ST. JOHN I. I 21
— among the nations whom He approached through the avenues of the natural conscience, and among the Israelites to whom He spoke in the piercing tones of inspiration, there were those who did feel His presence, did hear His voice ; and these were rescued from their grovelling, material, earthly life, were born anew in Him, were made sons of God through God the Word.
There is no broken reed so poor and base, No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, But He therewith the ravening wolf can chase. And guide His flock to springs and pastures new; Through ways unlooked for, and through many lands. Far from the rich folds built with human hands. The gracious footprints of His love I trace.^
(3) We have no need to question any value that can be claimed for writings held as sacred by others outside the Christian world. All truth is of God, and is profitable according to its degree, and its adaptedness to the genius and growth of the people who receive it. To judge and condemn other scriptures, such as the Koran, as wholly worthless and evil, is measurably to judge and condemn Him, by whose Providence the book and its religion exists, until its believers are prepared for clearer and fuller light. Yet in every such revelation, professing to come directly from heaven, even the human element is relatively most imperfect, and com- paratively powerless. Such scriptures appeal authoritatively only to the devotional or emotional element in man ; never to his intellect and heart. They demand reception under pain of con- demnation, independent of rational perception of their truth; and they promise, as a reward of faith, a sensuous paradise to the faithful. In their words is no potency of progress beyond a certain point. On the other hand, in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures there is a clear revelation of human development, through the growth of the spiritual or Christ nature in man throughout the ages.
If No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point ; but perhaps the
» Lowell, Poems, 112.
22 THE WORD
shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint always has a very sleek and harmoni- ous body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The medieval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards.^
^ In these days of the religion of this and that, — briefly let us say, the religion of Stocks and Posts — in order to say a clear word of the Campo Santo, on© must first say a firm word concern- ing Christianity itself. I find numbers, even of the most intelli- gent and amiable people, not knowing what the word means ; because they are always asking how much is true, and how much they like, and never ask, first, what was the total meaning of it, whether they like it or not.
The total meaning was, and is, that the God who made earth and its creatures, took at a certain time upon the earth, the flesh and form of man ; in that flesh sustained the pain and died the death of the creature He had made ; rose again after death into glorious human life, and when the date of the human race is ended, will return in visible human form, and render to every man according to his work. Christianity is the belief in, and love of, God thus manifested. Anything less than this, the mere accept- ance of the sayings of Christ, or assertion of any less than Divine power in His Being, may be, for aught I know, enough for virtue, peace, and safety; but they do not make people Christians, or enable them to understand the heart of the simplest believer in the old doctrine. Two verses of George Herbert will put the height of that doctrine into less debateable, though figurative, picture than any longer talk of mine —
Hast thou not heard that my Lord Jesus died?
Then let me tell thee a strange story. The God of Power, as he did ride In his majestic robes of glory,
Resolved to light ; and so, one day
He did descend, undressing all the way.
» G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.
ST. JOHN I. I 23
The stars his tire of light, and rings, obtained.
The cloud his bow, the fire his spear, The heavens his azure mantle gained,
And when they asked what he would wear. He smiled, and said as he did go, " He had new clothes a-making, here, below."
I write from memory; the lines have been my lesson, ever since 1845, of the noUesse of thought which makes the simplest word best.^
* Kuskin, Frceterita, ii. 208.
The Incarnation of the Word.