THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION
"They said, He is beside Himself,"--MARK iii.
21.
THE most pathetic life in the history of the
world is the life of the Lord Jesus. Those who study it find out, every day, a
fresh sorrow. Before He came it was already foretold that He would be
acquainted with grief, but no imagination has ever conceived the darkness of
the reality.
It began with one of the bitterest kinds of
sorrow--the sorrow of an enforced silence. For thirty years He saw, but dared
not act. The wrongs He came to redress were there. The hollowest religion ever
known--a mere piece of acting--was being palmed off around Him on every side as
the religion of the living God. He saw the poor trodden upon, the sick
untended, the widow unavenged, His Father's people scattered, His truth
misrepresented, and the whole earth filled with hypocrisy and violence. He saw
this, grew up amongst it, knew how to cure it. Yet He was dumb, He opened not
His mouth. How He held in His breaking spirit, till the slow years dragged
themselves done, it is impossible to comprehend.
Then came the public life, the necessity to
breathe its atmosphere: the temptation, the contradiction of sinners, the
insults of the Pharisees, the attempts on his life, the dulness of His
disciples, the Jews' rejection of Him, the apparent failure of His cause,
Gethsemane, Calvary. Yet these were but the more marked shades in the darkness
which blackened the whole path of the Man of Sorrows.
But we are confronted here with an episode in His
life which is not included in any of these-- an episode which had a bitterness
all its own, and such as has fallen to the lot of few to know. It was not the
way the world treated Him; it was not the Pharisees; it was not something which
came from His enemies; it was something His friends did. When He left the
carpenter's shop and went out into the wider life, His friends were watching
Him. For some time back they had remarked a certain strangeness in His manner.
He had always been strange among His brothers, but now this was growing upon
Him. He had said much stranger things of late, made many strange plans, gone
away on curious errands to strange places. What did it mean? Where was it to
end? Were the family to be responsible for all this eccentricity? One sad day
it culminated. It was quite clear to them now. He was not responsible for what
He was doing. It was His mind, alas! that had become affected. He was beside
Himself. In plain English, He was mad!
An awful thing to say when it is true, a more
awful thing when it is not; a more awful thing still when the accusation comes
from those we love, from those who know us best. It was the voice of no enemy,
it came from His own home. It was His own mother, perhaps, and His brethren,
who pointed this terrible finger at Him; apologising for Him, entreating the
people never to mind Him, He was beside Himself--He was mad.
There should have been one spot surely upon God's
earth for the Son of Man to lay His head--one roof, at least, in Nazareth, with
mother's ministering hand and sister's love for the weary Worker. But His very
home is closed to Him. He has to endure the furtive glances of eyes which once
loved Him, the household watching Him and whispering one to another, the cruel
suspicion, the laying hands upon Him, hands which were once kind to Him, and
finally, the overwhelming announcement of the verdict of His family, "He is
beside Himself." Truly He came to His own, and His own received Him not.
What makes it seemly to dig up this harrowing
memory today, and emphasize a thought which we cannot but feel lies on the
borderland of blasphemy? Because the significance of that scene is still
intense. It has a peculiar lesson for us who are to profess ourselves followers
of Christ--a lesson in the counting of the cost. Christ's life, from first to
last, was a dramatized parable--too short and too significant to allow even a
scene which well might rest in solemn shadow to pass by unimproved.
I. Observe, from the world's standpoint, the
charge is true. It is useless to denounce this as a libel, a bitter,
blasphemous calumny. It is not so--it is true. There was no alternative. Either
He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, or He was beside Himself. A holy
life is always a phenomenon. The world knoweth it not. It is either
supernatural or morbid.
For what is being beside oneself? What is
madness? It is eccentricity--ec-centr-icity--having a different centre from
other people. Here is a man, for instance, who devotes his life to collecting
objects of antiquarian interest, old coins perhaps, or old editions of books.
His centre is odd, his life revolves in an orbit of his own. Therefore, his
friends say, he is eccentric. Or here is an engine with many moving wheels,
large and small, cogged and plain, but each revolving upon a central axis, and
describing a perfect circle. But at one side there is one small wheel which
does not turn in a circle. Its motion is different from all the rest, and the
changing curve it describes is unlike any ordinary line of the mathematician.
The engineer tells you that this is the eccentric, because it has a
peculiar centre.
Now when Jesus Christ came among men He found
them nearly all revolving in one circle. There was but one centre to human
life--self. Man's chief end was to glorify himself and enjoy himself for ever.
