Here in strong terms a challenge is put to many of our current ideas. Is not this to revert5 to an outworn view of the Christian6 religion—to reassert its dark side, better forgotten, all the horrible emphasis on sin and its consequences introduced into the sunny teaching of Jesus by Paul of Tarsus, and alien to it? Before we answer this question in any direct way, it is worth while to realize for how many of the real thinkers, and the great teachers of mankind, this distinction between good and evil has been fundamental. They have not invented it as a theory on which to base religion, but they have found it in human life, one and all of them. If Walt Whitman or Swami Vivekananda overlook the difference between virtue7 and vice8, and do honour to the courtesan, it simply means that they are bad thinkers, bad observers. The deeper minds see more clearly and escape the confusion into which the slight and quick, the sentimental9, hurl10 themselves. Above all, when God in any degree grows real to a man, when a man seriously gives himself not to some mere11 vague "contemplation" of God but to the earnest study of God's ways in human affairs, and of God's laws and their working, the great contrasts in men's responses to God's rule become luminous12.
When God matters to a man, all life shows the result. Good and bad, right and wrong stand out clear as the contrast between light and darkness—they cannot be mistaken, and they matter—and matter for ever. They are no concern of a moment. Action makes character; and, until the action is undone13 again, the effect on character is not undone. Right and wrong are of eternal significance now in virtue of the reality of God.
Gautama Buddha14, for instance, and the greater Hindu thinkers, in their doctrine15 of Karma, have taught a significance inherent in good and evil, which we can only not call boundless16. Buddha did this without any great consciousness of God; and many Indian thinkers have so emphasized the doctrine that it has taken all the stress laid on "Bhakti" by Ramanuja and others to restore to life a perspective or a balance, however it should be described, that will save men from utter despair. Nor is it Eastern thinkers only who have taught men the reality of heaven and hell. The poetry of Aeschylus is full of his great realization17 of the nexus18 between act and outcome. With all the humour and charm there is in Plato, we cannot escape his tremendous teaching on the age-long consequences of good and evil in a cosmos19 ordered by God. Carlyle, in our own days, realized the same thing—he learnt it no doubt from his mother; and learnt it again in London. In Mrs. Austen's drawing-room, with "Sidney Smith guffawing," and "other people prating20, jargoning, to me through these thin cobwebs Death and Eternity21 sate22 glaring." "How will this look in the Universe," he asks, "and before the Creator of Man?" When someone in his old age challenged him with the question, "Who will be judge?"—(it is curious how every sapient23 inanity24 strikes, as on an original idea, on the notion that opinions differ, and therefore—apparently, if their thought has any consequence—are as good one as another)—Who will be judge? "Hell fire will be judge," said Carlyle, "God Almighty25 will be the judge now and always." There is a gulf26 between good and evil, and each is inexorably fertile of consequence. There is no escaping the issue of moral choice. That is the conclusion of men who have handled human experience in a serious spirit. As physical laws are deducible from the reactions of matter and force, and are found to be uniform and inevitable27, fundamental in the nature of matter and force, so clear-thinking men in the course of ages have deduced moral laws from their observation of human nature, laws as uniform, inevitable and fundamental. In neither case has it been that men invented or imagined the laws; in both cases it has been genuine discovery of what was already existent and operative, and often the discovery has involved surprise.
If Jesus had failed to see laws so fundamental, which other teachers of mankind have recognized, it is hardly likely that his teaching would have survived or influenced men as it has done. Mankind can dispense28 with a teacher who misses patent facts, whatever his charm. But there never was any doubt that Jesus was alive to the difference between right and wrong. His critics saw this, but they held that he confused moral issues, and that his distinctions in the ethical sphere were badly drawn29.
Jesus could not have ignored the problem of sin and forgiveness, even if he had wished to ignore it. To this the thought of mankind had been gravitating, and in Jewish and in Greek thought, conduct was more and more the centre of everything. For the Stoics30 morals were the dominant31 part of philosophy; but for our present purpose we need not go outside the literature of the New Testament32. Sin was the keynote of the preaching of John the Baptist. It is customary to connect the mission of Jesus with that of John, and to find in the Baptist's preaching either the announcement of his Successor (as is said with most emphasis in the Fourth Gospel), or (as some now say) the impulse which drove Jesus of Nazareth into his public ministry33. Whatever may be the historical connexion between them, it is as important for us at least to realize the broad gulf that separates them. They meet, it is true; both use the phrase "Kingdom of God," both preach repentance34 in view of the coming of the Kingdom; and we are apt to assume they mean the same thing; but Jesus took some pains to make it clear, though in the gentlest and most sympathetic way, that they did not.
