Religious Reality | Page 4

claims He was convicted of blasphemy and put to death.
His disciples failed to understand Him. The Gospels are full of the contrast between their minds and His. Of the chosen Twelve who, as He said, had continued with Him in His trials and to whom He promised that they should eat and drink at His table in His Kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, one betrayed and one denied Him when the time of crisis came, and the rest forsook Him and fled. The fact that their faith and loyalty were subsequently re- established--that the execution which took place on Calvary was not the complete and summary ending of the whole Christian movement--that, in the days that followed, the recreant disciples became the confident Apostles, requires for its explanation the assertion in some form of the truth of the Resurrection.
With regard to the precise form which the Resurrection took there may be room for differences of opinion: the accounts of the risen Jesus in the various Gospel records cannot be completely harmonized, and the story may here and there have been modified in the telling. The fact remains that apart from the assumption as a matter of historical truth that Jesus was veritably alive from the dead, and that He showed Himself alive to His disciples by evidences which were adequate to carry conviction to their incredulous minds, the origins of historical Christianity cannot really be explained.
In the Gospel according to S. John it is stated that the crowds said of Jesus, "This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world": and so much, at the least, the average Englishman is ready to admit: for to call Jesus Christ a Prophet--even to call Him the supreme Prophet--is to claim for Him no more than a good Mohammedan claims for Mohammed.
The word "prophet" in itself means one who speaks on behalf of another: and a prophet is defined to be a spokesman on behalf of GOD. He is essentially a man with a message. In so far as he is a true prophet he is one who by an imperious inner necessity is constrained to declare to his fellows a word which has come to him from the Lord. And the prophet's word is urgent: it brooks no delay. It is impatient of conventionalisms and shams. It breaks through the established order of things in matters both social and religious. It is dynamic, vivid, revolutionary. It goes to the root of things, with a startling directness, a kind of explosive force. It disturbs and shatters the customary placidities of men's lives. It forces them to face spiritual realities, to look the truth in the face.
All this is true in a pre-eminent degree of the words of Christ. There is a force and directness, an energy and intensity about His teaching, which is without parallel in the history of the world. It might have been thought impossible for His utterances, in any age or under any circumstances, to become conventionalized: but the miracle has been achieved. Christianity is to the average Englishman an established convention and nothing more.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit," said Jesus: but we say rather, "Blessed are the rich in substance."
"Blessed are they that mourn": but that is not the general opinion.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"--but who amongst us really believes it?
"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."
"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy": but to-day a more popular maxim is, "Be not merciful unto them that offend of malicious wickedness."
"Blessed are the pure in heart"--and how many of us are that?
"Blessed are the peace-makers": but in a time of war they are not very favourably regarded.
"Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake"--is that your ambition, or mine?
"Ye are the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world"--then the earth, it is to be feared, is a somewhat insipid place, and its light comparable to darkness visible. "If any man will come after Me, let him take up his Cross, and follow Me": but most of us make it a tacit condition of our Christianity that we shall not be crucified.
Is it not true that we habitually refuse to take seriously His teaching about man; that we water down His paradoxes and conventionalize His sayings; that we blunt the sharpness of His precepts, and shirk the tremendous sternness of His demands?
And does His teaching about GOD fare any better? GOD was to Jesus Christ the one Reality that mattered; is that in any serious sense true of us? GOD, He taught, cares for the sparrows, numbers the hairs of our heads, sees in secret, and reads our inmost hearts. GOD knows