Then, as now, by the all but unanimous concensus of the people, this present
world was sanctioned as the legitimate object of all human interest and
enterprise. By the whole gravitation of society, Jesus--as a man--must have
been drawn to the very verge of this vast vortex of self-indulgence, personal
ease and pleasure, which had sucked in the populations of the world since time
began. But He stepped back. He refused absolutely to be attracted. He put
everything out of His life that had even a temptation in it to the world's
centre. He humbled Himself--there is no place in the world's vortex for
humbleness; He became of no reputation--nor for namelessness. He emptied
Himself--gravitation cannot act on emptiness. So the prince of this world came,
but found nothing in Him. He found nothing, because the true centre of that
life was not to be seen. It was with God. The unseen and the eternal moved Him.
He did not seek His own happiness, but that of others. He went about doing
good. His object in going about was not gain, but to do good.
Now all this was very eccentric. It was living on
new lines altogether. He did God's will. He pleased not Himself. His centre was
to one side of self. He was beside Himself. From the world's view-point it was
simply madness.
Think of this idea of His, for instance, of
starting out into life with so quixotic an idea as that of doing good; the
simplicity of the expectation that the world ever would become good; this
irrational talk about meat to eat that they knew not of, about living water;
these extraordinary beatitudes predicating sources of happiness which had never
been heard of; these paradoxical utterances of which He was so fond, such as
that the way to find life was to lose it, and to lose life in this world was to
keep it to life eternal. What could these be but mere hallucination and
dreaming! It was inevitable that men should laugh and sneer at Him. He was
unusual. He would not go with the multitude. And men were expected to go with
the multitude. What the multitude thought, said, and did, were the right things
to have thought, said, and done. And if any One thought, said, or did
differently, his folly be on his own head, he was beside himself, he was
mad.
II. Every man who lives like Christ produces
the same reaction upon the world. This is an inevitable consequence. What
men said of Him, if we are true to Him, they will say of you and me. The
servant is not above his master. If they have persecuted Me, they will also
persecute you. A Christian must be different from other people. Time has not
changed the essential difference between the spirit of the world and the spirit
of Christ. They are radically and eternally different. And from the world's
standpoint still Christianity is eccentricity. For what, again, is
Christianity? It is the projection into the world of these lines along which
Christ lived. It is a duplicating in modern life of the spirit, the method, and
the aims of Jesus, a following through the world the very footprints He left
behind. And if these footprints were at right angles to the broad beaten track
the world went along in His day, they will be so still. It is useless to say
the distinction has broken down. These two roads are still at right angles. The
day may be, when the path of righteousness shall be the glorious highway for
all the earth. But it is not now. Christ did not expect it would be so. He made
provision for the very opposite. He prepared His Church beforehand for the
reception it would get in the world. He gave no hope that it would be an
agreeable one. Light must conflict with darkness, truth with error. There is no
sanctioned place in the world as yet for a life with God as its goal, and
self-denial as its principle. Meekness must be victimized; spirituality must be
misunderstood; true religion must be burlesqued. Holiness must make a strong
ferment and reaction in family or community, office or workshop, wherever it is
introduced. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I came not to
send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against
her mother-in-law, and a man's foes (He might well say it) shall be they of his
own household."
True religion is no milk-and-water experience. It
is a fire. It is a sword. It is a burning, consuming heat, which must radiate
upon everything around. The change to the Christlike Life is so remarkable that
when one really undergoes it, he cannot find words in common use by which he
can describe its revolutionary character. He has to recall the very striking
phrases of the New Testament, which once seemed such exaggerations:--"A new
man, a new creature; a new heart; a new birth." His
very life has been taken down and re-crystallised round the new centre. He has
been born again.
The impression his friends receive from him now
is the impression of eccentricity. The change is bound to strike them, for it
is radical, central. They will call in unworthy motives to account for the
difference. They will say it is a mere temporary fit, and will pass away. They
will say he has shown a weakness which they did not expect from him, and try to
banter him out of his novel views and stricter life. This, in its mildest form,
is the modern equivalent of "He is beside himself." And it cannot be helped. It
is the legitimate reproach of the Cross. The words are hard, but not new. Has
it not come down that long line of whom the world was not worthy? Its history,
alas! is well known. It fell on the first Christians in a painful and even
vulgar form.
