Imitation Of Christ

For I have givcn you an example that ye shonltl do as I have done to yon. - John -J-Ui, 18, A first remark may well be that the present age can find no higher degree of moral wortli tlian are expressed in the words, " He mis Ohristlike." Ií a great Juilge, or a grent statesman, or a great ruler passes away, the eulogists are happy ertóugh if over the new grave they can say that the actions of the man were Christlike. The worth of learning, and talent, and office fados before that beanI ty of moráis and conduct. Even Mr. Mili eonfcssed that earth had no brightci- example, and that, if any great dcstiny should be awaiting man, the following of Ohrist would lead thitherward, Such, at least, is the substance of his testimony. While the foot of man is pacing the bnsy streets, either in the pursuit of gold, or learning, or fame, or pleasu-e, he measures life by some one of those standards, but when his friend has come to the boundary, or when he is himself in the last moments, he flings away all these measurements and looks for 'the Christlike in the heart that is saying farewell to earth, It will bc held in long reniembrance of somc of tliose faithftil Howards in the South that they died in a service that was so perfectly Christlike. Their tombstones will need but one short epitaph - Herö lies one who followed the example of his Master. These words connected with the year 1878 will contain all the eloquence for which Iraman language ean find expression. And who can say that it may not be one of the meanings of this August and ■ September in our land that by their grief they shall point out to society the highest form and object of life, a'nd declare it to be an imitation of Jesiis ? The imitation of Chiïst involves "righteousness." ïhere can be no valuable Christianity where the disciple differs from his Master in this particular, llighteousness is that felation of man to man upon which society is fouuded. Take away righteousnesB, and each man is at the mercy of tlié strongest, nnd the people become at once lik o a herd of sheep in a land abounding in lions. When one of our religiouK journals took, recently, the position that no Christian could take refuge in a bankrupt law and pay a small part or no part of a money obligation, it spoke with fearful closeness to what is Christlike in the world of moráis. It is not to be conceived of that a Christ-man will ever see any arithmetic that can transform 10 cents into ,a dollar or reveal moráis that can take from a neighbor and never pay back. The Christliko life, having incurred a debt, will go forward repaying it regardless of any temptation offered by an earthly and defective legislature, and will help build up the only opinión in harmony with the Master, namely : that not a bankrupt law, but death only, may give a Christian release from his promises. I do not mean to imply that all persons who have taken what they cali tlïis legal refuge are hypocrites, and are unworthy of the esteem of good men. I mean only this : that they are erring Christians - Christians under a cloud - and that. as poor a'-Kempis saw only a part of his Lord's character in the iifteenth century, so these other souls, living in the nineteenth, have yet failed to mark and measure the lofty moráis of Jesus Clxrist. Next to the righteousness seen in this example comes tho subjection of the physical to tho spiritual. The early and middle ages misunderstood this form of j the sacied character ; they exaggerated the spirituality of the Lord and His temperance in physical passions until they elaborated such frightful human beings as Bernard and St. Anthony, who annihilated at once the body and the isoiil. The distance between Christ's modcration and monkish denial ia tlie difference between simple food and starvation, the difference .between a cheerful hearth in a cottage and a reckless exposure, without dothes or roof or fire, to the wintry storm. The oxample of Jesus is tha't of symmetry, that of relative mcrit, and not that of paüiful, injurious self-denial. Ohrist ate the dáily bread and drank the daily drinks set before Him, and wore the dress of His tribe, but the food and drink and the dress were under the control of a suprèpae wisdom. All thoso material thiiigs wei-e the simple servants of the soul, as distinguished from those witli whom the soul was the servant of food and the drink and the dress. In the spiritualism of Christ the body was valuable because it sustained a soul ; in the fashionable world the soul was valuable because ifc vitalized a body - it kept organized the thing that could eat and drink and wear elegant raiment. Tho great Leader sustains no direct relations to food and drink and dress, but a powerful indirect relation in the fact that under His religión the mind and soul became so largo