Article May 29, 1915 Issue

Gaining Reality

MARGARET OSTERTAG

A recent effort on the part of the writer to conquer a false sense of humility was rewarded in a most unexpected manner. Considering the teaching of the Master, and dwelling upon the outward expression of his knowledge of the Father, I was awed by the strange contrasts his life presented; and while analyzing his humility, in order truly to understand the nature of humility and thus uncover the error of my own belief, I was led to examine his other virtues, and the result was astonishing. In the search to discover the realities behind this remarkable life, I saw that we have just begun to understand the nature of goodness, and that for many this discovery only points out their mortal misconceptions, and has not yet led them very far into the realm of actuality.

Christ Jesus was tolerant because of his great wisdom. The world has never understood this tolerance, and it cannot until a better understanding of the Father is gained. Majesty was the expression of his humbleness and simplicity, the unconscious expression that clothed him like a garment. It seems strange to us to think of humility and majesty as at-one, but certainly they were thus manifest in the life of Christ Jesus. Patience was the expression of his far-sightedness, and loftiness the flower of his meekness. Tenderness, compassion, sympathy for the multitude, all sprang from his high courage.

Misgivings assail us as we attempt to reach the source of human virtues. They lead us such a little way! They take us too often to the wrong source, and show us why they fail to accomplish what they might, and why their expression is oftentimes meaningless and futile. Jesus asked, "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" Unless tolerance is born of wisdom and not of arrogance or ignorant and indifferent acquiescence with error, it cannot do the work or accomplish the end that tolerance must some day achieve; for it was one of Christ Jesus' greatest virtues. "Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them," he directed the payment of the tribute money, thus revealing wisdom great enough to "render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," while demonstrating a law far beyond the ideal that Cæsar's law embodied. "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more," came from an understanding of sin, and was followed with an admonition which uncovered its nothingness but did not judge its victim. If our dignity is the child of pride, if we are patient because we are asleep, lofty because of superior advantages, or tolerant only because we are weak, then we may be sure the plant is not of the Father's planting, and will be rooted up in due season, when all things shall pass away that are not from the beginning.

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