ch fool's, may lead to our
forgetting God; but Jesus incessantly lays the emphasis on the
thought-out life; and that, in the long run, means a new reckoning
with God. That is what Jesus urges--that we should think life out,
that we should come face to face with God and see him for what he
is, and accept him. He means us to live a life utterly and
absolutely based on God--life on God's lines of peacemaking and
ministry, the "denial of self," a complete forgetfulness of self in
surrender to God, obedience to God, faith in God, and the acceptance
of the sunshine of God's Fatherhood. He means us to go about things
in God's way--forgiving our enemies, cherishing kind thoughts about
those who hate us or despise us or use us badly (Matt. 5:44),
praying for them. This takes us right back into the common world,
where we have to live in any case; and it is there that he means us
to live with God--not in trance, but at work, in the family, in
business, shop, and street, doing all the little things and all the
great things that God wants us to do, and glad to do them just
because we are his children and he is our Father. Above all, he
would have us "think like God" (Mark 8:33); and to reach this habit
of "thinking like God," we have to live in the atmosphere of Jesus,
"with him" (Mark 3:14). All this new life he made possible for us by
being what he was--once again a challenge to re-explore Jesus. "The
way to faith in God and to love for man," said Dr. Cairns at Mohonk,
"is, as of old, to come nearer to the living Jesus."

CHAPTER VI

JESUS AND MAN

When, on his last journey, Jesus came in sight of Jerusalem, Luke
tells us that he wept (Luke 19:41). There is an obvious explanation
of this in the extreme tension under which he was living--everything
turned upon the next few days, and everything would be decided at
Jerusalem; but while he must have felt this, it cannot have been the
cause of his weeping. Nor should we look for it altogether in the
appeal which a great city makes to emotion.

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.

Yet it was not the architecture that so deeply moved Jesus; the
temple, which was full in view, was comparatively new and foreign.
There is little suggestion in the Gospels that Art meant anything to
him, perhaps it meant little to the writers. As for the temple, he
found it "a den of thieves" (Luke 19:46); and he prophesied that it
would be demoli