that they crowded back the lower appetites, and filled with mental beauty a civilization which had once been tlio slave of physical display and physical happiness. He estimates very badly the example of Cbrist who does not mark how it werkad its way out of the room of the individual, the cell of tho anchorite, and the closet of the saint, and became a vast out-door element of civilization. A civilization is nothing else than im accumulation of thoughts and feelings, which belong no longer to an individual, but to a century oran epoch. Antonine the Pions, drfissed plainly, and ate and drank moderately, luit lns ideas reposed in himself ; t'lie world around was all enveloped in pliysiral ends and tastes. A eivilizatioii is n ptiMic wealth of ideas, a t'ovtune like that of a certain railway king, jwhioh eannot be earried away by the dying individual. The one man is gone, hut the iron rails reach out for thousands of iniles, and the wheels run day and night. He cannot eonvert the track back to a wilderness, nor put the wheels back into the iron mountains. Not a single train was delayed by bis death, not a flying engine uttered one scream more or less, when the railroad priue dicd. Thus civilization is an idea, or a group of them, bré"aking away from ono mind, and becoming the irrevocable words of lmmanity. These ideas are a network around and over thcnation. Their wheels roll over all hearts by day and by night, and not the death of one man or of millions of men, can remand back from being these inwoven forms of thought. Christ, in. establishiug a re ligion, passëd beyond a single house or home,, and throug'h the long and prosperous career of that religión has entered into a civilization, and thus his spirituality lies upon the world to-day, lies as sweet as Shakspeare's inoonlight, whick slept npon the bank. To illustrate the relations between such a philosophy as that of Jesus and the decline of physical or material aims and eiids, note the changes in the costumes of men which have taken place since Christianity began to enlarge the estimate of mind. Not all of such reform must be placed to the credit of religión, for common sense would perhaps have grown, even had Christianity never appeared ; but this I claim, that, such a bcing as Jesus Christ pervaded the nations, "common.' sense" found in trim a powerful leader and companion, who hclped win a quicker and broader victory. The purple and fine linen have disappeared from the dress even of Kings, and gradually all men have put asido rings and jewels and personal decorations. The men of the nineteenth century attiro themselves with perfect plainness, compared with all the civilized past, because gradually lias escaped the long-hidden fact that a man is great only in mind and soul. Next to the influence of Christ upon the mind to exalt it, and upon the body to simplify its forms of life, may be reckoned His power to group men into one brotherhood. He is always binding into one family earth's alienatcd and scattercd children. He, beyond all others, binds states and races and families and souls into one. He lifts men up above tliat wherein they differ, and brings them to that height wïrere all agree. In the stricken places in the j South the faithful black and the faithful j white, the rich and the poor, are just i no-iv blended into one humanity, cause the solermüty of the hour has ] rendered contemptible their little : agreements, and has rendered visible j the soul in which all men are one. Thus for many ages Ohrist has moved among mena sublime spectacle, almost a solemn unfolding of those vastnesses where all are brethren. His divineness has given j Him authority; His philosophy has , given Him intellectual weight; His love I has made the world love Him in return ; . His death has drawn perpetual tears; j His doctrine of heaven and heil has lent : to His name deep solemnity. By this power He lifts the millions above their dissensions, and enthrones them amid their harmonies. What the world most needs now is a form of religión which shall melt all its articles into one. " The limitation of . Christ " - not that portrayed by a j pis, which imprisoned the Divine One j in a gloomy cavern, but that broader imitatioii wïiich shall not silence a single impulse of the heart or mind, but which shall build the many stones of the soul's temple up in one cemetery. It is to be hoped that our world is approaching a Christianity which will furnish the marts of business and the heiig of legislation, and the chairs of Presidents and the thrones of Kings witli Christian-like men. It is to be hoped the time is coming w-hen a man will be estimated not by his riches or his station, but by his absolute moral worth, and that no epitaph for the dead will read more eloquently the simple words, " His life was Christlike."