by Joseph Parker

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Christ prayed that his disciples might be kept from evil, but he had also a work to accomplish on a larger scale; not only had he to keep the disciples who were called by himself personally, but to extend their numbers; and we propose now to consider how he intended to do this, grouping our suggestions under the general title given above. To say that Christ found human relations disorganized, would be to put human history into the tritest form of expression; yet that inclusive fact lies at the bottom of his mission and plan among men. The man who was made “upright” found out many “inventions,” but among them all was not that of regaining the equilibrium which he had lost. If man had not destroyed his nature, he had disarranged his proportions. A very subtle thing is the equipoise (balance of forces). An extra handful of dust on the side of a planet might endanger the universe.

At the risk of violating a strictly logical progression (though not more so than Christ himself apparently did), it may be useful to look at once at the work which Christ accomplished in adjusting the relations between man and man; which will give us, from another point, Christ’s view of human nature, and place something concrete and immediately appreciable before us. It is of primary importance to remark that Christ never depreciated manhood in any of its forms or conditions, but on the contrary, continually spoke of man with reverence and affection; not of the Jew as a Jew, or the Roman as a Roman, but strictly of man as man; thus incidentally illustrating the meaning and force of his own appellation, the Son of Man. In one of his most touching parables, he rebuked Jewish exclusiveness with great dignity, yet in a manner which must have been most galling to the haughty men who heard him. It was the priest who passed by, and the Levite; but it was a scorned Samaritan who stopped and proved himself a practical philanthropist. Would any other Jew but Christ have so introduced a Samaritan? And would Christ himself, if he had not been more than a Jew? On another occasion, he declared that the faith of a heathen woman was greater than he had ever seen in Israel; and as he cast his eye over the nations of the earth, taking in his comprehensive survey “regions Caesar never knew,” he boldly told the supposed favorites of heaven that men should come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and sit down in the kingdom of heaven. When his contemporaries called themselves the children of Abraham, John struck the boast off their vaunting lips by telling them that God was able to raise up out of the very stones children to Abraham. In the same manner, Christ showed that manhood was not a geographical term, having one meaning on this coast and another on that, but that it was overflowing with moral significance, and stood in very intimate relation to God.

One of his longest discourses was delivered upon the subject of the relations between man and man, and man and his kingdom. The old and vexed question of gradation came up among the disciples and was referred to the Master for decision. The disciples would soon have rent the new kingdom by this question of position, had their leader not quenched their carnal aspirations, and showed them that they were equally wrong in their notions. Rulership has always been one of the hardest problems which society has had to solve, and today it lies at the root of all war. How can there be a kingdom without rulership? The disciples naturally pondered the inquiry, and entertained some exciting speculations on the point. When the matter so agitated them that they could no longer keep it to themselves, they abruptly laid it before Christ; whereupon he delivered a copious and impressive address on human nature. He called a little child unto him and set him in the midst and said—You trouble yourselves a good deal about greatness in my kingdom; now let me tell you, that except ye be converted—that is to say, radically changed in your self-estimation—and become as simple, trustful, and unconscious of your own importance as this little child, you shall not so much as even enter into that kingdom, much less have any distinguished position in it: great, swollen, self-idolizing men cannot be admitted; the gate is strait (narrow)—only childlike men may pass through. Nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of carnal ambition than such an answer. It did not leave the subject open for discussion. No craft could wriggle out of so positive a doctrine. But the text was not exhausted. The little child was still there, and Christ continued in the most sweet and captivating manner to discourse respecting the great value which he attached to manhood. In effect he said—Human nature is not to be measured by what is accidental, but by what is essential; you must value man as man, even though he be as low in the scale as it is possible for any human creature to be. The image of God, though much defaced, is upon the lowest man; if you despise him, you despise me; for the Son of Man is come to seek that which is lost; he will have to go a long way down for it, but it must be found. If you undervalue man, you undervalue my mission and reproach the wisdom of God; but if you value man as man, apart from all that is accidentally repulsive, and receive him in my name, you receive me; and whoso receiveth me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me. We all go together—God, Christ and the lowest man; take one and you take all, reject one and you reject all. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. Do not look high, as though men were to be judged by their stature; so important, so sublime, is humanity, apart altogether from culture and development, that whoso shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned on the depths of the sea.

