"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.

"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

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"Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”1

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven." 2

And he ceased not to lay stress on this subdual of man's will to the will of God, drawing them not by argument, to which there is always another side, but by demand upon their effort, setting forth that entrance to the kingdom of heaven is not by passing an examination in theology, or by study of the law, or by mastering all tradition, any more than one becomes an engineer by learning how Watt discovered the power of steam, but by faithful and glad discharge of the duties that lie nearest us. A man's religion should be that of which he is

most sure, and this comes only by testing it, for

1 Matt. v. I-IO.

2 Ibid. vii. 21.

S

says a Hindu book, "He who is practical is the truly learned; a well-devised medicine does not by its name restore the sick."1 And in one of his most forceful addresses Jesus compares the man who hears his word and does it, to one who builds a house upon a rock, and he who hears his word and does it not, to a foolish man who builds upon the sand, for when "the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, it fell, and great was the fall of it."

Highest in the scale of duty Jesus placed the casting out of self-love, the yielding of one's self for others' needs. Not that we are to be careless about ourselves and thus engender selfishness in those who profit thereby, but careful only in so far as we best fit ourselves for service; ruled always by a desire for the welfare of all, in carrying out which we may sometimes do for others and ourselves what is best at the cost of what is most pleasant. Happily, nature in all its beauty, thought for our kin, the love they 1 Hitopadesa, (tr. Johnson), p. 26.

beget and which makes effort blessed, the love of country and pride in its history, the stirrings of some noble and worthy cause, events both sad and sunny, the sight of suffering moving to pity, all take us out of ourselves into the world about us, and have taught men in utter self-abandonment to fling life away for the advancement of what they have felt to be the good and the true. These are they who have "through much tribulation" entered the kingdom; made "perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect," and among the greatest of these was Jesus.

While such is the general drift of his "gospel" ("gods-spell" or good tidings) injustice would be done it if the foregoing remarks left in the mind the notion that he built up any system of theology or delivered any creeds, or that it is possible to draw such from his teaching.

That which he did was to diffuse a common spirit of sweet charity and selflessness among men regarded as a brotherhood, because the offspring of one Father; and to pull his sayings apart in search for this were as vain as to scatter

the petals of a flower that we might see the scent. For the highest truth is that which cannot be defined, or prisoned in any form of words, and the secret of the enduring influence of Jesus is in this, that he enounced principles of world-wide application, leaving men free to connect them with any outward forms if they so willed, yet ever reminding them that "the letter killeth and the spirit giveth life." Upon these men have not quarrelled; no questions are raised as to the duty and blessedness of being pitiful and loving and helping; the dividers of mankind which have roused deathless hates, and stained the fair earth with blood, are the things which are either beyond proof or the falseness of which is now clear. Happily, the importance once given to them is lessening; the impure air needful to their life and growth is dispersing, and as they wither, men sort and explain them as the extinct and the curious are arranged and labelled in museums. But the spirit of Jesus will abide; under its inspiration men will reach their oneness, even were his, name to become forgotten.

VI.

Jesus and the Parties of his Time.

IT is now needful to look at the attitude of Jesus towards the great parties into which the Jews were, to their hurt, divided, first acquainting ourselves with the standpoint of each.

The two principal among these were the Sadducees and Pharisees. The former, who were few in number, belonged to the wealthier and priestly classes, and courted the favour of the ruling powers in aiding them to control the masses, by whom they were hated. They obeyed the written law and the oral law, as framed by the "great synagogue,” neither adding to these nor taking from them, holding that what was not taught in them might be rejected. They had no belief in angels, and because the law promised earthly blessings in the form of long life to the faithful, they held that the soul dies with the body, and that "on earth lies the aim for man; his resurrection being