, that is His method of propagating the inner spirit, and of producing a society of blessed people.