Such talk about human nature was new. Up to this time men had hardly advanced farther than to a civil regard for those who belonged to their own particular nation. But Christ set man above the nation; the gold above the inscription which had been stamped upon it. This one circumstance is a commanding plea in support of the divine origin of the Christian religion, and is in exquisite accord with the whole mystery called Christ, so far as we have been able to trace it. To reject Christ is, speaking merely in view of his humanity, to reject the most consistent and powerful vindicator of the dignity and value of human nature that ever challenged the attention of the world. If we cannot at once join him in some of the higher ranges of his discourse, we may at least sit down at this point and learn his view of the capability and worth of our own nature. Even Cicero himself apologized to a correspondent for referring to the death of a slave who had died in his family! It is, then, to be distinctly recognized as a primary fact in Christ’s teaching, that Christ will not allow any man, no matter how sunken he may be, to be despised. No word of contempt can be permitted; not even a thought that tends in the direction of scorn: “Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” Not only were men to love those who loved them, but to love their enemies, bless those that cursed them, and pray for those who despitefully used them; and this they were to do for a most remarkable and suggestive reason. “That ye may be the children of your Father, who makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain upon the just and unjust.” When men have made a feast, they were to call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and they would be blessed in so doing, for the guest could not recompense them, but they should be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. The words are now so familiar, and have indeed produced so great an effect upon modern society, that it is difficult to estimate their influence upon the men to whom they were addressed, or the moral courage which was required to utter them in the presence of the most exclusive social system in all civilization. The poor were not to be talked about as a farmer would talk about bog land, but to be treated as sharers with the greatest of a common human nature; and the divine element that was in them was not only to save them from contempt, but to bring them into brotherhood with the foremost men. But brotherhood in its true sense cannot come from the outside. There is a vital difference between patronage and brotherhood. Nothing is easier than for a man to conceal his pride under the forms of humility; actually never to stand so high in his own estimation as when seen in the public highway arm in arm with rags and wretchedness. He then says, “Look at me! This is humility; I am not ashamed to be seen thus.” It requires less moral courage to pick a beggar out of the ditch than to be seen on friendly terms with an honest man who earns weekly wages. In the one case the very extremity is its own defense; in the other there is room for several undesirable inferences on the part of genteel observers. Today the sect-church has conceived an extraordinary liking for institutions which touch the lowest strata of society; the nobility of the land refreshes itself by teaching the ragged and homeless Arabs of England—a very beautiful and even heavenly thing when done with a pure motive, yet covering a most seductive temptation to confound patronage with brotherhood. It is possible to like the rags more than the human nature—possible for the rich man to give Lazarus a coat, and yet to grind the face of his own servants, and by so much as this is possible, society should drill itself in the difficult doctrine that God hath made of one blood, and will call to one judgment, all nations of men. Society is very careful of its extremities—its purple and its rags, but midway is there not a great cemetery filled with living hearts, whose only hope is death? Is it, then, really human nature or human circumstances on which benevolence is operating? Society has to be saved from mistaking patronage for philanthropy, and can only be so saved by a deep study of the life of Jesus Christ.

