But whenever any man attempts to live in the spirit of Jesus, the first to rally to him are the sincere recusants from the church. He may be satirised, and probably will be, as a moral anarchist, a fanatic, and a hare-brained enthusiast; but nevertheless the best men will rally to him. They rallied to a Father Dolling, they rally to a General Booth. The types represented by such men lie far apart. One was so high a ritualist as to be almost Catholic, the other is an ecclesiastic anarchist so extreme that he dispenses with the sacraments. But these things count for little; what the world sees in such men is the essential reality of their life. One of the severest critics of Dolling once went to hear him with the bitterest prejudice. He found him with a couple of hundred thieves and prostitutes gathered round him, to whom he was telling the love of Jesus in the simplest language. "Dolling may be a Roman Catholic, or anything else he pleases," said his critic; "all I know is that I never heard any one speak of Christ like that," and from that hour he was his warmest friend. No doubt similar conversions of sentiment have attended the ministries of all apostolic men and women, of Francis and Catherine, of Wesley and Whitfield, of Moody and General Booth. Men know by instinct the lover of his kind. Men forgive a hundred defects for the sake of reality. Perhaps the sublimest of all justifications of Christ's law of love is that no man has truly practiced it in any age without himself rising into a life of memorable significance, without immediate attestations of its virtue in the transformation of society, without attracting to himself the reverence and affection of multitudes of fellow workers who have rendered him the same adoring discipleship that the friends of Jesus gave to Him.
No doubt it will also be said that were the ideals thus indicated to triumph, there would be nothing left for the direction of society but a mischievous and sentimental spirit of amiability. The general fibre of virtue would disintegrate. Pity for the sinner, pushed to such extremes, would in the end mean tolerance for sin. But to such an objection the character of Jesus furnishes its own reply. The character of Jesus displays love in its supreme type, but it is wholly lacking in that weak-featured travesty of love which we call amiability. His hatred of sin was at times a furious rage. His lips breathed flame as well as tenderness; "Out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword." We may search literature in vain to discover any words half as terrible and scathing as the words in which Jesus described sin. The psychological explanation is that great powers of love are twin with great powers of hatred. The passionate love of virtue is, in its obverse, an equally passionate hatred of vice. In the same way the passionate love of our kind has for its obverse an equally passionate hatred for the wrongs they endure. For this reason justice and virtue are nowhere so secure as in the hands of men who love their kind intensely. They are most insecure in the hands of the cynic, who despises his kind, and therefore misapprehends their conduct. For love, in its last analysis, is understanding, and where there is understanding of our fellows there can hardly fail to be wisdom in our method of treating them. That was the great secret of Jesus in these examples which we have reviewed. He understood Simon Peter. He understood the woman who was a sinner. He therefore knew the only wise method of treating them. One with less pity might have sent the harlot back to her shame, one with less love might have driven Peter into permanent apostasy. But Jesus, in His understanding of the human heart, knew the exact limit of reproof, the exact point at which magnanimity became efficacious in redemption. Those who follow His spirit will attain the same rare wisdom. They will never sacrifice virtue to compassion, nor will they put virtue in opposition to compassion. One question may suffice. Would we be content to leave the administration of society in the hands of Jesus? Would we confidently submit our own case to His jurisdiction? If, in every dispute between men and nations, in every case of wrong and crime, Jesus were the one Arbiter, would the world be better ruled, would the probable course of events be such as to increase the sum of human happiness? We can scarcely hesitate in the reply—we, who daily pray that His kingdom may come. And if to such questions we return our inevitable affirmative, we cannot doubt that society has everything to gain in being governed by those who live most closely in the spirit of Jesus; that they, and they only, are the true leaders and judges of the nations.
THE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE
THE PRAYER
Lover of souls, indeed,
But Lover of bodies too,
Seeing in human flesh
The God shine through;
Hallowed be Thy name,
And, for the sake of Thee,
Hallowed be all men,
For Thine they be.
Doer of deeds divine,
Thou, the Father's Son,
In all Thy children may
Thy will be done,
Till each works miracles
On poor and sick and blind,
Learning from Thee the art
Of being kind.
For Thine is the glory of love,
And Thine the tender power,
Touching the barren heart
To leaf and flower,
Till not the lilies alone,
Beneath Thy gentle feet,
But human lives for Thee
Grow white and sweet.
And Thine shall the Kingdom be,
Thou Lord of Love and Pain,
Conqueror over death
By being slain.
And we, with the lives like Thine
Shall cry in the great day when
Thou earnest to claim Thine own,
"All Hail! Amen."