i
bags that wax not old
the ancient world found it very difficult to keep money even after it was got. there were almost constant wars involving the dire stripping of the unprotected country districts, and the siege and devastation of cities. in those times almost everything was fragile. it was never easy to discover any form of wealth that was surely abiding. even if the besom of an invading army did not sweep away the labor of years, still there were other enemies to be feared. tyrants were, always on the watch for ways of relieving wealthy men of their treasures. there were robber bands lying in wait for the traveler, and neighborhood thieves found[40] it a small matter to break into private houses and to steal hidden money. it was no uncommon thing for men to dig in the ground and hide the talent which they had saved, or to bury the pearl of great price, or other precious jewel, in a field. if one invested his wealth in garments, then another enemy was to be feared. the moth is as old as clothes, and he got in even where the thief failed to break through.
the problem of getting an indestructible money-bag was, thus, a problem of first importance. a journey to jericho might any day reduce a man to primitive conditions, or a passing army might make him a beggar, or the visit of a thief might strip him of all his living, or the silent work of a brood of moths might ruin the savings of years. there were no perdurable purses, no nonbreakable banks, no irreducible forms of wealth.
christ evidently recognized that there was a value in money. he did not apparently demand from his follower the[41] absolute renunciation of ownership. he expounded no new theory of economics. but he was profoundly impressed by the moral havoc and the social calamities caused by the excessive ambition for, and pursuit of, wealth. he saw how the mad rush for money and the overvaluation of it killed out the noblest fundamental traits of the soul, and, more than all else, he felt the tragedy of human lives being focused with intensity of strain and fixed with burning passion on the pursuit of such pitiably fragile treasures—money-bags of all sorts waxing old and becoming incapable of holding the hoard that absorbed the whole life.
christ, then, proposes a new kind of purse, an indestructible and immutable treasure-bag—“make for yourselves bags that wax not old.” such purses are not on the market, they cannot be purchased, they must be woven by each person for himself, and they must be woven, if at all, out of the stuff of life itself. we here pass over, as so often in christ’s teaching,[42] from extrinsic wealth to intrinsic, from the wealth which men merely possess to the kind of wealth which they can themselves be. we once more find ourselves brought to an inner way of living, where the issue is no longer how to accumulate goods, but rather how to become good. the problem is the problem of what men live by. we are called to loosen our grip on perishable treasures only that we may tighten our hold on heavenly, i.e. spiritual, treasure. we are shown the folly of spending a life building barns for expanding earthly possessions, while we are taking no pains to make ourselves rich in god.
what is it, then, that men live by? what will prove to be imperishable wealth, whether we are in this world, or in any other world of real moral issues? it is obviously not money, for men often live nobly after the money-bag has waxed old and after the bank has failed, and it is our most elemental faith that life blossoms out into its consummate richness after all[43] earthly affairs come to a complete close, and after every penny of visible wealth has been left forever behind. money is plainly not intrinsic treasure; love is, goodness is, joy is. a beloved disciple, in a moment of inspiration, announced the profound truth that love is “of god.” men wrongly divide love into two types, “human love” and “divine love,” but in reality there is only love. wherever love has become the nature of the soul, and it has become “natural” now to forget self for others, to seek to give rather than to get, to share rather than to possess, to be impoverished in order that some loved one may abound, there a divine and godlike spirit has been formed. and we now come upon a new kind of wealth, a kind that accumulates with use, because it is a law that the more the spirit of love is exercised, the more the soul spends itself in love, so much the more love it has, the richer it grows, the diviner its nature becomes. but at the same time, it is a fact that love is never[44] complete, never reaches its full scope and measure until our love takes on an eternal aspect—until we love god in himself or love him in our loved ones. one reason why love is exalted by death is that we no longer love our immortal loved one in any narrow and selfish way; we love now for pure love’s sake, and the truest of all treasures which can be laid up in imperishable bags is this stock of unalloyed love for that which is most lovely—for god and for souls that are given to us to bring some of his nature closer to our human hearts.
goodness is, of course, notoriously hard to define. it is never an abstract quality that can be described by logical concepts. it is a way of living, a way of acting, a way of working out relationships. it is, like love, a cumulative thing. to be good inherently means to be becoming better, to be on the way to an unattained goal of action, or of character. it is the glory of going on to be perfect like our father in heaven. to be rich in goodness[45] of character, therefore, is to be on the way to become ever richer, however long the journey lasts, however far the spiral winds, for goodness, like love, is of god, and steadily assimilates our imperfect human nature to the perfect divine nature.
joy is, perhaps, not often thought of as one of the things men live by, as the soul’s eternal wealth. life is so full of sorrow and pain that joy seems like a fleeting, vanishing asset. but that is because joy is confused with pleasure. true joy is not a thing of moods, not a capricious emotion, tied to fluctuating experiences. it is a state and condition of the soul. it survives through pain and sorrow and, like a subterranean spring, waters the whole life. it is intimately allied and bound up with love and goodness, and so is deeply rooted in the life of god. joy is the most perfect and complete mark and sign of immortal wealth, because it indicates that the soul is living by love and by goodness, and is very rich in god.