The little Church had just begun to live. The
disciples stood after the great day of Pentecost contemplating that first
triumph of Christ's cause with unbounded joy. At last an impression had been
made upon the world. The enterprise was going to succeed, and the whole earth
would fill with God's glory. They little calculated that the impression they
made on the world was the impression of their own ridiculousness. "What meaneth
this?" the people asked. "It means," the disciples would have said, "that the
Holy Ghost, who was to come in His name, is here, that God's grace is stirring
the hearts of men and moving them to repent." The people had a different
answer. "These men," was the coarse reply, "are full of new wine." Not mad this
time--they are intoxicated!
Time passed, and Paul tells us the charge was
laid at his door. He had made that great speech in the hall of the Caesarean
palace before Agrippa and Festus. He told them of the grace of God in his
conversion, and closed with an eloquent confession of his Lord. What impression
had he made upon his audience? The impression of a madman. "As he thus spake
for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, `Paul, thou art beside thyself,
much learning hath made thee mad.'" Poor Paul! How you feel for him when the
cruel blow was struck. But there was no answer to it. From their view-point it
was perfectly true. And so it has been with all saints to the present hour. It
matters not if they speak like Paul the words of soberness. It matters not if
they are men of burning zeal like Xavier and Whitfield, men of calm spirit like
Tersteegen and a Kempis, men of learning like Augustine, or of ordinary gifts
like Wesley--the effect of all saintly lives upon the world is the same. They
are to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness.
It is not simply working Christianity that is an
offence. The whole spiritual life, to the natural man, is an eccentric thing.
Take such a manifestation, for instance, as Prayer. The scientific men of the
day have examined it and pronounced it hallucination. Or take Public Prayer. A
congregation of people with bowed heads, shut eyes, hushed voices, invoking,
confessing, pleading, entreating One who, though not seen, is said to see, who,
speaking not, is said to answer. There is no other name for this incantation
from the world's standpoint than eccentricity, delusion, madness. We are not
ashamed of the terms. They are the guarantee of quality. And all high quality
in the world is subject to the same reproach. For we are discussing a universal
principle. It applies to inventors, to discoverers, to philosophers, to poets,
to all men who have been better or higher than their time. These men are never
understood by their contemporaries. And if there are martyrs of science, the
centres of science being in this world, seen, demonstrated, known, how much
more must there be martyrs for religion whose centre is beyond the reach of
earthly eye?
III. It follows from this, that the more
active religion is, the more unpopular it must be.
Christ's religion did not trouble His friends at
first. For thirty years, at all events, they were content to put up with it.
But as it grew in intensity they lost patience. When He called the twelve
disciples, they gave Him up. His work went on, the world said nothing for some
time. But as His career became aberrant more and more, the family feeling
spread, gained universal ground. Even the most beautiful and tender words He
uttered were quoted in evidence of His state. For John tells us that after that
exquisite discourse in the tenth chapter about the Good Shepherd, there was a
division among the Jews for these sayings: "And many of them said, He hath a
devil and is mad. Why hear ye Him?" It seemed utter raving.
Have you ever noticed--and there is nothing more
touching in history--how Christ's path narrowed?
The first great active period is called in books
The year of public favour. On the whole it was a year of triumph. The world
received Him for a time. Vast crowds followed Him. The Baptist's audience left
him and gathered round the new voice. Palestine rang with the name of Jesus.
Noblemen, rulers, rabbis, vied with one another in entertaining Him. But the
excitement died down suddenly and soon.
The next year is called The year of opposition.
The applause was over. The crowds thinned. On every hand He was obstructed. The
Sadducees left Him. The Pharisees left Him. The political party were roused
into opposition. The Jews, the great mass of the people, gave Him up. His path
was narrowing.
With the third period came the end. The path was
very narrow now There were but twelve left to Him when the last act of the
drama opens. They are gathered on the stage together for the last time. But it
must narrow still. One of the disciples. after receiving the sop, goes out.
Eleven are left Him. Peter soon follows. There are but ten. One by one they
leave the stage, till all forsook Him and fled, and He is left to die alone.
Well might He cry, as He hung there in this awful solitude--as if even God had
forgotten Him, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
But this is not peculiar to Jesus. It is typical
of the life of every Christian. His path. too, must narrow. As he grows in
grace, he grows in isolation. He feels that God is detaching his life from all
around it and drawing him to Himself for a more intimate fellowship. But as the
communion is nearer, the chasm which separates him from his fellow man must
widen. The degree of a man's religion, indeed, is to be gauged by the degree of
his rejection by the world. With the early Christians was not this the
commonest axiom, "We told you before," did not Paul warn them, "that we should
suffer?" "Unto some it was given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on
Him, but also to suffer for His sake." It was the position of honour, as it
were, in the family of God to be counted worthy of being persecuted for the
sake of Christ.
