igs as they are. It is the
There the soul sees what
And, further, Jesus thus
living in the Absolute and Eternal, sees the lives of men and the processes of histoi-y purely in the light of their spiritual issues. What touches His consciousness in the great hvmian drama is the hidden movement that is workin" out human destiny. With Him the fact is merely the symbol, and the symbol has become so luminous that His vision is always of the spiritual processes of which it is an indication. Browning in tl,,' T.jiislU of Karahish, the Arab Physician, lia~ ma^le a , laving attempt to get into a conscioiisn,'v~ similai |,i that of Jesus, by trying to imagine l,o^^ a man whose soul had assimilated the pure spiritual environ- ment of heaven, would feel and act were he per- mitted to come back to earth and to envisage life
830
INSIGHT
INSIGHT
from the standpoint of the new experience. It would be —
' Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth. Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven.'
The attempt is strikingly suggestive, but Lazarus remains a man with a finite soul, who cannot find his tnie function in what is now an alien environ- ment. With Jesus this spiritual consciousness was so perfect that it mastered its alien environment and moved through it calmly and serenely, indi- cating its true place in the Divine purpose, and giving the right mterpretation to all its manifesta- tions. The teaching of Jesus is thus a key to the meaning of life, because He sees life in its essence, and has a sure insight into those hidden processes that are evolving the visible order of existence.
And again, from His very nature, the insight of Jesus into the individual souls of men is no less sure and unerring. He reads the human soul like an open book. He needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man (Jn 2"). He could trace accurately the working of the ideas He was instilling into the minds of His dis- ciples, as they mingled with their own crude reli- gious conceptions (6*')- He understood perfectly the feeling of instinctive resistance that arose within the minds of the Pharisees at the impact of spiritual tiuth upon the hard crust of an artificial religionism which had become part of their very natm-e (Lk 6*, Mt 12=^). And He recognized the uprising of a pure spiritual emotion in the hearts even of the most degraded when it was spontaneous and genuine (Lk l"), while He could repress and discourage the most fervent ofl'er of devotion when He detected in it a vein of insincerity (9''"-**). It was this insight into human nature wliicli was the secret of His amazing power over men in the days of His flesh. It is a faculty possessed by men in very varying degrees. Its accuracy and intensity depend upon the richness of a man's nature— upon his knowledge of and sympathy with the i:amut of human emotion. There have lieen i]i:uiy men of wonderful insight, and therefore of strmiL; ]iersonal ma^etism. But man's insiglit i^ alw.iy^ olisi-ured by indiWdual bias and by thf ol.-n urti.m of the medium of sense which conoe.iK iIm ~nnl - working. Men are always more or les> .li. eivtil. .iml even men of the keenest insight often break down in their reading of character at the point where it is most essential for them to be right. Jesus was per- fect man, and therefore His sympathy with men was f uU and entire, and touched human nature at every point. For Jesus, who viewed human life in the light of eternity, the sense-medium did not exist. It was the spirit that was always before His vision, and therefore His knowledge of the Iniinaii heart was instinctive and unerring. Hencr it «a- that the method of Jesus in dealing witli iUmi-.- i\|m-^ of character is so full of suggestivenes- an.l in-hur- tion.
This conception of the consciousness of Jesus must be kept clearly in mind when we study His sayings. His is a consciousness that moves freely in the realm of pure Reality, and visualizes God, human destiny, and the individual soul in the light of their eternal relations. Hence those man-ellous revelations of the essence of the Divine Nature in its correspondence to human needs and human aspirations. Hence, too, it results that it is the spuitual meaning of human actions alone that gives them value to Him, and the measure of their value is the degree of spiritual ^-itality they in- dicate. Thus Jesus continually reverses' the v'alua- tions of the world, which are "based on the theory of the reality of the objects of sense-iierceiitioii. He that is greatest among men is he tliat is the servant of all (Mk ff«). The two mites throw u by the widow into the Temple treasury are a more
munificent ofl'eriug than the costly gifts of the Pharisees, because they represent a greater degree of sacrifice (12*'- "). The action of Mary in break- ing over the head of Jesus the alabaster box of very- precious ointment, is one of the memorable events of history, because it indicates a tine perception of what is due to the Lord of life at the supremely critical moment of world-development (Mk 14', Jn 12^). Jesus gives to the penitent thief the assur- ance of immediate entry into Paradise, because full and adequate penitence for sin is itself the crossing of the threshold of the spiritual realm (Lk 23'''). If this clue be rigorously applied, it solves many of the difficulties that beset a literal exegesis of the words of Jesus. It is especially significant when we study His apocalyptic utter- ances. Here the difficulty of interpretation fre- quently lies in the fact that the commentator often attempts to force upon them a materialistic mean- ing that was never intended. Language is material , and has been constructed primarily tn indirate tlic phenomena of sense-perception. Wlicn it i- n-il to describe spiritual processes, the i^lia^ lum. yrd must be detached fi'om the medium of c (.ini yanrr, if they are to be rightly tmderstood. Jesus lived in the noumenal world. What He saw there He could convey to the souls of His hearers only by the use of words that had been coined to connote totally diflerent conceptions. AVhen Nathanael, struck by Jesus' recognition of him under the fig- tree, hails Him as the Son of God, Jesus says : ' Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig- tree, believest thou? . . . Verily, verily, I say unto you, Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man ' ( Jn !*>• *'). It is significant that the A V translates ax' apn ' hereafter. ' The translators were e\'idently dominated by the idea that Jesus is describing a physical marvel which Nathanael mil witness in the distant future. But Jesus clearly means that the intercourse of Nathanael with Himself will bring heaven to his soul, and enable liim to realize that a living link of com- mimication has been established between God and man.