On the famous occasion, when John the Baptist sent two of his disciples36 to Jesus with his striking message: "Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?" (Luke 7:19-35; Matt. 11:1-19), Jesus, when the messengers were gone, spoke37 to the people about the Baptist. "What went ye out into the wilderness38 for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? A man clothed in soft raiment? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist, but he that is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he." I am not sure which is the right translation, whether it is "he that is less, least, or little," and I do not propose to discuss it. The judgement is remarkable39 enough in any case, and the words of Jesus, as we have seen, have a close relation to real fact as he saw it. Why does he speak in this way? Our answer to this question, if we can answer it, will help us forward to the larger problem before us. But, for this, we shall have to study John with some care.
There is a growing agreement among scholars that there is some confusion in our data as to John the Baptist. There are gaps in the record—for instance, how and why did the school of John survive as it did (Acts 18:25, 19:1-7)? And again there are, in the judgement of some, developments of the story. The Gospel, with varying degrees of explicitness40, and St. Paul by inference (Acts 19:4) tell us that John pointed41 to "him which should come after him." Christians42, at any rate, after the Resurrection, had no doubt that this was Jesus. Whether John was as definite as the narratives43 now represent him to have been, has been doubted in view of his message to Jesus. But that is not our present subject. We are concerned less with John as precursor45 than as teacher and thinker.
Even if our data are defective46, still enough is given us to let us see a very striking and commanding figure. We have a picture of him, his dress, his diet, his style of speech, his method of action—in every way he is a signal and arresting man. The son of a priest, he is an ascetic47, who lives in the wilderness, dresses like a peasant, and eats the meanest and most meagre of food—a man of the desert and of solitude48. And the whole life reacts on him and we can see him, lean and worn, though still a young man, a keen, rather excitable spirit—in every feature the marks of revolt against a civilization which he views as an apostasy49. Luke, using a phrase from the Old Testament, says, "The word of God came upon John in the wilderness" (Luke 3:2). Luke leans to Old Testament phrase, and here is one that hits off the man to the very life. Jesus himself confirms Luke's judgement (Mark 11:29-33). The Word of the Lord has come on this ascetic figure, and he goes to the people with the message; he draws their attention and they crowd out to see him. He makes a great sensation. He is not like other men—for Jesus quotes their remark that "he had a devil" (Luke 7:33)—a rough and ready way of explaining unlikeness to the average man. When he sees his congregation his words are not conciliatory; he addresses them as a "generation of vipers50" (Luke 3:7); and his text is the "wrath51 to come."
Jesus asks whether they went out to see a reed shaken by the wind, or someone dressed like a courtier—the last things to which anyone would compare John. There was nothing supple52 about him, as Herod found, and Herodias (Mark 6:17-20); he was not shaken by the wind; there was no trimming of his sails. The austerity of his life and the austerity of his spirit go together, and he preached in a tone and a language that scorched53. He preached righteousness, social righteousness, and he did it in a great way. He brought back the minds of his people, like Amos and others, to God's conceptions and away from their own. Crowds of people went out to hear him (Mark 1:5). And he made a deep impression on many whose lives needed amendment54 (Matt. 21:26, 32; Luke 20:6).[27] We have the substance of what he said in the third chapter of St. Luke; how he told the tax-collectors to be honest and not make things worse than they need be; the soldiers to do violence to no man and accuse no man falsely, and to be content with their wages; and to ordinary people he preached humanity: "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." It may be remarked of John, and it is true also of Jesus, that neither attacked the absent nor inveighed55 against economic conditions, as some modern preachers do with, let us say, capitalists and the morality of other nations. Neither says a word against the Roman Empire. Slavery is not condemned56 explicitly58 even by Jesus, though he gave the dynamic that abolished it. The practical guidance that John gave, he gave in response to men's inquiries59.
Like an Old Testament prophet (cf. Amos 3:2), John tore to tatters any plea that could be offered that his listeners were God's chosen people, the children of Abraham. Does God want children of Abraham?—John pointed to the stones on the ground, and said, if God wanted, he could make children of Abraham out of them; a word and he could have as many children of Abraham as he wished. It was something else that God sought.
"John," writes the historian Josephus a generation later, "was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue both in justice toward one another and piety60 towards God, and so to come to baptism; for so baptism would be acceptable to God if they made use of it, not to excuse certain sins, but for the purification of the body, provided that the soul was thoroughly61 purified beforehand by righteousness."[28] This interpretation62 of John's baptism makes it look very like the baptisms and other purificatory rites2 of the heathen. The Gospels attribute to John a message, richer and more powerful, but essentially63 the same; and the criticism of Jesus confirms the account. The great note in his preaching is judgement; the Kingdom of God is coming, and it begins with judgement. Again, it is like Amos—"The axe64 is at the root of the tree," "His fan is in His hand." And as men listened to the man and looked at him—his intense belief in his message, backed up by a stern self-discipline, a whole life inspired, infused by conviction—they believed this message of the axe, the fan, and the fire. They asked and as we have seen received his guidance on the conduct of life; they accepted his baptism, and set about the amending65 of character (Matt. 21:32).
