Chapter XXII
THE NATIVITY AND MATURITY OF
JESUS
W. John Murray
The
Realm of Reality
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1922.
“And when these things
begin to come to pass, then look up,
and lift up your heads; for your
redemption draweth
nigh.”
--Luke 21:28
[250] The
central figure around which most serious
thought revolves is undoubtedly the most
unique person of all history, Jesus of
Nazareth. From every Christian rostrum
and from many Jewish pulpits the name of
Jesus is sounded forth as the one who has
left the greatest impression upon human
consciousness.
The songs
sung, and the sermons preached, at
Christmas services often deal with the
birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem.
Many references are made to prophecy,
particularly to that of Isaiah, who,
seven hundred years before the coming of
Jesus, foretold it, and related just what
would happen to him, just what he would
do and what he would accomplish for the
race. Those who are skeptical might take
the prophecy of Isaiah and the advent of
Jesus of Nazareth and [251] bring them
together in parallel columns and see if
one does not exactly fit the other, if
one does not seem to produce the other.
One strange fact about prophecy is this:
that when it finds acceptance by a single
human mind there is another mentality
added to the mentality of the prophet,
and when this belief is communicated to
other minds, there are a number thinking
along the same line, confidently
expecting the same thing; and when this
goes on increasing with geometrical ratio
that which starts in the mind of a single
prophet presently becomes a
nation’s hope. And so it is
perfectly natural, knowing what we know
of the power of thought, that Jesus
should come in response to prophesy.
He came
because of a great demand of the human
heart. The children of Israel had longed
for an emancipator, a deliverer and a
savior, and their hope gave rise to the
prophetic utterances and soul desire that
this should come to pass, and it came to
pass in due order and in due time. Hence
we have the peculiar and the supernatural
aspect apparently surrounding the birth
of him who was prophesied long before by
Isaiah.
I am not so
much concerned with the nativity of
Jesus, though it is tremendously
interesting, as I am with the maturity of
Jesus. His nativity and early life have
been taught in Sunday Schools all over
the world. The lives and characters of
children have been molded according to
this marvelous history of the child
Jesus. The young of either sex who desire
to be in the world, and yet [252] not of
it, find in the youthful Nazarene a flesh
and blood testimony to the power of God
to keep one from yielding to
temptation.
We see in
the young Jesus the triumphant
personality, one who was tempted in all
things, even as we are, and yet, without
succumbing to sin, calling upon his
internal and integral and inherent
Divinity which sustained him in the hour
of trial and tribulation and, moreover,
temptation, because many a man can stand
in the hour of trial and tribulation who
finds himself utterly weak in the
presence of temptation. To be tried from
without is one thing; to be tempted from
within is another. And so we find in this
youthful Jesus an example of the power of
a young man to rise superior to his
appetites and passions--because he had
them. Otherwise it would not be stated in
the Bible that he was tempted in all
things, even as we are, yet without
succumbing. Herein is not only a model
for childhood, not only a something upon
which you may build juvenile character,
but a something upon which you may base
the virility of early manhood.
But such
another composite character the world has
never known. Such another rare instance
of spiritual superiority over material
tendencies history cannot furnish. I want
to deal especially with his maturity,
with his full-fledged manhood. It is
nothing to us where he was or what he was
doing between his twelfth and thirtieth
[253] years, though speculation has
abounded over this particular period in
the life of the Master. Hindus tell us he
was in India. Persians assert that he was
in Persia. Assyrians tell us he was in
Assyria. The Esdras of Judea claim he was
in their monastery. It does not make any
difference where he was. The question is,
what was he doing? I believe he
was studying the science of life, Divine
Science. I believe he was becoming more
and more intelligently conscious of his
unity with God, so that when he appeared
in his thirtieth year in the first days
of his ministry he came forth with an
internal conviction of his co-partnership
with the Infinite.
