60/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
The whole attitude of Jesus was so remarkable that men have always been disposed to regard his life as apart from the world of actual human influences, an admirable ideal, indeed, but quite beyond the range of human attainments at any time. Yet he instructed his followers to conform in all particulars to his standard, and to realize in the concrete the very things he did.
He taught them to love their enemies, and to exhibit that attitude in all their dealings with men; to “resist not him that is evil,” but to “overcome evil with good”; to renounce anger, revenge, and all malevolent thoughts; to devote their lives to the service of others; to heal the sick; these things he did and enjoined on all who would become his disciples.
The only recorded incident in his life which seems inconsistent with his professed attitude of non-resistance of evil, viz.: the expulsion of the traders from the temple, is now treated, in accordance with the best of evidence, as an allegorical picture of certain experiences in his inner life, and not as descriptive of any actual event.
In a candid estimate of the life of Jesus, his whole course of action, as well as his recorded utterances on the subject, point overwhelmingly to such a conclusion. “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.” “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
When men seek to ascertain the plain spirit of Christianity, rather than the obscure letter of the terms and forms in which it received its original expression, we may expect to experience a very different state of affairs from that which confronts us in the so-called Christian world of today.
Four or five rival churches will not then struggle to maintain a precarious existence in a single small community, for the purpose of perpetuating as many creeds or intellectual opinions about the Truth.
Men will not resort to specious arguments and plausible sophistries in order to evade a direct, unreserved acceptance of the spiritual viewpoint. They will not substitute perfunctory religious observances for practical life, or mystifying creeds, theories and dogmas for truth so plain that “the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err” concerning it.