Jesus makes it quite clear that he held John to be an entirely66 exceptional man, and that he had no doubt that John's teaching was from God (Matt. 21:32; Luke 7:35, 20:4; and, of course, Luke 7:26-28). It was all in the line of the great prophets; and the Fourth Gospel shows it us once more in the work of the Holy Spirit—"when he is come, he will reprove (convict) the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement" (John 16:8). And yet, as Jesus says, there is all the difference in the world between his own Gospel and the teaching of the Baptist.
In Mark's narrative44 (2:18) a very significant episode is recorded. John inculcated fasting, and his disciples fasted a great deal ("pykna", Luke 5:33); and once, Mark tells us, when they were actually fasting, they asked Jesus why his disciples did not do the same? Jesus' answer is a little cryptic67 at first sight. "Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?" Who fasts at the wedding feast, in the hour of gladness? And then he passes on to speak about the new patch on the old garment, the new wine in the old wine skins; and it looks as if it were not merely a criticism of John's disciples but of John himself. John, indeed, brings home with terrific force and conviction that truth of God which the prophets had preached before; but he leaves it there. He emphasizes once more the old laws of God, the judgements of God, but he brings no transforming power into men's lives. The old characters, the old motives68 more or less, are to be patched by a new fear.
"Repent35, repent," John cries, "the judgement is coming." And men do repent, and John baptises them as a symbol that God has forgiven them. But how are they to go on? What is the power that is to carry John's disciples through the rest of their lives? We are not in possession of everything that John says, but there is no indication that John had very much to say about any force or power that should keep men on the plane of repentance. It is our experience that we repent and fall again; what else was the experience of the people whom John baptised? What was to keep them on the new level—not only in the isolation69 of the desert, but in the ordinary routine of town and village? In John's teaching there is not a word about that; and this is a weakness of double import. For, as Jesus puts it, the new patch on the old garment makes the rent worse; it does not leave it merely as it was. If the "unclean spirit" regain70 its footing in a man, it does not come alone—"the last state of that man is worse than the first" (Luke 11:24-26). Jesus is very familiar with the type that welcomes new ideas and new impulses in religion and yet does nothing, grows tired or afraid, and relapses (Mark 4:17).
Again, in John's teaching, as far as we have it, there is a striking absence of any clear word about any relation to God, beyond that of debtor71 and creditor72, judge and prisoner on trial, king and subject. God may forgive and God will judge; but so far as our knowledge of John's teaching goes, these are the only two points at which man and God will touch each other; and these are not intimate relations. There is no promise and no gladness in them; no "good news." John taught prayer—all sorts of people teach prayer; but what sort of prayer? It has been remarked of the Greek poet, Apollonius Rhodius, that his heroes used prayers, but their prayers were like official documents. Of what character were the prayers that John taught his disciples? None of them survive; but there is perhaps a tacit criticism of them in the request made to the New Teacher: "Teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1). One feels that the men wanted something different from John's prayers. Great and strenuous73 prayers they may have been, but in marked contrast to the prayers of Jesus and his followers74, because of the absence in John's message of any strong note of the love and tenderness of God.
Finally, the very righteousness that John preaches with such fire and energy is open to criticism. Far more serious than the righteousness of the Pharisees, stronger in insight and more generous in its scope, it fails in the same way; it is self-directed. It aims at a man's own salvation75, and it is to be achieved by a man's own strength in self-discipline, with what little help John's system of prayer and fasting may win for a man from God. John fails precisely76 where his strength is greatest and most conspicuous77. His theme is sin; his emphasis all falls on sin; but his psychology78 of sin is insufficient79, it is not deep enough. The simple, strenuous ascetic did not realize the seriousness of sin after all—its deep roots, its haunting power, its insidious80 charm. St. Paul saw far deeper into it "I am carnal, sold under sin. What I hate that do I. The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. I see a law in my members bringing me into captivity81 to the law of sin. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:14-24). Sin, in John's thought, is contumacy or rebellion against the law of God; he does not look at it in relation to the love of God—a view of it which gives it another character altogether. Nor has John any great conception of forgiveness—a man, he thinks, may win it by "fruits worthy82 of repentance" (Luke 3:8). Here again Paul is the pioneer in the universal Christian experience that fruits of repentance can never buy God's forgiveness. That is God's gift. That forgiveness may cost a man much—an amended83 life, the practices of prayer and fasting and almsgiving—John conceives; but we are not led to think that he thought of what it might cost God. John has no evangel, no really good news, with gladness and singing in it (1 Peter 1:8).
