That is the Christian life, the following of
Jesus Christ.
What is the Christian? Everywhere the man who, so far as he comprehends
Jesus Christ, so far as he can get any knowledge of Him, is His servant,
the man who makes Christ a teacher of his intelligence and the guide of
his soul, the man who obeys Christ as far as he has been able to
understand Him. What, you say, the man who imperfectly understands
Christ, who don't know anything about His divinity, who denies the great
doctrines of the Church in regard to Him, is he a Christian? Certainly
he is, my friends. There is no other test than this, the following of
Jesus Christ. So far as any soul deeply consecrated to Him, and wanting
the influence that it feels that He has to give, follows Christ, enters
into His obedience and His company, and receives His blessings, just so
far He is able to bestow it. I cannot sympathize with any feeling that
desires to make the name of Christian a narrower name. I would spread it
just as wide as it can be possibly made to spread. I would know any man
as a Christian, rejoice to know any man as a Christian, whom Jesus would
recognize as a Christian, and Jesus Christ, I am sure, in those old days
recognized His followers even if they came after Him with the blindest
sight, with the most imperfect recognition and acknowledgment of what
He was and of what He could do.
And then, again, is it not very strange, certainly, that there should
be, in these later days, in all these centuries that have passed between
the day of Jesus Christ and us, that there should have come a vast
accumulation of speculation and conjecture, of theorizing and thought
with regard to Christ and what He was, and that a great deal of it
should have been very strange and should seem to us to-day to have been
very silly, a great part of it should have seemed to be but a work of
intelligences that were half dulled and blinded, full of prejudice, and
shrinking from the error and the danger in which they stood? What does
it mean--all these complicated theologies that we say are keeping us
away from the simple following of the grandest figure that has ever
presented Himself before human kind? I know not how else it can be when
I see what has been the power of Jesus over thoughts and homes and
hearts of men through all these years.
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