The dilemma is truly tragic. A Jesus who should be proved to have
lived according to the conventions we respect, who did not rise above
conventional ideals of either love or justice, who approved force, and
resented injuries, who repudiated the friend who had betrayed Him, who
shunned the contact of persons whose touch dishonoured Him--such a
Jesus would cease to be our Jesus. He would no longer attract us, He
would not touch our hearts, He would barely command our respect.
Astounding fact! Those very things in the life of Jesus which we
disapprove are the things for which we love Him; and those tempers
which we ourselves disallow are in Him the sources of our adoration.
We are bound therefore to ask, can that method of conduct be wrong
which has won this triumphant issue? It may be ironically true that we
love Him most for those very acts of His which we are least likely to
imitate; but is not this our tacit testimony to the essential rightness
of these acts? In our better, or our softer moments; or in those
moments when we are most conscious of the cruelty of life, and most in
need of love, do we not feel, as the life of Jesus grows before us,
that this is how life should be lived? Dare we question that a world
governed wholly by the ideals of Jesus would be a far happier world
than this we know? Love, as the one necessary law of life, clearly
stands justified in Jesus, since it has produced the most adorable
character in history.
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