Their tastes are gratified by the normal
forms of worship, and their sentiments are softly stirred and
stimulated. But when the voice of the orator dies upon the porches of
the ear, and the music of the Church is silent, and the seduction of
splendid ceremonial is forgotten, there remains the uneasy sense that
between all this and the actual Carpenter-Redeemer there is a wide gulf
fixed; that Jesus scarcely lived and died to produce only such results
as these; that there must be some other method of interpreting His
life, much simpler, much truer, and much more satisfying. Is it
wonderful that among such men the current forms of Christianity excite
no enthusiasm, and that the bonds of their attachment to it are lax and
easily dissolved? And what is felt by these men within the Church is
felt with much greater strength by multitudes of sincere men outside
the Church, who do not hesitate to express their feeling and to
pronounce current Christianity a burlesque and tragic travesty upon the
real religion of the Nazarene.
But the moment we do begin to live, however inefficiently, as Jesus
lived, the sublime reality of His religion is revealed to us. We do
actually find that in the postponement of our own desires for the sake
of others; in the abandonment of our own apparently legitimate
ambitions for the service of the poor; in the patient endurance of
affront and injury; in the forgiveness of those whose wrong seems
inexpiable; in the daily exercise of love that "seeketh not itself to
please," but hopeth all things, and believeth all things,--there is a
joy beyond joy, and an exceeding great reward.
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