If it is urged that such things are natural to man—"do not even the publicans the same?" (Matt. 5:46)—Jesus carries the matter a long way further. "Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain" (Matt. 5:41). The man who would use such compulsion would be the alien soldier, the hireling of Herod or of Rome; and who would wish to cart him and his goods even one mile? "Go two miles," says Jesus—or, if the Syriac translation preserves the right reading, "Go two extra." Why? Well, the soldier is a man after all, and by such unsolicited kindness you may make a friend even of a government official—not always an easy thing to do—at any rate you can help him; God helps him; "be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). Ordinary kindness and tenderness could hardly be urged beyond that point; and yet Jesus goes further still. He would have us pray for those that despitefully use us (Matt. 5:44)—and in no Pharisaic way, but with the same instinctive love and friendliness that he always used himself. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). There are religions which inculcate the tolerance of wrong aiming at equanimity of mind or acquisition of merit. But Jesus implies on the contrary that in all this also the Christian denies himself, does not seek even in this way to save his own soul, but forgets all about it in the service of others, though he finds by and by, with a start, that he has saved it far more effectually than he could have expected (Mark 8:35; Matt. 25:37, 40). The emphasis falls on our duty of kindness and tenderness to all men and women, because we and they are alike God's children.
With his emphasis on tenderness we may group his teaching on forgiveness. He makes the forgiving spirit an antecedent of prayer—"when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses" (Mark 11:25). "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift" (Matt. 5:23, 24). The parable of the king and his debtor (Matt. 18:23), painfully true to human nature, brings out the whole matter of our forgiveness of one another into the light; we are shown it from God's outlook. The teaching as ever is Theocentric. To Peter, Jesus says that a man should be prepared to forgive his brother to seventy times seven—if anybody can keep count so far (Matt. 18:21-35). He sees how quarrels injure life, and alienate a man from God. Hence comes the famous saying: "Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matt. 5:39). He would have men even avoid criticism of one another (Matt. 7:1-5). Epigrams are seductive, and there is a fascination in the dissection of character; but there is always a danger that a clever characterization, a witty label, may conclude the matter, that a possible friendship may be lost through the very ingenuity with which the man has been labelled, who might have been a friend. It is not a small matter in Jesus' eyes, he puts his view very strongly (Matt. 5:22); and, as we must always remember, he bases himself on fact. We may lose a great deal more than we think by letting our labels stand between us and his words, by our habit of calling them paradoxes and letting them go at that.
It is worth while to look at the type of character that he admires. Modern painters have often pictured Jesus as something of a dreamer, a longhaired, sleepy, abstract kind of person. What a contrast we find in the energy of the real Jesus—in the straight and powerful language which he uses to men, in the sweep and range of his mind, in the profundity of his insight, the drive and compulsiveness of his thinking, in the venturesomeness of his actions. How many of the parables turn on energy? The real trouble with men, he seems to say, is again and again sheer slackness; they will not put their minds to the thing before them, whether it be thought or action. Thus, for instance, the parable of the talents turns on energetic thinking and decisive action; and these are the things that Jesus admires—in the widow who will have justice (Luke 18:21)—in the virgins who thought ahead and brought extra oil (Matt. 25:4)—in the vigorous man who found the treasure and made sure of it (Matt. 13:44)—in the friend at midnight, who hammered, hammered, hammered, till he got his loaves (Luke 11:8)—in the "violent," who "take the Kingdom of Heaven by force" (Matt. 11:12; Luke 16:16)—in the man who will hack off his hand to enter into life (Mark 9:43). Even the bad steward he commends, because he definitely put his mind on his situation (Luke 16:8). As we shall see later on, indecision is one of the things that in his judgement will keep a man outside the Kingdom of God, that make him unfit for it. The matter deserves more study than we commonly give it. You must have a righteousness, he says, which exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees (Matt. 5:20)—and the Pharisees were professionals in righteousness. His tests of discipleship illumine his ideal of character—Theocentric thinking—negation of self—the thought-out life. He will have his disciples count the cost, reckon their forces, calculate quietly the risks before them—right up to the cross (Luke 14:27-33)—like John Bunyan in Bedford Gaol, where he thought things out to the pillory and thence to the gallows, so that, if it came to the gallows, he should be ready, as he says, to leap off the ladder blindfold into eternity. That is the energy of mind that Jesus asks of men, that he admires in men.
