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So supremely had this young Jewish prophet, the son of a carpenter, made God's business his business, that he had come into the full realisation of the oneness of his life with the Father's life. He was able to realise and to say, "I and my Father are one." He was able to bring to the world a knowledge of the great fact of facts—the essential oneness of the human with the Divine—that God tabernacles with men, that He makes His abode in the minds and the hearts of those who[Pg 122] through desire and through will open their hearts to His indwelling presence.

The first of the race, he becomes the revealer of this great eternal truth—the mediator, therefore, between God and man—in very truth the Saviour of men. "If a man love me," said he, "he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.... If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love."

It is our eternal refusal to follow Jesus by listening to the words of life that he brought, and our proneness to substitute something else in their place, that brings the barrenness that is so often evident in the everyday life of the Christian. We have been taught to believe in Jesus; we have not been taught to believe Jesus. This has resulted in a separation of Christianity from life. The predominating motive has been the saving of the soul. It has resulted too often in a selfish, negative, repressive, ineffective religion. As Jesus said: "And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?"

We are just beginning to realise at all adequately that it was the salvation of the life that he taught. When the life is redeemed to righteousness through the power of the indwelling[Pg 123] God and moves out in love and in service for one's fellow-men, the soul is then saved.

A man may be a believer in Jesus for a million years and still be an outcast from the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. But a man can't believe Jesus, which means following his teachings, without coming at once into the Kingdom and enjoying its matchless blessings both here and hereafter. And if there is one clear-cut teaching of the Master, it is that the life here determines and with absolute precision the life to come.

One need not then concern himself with this or that doctrine, whether it be true or false. Later speculations and theories are not for him. Jesus' own saying applies here: "If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." He enters into the Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven here and now; and when the time comes for him to pass out of this life, he goes as a joyous pilgrim, full of anticipation for the Kingdom that awaits him, and the Master's words go with him: "In my Father's house are many mansions."

By thus becoming a follower of Jesus rather than merely a believer in Jesus, he gradually comes into possession of insights and powers that the Master taught would follow in the[Pg 124] lives of those who became his followers. The Holy Spirit, the Divine Comforter, of which Jesus spoke, the Spirit of Truth, that awaits our bidding, will lead continually to the highest truth and wisdom and insight and power. Kant's statement, "The other world is not another locality, but only another way of seeing things," is closely allied to the Master's statement: "The Kingdom of God is within you." And closely allied to both is this statement of a modern prophet: "The principle of Christianity and of every true religion is within the soul—the realisation of the incarnation of God in every human being."

When we turn to Jesus' own teachings we find that his insistence was not primarily upon the saving of the soul, but upon the saving of the life for usefulness, for service, here and now, for still higher growth and unfoldment, whereby the soul might be grown to a sufficient degree that it would be worth the saving. And this is one of the great facts that is now being recognised and preached by the forward-looking men and women in our churches and by many equally religious outside of our churches.

And so all aspiring, all thinking, forward-looking men and women of our day are not interested any more in theories about, explanations[Pg 125] of, or dogmas about Jesus. They are being won and enthralled by the wonderful personality and life of Jesus. They are being gripped by the power of his teachings. They do not want theories about God—they want God—and God is what Jesus brought—God as the moving, the predominating, the all-embracing force in the individual life. But he who finds the Kingdom of God, whose life becomes subject to the Divine rule and life within, realises at once also his true relations with the whole—with his neighbour, his fellow-men. He realises that his neighbour is not merely the man next door, the man around the corner, or even the man in the next town or city; but that his neighbour is every man and every woman in the world—because all children of the same infinite Father, all bound in the same direction, but over many different roads.

The man who has come under the influence and the domination of the Divine rule, realises that his interests lie in the same direction as the interests of all, that he cannot gain for himself any good—that is, any essential good—at the expense of the good of all; but rather that his interests, his Welfare, and the interests and the welfare of all others are identical. God's rule, the Divine rule, becomes for him, therefore, the fundamental rule in the business[Pg 126] world, the dominating rule in political life and action, the dominating rule in the law and relations of nations.

Jesus did not look with much favour upon outward form, ceremony, or with much favour upon formulated, or formal religion; and he somehow or other seemed to avoid the company of those who did. We find him almost continually down among the people, the poor, the needy, the outcast, the sinner—wherever he could be of service to the Father, that is, wherever he could be of service to the Father's children. According to the accounts he was not always as careful in regard to those with whom he associated as the more respectable ones, the more respectable classes of his day thought he should be. They remarked it many times. Jesus noticed it and remarked in turn.

We find him always where the work was to be done—friend equally of the poor and humble, and those of station—truly friend of man, teaching, helping, uplifting. And then we find him out on the mountain side—in the quiet, in communion—to keep his realisation of his oneness with the Father intact; and with this help he went down regularly to the people, trying to lift their minds and lives up to the Divine ideal that he revealed to them, that they in turn might realise their real relations[Pg 127] one with another, that the Kingdom of God and His righteousness might grow and become the dominating law and force in the world—"Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

It is this Kingdom idea, the Divine rule, the rule of God in all of the relations and affairs of men on earth that is gripping earnest men and women in great numbers among us today. Under the leadership of these thinking, God-impelled men and women, many of our churches are pushing their endeavours out into social service activities along many different lines; and the result is they are calling into their ranks many able men and women, especially younger men and women, who are intensely religious, but to whom formal, inactive religion never made any appeal.