Such a civilization as that of the nineteenth century brings society very much under the influence of the richest culture and refinement. The spirit of the age is aesthetic. Even utility (the basic and functional) now goes abroad gilded and brocaded most elaborately. The humblest industry has been taught to aspire to a position in the temple of the arts: and nation challenges nation to a comparison of handiwork. Under such circumstances there is a special temptation to worship faculty, skill, or genius—the attributes rather than the nature of man. We now ask for certificates of merit, and make manhood prove itself by competitive examinations. And now that certificates, medals and titles are so plentiful, it is a bare chance if the uncertified man escape contempt. Men are industriously trained to criticize the external; they are learned in all artificialism; inexorably exacting in matters of dress, posture and pronunciation. What, then, can the unconventional man do?  What if he still be “lost”? Then the ministry of Christ becomes his hope, for he never forgets the “lost” man, but goes after him till he is found. Refinement brings its own perils. When refinement boasts of itself, it becomes vulgarity. True refinement is a question of the heart, not an attainment of the schools; under the roughest exterior the most tender sensibilities may throb, and under the finest there may be dross and dust. After all, then, the question is fundamental: man, not circumstances; man as God made him, not as he has made himself.

A true conception of the value of human nature lies at the very foundation of Christ’s earthly mission. The term salvation is important only so far as human nature is important. The Cross is the only adequate interpretation of man. Would Christ, from all that we have seen of him in this rapid examination only, have died for a trifle? Gather a multitude of the worst characters that can be found, and let the heart say how much of its blood it would shed for their elevation. Not a drop, probably. It cannot see far enough. It sees the worst, not the best. Only God can value man; he knows how he made him; what music there is yet in the untouched chords of the human soul; he knows how terrible would be his own loneliness if the child of his heart were lost. But some men are vulgar: yet they are men still, but must be refined. All the gifts of man are to have a downward influence as well as an upward tendency. Refinement is to refine others. Culture is to be an inspiration, not a terror to those who are still rude. The criminal is to see in the judge what he himself might have been, and what even yet he may become. The chaste woman is to be the hope, not the dread, of her fallen sister. Education is not to enclose itself in an unapproachable hermitage, but to move among the rude humanities with a subduing and inspiring grace. This is the very spirit of Jesus Christ. He said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and that the chief of his disciples was to be servant of all. Merely, then, as a matter of argument, it must be allowed that Jesus Christ, immeasurably beyond any other teacher, recognized the greatness of human nature. How did he come by this unparalleled estimate? Certainly he had no inducement to flatter it in return for his personal reception on the earth. Sometimes pleasant circumstances force weak observers into an exaggeration of praise; but, in spite of the harshest reception, Christ affirmed that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son for its salvation. His verdict is thus the more important by reason of the conditions under which it was given. Had he been asked to give an opinion of human nature before he assumed it, his opinion might, on easily understood grounds, have been favorable; but after he has lain in the manger, been exposed to hunger and thirst and cold, been smitten on the face, and condemned as a felon, when he has been laughed at as a fanatic, or shunned as a madman, he speaks of human nature with the fond tenderness and lofty reverence of one who was preparing to die for it. Something more than human must explain this humanness. Every other man falls short of it: how came a Galilean peasant to have it all? It is an affront to common sense to say that it is an imaginary sketch; but even if it be, what then? The problem is not solved; for as only a poet can write a poem, so only a Christ could have conceived a Christ.

