The Spirit Of Jesus

THE spirit that was in Jesus! It was the spirit of sincerity. It was not enough for him that the outside of the cup and platter should be clean. It was not enough for him that men should abstain from outward acts of vice. There must be purity of heart. Thought and desire must be as clean as act.

The spirit that was in Jesus! It was the spirit of informal, undogmatic religion. He tolerated forms, he tolerated dogmas; but he laid no stress upon them. "This do," he said, "and thou shalt live." And the doing was to be no ceremony; it was to be personal righteousness of heart and life.

The spirit that was in Jesus! It was the spirit of compassion. Never was heart more deeply touched than his by human sorrow, suffering, or sin. And his compassion knew no bounds of caste or sect. Wherever there was a man sorrowing, suffering, sinning, there like a flood when winter's bars are broken, went out his tenderness.

The spirit that was in Jesus! It was the spirit of humanity of brotherhood. We may reject the forms in which this spirit shaped itself, but woe is unto us if we reject this spirit,—if we can ever look upon the oppressed and miserable, and not long to reach them a helping hand; if we can ever hug ourselves in selfish isolation, and let the toilsome, sorrowing, struggling world sweep by us, unregarded.