When we return to the teaching of Jesus, we find that he draws a clear and sharp line between right and wrong. He indicates that right is right to the end of all creation, and wrong is wrong up to the very Judgement Throne of God (Matt. 25). He views these things, as the old phrase puts it, "sub specie aeternitatis", from the outlook of eternity. Right and wrong do not meet at infinity84. There is no higher synthesis that can make them one and the same thing. Everything with Jesus is Theocentric, and until God changes there will be no very great change in right and wrong. Partly because he uses the language of his day, partly because he thinks as a rule in pictures, his language is apt to be misconstrued by moderns. But the central ideas are clear enough. "How are you to escape the judgement of Gehenna?" he asks the Pharisees (Matt. 23:33; the subjunctive mood is worth study). It is not a threat, but a question. There yawns the chasm85; with your driving, how do you think you can avoid disaster? He warns men of a doom86 where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched87; a man will do well to sacrifice hand, foot or eye, to save the rest of himself from that (Mark 9:43-48). But a more striking picture, though commonly less noticed, he draws or suggests in talk at the last supper. "Simon, Simon, behold88 Satan asked for you to sift89 you as wheat, but I prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou, when thou comest back, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke 22:31, 32). The scene suggested is not unlike that at the beginning of the Book of Job, or that in the Book of Zechariah (chap. 3). There is the throne of God, and into that Presence pushes Satan with a demand—the verb in the Greek is a strong one, though not so strong as the Revised Version suggests. Satan "made a push to have you." "But I prayed for thee."
To any reader who has any feeling or imagination, what do these short sentences mean? What can they mean, from the lips of a thinker so clear and so serious, and a friend so tender? What but unspeakable peril90? The language has for us a certain strangeness; but it shows plainly enough that, to Jesus' mind, the disciples, and Peter in particular, stood in danger, a danger so urgent that it called for the Saviour's prayer. So much it meant to him, and he himself tells Peter what he had realized, what he had done, in language that could not be mistaken or forgotten. To the nature of the danger that sin involves, we shall return. Meanwhile we may consider what Jesus means by sin before we discuss its consequences.
"The Son of Man," says Jesus, in a sentence that is famous but still insufficiently91 studied, "is come to seek and to save that which is lost" (Luke 19:10). Our rule has been to endeavour to give to the terms of Jesus the connotation he meant them to carry. The scholar will linger over the "Son of Man"—a difficult phrase, with a literary and linguistic92 history that is very complicated. For the present purpose the significant words are at the other end of the sentence. What does Jesus mean by "lost"? It is a strong word, the value of which we have in some degree lost through familiarity. And whom would he describe as "lost"? We have once more to recall his criticism of Peter—that Peter "thought like a man and not like God" (Mark 8:33)—and to be on our guard lest we think too quickly and too slightly. We may remark, too, that for Jesus sin is not, as for Paul and theologians in general, primarily an intellectual problem. He does not use the abstraction Sin as Paul does. But the clear, steady gaze turned on men and women misses little.
There are four outstanding classes, whom he warns of the danger of hell in one form or other.
To begin, there is the famous description of the Last Judgement (Matt. 25:31-46)—a description in itself not altogether new. Plenty of writers and thinkers had described the scene, and the broad outlines of the picture were naturally common property; yet it is to these more or less conventional traits that attention has often been too exclusively devoted93. Jesus, however, altered the whole character of the Judgement Day scene by his account of the principles on which the Judge decides the cases brought before him. On the right hand of the Judge are—not the Jews confronting the Gentiles on the left—nor exactly the well-conducted and well-balanced people who get there in Greek allegories—but a group of men and women who realize where they are with a gasp95 of surprise. How has it come about? The Judge tells them: "I was an hungered and ye gave me meat," and the rest of the familiar words. But this does not quite settle the question. Embarrassment96 rises on their faces—is it a mistake? One of them speaks for the rest: "Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee?" They do not remember it. There is something characteristic there of the whole school of Jesus; these people are "children of fact," honest as their Master, and they will not accept heaven in virtue of a possible mistake. And it appears from the Judge's answer that such instinctive97 deeds go further than men think, even if they are forgotten. Wordsworth speaks of the "little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love" that are "the best portion of a good man's life."[29] The acts of kindness were forgotten just because they were instinctive, but, Jesus emphasizes the point, they are decisive; they come, as another of his telling phrases suggests, from "the overflow98 of the heart," and they reveal it. With the people on the left hand it was the other way. They were fairly well in possession of their good records, but they had missed the decisive fact—they were instinctively99 hard. Such people Jesus warns. So familiar are his words that there is a danger of our limiting them to their first obvious meaning. Eighty years ago Thomas Carlyle looked out on the England he knew, and remarked that it was strange that the great battle of civilized100 man should be still the battle of the savage101 against famine, and with that he observed that the people were "needier than ever of inward sustenance102." Is there a warning in this picture of the people on the left hand that applies to deeper things than physical hunger? A warning to those who do not heed103 another's need of "inward sustenance," of spiritual life, of God? It looks likely. Otherwise there is a risk of our declining upon a "Social Righteousness" that falls a long way short of John the Baptist's, and does less for any soul, our own or another's.
