SO far we have been studying the character and work of Jesus as he is presented in the evangelists, just as we might study any other character of that period. We have not yet considered Jesus as he now affects the world—a presence and force of our own times.
When the scientists proved the indestructibility of matter, when they discovered the of the conservation of energy, showing us how the coal measures, that warm millions of homes and drive the of land and sea, are but stored-up sunbeams of ages gone, they showed us that through all her wonderful changes Nature loses none of her substance. In this splendid formulation of natural law the scientists have done a secondary but more important service; they have given us a symbol from things material, an illustration of a law of the higher sphere. Nothing is ever lost in the spiritual world.
A thought with life and truth in it, once set going, can no more be lost than a drop of water falling on the fields can be lost. Professor Harrison, of England, is right in his doctrine of , as far as it goes. He sees part of a truth and states it well. Whatever force there may be in any human life in human life. We may not be able to trace it, as we may not trace the identical dew-drop that glittered on the grass this morning and that, by the rising sun, has now disappeared from our view, but not from existence.
It may well be that the influences that have in shaping our lives—in making us what we are to-day—have in some way come to us from many thousands of lives. In a true sense Moses, David, Paul, Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, with many others—our parents and teachers above all—all these, and, it may be, more unnamable, live in us to-day. This is what Froude meant when he wrote of Martin Luther, “No man of our times is what he would have been but for Luther.” This is true because Luther’s life so enters into the influences of our times that no man ever brought into relations with him could escape that influence.
And few have escaped it; none of the European nations, none of the nations that have been brought into any sort of relations with Christianity and the civilizations that have grown out of it; few, if any, of what we call heathen nations; for the influences of Luther’s life and are in the movement of our times, that now promises to do for these nations what the coming of Christianity did for Europe, Eastern Asia, and Northern Africa in the first centuries of our era—so changed them as to make a new in history; we might say, a new world.
What is true of such a man as Luther is true in a measure—less extensive it may be, less real it cannot be—of every life that has gone before us, and that has, in any way, entered into our own.
It would be easy to offer illustrations. Consider Francis Bacon—perhaps Roger Bacon still more—in relation to the scientific methods of our times. Think of Shakespeare, not in poetry only, but in all literature; or of Kant, Spinoza, Locke, in philosophy; Calvin, Wesley, and the rest, in theology and moral reforms. Or think of the artists and inventors, the great soldiers and statesmen. You may easily make out a very long list of names of human lives that, going before us, now live in us. The list will show names that stand for diverse and elements; but all these enter into our lives, just as, to return to our illustration from the world of waters, the water pure from the clouds, sparkling in mountain springs, and from swamps and all manner of ugly places, enters, it well may be, into the elements of the dew-drop that reflects the sun upon each grass-blade in the fields.
It is nothing to the life of Jesus of Nazareth that his influence should in human history. Every human life, the humblest and unworthiest, so abides. But the influence of Jesus is different from that of other men. I am not now speaking of degree, but kind. As his method of thinking, of teaching; as the work he proposed to do and as the plans he adopted difference him from men, so does the history of the influence that flowed out from him into life and so made modern civilization, so does the character of his influence now difference him from men.
It would carry us too far for the design of these discussions to enter now into the subject of the relation of Jesus to the history of his era. Our calendar intimates the extent and power of that influence; we count time from his birth; this is 1889, A. D. That influence has entered into whatever has made the world of our times. The history of this influence is the history of the era.
We will consider the influence of Jesus, as it may be a matter of observation and consciousness.
Consider the power of the teachings of Jesus upon the human conscience. This is to me a growing wonder. Other men’s words the conscience to a degree, but only when they echo his or approach harmony with them. This is so strangely true that no words of any teacher stir the conscience—except to protest—that antagonize and contradict Jesus. There is no risk of exaggeration or dogmatism here; it is safe and perfectly fair to say no doctrine of God or man, of rights and wrongs, that or denies what Jesus teaches, has any power over the human conscience. Other words and doctrines may quicken the intellect and dominate it; may excite the imagination and stir the emotions; but if they are contrary to his doctrines and his life they have no grasp upon the moral side of man.
It is easy to make the experiment and to make it . Read books that contradict his doctrines—that seek to them. If you read with I am not afraid for you............