The first thing, then, that is before us is Christ’s adjustment of man’s relation to man, giving us deeper insight into humanity, inspiring mutual love, and strengthening the common trust of society. There is another phase of his adjustment of man, which, though less commanding, is yet one of great interest—that is, his way of setting them towards nature. Christ walked much in the open country with his disciples, and gave them a new method of reading the landscape and all natural objects. He turned nature into a great book of illustration; he showed that every bush was aflame with consuming fire, and vocal with the utterances of God. He made all nature preach the doctrine of trust in the divine Fatherhood. He spoke of the lilies as pledges of God’s care, and pointed to the fowls as an illustration of God’s watchfulness over all life. He bade his disciples consider these things, and lay them to heart as defenses against distrust or apprehension. Who can measure the distance between God and a flower of the field? What connection there is between the lily and the man we have not yet been sufficiently educated to discern, but Christ’s lesson is pointless if there is not a line common to all kinds of life, running through and binding all. It would be useless to “consider the lilies,” if they and the considerers had no point in common, though in the present state of our faculties it may be inappreciable; as well might the beggar say that he would “consider” the doorplates of the city because the hands that burnished them might feed him. The explanation is, that the universe is a series, and that he who cares for the least will care for the greatest; that simplicity and beauty and fragrance and every form of life are all of God, and that the Creator of all is also the servant of all. Christ thus showed not only the refining and stimulating power of nature, but the perfect unity of the Divine government, by teaching that the God of the flowers is the God of the human race, and that He who cared for the ephemeral leaf could not forget the immortal man. This lesson is invaluable, not only for its immediate practical comfort, but as warranting the application of inductive reasoning to the Divine nature as well as to Divine processes of education and government. In syntax, the grammarians have put as and so in relation, but Christ teaches us to put them together in deepest questions of experimental religion and speculative theology, and thus climb our way up to the very seat of the Eternal. He brings men very near to God when, in a parallel which would be blasphemous if it were not true, he says, “If ye . . . how much more your Father?”—the plane is one, though the intermediate points are immeasurably distant. Christ says—Begin with the lily, and reason upward to the absolute, and then descend and teach lessons of loving and reverent trust in God to anxious men who are foolishly carrying all the weight of tomorrow on shoulders already pressed by the burden of today. But can the conscious learn from the unconscious? Can the man learn anything from the lily? Enough, to know that the lily and the man eat at the same table, and quench their thirst at a common fountain. We have no answer to enigmas respecting the consciousness of nature; but as Christ set men down by the lily to consider it, they may justly feel that there is a mystery in life of the lowest kinds which compels the conclusion, solemn yet gladsome, that the whole earth is sacred with the presence of God—the very gate of heaven.

The third relation which Christ came to adjust (the first, indeed, in order of importance) was the relation of man to God; and in the consideration of this point we shall ascertain something of what may be distinctively termed Christ’s theology—Christ’s view and representation of God. Christ revealed God, not by direct religious teaching alone, but by the whole tenor of his course among men. It might have been supposed, had the matter been submitted to conjecture, that in the first instance Christ would have delivered elaborate discourses concerning the Godhead, and by frank statements about heaven and his own pre-incarnate position therein, have met and satisfied the natural curiosity of his hearers. It does not appear that Christ adopted the most likely means to accomplish his work; on the contrary, he seems to have done everything to excite suspicion, and prejudice, to have tantalized expectation, and mocked the efforts of natural reasoning. We have now to deal with relation to him; and we venture to say that, however far conjecture may by disappointed in that method, it will be allowed that no teacher ever represented God in so pleasing and attractive a manner. There is depth enough of solemnity too. No hearer can feel a disposition towards levity while listening to Christ’s expositions of God’s nature. God, according to those expositions, is not only unseen, but invisible; no man has seen him, only the Son; no man but the Son can reveal him: here is majesty—here, a feeling of awe steals over the listener. Assuming the truth of these statements, one conclusion cannot be escaped, that is to say that all previous relations and all subsequent doctrines respecting the Godhead must be judged by Christ’s words, and accepted only so far as they are constant with them. No greater claim could be asserted by any teacher than to be the only revealer of God. This point should be dwelt upon with most careful reflection. When a man separates himself from all other men, and even confines God himself to one instrument of revelation, he assumes a position dangerous by its very extremity, unless the claim be upheld by indisputable and universally appreciable proofs.