On the other side, he is always against the life of drift, the half-thought-out life. There they were, he says, in the days of Noah, eating and drinking, marrying, dreaming—and the floods came and destroyed them (Luke 17:27). So ran the old familiar story, and, says Jesus, it is always true; men will drift and dream for ever, heedless of fact, heedless of God—and then ruin, life gone, the soul lost, the Son of Man come, and "you yourselves thrust out" (Luke 13:28, with Matt. 25:10-13). It is quite striking with what a variety of impressive pictures Jesus drives home his lesson. There is the person who everlastingly says and does not do (Matt. 23:3)—who promises to work and does not work (Matt. 21:28)—who receives a new idea with enthusiasm, but has not depth enough of nature for it to root itself (Mark 4:6)—who builds on sand, the "Mr. Anything" of Bunyan's allegory; nor these alone, for Jesus is as plain on the unpunctual (Luke 13:25), the easy-going (Luke 12:47), the sort that compromises, that tries to serve God and Mammon (Matt. 6:24)—all the practical half-and-half people that take their bills quickly and write fifty, that offer God and man about half what they owe them of thought and character and action, and bid others do the same, and count themselves men of the world for their acuteness (Luke 16:1-8). And to do them justice, Jesus commends them; they have taken the exact measure of things "in their generation." Their mistake lies in their equation of the fugitive and the eternal; and it is the final and fatal mistake according to Jesus, and a very common one—forgetfulness of God in fact (Luke 12:20), a mistake that comes from not thinking things out. Jesus will have men think everything out to the very end. "He never says: Come unto me, all ye who are too lazy to think for yourselves" (H. S. Coffin). It is energy of mind that he calls for—either with me or against me. He does not recognize neutrals in his war—"he that is not against us is for us" (Luke 9:50)—"he that is not with me is against me" (Matt. 12:30).
Where does a man's Will point him? That is the question. "Out of the abundance, the overflow, of the heart, the mouth speaketh" (Matt. 12:34). What is it that a man wills, purity or impurity (Matt. 5:28)? It is the inner energy that makes a man; what he says and does is an overflow from what is within—an overflow, it is true, with a reaction. It is what a man chooses, and what he wills, that Jesus always emphasizes; "God knoweth your hearts" (Luke 16:15). Very well then; does a man choose God? That is the vital issue. Does he choose God without reserve, and in a way that God, knowing his heart, will call a whole-hearted choice?
St. Augustine, in a very interesting passage ("Confessions", viii. 9, 21), remarks upon the fact that, when the mind commands the body, obedience is instantaneous, but that when it commands itself, it meets with resistance. "The mind commands that the mind shall will—it is one and the same mind, and it does not obey." He finds the reason; the mind does not absolutely and entirely ("ex toto") will the thing, and so it does not absolutely and entirely command it. "There is nothing strange after all in this," he says, "partly to will, partly not to will; but it is a weakness of the mind that it does not arise in its entirety, uplifted by truth, because it is borne down by habit. Thus there are two Wills, because one of them is not complete."
The same thought is to be traced in the teaching of Jesus. It is implied in what he says about prayer. There is a want of faith, a half-heartedness about men's prayers; they pray as Augustine says he himself did: "Give me chastity and continence, but not now" (Conf, viii. 7, 17). That is not what Jesus means by prayer—the utterance of the half-Will. Nor is it this sort of surrender to God that Jesus calls for—no, the question is, how thoroughly is a man going to put himself into God's hands? Does he mean to be God's up to the cross and beyond? Does he enlist absolutely on God's terms without a bargain with God, prepared to accept God's will, whatever it is, whether it squares with his liking or not? (cf. Luke 17:7-10). Are his own desires finally out of the reckoning? Does he, in fact, deny—negate—himself (Mark 8:34)? Jesus calls for disciples, with questions so penetrating on his lips. What a demand to make of men! What faith, too, in men it shows, that he can ask all this with no hint of diminished seriousness!
