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Chapter V
In passing, we may notice that these stories suggest that this experience may be reached in different ways. In the parables of the seed and the leaven he indicates a natural, quiet and unconscious growth, a story without crisis, though full of change. To the Treasure Finder the discovery is a surprise—how came Jesus so far into the minds of men as to know what a surprise God can be, and how joyful a surprise? The Pearl Merchant, on the other hand, has lived in the region where he makes his discovery. He is the type that lives and moves in the atmosphere of high and true thought, that knows whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report, of help and use; he is no stranger to great and inspiring ideas. And one day, in no strange way, by no accident, but in the ordinary round of life, he comes on something that transcends all he has been seeking, all he has known—the One thing worth all. There is little surprise about it, no wild elation, but nothing is allowed to stand in the way of an instant entrance into the great experience—and the great experience is, Jesus says, God.
To see God, to know God—that is what Jesus means—to get away from "all the fuss and trouble" of life into the presence of God, to know he is ours, to see him smile, to realize that he wants us to stay there, that he is a real Father with a father's heart, that his love is on the same wonderful scale as every one of his attributes, and in reality far more intelligible than any of them. That is the picture Jesus draws. The sheer incredible love of God, the wonderful change it means for all life—that is his teaching, and he encourages us, in the words of the Shorter Catechism, "to enjoy God for ever," as Jesus himself does. Those who learn his secret enjoy God in reality. Wherever they see God with the eyes of Jesus, it is joy and peace. And they realize with deepening emotion that this also is God's gift, as Jesus said (Luke 8:10; 12:39).
Jesus entirely recast mankind's common ideas of holiness. It is no longer asceticism, no longer the mystical trance, no longer the "fussiness," with which the early Christian reproached the Jew, which still haunts all the religions of taboo and merit, and even Christianity in some forms. Where men think of holiness as freedom from sin, the negative conception reacts on life. They begin at the wrong end. Solomon Schechter, the great Jewish scholar, once said of Oxford, that "they practice fastidiousness there, and call it holiness." Unfortunately Oxford has no monopoly of that type of holiness. But with Jesus holiness is a much simpler and more natural thing—as natural as the happy, easy life of father and child, and it rests on mutual faith. It is Theocentric, positive, active rather than passive—not a state, but a relation and a force. Holiness with him is a living relation with the living God. That is why the first feature in it that strikes us is Courage. "Be of good cheer; be not afraid"; that note rings through the Gospels, and how much it means, and has meant, in sweet temper and cheerfulness in the very chequered history of the Church! His is the great voice of Hope in the world. "The Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Hope," Paul said (1 Tim. 1:1). Even on the Cross, according to one text, Jesus said to the penitent thief: "Courage! To-day thou shalt be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). We may not know where or what paradise is, but the rest is intelligible and splendid: "Courage; to-day thou shalt be with me." Look at the brave hearts the Gospel has made in every age; how venturesome they are! and we find the same venturesomeness in Jesus—for instance, as a German scholar emphasizes, in that episode of the daughter of Jairus. The messenger comes and says she is dead. Anybody else would stop, but Jesus goes on. That is a great piece of interpretation. Look again at his venturesomeness in trusting the Gospel to the twelve and to us—and in facing the Cross. "It was his knowledge of God," says Professor Peabody, "that gave him his tranquillity of mind."[22]