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"The emergence of the feeling of kinship with the Unseen is the most arresting and revealing fact of human history. * * * The union with God is not through the display of ritual, but the affiliation and conjunction of life. We do not believe we are in a universe that has screens and folds, where the spiritual commerce of man has to be conducted on the principle of secret diplomacy. The universe is frank and open, and God is straightforward and honourable. In making the spirit and practice of brotherliness the test of religious value, we are at one with Him who said: 'Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least—ye do it unto me.' We touch the Father when we help His child. Jesus taught us not to come to God asking, art Thou this or that? but to call Him Father and live upon it. Do not admit that many of our Brotherhood meetings are in[Pg 265] 'neutral' or 'secular' halls and buildings! 'Where two or three gather in My name, there am I.' Where He is, there is hallowed ground."
We need a stock-taking and a mobilisation of our spiritual forces. But what, after all, does this mean? Search as we may we are brought back every time to this same Man of Nazareth, the God-man—Son of Man and Son of God. And gathering it into a few brief sentences it is this: Jesus' great revelation was this consciousness of God in the individual life, and to this he witnessed in a supreme and masterly way, because this he supremely realised and lived. Faith in him and following him does not mean acquiring some particular notion of God or some particular belief about him himself. It is the living in one's own life of this same consciousness of God as one's source and Father, and a living in these same filial relations with him of love and guidance and care that Jesus entered into and continuously lived.
When this is done there is no problem and no condition in the individual life that it will not clarify, mould, and therefore take care of; for "μὴ μεριμνᾶτε τῇ ψυχῇ ὑμῶν"—do not worry about your life—was the Master's clear-cut command. Are we ready for this high type of spiritual adventure? Not only are we[Pg 266] assured of this great and mighty truth that the Master revealed and going ahead of us lived, that under this supreme guidance we need not worry about the things of the life, but that under this Divine guidance we need not think even of the life itself, if for any reason it becomes our duty or our privilege to lay it down. Witnessing for truth and standing for truth he again preceded us in this.
But this, this love for God or rather this state that becomes the natural and the normal life when we seek the Kingdom, and the Divine rule becomes dominant and operative in mind and heart, leads us directly back to his other fundamental: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. For if God is my Father and if he cares for me in this way—and every other man in the world is my brother and He cares for him in exactly the same way—then by the sanction of God his Father I haven't anything on my brother; and by the love of God my Father my brother hasn't anything on me. It is but the most rudimentary commonsense then, that we be considerate one of another, that we be square and decent one with another. We will do well as children of the same Father to sit down and talk matters over; and arise with the conclusion that the advice of Jesus, our elder brother, is sound: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."[Pg 267]
He gave it no label, but it has subsequently become known as the Golden Rule. There is no higher rule and no greater developer of the highest there is in the individual human life, and no greater adjuster and beautifier of the problems of our common human life. And when it becomes sufficiently strong in its action in this, the world awaits its projection into its international life. This is the truth that he revealed—the twofold truth of love to God and love for the neighbour, that shall make men free. The truth of the Man of Nazareth still holds and shall hold, and we must realise this adequately before we ask or can expect any other revelation.
We are in a time of great changes. The discovery of new laws and therefore of new truth necessitates changes and necessitates advances. But whatever changes or advances may come, the Divine reality still survives, independent of Jesus it is true, but as the world knows him still better, it will give to him its supreme gratitude and praise, in that he was the most perfect revealer of God to man, of God in man, and the most concrete in that he embodied and lived this truth in his own matchless human-divine life; and stands as the God-man to which the world is gradually approaching. For as Goethe has said—"We can never get beyond the spirit of Jesus."[Pg 268]
Love it is, he taught, that brings order out of chaos, that becomes the solvent of the riddle of life, and however cynical, skeptical, or practical we may think at times we may be, a little quiet clear-cut thought will bring us each time back to the truth that it is the essential force that leads away from the tooth and the claw of the jungle, that lifts life up from and above the clod. Love is the world's balance-wheel; and as the warming and ennobling element of sympathy, care and consideration radiates from it, increasing one's sense of mutuality, which in turn leads to fellowship, cooperation, brotherhood, a holy and diviner conception and purpose of life is born, that makes human life more as it should be, as it must be—as it will be.
I love to feel that when one makes glad the heart of any man, woman, child, or animal, he makes glad the heart of God—and I somehow feel that it is true.
As our household fires radiate their genial warmth, and make more joyous and more livable the lot of all within the household walls, so life in its larger scope and in all its human relations, becomes more genial and more livable and reveals more abundantly the deeper riches of its diviner nature, as it is made more open and more obedient to the higher powers of mind and spirit.[Pg 269]
Do you know that incident in connection with the little Scottish girl? She was trudging along, carrying as best she could a boy younger, but it seemed almost as big as she herself, when one remarked to her how heavy he must be for her to carry, when instantly came the reply: "He's na heavy. He's mi brither." Simple is the incident; but there is in it a truth so fundamental that pondering upon it, it is enough to make many a man, to whom dogma or creed make no appeal, a Christian—and a mighty engine for good in the world. And more—there is in it a truth so fundamental and so fraught with potency and with power, that its wider recognition and projection into all human relations would reconstruct a world.[Pg 270]