[46]
ii
otherism
(matt. vii. 1-12)
altruism is an honored word. otherism is only recently coined and has not yet become widely current in good speech. we need, however, a word that has more inward depth than altruism usually carries, and perhaps otherism will eventually take that vacant place.
not merely in these days of war, but in all our human relations all the time we greatly need to get the interior vision which enables us to understand from within those with whom we live and work. nobody sees life correctly until he has corrected his own views by a true appreciation of the views of others. from the outside it is impossible to estimate any life fairly. we have long ago learned that we can get no true account of any historical character unless we have a historian who can put himself in the place of the person he is describing. he must have imagination[47] and be able to see clearly the conditions and forces, the influences and the atmosphere in which the man lived. the problems which he had to deal with, the conceptions which governed men’s thoughts when he lived—all these must be understood, before we can get any estimate of the man himself. the same sort of imagination is necessary to judge the person who lives next door. we dare not pronounce upon him until we know all that he has to face. if we could once feel his quivering spirit and could see his inward struggles, we could not set up our private tribunal and pass our cold individual judgment upon him. the real remedy for this hard critical spirit which breaks society up into independent units is the spirit of love, the spirit of otherism.
the moment we put ourselves in the place of others, and pronounce no judgment upon persons until we have seen all the circumstances of their life, a new state of things at once appears. genuine sympathy,[48] clear interior insight into the personality of others, immediately creates a new world. the trouble too often is that we see all the defects in others and forget our own. we want to take the mote out of another person’s eye while all the time there is a whole fence rail in our own. christ’s rule is to make oneself perfect before one goes to correcting others. “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
there is another situation also which would be remedied if we learned to put ourselves in the other person’s place—if we had the spirit of otherism. christ sums it up in the proverb about casting pearls before swine, i.e. giving what is a misfit. many of our well-meant charities are of this sort. we blunder in our efforts to help poor needy people, because we do not get their point of view. we do not live our way into their lives. there is no fit between our gift and their need. they get a stone for bread.
the same thing happens in much of our[49] public speaking. many persons have the barbarous habit of never imagining the listeners’ point of view. they go on speaking as unconscious of the condition confronting them as the hose pipe is when the water is turned on. the remedy again is otherism. it is impossible to help anybody with a message until you can in some measure share his life.
“the holy supper is kept, indeed,
in whatso we share with another’s need.”
this teaching is all summed up in the golden rule, “all things that ye would that men should do unto you do ye also unto them.” it is clear at once that to do this one must cultivate both his spirit of love and his power of imagination. it is never enough to want to help a person. we must put ourself in his place and be able to do what really will help him. it would appear, therefore, that the most difficult and at the same time the most heavenly attainment in the world is sympathy—the spirit of otherism.
[50]
iii
scavengers and the kingdom
we no longer expect a world of perfect conditions to appear by sudden intervention. we have explained so many things by the discovery of antecedent developmental processes that we have leaped to the working faith that all things come that way. we do, no doubt, find unbridged gaps in the enormous series of events that have culminated in our present world, and we must admit that nature seems sometimes to desert her usual placid way of process for what looks like a steeplechase of sudden “jumps,” but we feel pretty sure that even these “jumps” have been slowly prepared for and are themselves part of the process-method.
then, too, we find it very difficult to conceive how a spiritual kingdom—a world which is built and held together by the inner gravitation of love—could come by a fiat, or a stroke, or a jet. the qualities which form and characterize the[51] kingdom of god are all qualities that are born and cultivated within by personal choices, by the formation of rightly-fashioned wills, by the growth of love and sympathy in the heart, by the creation of pure and elevated desires. those traits must be won and achieved. they cannot be shot into souls from without. if, therefore, we are to expect the crowning age that shall usher in a world in which wrath and hate no longer destroy, from which injustice is banished and the central law of which is love like that of christ’s, then we must look for this age, it seems to me, to come by slow increments and gains of advancing personal and social goodness, and by divine and human processes already at work in some degree in the lives of men.
