e to find an
active man engaged in worldly business who recognizes the laws of
simple unselfishness and truth as having any practical existence in
human affairs; but it is still more rare to find such a man
understanding the true relation between essential goodness and the
conventional principles of morality. There are times when those who act
from higher standards must appear to contradict entirely all
conventional modes of life, but they do not necessarily oppose such
conventions, for through a courageous adherence to the spirit of the law
they eventually bring new life to its letter. The true man of the world
is he who can express his essential goodness and truth in wise and
appropriate ways, and in terms which must be, in the long run,
intelligible to all kinds of men.

When Jesus Christ healed a man on the Sabbath day, He not only ignored
the conventional standards of His nation, but He appeared to disobey one
of the fundamental commandments of the law. The Pharisees, and all the
people about Him who stood well in the eyes of the world, were angrily
indignant. It is not difficult to imagine, after it was all over, a kind
and conventional soul coming to the Lord and asking Him why He had not
waited until the next day before carrying out His intention;--He would
not have had to wait long, and the displeasure of the Pharisees would
have been avoided. "Would it not have been more charitable to respect
the religious scruples of the Jews? Is it not wrong to fly needlessly in
the face of respectable public opinion? Was it not unwise needlessly to
break the letter of the commandment, even while keeping its spirit?"
Some doubting soul, who wanted to believe in the goodness of the Lord
and the purity of His motive, might well have put all these questions
to Him with a sincere and conscientious desire to serve. And yet this
doubter, with all his conscientious kindness, would have been blind and
stupid. For only the self-righteous or the morally stupid could fail to
understand that, in healing a sick man on the Sabbath day, our Lord was
establishing a new precedent of a truer and deeper obedience for all
mankind. The Pharisees were convinced of their own goodness; it would
not have occurred to them as possible that they were narrow, provincial,
and self-righteous. They would not have admitted for an instant the
possibility of any circumstances under which it might be right to
perform a radical cure on the Sabbath day; and they