We do not
find anywhere in the history of the
Nazarene any attempt to set up a new
organization, a new cult, a new church.
On the contrary, everything bears witness
to the fact that he sought to use
intelligently and wisely the existing
institutions of his day. He was not to be
the founder of a new church. He came to
give life to the old one. He came to ask
of the old church what it was doing as
the pastor, what it was doing as the
shepherd of the flock. He came to remind
the old church of his day that it was not
measuring up to the Divine requirements.
And so we find him going from city to
city, and village to village, and
preaching in their synagogues about the
Kingdom of God, the gospel of
righteousness.
He had
traveled over many cities in Judea, and
one day he came to his own little home
town, [254] Nazareth, and, as the custom
was in that day (and one which might
prevail today with a great deal more
benefit to the world than the customs
which do prevail), he was handed by the
presiding rabbi of the synagogue the Book
of the Prophet Isaiah. And he read from
the Prophet Isaiah a reference to himself
and to his own mission--“I am come
to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, to open the
eyes of the blind and to preach the
Gospel to the poor.” And, closing
the book, he handed it to the rabbi and
he said: “This day, this very day,
this scripture is fulfilled in your
ears.”
That
prophecy had stood on the pages of the
Book of Isaiah for seven hundred years,
and no man up to that time had dared to
attribute it to himself. No man up to
that hour had felt that it had any
reference whatsoever to himself. But this
man, who had arrived at his maturity, not
only his maturity in years, but his
maturity of spiritual understanding, took
it to himself. “It has reference to
me, and I tell you, of a verity, on this
day this scripture shall be fulfilled in
your ears. I shall preach the Gospel to
the poor. I shall heal the sick. I shall
preach deliverance to the captives. I
shall open the eyes of them that are
blind. I shall bring to them a new
thought concerning themselves and
concerning God and concerning their
fellow-men.” And they marveled.
They marveled because they knew that he
was not schooled in the Sanhedrin. He was
not [255] a college graduate. He was not
a theological seminarian. He was not
ordained by the existing ecclesiastical
institutions. He was the son of a
carpenter from a remote village. He had
not even had the benefit of associating
with the bright lights of Jerusalem.
“Now,
how knoweth this man letters, seeing that
he hath never learned?” They
propounded questions, and the answers
staggered them. He had been closer to the
great heart of things than they; he had
not developed the intellect at the
expense of spiritual intuition. Rather,
he paid more attention to the inner
thoughts of God. He confounded the wise,
made the scholastic look foolish, asked
questions to which there was no answer,
from their point of view, and then, as it
is said, he came unto his own and his own
received him not.
There is a
tremendous significance in this
statement. One of the most natural things
in the world, when a man finds a good
thing, whether it is a valuable gold
mine, a great political idea, or a
tremendous spiritual truth, is to
communicate it to others. There is that
inherent unselfishness in the great
majority of men which, when they discover
anything that is really worthwhile,
prompts them, impels them to share it
with others. And so, the most natural
thing in the world for Jesus of Nazareth
to do was to communicate this great
spiritual truth of his to his own people.
He came to Nazareth, where he was brought
up, where he was well-known, and there he
proclaimed [256] for the first time the
mission that he was about to
accomplish.
Presently a
murmur arose in the synagogue. His
statement was a rebuke to them. If he
were going to do it, why had not the
Church of Israel done it long before? If
he were going to initiate this new order
of things and fulfill this prophecy in
his own person, why had not someone like
Malachi or Joel done it? Why had not the
great prophet in the wilderness, John the
Baptist, done it? Why should he attribute
this prophecy to himself and make himself
co-equal with God? Presently we find them
leading him out of the church to the brow
of a hill, from thence, says the
Scriptures, to cast him off, to murder
him.
He had
blasphemed. He had taken unto himself a
prophecy that could have no application
to an ordinary carpenter’s son. If
any were going to fulfill this prophecy,
it must be one of them. It would
naturally be a man high in the church,
one noted for sanctity and piety. But the
strange thing is that history does not
record that any great truth, that any
startling spiritual truth has ever come
through a man standing high in the
church.
