58/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

It is far more profitable to cultivate his spirit of life than to try to ascertain the exact meaning he intended to convey in certain utterances which seem to us obscure, because of our unfamiliarity with the conditions under which they were spoken. As it was not his aim to establish intellectual beliefs, the terms he chose in which to illustrate spiritual principles,

were such as came to hand most naturally. Whenever his hearers held traditional beliefs that did not involve moral wrong or conduce to hypocrisy, instead of entering into an unprofitable argument over doctrinal issues, he sought to enforce some spiritual lesson which those with “eyes to see and ears to hear,” could discern at once.

Therefore, in the course of his teaching, we often find him incidentally drawing material for illustration from such current beliefs and figures of expression as lent themselves most readily to his purpose and method of treatment. In parable, metaphor, and hyperbole, dealing with incidents and situations familiar to their habits of thought, he presented various phases of truth, in such a manner that the spiritually discerning among his hearers could appreciate the point he sought to convey.

But the modern sectarian interpreter who regards the letter of these utterances as of the first importance, finding certain doctrines embodied or suggested in the narrative, assumes that Jesus intended to incorporate them into his teaching; he accepts their introduction as an unqualified endorsement of their dogmatic value.

Again, we should remember that the writers of the New Testament accounts, however deep and sincere their appreciation of the spirit and aim of their master may have been, never claimed to be more than practical exponents of the truth he proclaimed, and that the few scattered, suggestive remnants of his utterances we now possess, are drawn either from incomplete personal recollections gathered long afterward, or from the testimony of witnesses incapable of perfectly understanding their meaning.

“I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” It is, therefore, purely gratuitous to assume that the brief sketches (they cannot properly be termed histories) of the life and teaching of Jesus, which we now have in the four Gospels, fairly represent more than his general intent and purpose, with such occasional side-lights as the disciples were disposed to furnish by way of interpretation.

Even the most discerning of his hearers, born and educated as they were in the conventional atmosphere of the period, were imperfect mediums through which to communicate to the world the purest and profoundest spiritual truth; so that, naturally, much of the record is colored with their quasi materialistic conceptions, and one must constantly read between the lines to discover its purely spiritual significance.