The second class warned by Jesus consists of several groups dealt with in the Sermon on the Mount—people whose sin is not murder or adultery, but merely anger and the unclean thought—not the people who actually give themselves away, like the publicans and harlots—but those who would not be sorry to have that ring of Gyges which Plato described, who would like to do certain things if they could, who at all events are not unwilling104 to picture what they would wish to do, if it were available, and meanwhile enjoy the thought (Matt. 5:21, 22, 27-29). Here St. Paul can supply commentary with his suggestion that one form of God's condemnation105 is where he gives up a man to his own reprobate106 mind (Romans 1:28—the whole passage is worth study in the Greek). The mind, in Paul's phrases, becomes darkened (Rom. 1:21), stained (Titus 1:15), and cauterized107 (1 Tim. 4:2), invalidated for the discharge of its proper functions, as a burnt hand loses the sense of touch, or a stained glass gives the man a blue or red world instead of the real one. Blindness and mutilation are better, Jesus said, than the eye of lust108 (Matt. 5:28). How different from the moralists, for whom sin lies in action, and all actions are physical! The idle word is to condemn57 a man, not because it is idle, but because, being unstudied, it speaks of his heart and reveals, unconsciously but plainly, what he is in reality (Matt. 12:36). Thus it is that what comes out of the mouth defiles110 a man (Matt. 15:18)—with the curious suggestion, whether intended or not, that the formulation of a floating thought gives it new power to injure or to help. That is true; impression loose, as it were, in the mind, mere thought—stuff, is one thing; formulated111, brought to phrase and form, it takes on new life and force; and when it is evil, it does defile109, and in a permanent way. Marcus Aurelius has a very similar warning (v. 16)—"Whatever the colour of the thoughts often before thy mind, that colour will thy mind take. For the mind is dyed (or stained) by its thoughts." "Phantazesthai" and "phantasiai" are the words—and they suggest something between thoughts and imaginations—mental pictures would be very near it.
The third group whom Jesus warned, the most notorious of all, was the Pharisee class. They played at religion—tithed mint and anise and cumin, and forgot judgement and mercy and faith (Matt. 23:23). Jesus said that the Pharisee was never quite sure whether the creature he was looking at was a camel or a mosquito—he got them mixed (Matt. 23:24). Once we realize what this tremendous irony113 means, we are better able to grasp his thought. The Pharisee was living in a world that was not the real one—it was a highly artificial one, picturesque114 and charming no doubt, but dangerous. For, after all, we do live in the real world—there is only one world, however many we may invent; and to live in any other is danger. Blindness, that is partial and uneven115, lands a man in peril whenever he tries to come downstairs or to cross the street—he steps on the doorstep that is not there and misses the real one. He is involved in false appearances at every turn. And so it is in the moral world—there is one real, however many unreals there are, and to trust to the unreal is to come to grief on the real. "The beginning of a man's doom," wrote Carlyle, "is that vision be withdrawn116 from him." "Thou blind Pharisee!" (Matt. 23:26). The cup is clean enough without; it is septic and poisonous within—and from which side of it do you drink, outside or inside? (Matt. 23:25). As we study the teaching of Jesus here, we see anew the profundity117 of the saying attributed to him in the Fourth Gospel, "The truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). The man with astigmatism118, or myopia, or whatever else it is, must get the glasses that will show him the real world, and he is safe, and free to go and come as he pleases. See the real in the moral sphere, and the first great peril is gone. Nothing need be said at this point of the Pharisee who used righteousness and long prayers as a screen for villainy. Probably his doom was that in the end he came to think his righteousness and his prayers real, and to reckon them as credit with a God, who did not see through them any more than he did himself. It is a mistake to over-emphasize here the devouring119 of widow' houses by the Pharisee (Matt. 23:14), for it was no peculiar120 weakness of his; publicans and unjust judges did the same. Only the publican and the unjust judge told themselves no lies about it. The Pharisee lied—lying to oneself or lying to another, which is the worse? The more dangerous probably is lying to oneself, though the two practices generally will go together in the long run. The worst forms of lying, then, are lying to oneself and lying about God; and the Pharisee combined them, and told himself that, once God's proper dues of prayer and tithe112 were paid, his treatment of the widow and her house was correct. Hence, says Jesus, he receives "greater damnation" (A.V.)—or judgement on a higher scale ("perissoteron krima").