Jesus is the great believer in men, as we saw in the choice of his twelve. To that group of disciples he trusts the supremest task men ever had assigned to them. Not many wise, not many mighty, Paul found at Corinth (1 Cor. 1:26); and it has always been so. Is it not still the gist of the Gospel that Jesus believes in the writer and the reader of these lines—trusts them with the propagation of God's Kingdom, incredible commission? Jesus was always at leisure for individuals; this was the natural outcome of his faith in men. What else is the meaning of his readiness to spend himself in giving the utmost spiritual truth—no easy task, as experience shows us—even to a solitary listener? If we accept what he tells us of God, we can believe that the individual is worth all that Jesus did and does for him, but hardly otherwise. His gift of discovering interest in uninteresting people, says Phillips Brooks, was an intellectual habit that he gave to his disciples. We think too much "like men"; he would have us "think like God," and think better of odd units and items of humanity than statesmen and statisticians are apt to do. It has been pointed out lately how fierce he is about the man who puts a stumbling-block in the way of even "a little one"—"better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea"; no mere phrase—for when he draws a picture, he sees it; he sees this scene, and "better so—for him too!" is his comment (Mark 9:42). There was, we may remember, a view current in antiquity that when a man was drowned, his soul perished with his body, though I do not know if the Jews held this opinion. It is not likely that Jesus did. What is God's mind, God's conduct, toward those people whom men think they can afford to despise? "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). And to whom did he say this? To the most ordinary people—to Peter and James and John; for all sorts of people he held up this impossible ideal of a perfection like God's. What a faith in man it implies! "All things are possible to him that believes" (Mark 9:9.3). Why should not you believe? he says.
His faith in the soul's possibilities is boundless, and in marked contrast with what men think of themselves. A man, for instance, will say that he has done his best; but nine times out of ten it means mere fatigue; he is not going to trouble to do any more. How can a man know that he has done his best? The Gospel of Jesus comes with its message of the grace of God, and the power of God, to people who are stupid and middle-aged, who are absolutely settled in life, who are conscious of their limitations, who know they are living in a rut and propose to stick to it for the remainder of their days; and Jesus tells them in effect that he means to give them a new life altogether, that he means to have from them service, perfectly incredible to them. No man, he suggests, need be so inured to the stupidity of middle age but there may be a miraculous change in him. A great many people need re-conversion at forty, however Christian they have been before. This belief of his in the individual man and in the worth of the individual is the very charter of democracy. The original writings of William Tyndale, who first translated the New Testament from Greek into English, contain the essential ideas of democracy already in 1526—the outcome of familiar study of the Gospel. Jesus himself said of Herod: "Go and tell that fox" (Luke 13:32). Herod was a king, but he was not above criticism; and Christians have not failed at times to make the criticism of the great that truth requires.
Jesus had no illusions about men; he sees the weak spots; he recognizes the "whited sepulchre" (Matt. 23:27). He is astonished at the unbelief of men and women (Mark 6:6). He does not understand why they cannot think (Mark 8:21), but he notes how they see and yet do not see, hear and do not understand (Matt. 13:13). He is impressed by their falsity, even in religion (Matt. 15:8). He knows perfectly well the evil of which the human heart is capable (Matt. 15:19). A man who steadily looks forward to being crucified by the people he is trying to help is hardly one of the absent-minded enthusiasts, mis-called idealists. There never was, we feel, one who so thoroughly looked through his friends, who loved them so much and yet without a shade of illusion. This brings us to the subject of the next chapter.