XLII.

JESUS THE PATH-FINDER.

66 'Follow me."-MATTHEW xvi. 24.

CHRISTIANITY takes for granted that all men are "lost." But it is well to understand distinctly that when it says lost, it does not mean condemned. It uses the word lost according to its simple, every-day meaning. A man is "lost" when he does not know where he is, or in which direction to turn. Jesus evidently conceives the situation to be something like this: Humanity is a company of people-men, women, and children-who are entangled in the mazes of a strange country. He seems to think of them in the world as we might think of a group of emigrants who have lost themselves in the midst of tropical Africa. The country about them is fair, but perilous. It is rich in resources and offers much gratification to the senses, but it is saturated with unseen miasmas. From out of its fair forests may emerge at any time ravening wild beasts. From its shady valleys may come at any moment forms worse than those of demons. They have explored the territory for a little way round about them. They have built themselves

habitations and have fallen into a routine of liv ing. The children and the stupid ones among them are content with the situation. But the sober-minded and wise are deeply anxious for more light. Indeed, they, and they alone, are aware that their community is lost.

This seems to be Christ's conception of humanity. They are in the midst of a universe of which they are partial explorers, but of which they know little. They are exposed to dire perils of which they themselves are ignorant. They know not which way to turn in order that they may establish communication with the other inhabitants of the universe. It is to this situation that Christianity speaks. It is the reply to the needs of the men who are lost. It shows them how to live in the world, and it uncovers the path out of it.

These are really the two questions of religion. How ought I to live? What path is there to walk in when I shall have done living? Jesus Christ offers himself as the answer to both of these. His answer must needs be examined. can only be put aside or ignored by stupid folk. His solution may be rejected, but to reject it without examination is folly. He comes so accredited that He must be listened to.

It

What, then, is His word to men who recognize that they are unable to solve the riddle of living, or who wish to know which way their faces shall turn on dying? To recur again to the simile of

the African emigrants: He does not offer to relieve them by giving a chart or any detailed description of the path they should take. In this is His difference from all other religious leaders of men. They have issued rules for living, a philosophy to be interpreted, a theology to be trusted. Jesus does none of these things. He says to the company of perplexed and frightened people: "Follow Me.' That is, "Do as I do. As you watch Me, act as I act, think as I think, and live as I live, and thus you will escape from the perils and necessities of life as I escape from them." Christianity is the imitation of Christ.

Let us see, then, more narrowly what His manner of life was. A Hebrew carpenter, thirty years of age, renounces the joys of life and love to give himself solely to well-doing. He renounces them after having seen them. The psychology of the Temptation is marvelous. The possibilities of a triumphant life passed across the mirror of His mind as clear and sharp as a picture in the most brilliant sunlight. He verily saw the "kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them.” He put them aside in obedience to a higher resolve, and what was the result? Poverty, disappointment, distress; the seeming failure of His plans.

He was outspoken for the truth against every lie. There was no guile in His mouth. His high resolve for true thinking matched His de

termination for true doing. The result was that it put Him in the wrong with His family, with His church, with His neighbor, with His government. His kinsfolk said He was mad. His church said He was a blasphemer. His neighbor said He was a disturber of the peace. His government said He was a malefactor. His way of life incensed His fellows to such an extremity that at last by the practically unanimous consent of all concerned, He was put out of the way as a man who was too disagreeable to be allowed to live.

He submitted tamely to every wrong. He bore Himself toward His enemies as other men do toward their friends. Affront could not arouse Him, insult could not disturb Him-with the result that He was despised, reviled, cuffed, and in the end crucified. He does not at all disguise the difficulty and peril of the path in which He walked. It may cost fortune: "Sell all thou hast and follow Me." It may cost pain: "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better so." It may cost the starvation of the affections: 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." In his phrase it "brings a cross. 'If any man determines to follow Me, let him take up his cross.' This is the doctrine of the cross. But in the face of it all, He stands serenely looking at the lost company of lost humanity and says to them "Follow Me!"

In the presence of the hard facts of life there is the stubborn conviction that in a world like ours it is not safe to accept His leadership. Said a clear-minded and candid man: "I can't afford to be a Christian; it costs too much. If it only cost money that would be a trifle, but it seems to me that I could only be a Christian at the cost of all that makes life worth living. I am not ready to renounce the joys of life and love. I am not willing to be despised and rejected. His way may be divine and all that, but it is a way along which I am not prepared to follow Him."

What shall we say to this? Here is His invitation to follow. Here is the known difficulty of His path. What considerations will persuade or justify a reasonable man in walking under His leadership? In the first place, there is the strange fact that there is an imperious voice in the secret soul of every sane man which asserts that Jesus is right. The inmost nature of a man responds to Him. While the flesh shrinks from it, and the mind is perplexed at it, the spirit itself recognizes in the voice of the Master, not only the voice of God, but the voice of the most real humanity. To follow this innermost voice along His thorny path is the supreme act of faith. Faith in Christ is really not so much the assent to the truth of what He says, as it is the assent to the truthfulness of one's own innermost soul.