The Pharisees were men who believed in God—only that with his world, they re-created him (as we are all apt to do for want of vision or by choice); but what is atheism121, what can it be, but indifference122 to God's facts and to God's nature? If religion is union with God, in the phrase we borrow so slightly from the mystics, how can a man be in union with God, when the god he sees is not there, is a figment of his own mind, something different altogether from God? Or, if we use the phrase of the Old Testament. prophet and of Jesus himself, if religion is vision of God, what is our religion, if after all we are not seeing God at all, but something else—a dummy123 god, like that of the Pharisees, some trifling124 martinet125 who can be humbugged—or, to come to ourselves, a majestic126 bundle of abstract nouns loosely tied up in impersonality127? For all such Jesus has a caution. Indifference to God's facts leads to one end only. We admit it ourselves. There are those who scold Bunyan for sending Ignorance to hell, but we omit to ask where else could Ignorance go, whether Bunyan sent him or not. Ignorance, as to germs or precipices128 or what not, leads to destruction "in pari materia"; in the moral sphere can it be otherwise? This serves in some measure to explain why Jesus is so tender to gross and flagrant sinners, a fact which some have noted129 with surprise. Surely it is because publican and harlot have fewer illusions; they were left little chance of imagining their lives to be right before God. What Jesus thought of their hardness and impurity130 we have seen already, but heedless as they were of God's requirements of them, they were not guilty of the intricate atheism of the Pharisees. Further, whether it was in his mind or not, it is also true that the frankly131 gross temptations do bring a man face to face with his own need of God, as the subtler do not; and so far they make for reality.
The fourth group are those who cannot make up their minds. "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). The word is an interesting one ("euthetos"), it means "handy" or "easy to place." (The word is used of the salt not "fit" for land or dunghill (Luke 14:35), and the negative of the inconvenient132 harbour (Acts 27:12).) This man is not adapted for the Kingdom of God; he is not easy to place there. Like the man who saved his talent but did not use it (Matt. 25:24), he is not exactly bad; but he is "no good," as we say. Jesus conceives of the Kingdom of God as dynamic, not static; state or place, condition or relation, it implies work, as God himself implies work. He holds that truth is not a curiosity for the cabinet but a tool in the hand; that God's earnest world is no place for nondescript, and that there is only one region left to which they can drift. What part or place can there be in the Kingdom of Heaven—in a kingdom won on Calvary—for people who cannot be relied on, who cannot decide whether to plough or not to plough, nor, when they have made up their mind, stick to it? Jesus cannot see. (What a revelation of the force and power of his own character!)
These, then, are the four classes whom Jesus warns, and it is clear from the consideration of them that his view of sin is very different from those current in that day. Men set sin down as an external thing that drifted on to one like a floating burr—or like paint, perhaps—it could be picked off or burnt off. It was the eating of pork or hare—something technical or accidental; or it was, many thought, the work of a demon133 from without, who could be driven out to whence he came. Love and drunkenness illustrated134 the thing for them—a change of personality induced by an exterior135 force or object, as if the human spirit were a glass or a cup into which anything might be poured, and from which it could be emptied and the vessel136 itself remain unaffected. Jesus has a deeper view of sin, a stronger psychology, than these, nor does he, like some quick thinkers of to-day, put sin down to a man's environment, as if certain surroundings inevitably137 meant sin. Jesus is quite definite that sin is nothing accidental—it is involved in a man's own nature, in his choice, it comes from the heart, and it speaks of a heart that is wrong. When we survey the four groups, it comes to one central question at last: Has a man been in earnest with himself about God's dealings with him? Hardness and lust make a man play the fool with human souls whom God loves and cares for—a declaration of war on God himself. Wilful139 self-deception about God needs no comment; to shilly-shally and let decision slide, where God is concerned, is atheism too. In a word, what is a man's fundamental attitude to God and God's facts? That is Jesus' question. Sin is tracked home to the innermost and most essential part of the man—his will. It is no outward thing, it is inward. It is not that evil befalls us, but that we are evil. In the words of Edward Caird, "the passion that misleads us is a manifestation140 of the same ego94, the same self-conscious reason which is misled by it," and thus, as Burns puts it, "it is the very 'light from heaven' that leads us astray." The man uses his highest God-given faculties141, and uses them against God.
