Despite the language of certain hymns that we sing, we do not find that any of the inspired Evangelists applied to our Saviour the softer adjectives, like "mild" and "sweet" and "kind." The strong, true, and often stern portraiture of the Gospels was wholly devoid of that air of yielding benevolence which pervades so many pictures and images of our Lord. He did not merely "mean well"; He went about actually doing the good, and allowed Himself no leisure until He had finished His work; even in His gentlest utterances there is the salt of duty, with its savor of judgment.
He did not say, "Come unto Me all ye that are lazy," and, like the Pharisees, leave others to lift their burdens, so grievous to be borne; "Come unto Me all ye that labor," was His invitation. He wanted laborers; He realized that they were too few for the fields of opportunity, white unto harvest. He would engage such even at the eleventh hour; to work, not for the meat which perishes anyway, but för the souls of men, which may still be saved. He wishes us to be heavy-laden, not with worry, and sin, and care, and remorse of our own, but with others' burdens. Bearing these is His law, His yoke--not imposed upon us by compulsion, but taken by us of our free will, and shared with Him on those terms. He begins by giving us rest, we know not how; but He would have us in due course find it for ourselves, and so understand why it is bestowed on us. If His yoke is easy, it is because we have with Him one impulse, one sense of duty, which eliminates friction, jealousies, quarrels, lawsuits, so producing the utmost, because the best-directed, efficiency. If His burden is light, it is because it has ceased to be our own or even our neighbor's. He bears it with us, and so measures the weight, granting thus the strength by which it may be lifted.
Conquest by Sacrifice
Our Lord's Beatitudes, too--they also were based not upon ease and indulgence, but upon conquest by sacrifice. To be poor in spirit, we must rid ourselves of pride and prejudice. We mourn for sin only when we have abandoned it. We are meek when we keep--restrain--our temper. We hunger and thirst after righteousness when (at least) we have painfully denied ourselves what is unrighteous. We are merciful when we expel our grudges and grievances and terrors and lust for revenge. We are pure in heart when, by God's grace, we are cleansed of vices. And we are peacemakers when from our minds we obliterate anger and suspicion and revolt.
It is not an easy religion, this of Jesus Christ. No idealist has ever set so lofty a standard as His, for He is unsatisfied unless we be perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect. To Him, no peccadillo is venial. A heated word is murder. An evil glance is adultery. Even in an oath, His eye, so sensitive in its accurate discernment, detected evil. "Verily, verily, I say unto you," was His own imprimatur of truth, and He limits us also to a simple "Yea, yea" and "Nay, nay." Whatever emphasis exceeds this, He condemns as sacrilege. To swear by heaven, it is God's throne; by earth, it is His footstool; by Jerusalem, it is His city; by the hairs of our head--God only can count them, and change them from black to white. We are surrounded by God's greatness; therefore let our words be few, for by those words we are justified and by them we are condemned. Nor were these views of merely academic interest. One only of His Apostles ever swore; but that Apostle was Peter, and what he swore was that he knew nothing of Jesus. Bad language, as we call it, is really needless language; the idle word, which serves no purpose. Of every such utterance we shall have one day to give account, and it is only by our recognizing the keenness of our Lord's detection of sin that we can appreciate the love which led Him to bear it.
Love and Wrath
We like to think of the kindness of the Lord Jesus when He blessed little children. We do not so often remember the anger, moved by which He spoke about those millstones that have bruised the feet of children, and are bound about the necks of men. The drunkard who is his own enemy--for him let us pray; but for the drunkard who is untouched by the miseries of his own girls and boys, pray doubly, for the temptation has him by the throat; he is plunged in a sea of despair-it would be better for him that he had never been born. We are impressed by the humility with which He washed the disciples' feet. Do not forget that it was a rebuke to such as sought to be the greatest, and an assertion of His sole mastery over us; a warning to Peter, a judgment on Judas. Within a few hours, Peter, thus blessed, was weeping bitterly; while Judas hanged himself above Aceldama, the field of blood. For judgment, Jesus came into the world--to show us God; the love of God assuredly, but the wrath of God no less.
And His test for us is not whether we go to church and chapel, or otherwise call Him "Lord, Lord." He asks whether we have helped those who suffer. It is not enough that we should be sorry for them, and send a subscription to some society. What we give in money is good, but it is only the repayment of a loan which, in due course, will be called in by the Almighty Creditor. What He claims is that eternal part of us, which we are able to give or withhold, here and hereafter; it is the soul of us--the whole soul--that must enter into His work. The hungry--have we fed them? Surely we might have shared His daily bread, for it is generously bestowed. The, thirsty--have we given them drink? One cup of His living water, springing up within us--why withhold it? The naked--do we clothe them? Or is our righteousness, like theirs, no better than filthy rags? The sick--do we visit them, or are we ourselves in need of healing? The prisoners--do we enter their narrow cells, or is it that we cannot leave our own?