christ often seems to teach this view. there is a strand in his sayings that certainly implies a kingdom coming by a long process of slow spiritual gains. there is first the seed, then the blade, then the ear and finally the full corn in the ear.[52] the mustard seed, though so minute and tiny, is a type of the kingdom because it contains the potentiality of a vast growth and expansion. the yeast is likewise a figure of ever-growing, permeating, penetrating living force which in time leavens the whole mass. the kingdom is frequently described as an inner life, a victorious spirit. it “comes” when god’s will is done in a person as it is done in heaven, and, therefore, it is not a spectacle to be “observed,” like the passing of c?sar’s legions, or the installation of a new ruler. but, on the other hand, there are plainly many sayings which point toward the expectation of a mighty sudden event. we seem, again and again, to be hearing not of process, but of apocalypse, not of slow development, but of a mysterious leap. there can be no question that most devout jews of the first century expected the world’s relief expedition to come by miracle, and it is evident that there was an intense hope in the minds of men that, in one way or another, god would[53] intervene and put things right. many think that christ shared that hope and expectation. it is of course possible that in sharing, as he did, the actual life of man, he partook of the hopes and travails and expectations of his times. but, i think, we need to go very slowly and cautiously in this direction. to interpret christ’s message mainly in terms of apocalypse and sudden interventions is surely to miss its naturalness, its spiritual vision, and its inward depth. we can well admit that nobody then had quite our modern conception of process or our present day dislike of breaks, interruptions, and interventions. there was no difficulty in thinking of a new age or dispensation miraculously inaugurated. only it looks as though christ had discovered an ethical and spiritual way which made it unnecessary to count on miracle. there was much refuse to be consumed, much corruption to be removed, before the new condition of life could be in full play, but he seems to have seen that the consuming fire and the[54] cleansing work were an essential and inherent part of the process that was bringing the kingdom.
when he was asked where men were to look for the kingdom, his answer was that they were to find a figure and parable of it in the normal process of nature’s scavengers. the carcass lies decaying in the sun, corrupting the air and tainting everything in its region. there can be no wholesome conditions of life in that spot until the corruption is removed. but nature has provided a way of cleansing the air. the scavenger comes and removes the refuse and corruption and turns it by a strange alchemy into living matter. life feeds on the decaying refuse, raises it back into life, and cleanses the world by making even corruption minister to its own life processes. we could not live an hour in our world if it were not alive with a myriad variety of scavenging methods that burn up effete matter, transmute noxious forms into wholesome stuff, cleanse away the poisons, and transmute, not by[55] an apocalypse, but by a process, death into life and corruption into sweetness. may not the vulture, like the tiny sparrow who cannot fall without divine regard, be a sign, a figure, a parable? when we look for the kingdom, in the light of this sign, we shall not search the clouds of heaven, we shall not consult “the number of the beast”—we shall look for it wherever we see life conquering death, wherever the white tents of love are pitched against the black tents of hate, wherever the living forces of goodness are battering down the strongholds of evil, wherever the sinner is being changed to a saint, wherever ancient survivals of instinct and custom are yielding to the sway of growing vision and insight and ideal. it is “slow and late” to come, this kingdom! so was life slow to come, while all that was to be
“whirl’d for a million ?ons thro’ the vast
waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light.”
so was man slow to come, while fantastic creatures were “tearing each other[56] in the slime.” so was a spirit-governed person slow to come, while men lived in lust and war and hate. but in god’s world at length the things that ought to come do come, and we may faintly guess by what we see that the kingdom, too, is coming. there is something like it now in some lives.
iv
“the beyond is within”
among the parables of christ there is a very impressive one on the shut door. it is a story of ten country maidens who were invited to a wedding. they were to meet the bridegroom coming from a distance, as soon as his arrival should be announced, and with their lighted lamps they were to guide him and his attendants through the darkness to the home of the bride, where the banquet and the festal dance were to be held.
for many days these simple maidens had been living in the thrilling expectation of the great event in which they were to take a leading part.