* St. Francis of Assisi
did not stand high in the church; neither
did St. Francis de Sales. Peter was a
fisherman. Truth seems always to have
reserved herself for some simple, meek
and great soul of humility. You cannot
pour the wine of spiritual inspiration
into a vessel that is already full, but
only into an empty vessel. And Jesus was
such, an empty vessel crying night and
day [257] for wisdom and love and
righteousness and truth. Like David, his
forbear, he moistened his couch with his
tears. He wept on the Mount of Olives as
well as in the Garden of Gethsemane. His
great soul poured forth its supplication
for more truth wherewith to feed
humanity. And he came unto his own and
his own received him not. Such is the
history of every great thinker.
Homer sang
through many cities in which he could get
no bread, and in which hundreds of years
afterwards he was honored. So, Jesus of
Nazareth was rejected in his own
community when he came there with a
message. He came to a people, the
children of Israel, the members of the
ancient Church of Judah, with the
fulfillment of the very thing that they
believed in, wanted, desired, or thought
they did. He came to tell them that
Isaiah had spoken the truth, and that it
was within the power of God to heal the
sick, to comfort the sorrowing, to set
the captives free and to raise the dead.
It was the message of life and love to a
dying and sickly race--and it was too
good to be true. Could it be that God was
going to minister to them through a
solitary personality who was not equipped
as they thought he should be? Was this
lonely man, unknown in the world of
letters, to be the channel through which
these great blessings should come to the
race? This was too much to expect, and so
at once he was misunderstood.
The Greeks
understood him better. The despised [258]
Samaritans understood him better. The
common people heard him gladly. The
scholars scoffed. And today, two thousand
years later, we find the scholars still
scoffing. Christians, who call themselves
by his sacred name, ridicule the
possibility of a continuation of his
healing ministry. He comes unto his own
and his own receive him not. The Christ
truth knocks at the door of the
synagogues of today, and I mean by the
synagogues, the Christian churches as
well. There was no intention on the part
of those to whom the second appearing
came to start up new institutions, new
organizations.
Ask
yourselves, Baptists, Methodists,
Presbyterians, Catholics and Jews, when
this thought of the indwelling Christ
first came to you, if it was not the
desire of your heart and the ambition of
your soul to take it to your people--the
Jew to the Jew, the Presbyterian to the
Presbyterian, the Catholic to the
Catholic? When this light of a new truth
dawned upon your consciousness, was it
not the first great impulse of your heart
to communicate it to your own? What is
more natural? Appreciating all the good
of your respective churches, recognizing
all the sanctity of your respective
clergy, realizing all the peace and
contentment that had come to you in your
churches through your respective
sacraments, or without them, the first
great impulse of your generous hearts,
when you discovered this, was to take it
to your people.
The
Presbyterian had no desire to convert the
[259] Roman Catholic, and vice versa; the
Catholic had no desire to go to the
Presbyterian with his message of love and
life and truth or New Thought. To the
Presbyterian it is the fulfillment of
prophecy, it is the realization of hope,
and likewise to the Catholic and the Jew.
And then what? What else would we do, if
we should not go into our respective
synagogues or churches and say to our
respective ministers or rabbis:
“What do you think of this? This
has given to me more comfort than my old
church has ever given to me. I wish you
would look into it and incorporate it. I
wish you would take it into the church
and preach it from your pulpit. Will you
not recommend it to your people? It is so
real, so vital, so loving, so healing.
Please do not keep it out of the
church.” And the wise man has all
too frequently shaken his head and looked
at us with a sort of pitying contempt:
“What is this strange thing? What
is this new doctrine, this declaration of
Spirit is greater than matter, the
affirmation that God can overcome evil;
this statement that prayer can conquer
human ills, as well as moral infirmities?
