57/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

But the whole life of Jesus demonstrated the absolute freedom of Spirit and the impossibility of making it subject to forms.
Jesus did not estimate men by their deeds, but by their motives and their receptivity to spiritual truth. The poor widow who cast a mite into the treasury, gave more than the rich who contributed liberally.

Although the polished counterfeit outsparkles the rough gem, it does not deceive the connoisseur. Jesus saw in the uncouth peasant fishermen, Peter and John, and the detested tax-gatherer, Matthew, the crude material of divine characters. Beneath most unpromising surface indications were natures which responded to truth that the scholarly, religious Nicodemus and the exemplary young ruler declined to accept.

Conventional piety and Christianity are by no means identical; for genuine Christianity is utterly opposed to the spirit of conventionality. The following of Jesus was drawn largely from the class known as the irreligious, according to conventional standards. He declared to the chief priests and the elders:

“Verily the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Sooner or later every life is judged by the spirit it expresses; but just estimates are often tardy.

The world is still prone to stone its living prophets while building the tombs of dead ones; yet the living and the dead, voice the same Spirit under different forms. It is the Rabbis, priests, and conventional teachers representatives of the letter in religious matters who are accorded immediate recognition, while prophets and apostles representatives of the Spirit are received, if not with scorn and contempt, at least with meager appreciation.

The same general types of character appear and reappear in all ages.
Future generations will read the history of the nineteenth century as we read that of the first. Men of this age will be judged according to the spirit of their lives, and not their professed allegiance to creeds or observances, which are destined sooner or later to become obsolete.

We individually must take our places either on the side of the Pharisees exponents of traditionalism, or of the apostles exponents of the free Spirit. The Pharisaic spirit is exhibited today by those who insist on the perpetuation of creeds and observances, and demand that men shall recognize particular times, places and forms of worship.

So long as men order their lives according to external authority supposed to be derived from the Scriptures, instead of the internal authority of the omnipresent Spirit of truth, they find little difficulty in proving, to their own satisfaction, the correctness of their tenets. But such a course is not consistent with the view-point of Jesus, who taught that the spirit, instead of the letter, is the sole consideration in all human thought and action.