Article September 4, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Lyman Abbott, Alexander McLaren, John James Tayler, James Freeman Clarke, Walter Besant, P. T. Forsyth

Professor Harnack says: "You observe how Jesus felt the material wants of the poor, and how he deduced a remedy for such distress from the commandment, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' People ought not to speak of loving their neighbors if they can allow men beside them to starve and die in misery. It is not only that the Gospel preaches solidarity and the helping of others, it is in this message that its real import consists. In this sense it is profoundly socialistic, just as it is also profoundly individualistic, because it establishes the infinite and independent value of every human soul. Its tendency to union and brotherliness is not so much an accidental phenomenon in its history as the essential feature of its character. The Gospel aims at founding a community among men as wide as human life itself and as deep as human need. As has been truly said, its object is to transform the socialism which rests on the basis of conflicting interests into the socialism which rests on the consciousness of a spiritual unity. In this sense its social message can never be outbid."

To follow Christ is not to go out from the world. Christ came into the world. Christ lived among men and dwelt with them. It is not doing great things. It is carrying into our common life the spirit that Christ carried into his common life. Christ came to make men happy, and wherever he went he did make men happy; he carried joy with him; he was a joy-distributor. To follow Christ is to make others happy. . . . Christ came to make men happy by making them good. He told them the secret of happiness was to be poor in spirit, to be pure in heart, to be peaceful and peace-making. He came to put the fountains and sources of happiness within men. It is character, not condition, that makes our happiness, and he taught this partly by precept, but more by his life. . . . He made men better by living among them in such spirit that they desired his life for themselves. . . . Others besides Christ may wear a garment such that he who but touches the hem of it shall feel him better for the contact.

Lyman Abbott in The Outlook.

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