What do you mean?”
Exactly the
same questions are being asked today as
were asked by the people of our
Saviour’s time. It was the doctrine
of man’s emancipation to the right
exercise of his own mentality, of
salvation to the power of the spirit over
the flesh. It was merely a re-emphasis of
an ancient truth. The same thing is true
today; it comes to its own and its own
receive it not.
[260] It is
such a startling truth that a Christian,
calling himself such, believing himself
such, will say: “Well, I believe in
prayer, but when I am ill I want a
doctor. I believe in prayer, but when I
am ill I want some physical help.”
He cannot understand the man who believes
in prayer and is willing to trust to it
absolutely with the same thought that Job
expressed when he said: “Yea,
though He slay me, yet will I trust
Him.” And when a man arrives at
that conclusion, he knows that God does
not slay anything. Truth comes unto its
own and its own repudiates it. It comes
in the sacred name of Christ, and
Christians resent it, because, they say,
if this thing were designed to come to us
in the natural and prophetic order of
things it would have reached us through
our respective churches.
Well, again
we repeat, nothing that is really
worthwhile has ever come to us through
our respective churches. Churches, like
individuals, have to be aroused. They are
hypnotised by ecclesiastical formulas.
Great bodies move slowly. It is always
some lonely, solitary individual who,
alone with God or some great idea,
perceives a hidden truth and then
communicates it to another. Great bodies
have never given us anything. For all
they have ever done we thank them, but we
do not applaud them very much. All that
any great body has ever done has been to
perpetuate an idea which an individual
communicated in the first place. And
then, when it has grown up into [261] a
great, big, tremendous organization, it
resents a new idea. It says: “We
have always believed this. This is the
faith of our fathers. Ye shall not bring
to us any new thought. The religion of
our fathers is good enough for us. We are
perfectly satisfied.” But the new
idea keeps knocking at the door; very
frequently from within the church, more
frequently from without, and the church
maintains its stolid indifference.
I want to
give to the churches all the credit that
belongs to them, but every great
ecclesiastical and political institution,
and every institution which has banded
together under its banners large numbers
of men, moves slowly, whether it is
medical, or political, or religious. You
remember how long it took the medical
institutions to accept Sir Humphrey
Davy’s idea. You remember how slow
the medical schools have been to accept
new ideas born in the minds of individual
physicians; how they have been opposed
and persecuted and misunderstood and
rejected and finally accepted, and then
the sweet, wise men of the profession
have said: “Why, of course; we
always believed it.” They forget
the days when they persecuted the man who
formulated the idea.
Agassiz says
that every great truth goes through three
stages of evolution--first it is
rejected, then it is considered, then it
is accepted; and when it is accepted men
delude themselves into thinking they
always admitted it. Divine Science, not
as a religion, not as a denomination,
[262] not as a sectarian philosophy, came
unto its own and its own received it not.
It has knocked at the door of every
church of the City of New York through
someone who has been healed and helped by
it. It has knocked at the door of every
rector’s private study through
someone who has been affected by it, or
through some book which has been sent to
him anonymously. It has sought admittance
into the souls of the most progressive
clergymen of this and other countries,
and only in rare instances do we find men
big enough and meek enough and humble
enough to kneel at the feet of Christ and
take it as a truth. One of such was
Archdeacon Wilberforce, the noted prelate
of England. Dr. Andrew Raymond is
another. There are very few men in the
city of New York like Rev. Herman J.
Randall, a Baptist clergyman, who has
been willing to sit down thoughtfully,
quietly and prayerfully, and examine this
thing to see if it had a message for him.
And, if so, if it had a message for
others through him, he thanked God that
he had found it. But he is only one in
perhaps twenty thousand.
