secure the development of those virile activities that war has produced in the past? In other words, can real Christianity be saved from softness?

9. Can war be conducted without hatred? What is the proper attitude of the Christian toward war?

10. Suppose the United States should abolish the army and navy, announcing that we should not resort to arms under any circumstances, would that fulfill Jesus's doctrine of the substitution of love for force? If not, what else would be necessary? What practical steps are possible in this direction?

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE INSTITUTIONS OF RELIGION

§ 1. THE TEST OF RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS JESUS grew up in a certain religious environment. As we have seen, the Judaism of his day had a large ritualism that had been gradually developed, and to which accretions had come from many sources. It was elaborately institu

tionalized. At the same time it had elements of moral and spiritual power. His first religious awakening seems to have been in connection with the great festival of the Jewish Passover. His most solemn legacy to his disciples was spoken at the celebration of that same feast. The Jewish Scriptures were his constant inspiration, quotations from them coming naturally from his lips. The synagogue was the place of his early religious training, and continued to be dear to him as the place of worship and as an opportunity to teach (Luke 4. 16; Matt 4. 23).

Jesus believed that in the religion of Israel spiritual values had been revealed that were to be found nowhere else (John 4. 22). But he was very sure that spiritual religion must transcend the institutions of Judaism, and that ultimate religion was wholly outside of institutions, and was a direct spiritual relationship with God (vv. 21-24).

His test of a religious institution was pragmatic. He did not ask whether it was old, whether it was necessary for the creed, whether it had high ecclesiastical sanction. He did not even ask whether it was divine, for that would have been to beg the question. He asked whether it was religiously useful. The supreme test of a religious institution is expressed in his keen evaluation, “The sabbath was made for

359

man, and not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2. 27). To say that the Sabbath was divinely ordained and, therefore, should be observed was to beg the question and was to set one immediately to the task of legal definition. To say that the Sabbath was divinely ordained for man's highest welfare and, therefore, should be used for his highest welfare, was to set one to a study of the social opportunities of this most valuable gift of time.

Jesus, therefore, found the test of all forms in the sincerity of their observance. Almsgiving, prayer, fasting are of no value in themselves. In so far as they are performed for the purpose of giving an appearance of religiousness they are positively harmful. They are of value when they are actually the expression of love, aspiration, contrition (Matt 6. 1-18).

The temple as the great central institution of Judaism. was sacred to Jesus. He was grieved that the building, which the prophet had hoped was to be the house of prayer for all peoples, should have been turned into a place of sacrilegious traffic (Matt 21. 12f.; Mark 11. 15-17; Luke 19. 45f.). Yet he saw that the inevitable outcome of the Jewish attitude was conflict with Rome and the destruction of the temple (Matt 24. 1f.; Mark 13. 1f.; Luke 21. 5f.). But men could worship God without a temple (John 4. 21-24).

One religious institution Jesus definitely condemned because of its harmfulness. It was obscuring truth. It was leading the people into legalism. This was "the tradition of the elders." In the orthodox view the body of oral law had come down from Moses, side by side with the written. law. It had the authority of his great name, but Jesus saw that it tended to obscure social obligation. It exalted the letter above the spirit, externals above essentials, ceremonialism above humanity. He swept it out of consideration (Matt 15. 1-20; Mark 7. 1-23). He set up his inevitable ethical test. The tradition of the elders did not

make for truth, purity, honor, righteousness, love among men; therefore whatever it was, and whence-ever it came, it was not good.

82. THE NEW WINE IN FRESH WINESKINS

Jesus was not an iconoclast. He felt himself connected with the great religious life of the past. He believed that his life and teaching were in no wise contrary to what the prophets and the law had done for Israel, but, rather, an enlargement and completion of their work (Matt 5. 17-20). He founded his own faith on the Scriptures. He regarded himself as one with the prophets, and, indeed, called himself by that name (Matt 13. 57; Luke 13. 33).

But he held that all inherited custom is subservient to the needs of life. This came out most significantly in a discussion about fasting. Jesus had himself fasted in a time of profound moral struggle when the conditions seemed to require it; but he did not regard the traditional fasting as significant. He told the objectors that those who were sad should fast, not those who were rejoicing in a great gospel. Then he gave them the striking figure that new wine must be put into fresh wineskins (Matt 9. 17; Mark 2. 22; Luke 5. 37f.). He saw the inevitable break up of old forms as the new spirit sought fitting expression.

So Jesus plainly taught that the old law must be enlarged to meet the new ethical outlook. The lex talionis that seemed simple justice in the earlier days was not a rule for the kingdom of God (Matt 5. 38ff.). The elaborate distinction between the clean and unclean foods, which had held so important a place in Jewish custom, Jesus simply put aside as insignificant. With his keen ethical insight he said that a man was not defiled by what he ate, but by the evil that came out of his heart (Matt 15. 15-20; Mark 7. 17-23).

Jesus made the Sabbath a new day by laying emphasis on the deeds of love that should be performed (Matt 12. 1-14;

Mark 2. 23 to 3. 6; Luke 6. 1-11; 13. 10-16). Thus he carried over all the values of the sacred day and freed it from its burdens. He made the Old Testament a new book, freely criticizing its imperfect morality (Matt 5. 31f., 38; 19. 8; Mark 10. 5), but constantly drawing from it inspiration, and finding its supreme values in the teaching of the love of God and the love of man (Matt 22. 37-40). It was no longer necessary for expert scribes to give the interpretation of its noble words. Anyone could gain from the Scriptures what the Scriptures had for his need.

Holding all forms subservient to the spiritual life which they were to express, Jesus laid no emphasis upon any specific religious institution. He accepted the baptism of John because that striking ceremony was the means employed for expressing a desire to enter the new kingdom (Matt 3. 13-17; Mark 1. 9-11; Luke 3. 21f.). He seems to have continued John's baptismal ministry for a time (John 3. 22; 4. If.). After that there is no evidence that baptism was employed until the disciples made it the inaugural rite of the new church (Acts 2. 38). Jesus at the Last Supper used the bread and wine of the meal as one of his most impressive parables, telling the disciples that the broken bread was his broken body and the wine was the blood of the new covenant, poured out for them (Matt 26. 26-29; Mark 14. 22-25; Luke 22. 19f.). It was his last meal with them, and he bade them to remember the fellowship which had united them, and to think of him always as the Companion at their board. Their common meals were to be sacramental. Jesus was not so much instituting a ceremonial as he was asserting the reality of a fellowship which death could not destroy. Strangely enough, his simple act of kindly condescension at this same feast, the washing of the disciples' feet, intended as an example of service and a gentle rebuke of their contentions (John 13. 1-17), has been supposed by some to have been an authoritative institution. But, of course, it was the spirit, and not the act, that