From Christ’s teaching respecting God we learn, in so many words, that God is a Spirit, and that God is a Father—really the only two things that men require to know about him, all else being involved in those designations. In teaching these doctrines, Christ said that spirit must be met by spirit, and therefore men must be born again; and, secondly, that fatherhood on the part of God must be met by sonship on the part of man, and therefore that he had himself come amongst men as God’s Son. These high revelations could not be understood at once, and therefore he approached them from distant points, always, however, keeping his eye steadily upon them. Healing the body was an alphabetic way of saying, “Ye must be born again;” ministering to human want was the same way of saying, “God is your Father.” He began at the lowest accessible point, and pursued his way to the ultimate truths. An illustration of this happy method of graduating philanthropic service is given in one of the most dramatic and exciting chapters in the New Testament. In that chapter the hero says, “Whether he be a sinner or no I know not; one thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I see.” This “one thing” was the rock from which the man could not be displaced, and he was determined to stand there until he should be called higher. Here is Christ’s plan of always being behind a man with a fact, and in front of him with a doctrine. The church is exposed to the peril of taking the doctrine into its care, and leaving the fact—a plan of service as ill-adapted to the temper and condition of society now as it was in the days of Christ. Men must be met at the points where remedial ideas are most needed and will be best understood. The blind man needs something more than “the concord of sweet sounds;” in his case effort must be directed to the eye, not to the ear. The man who is perishing of hunger needs bread most, not doctrine or prayer. The soul that is possessed with a devil must first be dispossessed, then taught divine doctrines. Instrumentalities (the mechanisms by which a thing is to be accomplished) must be adapted to circumstances. This was certainly Christ’s plan of movement—not in a sudden and startling manner, bewildering the understanding with an obscure dogma, but quietly joining man at the most accessible point, and charming him into deeper companionship, until he who began as a needy client remained as a consecrated disciple. Christ’s skill in adaptation is illustrated sharply by the answer which he returned to John’s inquiry: “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear,” that is to say, every man found in Christ “the piece which was lost:” the deaf were not sharpened in vision, they received their hearing; the blind were not quickened in hearing, they received their sight; the leper was not heightened in stature, he was cleansed of his leprosy. By so working, it was indeed sometimes difficult to see the exact relation of the physical deed to the spiritual purpose of Christ’s mission—to reveal the Father. We are tempted to become impatient with Christ as he devotes so much attention to details: it seems almost a waste of time for a man who came to save a world to be lingering over a special case of disease. Could the blind man not have had his soul saved without first having his eyes open? If not, what becomes of the blind men of today? We think that we could have hastened Christ’s movements, especially in the physical department of his service. Why not speak one healing word for all, so that throughout the land every sickbed might have been vacated at the same hour? What a magnificent introduction to spiritual labor this would have been! How quickly he could thus have come to his main point—the revelation of God! Yet he lingers over individual cases with a calmness which baffles us, considering how much work lies before him. But is it not the same with him whom we know as Creator? Does he not dally most vexatiously in physical processes? How long a time he takes to mold an ear of corn! And what a waste of power it appears, that the earth should bring forth but one harvest in the year! In his physical service Christ was strikingly like what we know of the Creator. The meaning of this slowness may come to us in the higher spheres. In the meantime, impatience is an infallible sign of weakness.

On the matter of setting man in a right relation to God, something further will be said in another chapter: it is introduced here as completing the statement that Christ undertook the adjustment of human relations; and while it is thus before us it may be well to repeat that there is nothing revolting in Christ’s representation of God, but everything that is pleasing and satisfying to the tenderest instincts of human nature. God is the Spirit; God is the Father; God is revealed by the Son, and there is no way but through the Son to the Father; God loved the world, and proved his love by the gift of his Son. This is Christ’s theology. In Christ’s God there is nothing to terrify the heart that yearns for him. He has no thirst for revenge, no bloody decree to execute. He is so tender that a heart-wish will move him; so generous, that he will withhold nothing from them that are reconciled to him. His anger with the wicked is only the recoil of his love of the good. This being so, Christ says—Come to him; be as he is; you misunderstand him if you think evil of him; I know him better than any other being can ever know him, and I declare unto you that his power and wisdom are equaled by his love. A great speech to make to the human world! How sincere it was we may see when we come to study the Cross of Christ.