The Jews
accept it more readily than most of our
Christian people, and yet these same
Christians say: “We are open, we
are alive to new things.” They say:
“We want to know more about
God.” Do they? I am speaking on the
maturity of Jesus. He went to his own
people, as was most natural for him to
do, and they received him not. History
ever repeats itself. He comes today, in
the maturity [263] of two thousand years
of Christianity--a great maturity that
is, you know--and knocks at the door of
the human mind and the doors of the
synagogues and churches and asks if there
is any room for him within. And again, as
of old, there is no room.
The ass
hears the message of good will and peace
upon earth more quickly than most of our
scholastics. It is the donkey in the
stable that breathes upon it and keeps it
warm, and most of us are considered
donkeys by the general public. But, thank
God, we are breathing upon a newly
revived philosophy, keeping it warm until
the men and women, and children of
tomorrow will take it up and see in it a
communicable light. It is the stranger,
sometimes, whose heart has been longing
for something better, whose thoughts have
been aspiring to something higher and
nobler, and in all his simplicity and
contriteness of soul, and all the great
repentance of a mind that is conscious of
the fact that it does not know
everything, who sits down at the feet of
a simple disciple of truth and listens in
wonderment, enthusiastic over the new
revelation, and sets about to learn more
of it. Such a person may not be in the
church and may not want to have anything
to do with the church; because he has
sought in the church previously and found
Him not there.
It is all
very well for us to go out into public
squares and talk about the nativity of
Jesus and how he was born, but what about
his maturity? What about his Gospel? To
sing the praises of [264] the infant
Jesus we tend to forget the manly Jesus;
that is hardly the full text of
Christianity.
It has come
again, and the same question is being
asked today that was asked in that
day--can any good thing come out of
Nazareth? That was the question the
clergymen asked concerning P.P.Quimby, of
Portland, Maine, who was Mrs.
Eddy’s [founder of Christian
Science] first healer and teacher--"Can
any good thing come out of an ordinary
clock-maker?" We ask exactly the same
question, with two thousand years of
Christian philosophy at our backs--can
any good thing come out of Portland? Can
an ordinary clock-maker communicate any
new truth to us? But he did; a truth that
has rung around the world, so that there
is not a Christian city, village or
hamlet on the planet today that does not
know something of the philosophy of the
Newer Thought of God. There is not a
place in the world today that is worthy
of the name of place where this thought
has not been heard, felt and
demonstrated.
Over in
Germany and England, when this
re-statement of the truth was taken over
to them, they said: “This is
another American fantasy; can any good,
profound, religious thing come out of
America, a land of commercialists?”
When a friend of mine took it to Berlin
they wanted to know what this strange
thing was. And, when it began to make
inroads in the court, it was summarily
suppressed. It made no further progress
except secretly, just as the early
Christians progressed [265] secretly in
the catacombs of Rome. When it was seen
by the powers-that-be that it was making
headway among the thoughtful people of
Germany, then the iron hand was put down
upon it, but it went on growing
nevertheless. It makes no difference how
heavy the rock is, the worm under the
soil performs its functions and wriggles
its way upward and through. It makes no
difference what may be the weight of the
soil, the thirsty root of the tree will
find water. And it makes no difference
how many weights are placed upon this
larger thought of God, this Twentieth
Century communication of Christ to
humanity will find its way into the
hearts of men, and no ecclesiastical
dynasty, no government authority, can
prevent it. Just as early Christianity
flourished in spite of persecution, so
Twentieth Century Christianity will do
likewise.
It has come
unto its own, and if its own have not
received it, if the smugly complacent and
self-satisfied ecclesiastics have not
taken it as a body, what of it? You
can’t expect them to do so. The
sick have taken it, and the common people
have heard it gladly, and the poor have
accepted it, and the oppressed and the
down-trodden and the miserable. The
Gospel of New Thought or Divine Science
appeals to the very same class of people
as those to whom the Gospel of Jesus
appealed. The common people always hear a
prophecy of better things gladly, and
this is no Utopian dream. This is not
something to make men feel better for a
while, and to delude [266] them into the
hope that they are going to get better
things, and have them feel that they must
put up with conditions as they are today,
because the future will bring forth a new
order. Not at all! This is not only the
prophecy of better things to come next
year, but it is the fulfillment of the
thing today; so that men and women can
rise up and call it blessed, and know
that the healing of their bodies is being
accomplished through the quieting of
their minds, through the uplifting of
their souls, and that something greater
has come into their lives than ever was
there before.