[57]
they had been busy with their preparations, drilling their rhythmic steps, and talking eagerly of the approaching night. but five of them foolishly neglected the critically important part of the preparation—they took no oil to supply their lamps and at the dramatic moment they found themselves compelled to withdraw from the joyous throng and to go in search of the necessary equipment. when at length they arrived with their oil, the illuminated procession was over and the door of the festal house was shut.
the simple maidens soon discovered that there was a stern finality to this shut door. their blunder had irrevocable consequences. they may have had other interesting opportunities as life went on, but they forever missed this joyous procession and this wedding feast. “too late, too late. ye cannot enter now.”
christ turns this common, trivial neighborhood incident into a parable of the kingdom of god. those who believe that he was looking, as so many in his[58] time were looking, for a sudden shift of dispensations and for a kingdom to be ushered in by a stupendous apocalyptic event, find in this irrevocably shut door of the parable a figure of the doom of those who failed to prepare for the sudden coming of this crisis, decisive of the destiny of men.
but there is another, and, i think, a truer, way of interpreting this shut door. there is a stern finality to all opportunities that have been missed and to all high occasions that have been blundered and bungled. all decisions of the will, all choices of life have, in their very nature, apocalyptic finality. they suddenly reveal and unveil character and they are loaded with destiny which can be changed only by a change of character. other opportunities may offer themselves and new chances may indeed come, but when any choice has been made or any opportunity has been missed that chance has gone by and that door is shut.
the football player who has had a[59] chance in the great game of the year to make a goal, and instead of doing it fumbled the ball and lost the opportunity to score, may just possibly have another chance sometime, but no apologies and no explanations can ever change the apocalyptic finality of that fumble.
something like that is involved in all the spiritual issues of life, and our deeds and attitudes are all the time irrevocably opening or shutting doors, which prove to be doors to the kingdom of god. christ may possibly at times have looked for some sudden revelation of destiny, but surely for the most part he looked for the momentous issues of the kingdom within the soul itself rather than in a spectacular event in the outer world. this principle throws light on all christ’s sayings about the future. the coming destiny is not in the stars, it is not in the sentence of a great assize, it is not in the sudden shift of “dispensations”; it is in the character and inner nature, as they have been formed within each soul. the[60] thing to be concerned about is not so much a day of judgment or an apocalyptic moment, as the trend of the will, the attitude of the spirit, the formation of inner disposition and character. we are always facing issues of an eternal aspect, and every day is a day of judgment, revealing the line of march and the issues of destiny. conversion crises are fortunately possible, when suddenly a new level of life may be reached and a fresh start may be made, and in this inner world of personality, there are always new possibilities occurring, but, as at oriental marriage feasts, neglected opportunities are irreversibly neglected, shut doors are irrevocably shut, and blunders that affect the issues of the soul have an apocalyptic finality about them. new dispensations may await us; the kingdom may come in ways we never dreamed of; the beyond may be more momentous than we have ever expected, but always and everywhere “the within” determines “the beyond,” and character is destiny.
[61]
v
the attitude toward the unseen
“nowhere as yet has history spoken in favor of the ideal of a morality without religion. new active forces of will, so far as we can observe, have always arisen in conjunction with ideas about the unseen.” so wrote the great german historian and philosopher, wilhelm dilthey. the greatest experts in the field both of ethics and of religion agree with this view. henry sidgwick and leslie stephen are experts in the field of ethics who cannot be suspected of holding a brief for religion, and yet sidgwick says: “ethics is an imperfect science alone. it must run up into religion to complete itself;” and leslie stephen says: “morality and religion stand or fall together.” spinoza, who was denounced during his lifetime as an atheist and a destroyer of the faith, nevertheless makes love of god the whole basis of genuine ethics, insisting that there is no morality conceivable without love of[62] god. st. augustine’s famous testimony may suffice as a religious expert’s view. he says, “love god and then you may do what you please,” meaning, of course, that you cannot then approve a wrong course of action or of life.
nowhere, certainly, are religion and ethics so wonderfully fused into one indissoluble whole as in the experience and teaching of christ. this appears not only in his supreme rule for religion and for good conduct: “thou shalt love god with all thy powers and thy neighbor as thyself,” but still more does it appear in the inner steps and processes which underlie and prepare the way for the decisions and acts of christ’s own life. here, unmistakably, all the active forces of will arose in conjunction with ideas about the unseen.
it is the modern custom to talk much about the ethics of jesus and to see in the sermon on the mount an ideal of human personality and a program for an ideal social order. but a careful reader cannot[63] fail to feel in christ’s teaching the complete fusion of his ideal for the individual and for society with his consciousness of the world of unseen realities. the new person and the new society are possible in his thought, only through unbroken correspondence with the world of higher forces and of perfect conditions. the only way to be perfect is to be on the way toward likeness to the heavenly father, the only moral dynamic that will work is a love, like that of god’s love, which expels all selfishness and all tendency to stop at partial and inadequate goods. if any kingdom of heavenly conditions is ever to be expected on earth, if ever we may hope for a day to dawn when the divine will is to be exhibited among men and they are to live the love-way of goodness, it is because god is our father and we have the possibilities of his nature.