He does not ask of us more than we can undertake. He knows that we cannot ourselves provide the bread and the water and the clothing, or ourselves heal the sick and liberate the prisoners. But He does hold us answerable for the personal service that we can undertake; and if we neglect it, we become strangers to Him. For these people, so hungry, so ill-clad, so sick, are they for whom He died. Where they are, there is He, waiting for us to keep our appointment. If we refuse so to do, then He does not know Us--not, that is, as fellow-laborers or yoke-fellows, but only as workers of iniquity. This word iniquity does not mean, of necessity, anything very bad--iniquity is often quite respectable--but simply describes the deeds of a servant who is "unprofitable," because the aims of his life are misdirected.
"Resist not an Injury"
When our Lord said, "Resist not evil," He did not mean, "Condone evil," or "Forgive evil," for none can pardon sin but God alone. This much-debated command is simple enough when you read it as, "Resist not an injury," or, as the Lord's Prayer calls it, "a trespass." Forgive your brother, not seven times only, but seventy times seven, since it is without limit that God has forgiven you; and whatever is now done amiss is, not against you, but against Him. If a careless servant had broken Mary Magdelene's alabaster box of ointment, very precious, who can say what punishment would have been inflicted by that woman, with the seven devils within her? But loving much, because forgiven much, she broke it willingly as a gift for our Lord. If useless to Him, to her also it was useless. And when they drove the nails into His hands and feet, He did not seem to be conscious that His was the wrong. He did not say, "I forgive"--as if the injury were against Himself--but "Father, forgive." It is not the ill-treatment of the Son of Man that is irreparable--they know not what they do ' rather, the mortal sin is committed against the Holy Ghost--against the Light, the Knowledge, the revealed and realized Truth. You think that someone has injured you. Be it so; then you should forgive, as He did, because the injury against you cannot be as deep as the implied injury against your Father, who cares for you better than you have ever cared for yourself.
Our Lord--in this, as in other respects, living out His laws--did not resist injuries. When Peter struck off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest, Christ restored it with a touch. He would not have His disciples fight for His deliverance from the civil power. When one of those same priestly servants smote Him on the cheek, He turned the other, and was smitten also by the Roman soldiers. When they took away His cloak, He gave them also His seamless robe. And when they compelled Him to go one mile to the judgment-hall, He went with them twain, even unto Calvary. But what was His argument? Pity for Malchus? Not only that. What stirred Him to the miracle was a sense of the peril to Peter's own life. It was not the cruelty of the sword only but the wastage of the sword that He condemned. As Jesus foretold, Peter did perish ultimately by cold steel; but our Lord saved his intervening years. The Christians who fled into the mountains were no shirkers. They were good troops, taking cover, and thousands of them endured a hideous martyrdom. If, in that judgment-hall, Jesus had returned blow for blow, then, humanly speaking, He would have died an easier death than the cross, but He could never have said, as He did, "It is finished." To finish one's course is the ideal; to keep the faith is to be ready for death--but only as the last enemy to be conquered. He aimed not merely at overcoming Evil, but at overcoming it with Good.
Christ and War
And this explains why Jesus never denounced war, whether past or future. He knew that He Himself was raising issues which would fling men into the fighting-line. When the centurion came to Him, He did not call upon him to lay down his arms, but healed his servant. The profession of soldier was to Him neither better nor worse than the profession of tax-gatherer, farmer, or fisherman. For the laws of a State were to Him an expression of God's law. The gift on the altar--that is, religion--is no payment of an overdue debt to a neighbor--that is, justice. The judge is right to enforce that debt, and the debtor is not free to complete his bequest for religion until the uttermost farthing has been paid where due. The dispensation of justice precedes the dispensation of grace, and the one must be satisfied before the other can be enjoyed. Hence the judge, hence the officer, hence the prison--all stamped with our Saviour's unmistakable "Verily." Hence His whip of cords which twice cleansed the Temple of the money-changers. Hence armies, hence navies, which must continue until He reigns in the heart.
Twice, I say, not once. How quickly those tables were æt up again! On the one hand, He authorized the use of force against evil; on the other hand, He showed how little is achieved thereby. For it was that money from those tables--twice overturned--that bribed Judas to betray Him. And it was only when He had won men's hearts that they laid all their possessions at the Apostles' feet. We do well to defend the weak and correct abuses But in His presence the weak do not need defense, and abuses cannot raise their head. A woman in imminent peril of her life was brought to our Lord. He did not strike one blow in her defense, but wrote on the ground, and she was safe. it is as He writes His law on our conscience that we also go in peace.