It has come
unto its own, but only those receive it
who really yearn after it. Only those who
are worthy receive it, because this is
not thrust upon anybody. There must be a
heart-longing and a soul-yearning for it.
We must desire this truth of God as much
as the drowning man desires air, or the
sunflower desires the sun. We must yearn
after it with all our hearts and souls
and minds and bodies. And then it shall
come unto us and sup with us. We shall
invite it and it will bring with it its
own rich blessings. Our health shall
spring forth speedily, regardless of the
laughter of so-called Christians,
regardless of the ridicule of existing
institutions.
There are
those individuals who have felt the touch
of this healing agency in their own
bodies, who know something of the
uplifting of the mind through spiritual
influences, who know something of the
change of heart, or what we call the
[267] transformation of the soul, through
it. This something can never be taken
away from us. There is no amount of
legislation that can take it away from
us, no amount of persecution that can
belittle it in our estimation. We believe
that we are standing for the same Divine
principles for which the early Christians
stood, the right to pray in time of
trouble, and the right to trust God
absolutely and implicitly and not to lean
upon an arm of flesh. Woe unto them that
go down into Egypt for help! Woe unto
that man who seeks any lesser aid or
assistance than that which comes from
God, because sometime, somehow,
somewhere, he will be rudely awakened
from his delusion.
Divine
Science has come to teach us and to
emphasize the great fact that the only
reliable thing in the universe is God
Almighty, and that a man that putteth his
trust in Him confidently, absolutely,
implicitly and without division will
bring whatsoever he will to pass. There
is no danger in trusting God. The great
danger is in not trusting God. We
cannot trust God too implicitly.
“Do not rely,” says a very
good Christian, “too much on
prayer.” How remarkable--do not
rely too much on prayer? Did Jesus rely
too much upon prayer? Did the early
apostles rely too much upon prayer? Has
any man ever lived who relied too much
upon prayer? The great trouble is we have
not relied enough upon it. “When I
am ill,” says a caustic individual,
“I [268] pray, but I also take
drugs.” Well, in Divine Science, we
do not say that. When we are ill, we pray
the fervent, effectual prayers of
righteous men and of righteous women, and
the prayer of faith saves the sick
without drugs.
There is one
thing from which Divine Science has saved
us, thank God, and that is the drug
habit. There are thousands and hundreds
of thousands in this great country who
can testify to the fact that they have
been saved by Christ from the drug habit.
What do you suppose the Churches of
Christ, Scientist, have been
builded with in this country or in any
other? Let me tell you--drug money. With
what do you suppose this church is
carried on? Drug money, for the most
part, if not altogether. If our people
would compute the cost to themselves,
before they came into Divine Science, of
just drugs for their so-called maladies
and diseases, and would put that money
into the treasury, they would do
marvelous things.
If Divine
Science has done nothing more than to
break the drug habit for most of us, it
is a benefactor, a veritable Messiah.
Submit it to yourselves--those of you who
know anything about Divine Science, those
to whom it is a religion, those to whom
it is a philosophy--have you saved
anything, or have you been saved from
anything as the result of your interest
in it? Do [269] you take more, or less,
drugs? Do you feel better, or worse?
These are simple questions, purely
mathematical in their character. If you
want to find out whether you have been
benefited or blessed by your study, take
your little day book and study the debit
and credit side. Most of you have lost an
ugly and costly habit, and you have
gained a better understanding of God.
