Firstly: Jesus severed the connexion existing in his day between ethics and the external forms of religious worship and technical observance. He would have absolutely nothing to do with the purposeful and self-seeking pursuit of “good works” in combination with the ritual of worship. He exhibited an indignant contempt for those who allow their neighbours, nay, even their parents, to starve, and on the other hand send gifts to the temple. He will have no compromise in the matter. Love and mercy are ends in themselves; they lose all value and are put to shame by having to be anything else than the service of one’s neighbour.
Secondly: in all questions of morality he goes straight to the root, that is, to the disposition and the intention. It is only thus that what he calls the “higher righteousness” can be understood. The “higher righteousness” is the righteousness that will stand when the depths of the heart are probed. Here, again, we have something that is seemingly very simple and self-evident. Yet the truth, as he uttered it, took the severe form: “It was said of old . . . but I say unto you.” After all, then, the truth was something new; he was aware that it had never yet been expressed in such a consistent form and with such claims to supremacy. A large portion of the so-called Sermon on the Mount is occupied with what he says when he goes in detail through the several departments of human relationships and human failings so as to bring the disposition and intention to light in each case, to judge a man’s works by them, and on them to hang heaven and hell.
Thirdly: what he freed from its connexion with self-seeking and ritual elements, and recognised as the moral principle, he reduces to one root and to one motive—love. He knows of no other, and love itself, whether it takes the form of love of one’s neighbour or of one’s enemy, or the love of the Samaritan, is of one kind only. It must completely fill the soul; it is what remains when the soul dies to itself. In this sense love is the new life already begun. But it is always the love which serves, and only in this function does it exist and live.
Fourthly: we saw that Jesus freed the moral element from all alien connexions, even from its alliance with the public religion. Therefore to say that the Gospel is a matter of ordinary morality is not to misunderstand him. And yet there is one all-important point where he combines religion and morality. It is a point which must be felt; it is not easy to define. In view of the Beatitudes it may, perhaps, best be described as humility. Jesus made love and humility one. Humility is not a virtue by itself; but it is pure receptivity, the expression of inner need, the prayer for God’s grace and forgiveness, in a word, the opening up of the heart to God. In Jesus’ view, this humility, which is the love of God of which we are capable—take, for instance, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican —¦ is an abiding disposition towards the good, and that out of which everything that is good springs and grows. “Forgive us our trespasses even as we forgive them that trespass against us” is the prayer at once of humility and of love. This, then, is the source and origin of the love of one’s neighbour; the poor in spirit and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are also the peacemakers and the merciful.
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