But this is not all. Many people will agree with the estimate of Jesus, when they understand it, in regard to most of these classes; perhaps they would urge that in the main it is substantially the same teaching as John the Baptist's, though it implies, as we shall see, a more difficult problem in getting rid of sin. Jesus goes further. He holds up to men standards of conduct which transcend142 anything yet put before mankind. "Be ye therefore perfect," he says, "even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). When we recall what Jesus teaches of God, when we begin to try to give to "God" the content he intended, we realize with amazement143 what he is saying. He is holding up to men for their ideal of conduct the standard of God's holiness, of God's love and tenderness. Everything that Jesus tells us of God—all that he has to say of the wonderful and incredible love of God and of God's activity on behalf of his children—he now incorporates in the ideal of conduct to which men are called. John's conceptions of righteousness grow beggarly. Here is a royal magnificence of active love, of energetic sympathy, tenderness, and self-giving, asked of us, who find it hard enough to keep the simplest commandments from our youth up (Mark 10:20). We are to love our enemies, to win them, to make peace, to be pure—and all on the scale of God. And that this may not seem mere talk in the air, there is the character and personality of Jesus, embodying144 all he asks of us—bringing out new wonders of God's goodness, the ugliness and evil of sin, and the positive and redemptive beauty of righteousness.
The problem of sin and forgiveness becomes more difficult, as we think of the positive ideals which we have not begun to try to reach. Let us sum up what it involves.
Jesus brings out the utter bankruptcy145 to which sin reduces men. They become "full of hypocrisy146 and lawlessness" (Matt. 23:28), so depraved that they are like bad trees, unproductive of any but bad fruit (rotten, in the Greek, Matt. 7:17); the very light in them is darkness, and how great darkness (Matt. 6:23). They are cut off from the real world, as we saw, and lose the faculties they have abused—the talent is taken away (Matt. 25:28); "from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath" (Matt. 25:29). The nature is changed as memory is changed, and the "overflow of the heart" in speech and act bears witness to it. The faculty147 of choice is weakened; the interval148 in which inhibition—to use our modern term—is possible, grows shorter. The instincts are perverted149 and the whole being is disorganized. In a word, all that Jesus connotes by "the Kingdom of God" is "taken from them" (Matt. 21:43), and nothing left but "outer darkness" (Matt. 22:13). The vision of God is not for the impure150 (Matt. 5:8). Meanwhile sin is not a sterile151 thing, it is a leaven152 (Matt. 16:6). If our modern medical language may be applied—and Jesus used the analogy of medicine in this very case (Mark 2:17)—sin is septic. In the first place, all sin is anti-social—an invasion "ipso facto" of the rights of others. The man who sins either takes away what is another's—a man's goods, a widow's house, or a woman's purity—or he fails to give to others what is their due, be it, in the obvious field, the aid the Good Samaritan rendered to the wounded and robbed man by the roadside (Luke 10:33), or, in the higher sphere, truth, sympathy, help in the maintenance of principle, or in the achievement of progress and development (cf. Matt. 25:43). Sin is the repudiation153 of the concepts of law, duty, and service, in a word, of the love on God's scale which God calls men to exercise. And its fruits are, above all, its dissemination154. Injustice155, a historian has said, always repays itself with frightful156 compound interest. If a man starts to debauch157 society, his example is quickly followed; and it comes to hatred158.
What, we asked, did Jesus mean by "lost"? This, above all, that sin cuts a man adrift from God. In the parable159 of the Prodigal160 Son this is brought out (Luke 15:11-32). There the youth took from his father all he could get, and then deliberately161 turned his back on him forever; he went into a far country, out of his reach, outside his influence, and beyond the range of his ideas, and he devoted his father's gifts to precisely what would sadden and trouble his father most. And then came bankruptcy, final and hopeless. There was no father available in the far country; he had to live without him, and it came to a life that was not even human—a life of solitude, a life of beasts. Jesus draws it, as he does most things, in picture form, using parable. Paul puts the same in directer language; sin reduces men to a position where they are "alienated162 from the life of God" (Eph. 4:18; Col. 1:21), "without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12), "enemies of God" (Rom. 5:10; Col. 1:21); but he does not say more than Jesus implies. Paul's final expression, "God gave them up" (thrice in Rom. 1:24, 26, 28), answers to the Judge's word, in Jesus' picture, "Depart from me" (Matt. 25:41).
O Wedding-guest, this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seeméd there to be.