And this
thing comes to its own today in this
enlightened Twentieth Century, and we are
still egotistical enough to say that
“the religion of my fathers is good
enough for me.” Abraham might have
said that and remained a pagan. Moses
might have been so minded and remained in
Egypt. Jesus might have said that and
have gone to the synagogue with his
mother from then until now, if he had
stayed with us. The religion of our
forefathers is not good enough for us,
not if we are progressive. The lives of
our forefathers and the characters of our
forefathers may be, but their religious
ideas and views, not at all. Why? Because
God is forever imparting himself to human
souls. God, in his infinite wisdom, is
ever unfolding to humanity nobler,
higher, better, more beautiful truths,
and for a man to say that “the
religion of my forefathers is good enough
for me” is to limit the power of
the Holy One of Israel. It is to stand
still.
We might as
well say that the politics of two
thousand years ago are good enough for
us, that the sanitary conditions of our
forefathers are [270] good enough for us,
and therefore we will make no
improvement. How ridiculous, how absurd,
how un-Christian! As if God had reached a
limit of his impartations to the human
soul! As if the final word of truth had
been spoken and God would never again
utter himself! And, when a simple man
comes to us, apparently from nowhere,
with a message, we say: “Can any
good thing come out of this simple,
unschooled man? Can he know anything of
truth? Is it possible that this man knows
more than Bishop So-and-So?” Bless
you, perhaps the bishop knows more about
good eating than he knows about
Christianity. We are awakening to the
great fact that scholastic education
means nothing by comparison with Divine
intuition, and whether a man comes out of
Nazareth as a simple carpenter’s
son with a message of truth, or from a
remote village in some foreign country
and brings to us a more glorious tiding
of great joy, we in all humility should
listen to his message. How do we know but
that it is one that is coming to its own
and not being received?
Therefore, I
recommend to you that you listen more
intelligently to this new message, that
you get such literature as is now at your
disposal, that you study it earnestly and
thoughtfully, that you make comparisons
between the new thought and the old
thought, and then abide by your
convictions. If you do, there is a
blessing in store for you that is as far
superior to anything that you can think
of as prosperity is superior to poverty.
[271] Search the Scriptures, for in them
ye have eternal life.
It is the
maturity of this man, Jesus, this God-man
and man-God, that I wish to emphasize.
The beautiful infant is pictured in art,
literature, music and oratory. A holy
child is one thing; a sublime man is
another. It is the sublime man that I
want to call to your attention, the
developed Christ, the matured soul, the
courageous, fearless proclaimer of truth,
the man who could say, with all the
conviction of an awakened consciousness:
“I have come that ye might have
life and that ye might have it more
abundantly. This day this Scripture will
be fulfilled in your ears.” And he
said it without any thought or suspicion
in his mind that it would not come to
pass; he said it though he knew that his
very declaration would draw down upon him
the bitterness, the hate, the animosity,
the devilishness of the existing
institutions, that that very minute they
would seek to pull him out of the
synagogue and cast him from the hills.
Failing in that they would cry, as any
angry fool mob will cry: “Crucify
him! Crucify him!” And yet, he had
the hardihood to say it.
It is the
mature man that stands before me and not
the infant Jesus. I love the infant
Jesus. It is a wonderful example to youth
that one could stand there, with all the
appetites and passions and angers and
hates of the human soul, and still could
triumph over them by the power of an
[272] intense spirituality. But it is
quite another thing when a man comes
before us, at thirty years of age,
matured and developed, and opposes the
institutions which would slay him, which
would crucify him, and which did so. It
is not the birth of Jesus but the life of
Jesus that stands out, the life of a
glorious man, the life of a personified
God who feared nothing and nobody, who
spoke the truth as he felt it, gave
utterance to it as he knew it and defied
the Devil and all his minions.
