Thou shalt use just so much of the materials and tools of life as the service of thy end requires. Thou shalt exclude from thy life all that exceeds or falls below this mean, reckless of pleasure lost. Thou shalt endure whatever hardship and privation the maintenance of this mean in the service of thy end requires, heedless of pain involved. Thou shalt remain steadfast in this service until habit shall have made it a second nature, and custom shall have transformed it into joy. Thou shalt find and hold a few like-minded friends, to share with thee this lifelong devotion to that common social welfare which is the task and goal of man. CHAPTER V THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF LOVE I THE DEFINITION OF THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT CHRISTIANITY is not a philosophy but a religion; not a doctrine but a life; not the performance of a task but the maintenance of certain personal relationships; in a word, it is the Spirit of love. First it is grateful reverence toward the Father whose nature is manifested in the goodness of the universe, and its perpetual struggle toward perfection. That this goodness at the heart of the universe is so akin to us that we can regard it as personal, and treat its struggle toward perfection as the expression of the Father's will, is the deep spiritual insight on which Christianity is founded. The main proofs of this insight are two: the fact that the seers from Jesus down have seen it; and that on it as a basis a satisfactory life can be developed. This fundamental insight has been variously expressed; sometimes in personal, sometimes in impersonal terms; but always with the implication, latent or avowed, that this Universal Good ness, working through the cosmic process and coming to self-expression in the customs, institutions, and standards of human society, is capable of being reproduced within us as the Spirit of our own regenerated lives. Perhaps this basal insight has never been better expressed than by the least orthodox and conventional of modern seers, Walt Whitman. "In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart Nestles the seed perfection. "Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states, Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all, Only the good is universal. "Is it a dream? Nay but the lack of it a dream, And failing it life's wealth and lore a dream, To take the duties and trials, the practical problems and personal relationships of life up into this atmosphere of Universal Goodness, so that what we do and how we treat people becomes the resultant, not of the outward situation and our natural appetites and passions, but of the outward situation and this Universal Goodness reproduced within our reverent and obedient wills, this is what it means to live in the Christian Spirit; this is the essence of Christianity. Strengthened character and straightened conduct are sure to follow the maintenance of this spiritual relationship. Not that it will transform one's hereditary traits and acquired habits all at once, or save one from many a slip and flaw. Even the Christian Spirit of love takes time to work its moral transformation. The tendency of it, however, is steady and strong in the right direction; and in due time it will conquer the heart and control the action of any man who, whether verbally or silently, whether formally or informally, maintains this conscious relationship to that Universal Goodness at the heart of things which most of us call God. Christ, and all who have shared his spiritual insight, tell us that the maintenance of this relationship, close, warm, and quick, is the pearl of great price, the one thing needful, the potency of righteousness, the secret of blessedness; and that there is more hope of a man with a bad record and many besetting sins who honestly tries to keep this relationship alive within his breast, than there is of the self-righteous man who boasts that he can keep himself outwardly immaculate without these inward aids. Christianity of this simple, vital sort, is the world's crowning principle of personality. Criticised by enemies and caricatured by friends; fossilised in the minds of the aged, and artificially forced on the tongues of the immature; mingled with all manner of exploded superstition, false philosophy, science that is not so, and history that never happened; obscured under absurd rites; buried in incredible creeds; professed by hypocrites; discredited by sentimentalists; evaporated by mystics; stereotyped by literalists; monopolised by sacerdotalists; it has lived in spite of all the grave-clothes its unbelieving disciples have tried to wrap around it, and will hold forever the keys of eternal life. II THE CHRISTIAN EXPANSION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS The Christian Spirit came historically as an expansion of the Jewish law; a rewriting of that law on the tables of the heart; an interpretation of it in terms of personal attitude toward God and one's fellow-men, instead of in terms of specific acts to be done or left undone. Perhaps there is no better way to get at the heart of Christianity than from this historical approach, trying to see |