It is
not the truths and ideals of Jesus that offend them, but the travesty
of those truths and ideals in the average life of Christians.
But whenever any man attempts to live in the spirit of Jesus, the first
to rally to him are the sincere recusants from the church. He may be
satirised, and probably will be, as a moral anarchist, a fanatic, and a
hare-brained enthusiast; but nevertheless the best men will rally to
him. They rallied to a Father Dolling, they rally to a General Booth.
The types represented by such men lie far apart. One was so high a
ritualist as to be almost Catholic, the other is an ecclesiastic
anarchist so extreme that he dispenses with the sacraments. But these
things count for little; what the world sees in such men is the
essential reality of their life. One of the severest critics of
Dolling once went to hear him with the bitterest prejudice. He found
him with a couple of hundred thieves and prostitutes gathered round
him, to whom he was telling the love of Jesus in the simplest language.
"Dolling may be a Roman Catholic, or anything else he pleases," said
his critic; "all I know is that I never heard any one speak of Christ
like that," and from that hour he was his warmest friend. No doubt
similar conversions of sentiment have attended the ministries of all
apostolic men and women, of Francis and Catherine, of Wesley and
Whitfield, of Moody and General Booth.
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