In our parks
we set up wonderful Christmas trees--to
what? For the most part to the infant
Jesus. What do we know about the mature
man? Very little, and that little would
be taken away from us if that could be
done. But we are learning every day and
every hour the principle for which he
stood.
Up to date I
have found nothing better than a divinely
scientific interpretation of his mission.
I do not know what new revelation is in
store for me next year. But this one
thing I know, that when it comes I shall
pray God for humility and meekness and
strength enough to accept it; no matter
through whom it comes, or from where.
Tomorrow, if any of you has a better
interpretation of the law of God, bring
it to me: I want it. I have never stood
as one who knows more of the Lord than
you. I am a fellow-disciple with you, a
co-worker in the Kingdom of God with you,
a reacher-out with you, after the great
things of God. It is only as we come with
this empty vessel, it is only as we come
with this open soul, [273] to the great
heart of things that there can be poured
into it the water of life and the wine of
inspiration. It is only as we become
conscious of the fact that, by comparison
with all there is to know, we know very,
very little, that we will be kept meek
and humble and contrite.
He came unto
his own and his own received him not.
That text haunts me. The natural
expectation of the human heart is that
when it goes to its own it will be
received. Have you tried to communicate
this thought to a mother, or has a mother
tried to take it to a child, or a sister
to a brother? Has it always been accepted
joyfully and gladly? Then you know
something of the attitude of mind that
Jesus must have suffered when he brought
this great, glad message of God to his
own people and they received it not. If
you have tried to take this New Thought
to one whom you believe needs it more
than he needs anything else in the world,
and he has looked at you with
astonishment and almost ordered you out
of his house, then you know something of
the experience of the Master. He came
unto his own and his own received him
not. There is nothing more pathetic than
this in the whole New Testament.
There is
nothing more pathetic on the pages of
human history than this great, tremendous
fact, that when you discover a new truth,
whether it is political or religious or
otherwise, and you strive to communicate
it to others, they do not receive [274]
it. That is where the poignancy of it all
comes in, and the pain of it all, but it
is good for you. It is tremendously good
for you, because then you know what it
means when he says: “Two women
shall be working in a field; one shall be
taken and one shall be left. Two men
shall be sleeping in a bed; one shall be
taken and the other shall be left.”
And the one that is taken with your idea
may not be related to you, while the
other, the one sleeping beside him, may
be your own brother or your own father.
Whatever objection men may have to it,
whatever refusal they may make of it, do
not be discouraged. You are no better
than Jesus, not as good; and remember
that your faith is only his faith written
in small letters. No matter what you have
to go through, he felt it before. He trod
the wine-press absolutely alone, and not
even the guards at Gethsemane, Peter nor
John nor James could stay awake with
him.
His own
received him not and comforted him not.
It is well for us, because the only
comfort that we can get is the comfort of
turning the heart unreservedly to God,
and when that comes you will not seek
consolation, but you will give it. That
is the mark of an emancipated soul. The
only thing it seeks consolation from is
the Most High God, and, seeking it there,
it will get it in abundance, and, getting
it in abundance, it can minister
lavishly.
The
Christian life is wonderful. It is not
what we have thought it to be at all. It
is a life of perpetual prayer. And what
is prayer? I quote Emerson on this,
because I think he was more of a
Christian than those who condemned him.
“Prayer,” says Emerson,
“is the contemplation of the
highest facts of being from the sublimest
point of view.” In other words,
prayer is contemplation; it is meditation
upon God. It is the absorption of the
soul in the Deity. It is the conscious
unity of the individual with the
universal, the contemplation of the facts
of being from the highest point of view.
How many who pray with the lips
contemplate the facts of being from the
highest point of view? How many know
anything about the facts of being? A
woefully small number. Let it not be said
of us that he came unto his own and his
own received him not. Let us cultivate
the expectant heart, the awakened mind,
the open soul, because these lead to joy,
gladness, peace, power and
prosperity.
Chapter
23
* * * * *
The Realm of Reality
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
