Among men the poets alone
have really understood Jesus: and in the category of the poets must be
included the saints, whose religion has always been interpreted to them
through the imagination. The poets have understood; the theologians
rarely or never. Thus it happens that men, being the general and
accepted interpreters of Christ, have all but wholly misinterpreted
Him. The lyric passion of that life, and the lyric love which it
excites, has been to them a disregarded music. They have rarely
achieved more than to tell us what Christ taught; they have wholly
failed to make us feel what Christ was. But Mary Magdalene knew this,
and it was what she said and felt in the Garden that has put Christ
upon the throne of the world. Was not her vision after all the true
one? Is not a Catherine a better guide to Jesus than a Dominic? When
all the strident theologies fall silent, will not the world's whole
worship still utter itself in the lyric cry,
Jesu, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly.
Is it then not within the competence of man to interpret Christ aright,
simply because the masculine temperament is what it is? By no means,
for such a statement would disqualify the evangelists themselves, who
are the only biographers of Jesus. But in the degree that a
temperament is only masculine, it will fail to understand Jesus.
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