It is a sad reflection that, as in the case of
Christ, the keenest suffering may come sometimes still from one's own family
circ]e. Among our friends there may be one on whom we all look askance--one who
is growing up in the beauty of holiness, and we not knowing what it is that
makes him strange. It often needs Death to teach us the beauty of a life which
has been lived beside our own; and we only know the worth of it when God proves
it by taking it to Himself.
Finally, it may be objected to all this
that if eccentricity is a virtue, it is easily purchased. Any one can set up
for an eccentric character. And if that is the desideratum of religion we shall
have candidates enough for the office. But it remains to define the terms on
which a Christian should be eccentric--Christ's own terms. And let them be
guides to us in our eccentricity, for without them we shall be not Christians,
but fanatics.
The qualities which distinguish the eccentricity
of godliness from all other eccentricities are three; and we gather them all
from the life of Christ.
(1) Notice, His eccentricity was not
destructive. Christ took the world as He found it, He left it as it was. He
had no quarrel with existing institutions. He did not overthrow the church--He
went to church. He said nothing against politics --He supported the government
of the country. He did not denounce society--His first public action was to go
to a marriage. His great aim, in fact, outwardly, and all along, was to be as
normal, as little eccentric as possible. The true fanatic always tries the
opposite. The spirit alone was singular in Jesus; a fanatic always spoils his
cause by extending it to the letter. Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil.
A fanatic comes not to fulfil, but to destroy. If we would follow the
eccentricity of our Master, let it not be in asceticism, in denunciation, in
punctiliousness, and scruples about trifles, but in largeness of heart,
singleness of eye, true breadth of character, true love to men, and heroism for
Christ.
(2) It was perfectly composed. We think
of eccentricity as associated with frenzy, nervousness, excitableness,
ungovernable enthusiasm. But the life of Jesus was a calm. It was a life of
marvellous composure. The storms were all about it, tumult and tempest, tempest
and tumult, waves breaking over Him all the time till the worn body was laid in
the grave. But the inner life was as a sea of glass. It was a life of perfect
composure. To come near it even now is to be calmed and soothed. Go to it at
any moment, the great calm is there. The request to "come" at any moment was a
standing invitation all through His life. Come unto Me at My darkest hour, in
My heaviest trial, on My busiest day, and I will give you Rest. And when the
very bloodhounds were gathering in the streets of Jerusalem to hunt Him down,
did He not turn to the quaking group around Him and bequeath to them--a last
legacy--"My Peace"?
There was no frenzy about His life, no
excitement. In quietness and confidence the most terrible days sped past. In
patience and composure the most thrilling miracles were wrought. Men came unto
Him, and they found not restlessness, but Rest. Composure is to be had for
faith. We shall be worse than fanatics if we attempt to go along the lonely
path with Christ without this spirit. We shall do harm, not good. We shall
leave half-done work. We shall wear out before our time. Do not say, "Life is
short." Christ's life was short; yet He finished the work that was given Him to
do. He was never in a hurry. And if God has given us anything to do for Him, He
will give time enough to finish it with a repose like Christ's.
(3) This life was consistent.
From the Christian standpoint a consistent life
is the only sane life. It is not worth while being religious without being
thorough. An inconsistent Christian is the true eccentric. He is the true
phenomenon in the religious world; to his brother Christian the only madman.
For madness, in a sense, is inconsistency; madness is incoherency, irrelevancy,
disconnectedness; and surely there is nothing more disconnected than a belief
in God and Eternity and no corresponding life. And that man is surely beside
himself who assumes the name of Christ, pledges perhaps in sacramental wine to
be faithful to His name and cause, and who from one year to another never lifts
a finger to help it. The man who is really under a delusion, is he who bears
Christ's name, who has no uneasiness about the quality of his life, nor any
fear for the future, and whose true creed is that
He lives for
himself, he thinks for himself,
For himself, and none beside;
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if He had never died.
Yes, a
consistent eccentricity is the only sane life. "An enthusiastic religion is the
perfection of common sense." And to be beside oneself for Christ's sake is to
be beside Christ, which is man's chief end for time and eternity.