the ethical ideals of the kingdom are inherently attached to the prayer experience of jesus. the kind of human world which his faith builds for men is[64] forever linked to the kind of god to whom he prays. cut the link and both worlds fall away. we cannot shuffle the cold, hard, loveless atoms of our social world into lovely forms of co?perative relationship. the atoms must be changed. in some way we must learn how to lift men into the faith which christ had, that god is the father who is seeking to draw us all into correspondence with his unseen world of life and love. “after this manner pray ye. our heavenly father of the holy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” the two faiths make one faith—the faith in a father-god who cares, and the faith in the realization of an ideal society based on co?perative love.
“and as he was praying, the fashion of his countenance was altered and his raiment became white and dazzling.” this is a simple, synoptic account of an experience attaching to a supreme crisis of personal decision in the life of jesus. his so-called ethics, as i have been insisting,[65] is indivisibly bound up with his attitude toward the unseen, with his experience of a realm where what ought to be, really is. so, too, it is because he has found his inward relation with god that he makes his great decision to go forward toward jerusalem, to meet the onset of opposition, to see his work frustrated by the rulers of the nation, to suffer and to die at the hands of his enemies. the transfiguration has been treated as a myth and again as a misplaced resurrection story. but it is certainly best to treat it as a genuine psychological narrative which fits reality and life at every point. as the clouds darken and the danger threatens and the successful issue of his mission seems impossible, jesus falls back upon god, brings his spirit into absolute parallelism with the heavenly will and accepts whatever may be involved in the pursuit of the course to which he is committed. when he pushes back into the inner experience of relation with his father and the circuit of connection[66] closes and living faith floods through him and fixes his decision unalterably to go forward, his face and form are transfigured and illuminated through the experience of union. this prayer of illumination reported in the gospels, is not an isolated instance, a solitary experience. the altered face, the changed body, the glorified figure, the radiation of light, have marked many a subordinate saint, and may well have characterized the master as he found the true attitude of soul toward the unseen and formed his momentous decision to be faithful unto death in his manifestation of love.
in gethsemane, as the awful moment came nearer, once more we catch a glimpse of his attitude to the unseen. in place of illuminated form and shining garments, we hear now of a face covered with the sweat and blood of agony. just in front are the shouting rabble, the cross and the nails, the defeat of lifelong hopes and the defection of the inner fellowship, but[67] the triumphant spirit within him unites with the infinite will that is steering the world and piloting all lives, and calmly acquiesces with it. but to this suffering soul, battling in the dark night of agony, the infinite will is no abstract power, no blind fate, to be dumbly yielded to. the great word which breaks out from these quivering lips is the dear word for “father” that the little child’s lips have learned to say: “abba.” the will above is his will now and he goes forward to the pain and death in the strength of communion and fellowship with his abba-father. there may have been a single moment of desolation in the agony of the next day when the cry escaped, “my god, why hast thou forsaken me?” but immediately the inner spirit recovers its connection and its confidence and the crucifixion ends, as it should, with the words of triumphant faith, “father, into thy hands i intrust my spirit.”
the most important fact of this life, which has ever since poured alpine streams[68] of power into the life of the world, is its attitude toward the unseen. we miss the heart of things when we reduce the gospel to ethics or when we transform it into dry theology. through all the story and behind all the teaching is the mighty inner fact of an intimate personal experience of god as father. to live is to be about the “father’s business.” in great moments of intercourse there comes to him a flooding consciousness of sonship, joyous both to father and son: “in him i am well pleased,” and in times of strain and tragedy the onward course is possible because the inner bond holds fast and the abba-experience abides.
it is not strange that a synoptic writer reports the saying: “no man knoweth the father but the son.” the passage as it stands reported in matthew may be colored by later theology, but there is a nucleus of absolute truth hidden in the saying. there is no other way to know god but this way of inner love-experience. only a son can know a father. only one[69] who has trodden the wine-press in anguish and pain, and through it all has felt the enfolding love of an abba-father really knows. mysticism has its pitfalls and its limitations, but this much is sound and true, that the way to know god is to have inner heart’s experience of him, like the experience of the son.
