The Real Jesus of the Four GospelsAtwater, John Birdseye
Religion
The Real Jesus of the Four Gospels
Atwater, John Birdseye
Jesus Christ -- Biography
In fact, the two utterances of Jesus--"he that is without sin among you,
let him first cast a stone at her" (John VIII:7), and "why beholdest
thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam
that is in thine own eye" (Matt. VII:2)--cut at the very root of the
non-compromiser's position. For, in carrying on his crusade against his
pet evil-doers, it would be fatal to be obliged to stop to answer
objections that he may not be infallible in deciding what is evil, and
that he may himself have habits considered by others as evil as the one
he is denouncing. For instance, many a prominent non-compromiser among
the clergy is living in comparative ease, if not luxury. When he reads
the standard of living set by Jesus for the ministers of His Word (Matt.
X:9; Mark VI:8; Luke IX:3; X:4; XXII:35), he must admit that he is every
day compromising with the ideals of Jesus--with the evil of riches.
Compromise is the rule of human life. Each individual, as he tries to
follow the Socratic advice, "know thyself," finds that most of his
actions are a compromise between his good impulses and his evil
impulses. Few men are a Dr. Jekyll during the day and a Mr. Hyde during
the night. Most men are partly Jekyls and partly Hydes all the time. As
the individual makes his way in business and society, he learns more and
more every day, if he has common sense, the wisdom and advisability of
compromise. He that is always bent on "having his own way" will usually
find that his way does not go far, and results in unhappiness for
himself and others. Happy marriages are founded on a compromise of
individual tastes, habits and opinions. Parents win and retain the
affection of their children, not by imposing on them their own
inflexible laws of right and wrong, but by modifying these laws to meet
the different tastes, habits and opinions of the children. Success in
business, in law, in politics, is usually associated with the faculty of
making reasonable compromises. The wisest legislation is usually a
compromise between conflicting interests and opinions.
It is not too much to say that compromise is the corner stone of every
modern democratic society. It is a necessary consequence of the "rule of
the majority," since the majority of today may be the minority of
tomorrow. To find a society of his taste, the non-compromiser should
seek some negro tribe in darkest Africa, where the witch-doctors permit
no deviations from the prescribed theological cult. Or, in matters
political, he might find much to admire in the administrative system of
Louis the XIVth, with his famous aphorism, "L'Etat, C'est Moi."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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