So Jesus handles the problem of sin, but that is only half the story, for there remains163 the problem of Redemption. The treatment of sin is far profounder and truer than John the Baptist or any other teacher has achieved; and it implies that Jesus will handle Redemption in a way no less profound and effective. If he does not, then he had better not have preached a gospel. If, in dealing138 with sin, he touches reality at every point, we may expect him in the matter of Redemption to reach the very centre of life.[30] How else can he, with his serious view of sin, say to a man, "Thy sins are forgiven thee"? (Mark 2:5). But it is quite clear from our records that, while Jesus laid bare in this relentless164 way the ugliness and hopelessness of sin, he did not despair: his tone is always one of hope and confidence. The strong man armed may find a stronger man come upon him and take from him the panoply165 in which he trusted (Luke 11:21, 22). There is a great gulf that cannot be crossed (Luke 16:26)—yes, but if the experience of Christendom tells us anything, it tells us that Jesus crossed it himself, and did the impossible. "The great matter is that Jesus believed God was willing to take the human soul, and make it new and young and clean again." But the human soul did not believe it, till Jesus convinced it, and won it, by action of his own. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost"; and he did not come in vain.
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1
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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ethically
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| adv.在伦理上，道德上 | |
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speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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revert
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| v.恢复，复归，回到 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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nexus
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| n.联系；关系 | |
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cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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prating
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| v.（古时用语）唠叨，啰唆( prate的现在分词 ) | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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sate
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| v.使充分满足 | |
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sapient
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| adj.有见识的，有智慧的 | |
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inanity
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| n.无意义，无聊 | |
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almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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stoics
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| 禁欲主义者，恬淡寡欲的人，不以苦乐为意的人( stoic的名词复数 ) | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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explicitness
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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43
narratives
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| 记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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precursor
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| n.先驱者；前辈；前任；预兆；先兆 | |
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defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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ascetic
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| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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48
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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apostasy
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| n.背教，脱党 | |
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50
vipers
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| n.蝰蛇( viper的名词复数 )；毒蛇；阴险恶毒的人；奸诈者 | |
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51
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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52
supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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53
scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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amendment
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| n.改正，修正，改善，修正案 | |
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inveighed
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| v.猛烈抨击，痛骂，谩骂( inveigh的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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56
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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57
condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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59
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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amending
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| 改良，修改，修订( amend的现在分词 )； 改良，修改，修订( amend的第三人称单数 )( amends的现在分词 ) | |
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66
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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debtor
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| n.借方，债务人 | |
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creditor
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| n.债仅人，债主，贷方 | |
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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81
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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82
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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Amended
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| adj. 修正的 动词amend的过去式和过去分词 | |
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84
infinity
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| n.无限，无穷，大量 | |
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85
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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86
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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87
quenched
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| 解（渴）( quench的过去式和过去分词 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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88
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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89
sift
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| v.筛撒，纷落，详察 | |
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90
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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91
insufficiently
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| adv.不够地，不能胜任地 | |
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92
linguistic
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| adj.语言的，语言学的 | |
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93
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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95
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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96
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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97
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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98
overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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99
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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100
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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101
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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102
sustenance
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| n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计 | |
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103
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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104
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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105
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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106
reprobate
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| n.无赖汉；堕落的人 | |
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107
cauterized
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| v.（用腐蚀性物质或烙铁）烧灼以消毒( cauterize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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108
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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109
defile
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| v.弄污，弄脏；n.(山间)小道 | |
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110
defiles
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| v.玷污( defile的第三人称单数 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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111
formulated
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| v.构想出( formulate的过去式和过去分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
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112
tithe
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| n.十分之一税；v.课什一税，缴什一税 | |
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113
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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114
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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115
uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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116
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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117
profundity
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| n.渊博；深奥，深刻 | |
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118
astigmatism
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| n.散光，乱视眼 | |
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119
devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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120
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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121
atheism
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| n.无神论，不信神 | |
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122
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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123
dummy
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| n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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124
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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125
martinet
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| n.要求严格服从纪律的人 | |
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126
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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127
impersonality
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| n.无人情味 | |
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128
precipices
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| n.悬崖，峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
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129
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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130
impurity
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| n.不洁，不纯，杂质 | |
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131
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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132
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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133
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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134
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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135
exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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136
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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137
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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138
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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139
wilful
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| adj.任性的，故意的 | |
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140
manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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141
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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142
transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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143
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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144
embodying
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| v.表现( embody的现在分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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145
bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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146
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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147
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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148
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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149
perverted
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| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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150
impure
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| adj.不纯净的，不洁的；不道德的，下流的 | |
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151
sterile
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| adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的 | |
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152
leaven
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| v.使发酵；n.酵母；影响 | |
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153
repudiation
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| n.拒绝；否认；断绝关系；抛弃 | |
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154
dissemination
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| 传播,宣传,传染(病毒) | |
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155
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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156
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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157
debauch
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| v.使堕落，放纵 | |
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158
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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159
parable
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| n.寓言，比喻 | |
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160
prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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161
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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162
alienated
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| adj.感到孤独的，不合群的v.使疏远( alienate的过去式和过去分词 )；使不友好；转让；让渡（财产等） | |
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163
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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164
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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165
panoply
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| n.全副甲胄，礼服 | |
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