nt? Was he encouraging social
revolt? Was he an anarchist or a socialist? The other question was
theological. What did he think about the future life? How would
marriage be arranged in heaven? Was his theology orthodox? All this
must have seemed to Jesus malicious enough, but I think that the
deepest impression he had of such questions {152} must have been of
their stupidity. How was it possible that after months of public
teaching any one could suppose that such problems were in the line of
his intention. Here he was, trying to bring spiritual life among his
people,--the life of God to the souls of men,--and here were people
still trying to find in him a political schemer or a metaphysical
theologian.

Yet there are questions of much this nature still being asked of Jesus.
Some honest persons are still insisting that Christ's religion is a
system of theology, and some are trying to make of it a course in
social science, and neither of them seem to notice that the last day of
general teaching which was permitted to him on earth was largely
devoted to demonstrating that he was neither a social agitator nor a
theological professor. Christianity is not a scheme or arrangement,
social or theological, like a railway which men might build either to
accelerate the business of life or to take one straight to heaven.
Christianity provides that which all such mechanism needs. It is a
power, like that electric force which makes the equipment of a railway
move. A church is a power-house for the {153} development and the
transmission of the power that makes things go. Cut off the power, and
the theological creeds and social programmes of the day stand there
paralyzed or dead. Communicate to them the dynamic of the Christian
life, and the power goes singing over all the wires of life and sets
its mechanism in motion, as though it sang upon its way: "I am come
that these may have my life, and may have it abundantly."

{154}

LXII

AN UNRECORDED DAY

(PASSION WEEK--WEDNESDAY)

We have traced from day to day the life of Jesus through the earlier
days of its last week, its triumph of Sunday, its solitude of Monday,
its controversies of Tuesday. On each of these days Jesus has come
over the hill from Bethany into the city, and has returned to the
village at night. And now we come to the last day before the Passover
and the betrayal; the last chance to meet his enemies and to enforce
his cause. What then doe