Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man
which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
wind blew and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.
Jesus
If ye continue in my word, then ye are my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the Thruth,
and the Truth shall make you free.
Jesus
The Gospel of Jesus is a Gospel of living and doing. If it were not this, it would not voice the Eternal Truth. Its Temple is Purified Conduct, the entrance-door to which is Self-surrender. It invites men to shake off sin, and promises, as a result, joy and blessedness and perfect peace.
There is one characteristic in the teachings of all those Great Souls who have been worshipped by mankind as saviors, and that is that they bring to light and appeal directly to, the simple facts and truths of the soul and of life; and in the teaching of Jesus this feature stands out pre-eminently. Strictly speaking, he put forward no theory, advanced no creed, laid no claim to any particular "views," and propounded no speculative philosophy. He was content to state that which is.
Men are so taken up with their pleasures, theories, theologies, and philosophies that they cannot comprehend the simple facts of life, and it is supremely the office of the true teacher to bring men back to the simple and beautiful realities of their own souls. The false teacher, he who can perceive the simple truths of Duty and of Conduct, and does not see himself and other men as they are, when asked to point out the Way of Truth, will declare that it lies entirely in the acceptance of his own particular theology, and will warn the questioner against all other systems of theology. Not so, however, the true Teacher, he who knows the human heart, and who sees life as it is; and particularly not so, Jesus, who when questioned of the Way of Life, always told his questioner to go and do certain things. Never once did he refer a questioner to any views, theories, or deftly woven philosophies of his own, or indeed of other men. He referred them to duty and to purity of life and conduct, and the only things he warned them against were their own sins. And, truly, this is all that is needful. A man either abandons sin or clings to it; if the former, he does all and realizes the Law of Life; if the latter, he does nothing, and remains ignorant, blind, without understanding.
Truth is contained in conduct, and not in any system of thought; and to live purely and blamelessly is infinitely superior to all wordy doctrines. Let a man carefully study every system of theology, and he will at last find that one selfless thought, one pure deed, puts them all to shame. Truth is divorced from the controversies of the creeds, but it shines with undimmed luster in the self-forgetting deed. How beautifully this is illustrated in the parables of Jesus, and how forcibly it is brought out in many of the incidents of his life; particularly in that one recorded in the tenth chapter of Luke, where the lawyer asks, "Master, what shall I do to inherit Eternal Life?" The answer of Jesus is to ask him to repeat the chief commandment, which being done, Jesus simply says, "This do, and thou shalt live." Whereupon the lawyer, wishing to draw Jesus into an argument, in order, no doubt, to confound him, asks, "And who is my neighbor?"
We then have the incomparable parable of the good Samaritan, wherein Jesus shows in the simplest language and imagery, yet forcibly and unmistakably, that religious observances are so many vain and useless burdens unless accompanied by good deeds, and that the so-called worldly man who does
unselfish deeds has already found Eternal Life; while the so-called religious man who shuts up his soul against mercy and unselfishness, is shut out from Life. To comprehend the full force of this parable it is necessary to bear in mind that the Priests and the Levites were regarded by the Jews as being the highly favored and chosen of God, whereas the Samaritans were regarded as being entirely outside the pale of salvation.
