Article March 27, 1909 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

J. H. Jowett with contributions from T. Rhondda Williams, D. C. Knowles

[Universalist Leader.]

If we study the program of Jesus carefully we find that its fundamental proposition was an absolute faith in truth. Every one of the synoptics records the saying of Jesus that his words should outlast the heavens and the earth. The sky might collapse; the solid globe might crumble; but the words he spoke should survive the wreck of the material universe. It is the absolute confidence in the indestructibility of truth which makes the career of Jesus unfold as it does. Amid all the chaos of politics and society where he stood, with an alien despot ruling his people, with all Israel groaning with social injustice, with the very atmosphere surcharged with a multitude ready to spring to arms and die at his call, he never even hesitated. Probably there was never a moment up to the march to Calvary when a word from him would not have been like a lighted match in a powder magazine. Had Jesus been willing to escape death itself by force, he might have brought about an explosion that would have shook the human rule in Palestine. One of his finest Jewish biographers asks, with a sigh of regret, why he did not speak the word, and lead the people out of their wilderness of woe. The answer is clear to one who uncovers in the magnitude of Jesus the magnitude of his faith in truth. He believed, and planted his gospel on the rock of this belief, that a word of truth spoken out of the heart of infinite reality would outlast the cosmos. He was never really tempted from his true path from the moment that he returned from the wilderness with his ideas and ideals clarified. [J. H. Jowett in the Christian World.]

Note how the man of the positive life conquers in facing possible gain. He contemplates the supernal heights of moral purity and loveliness, and determines that he will stand upon their topmost peaks. By the very fervor of his ambition his soul becomes incandescent and is purified. He counts all things but loss that he may possess "the unsearchable riches of Christ." In seeming loss he is making constant gain, and he will at length sit down with the Lord in heavenly places, robed in spiritual sovereignty and glory. Such is the positive life—exhilarating, invigorating, protective, and triumphant.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS