says, "I do the things that please him"--not "I
teach them," not "I dream them," not "I have seen them in a fair
vision," but "I do them." There never was a bigger claim from the lips
of the Master than that: "I do always the things that please him."

You would not thank me to insult your Christian experience, upon
whatever level you live it, by attempting to define that statement
of Christ. History has vindicated it. We believe it with all our
hearts--that He always did the things that pleased God. But I have got
on to a level that I can touch now. The great ideal has come from the
air to the earth. The fair vision has become concrete in a Man. Now,
I want to see that Man; and if I see that Man I shall see in Him
a revelation of what God's purpose is for men, and I shall see,
therefore, a revelation of what the highest possibility of life is.
Now this is a tempting theme. It is a temptation to begin to contrast
Him with popular ideals of life. I want to see Him; I want, if I can,
to catch the notes of the music that make up the perfect harmony which
was the dropping of a song out of God's heaven upon man's earth, that
man might catch the key-note of it and make music in his own life.
What are the things in this Man's life? He says: "I have realized the
ideal--I do." There are four things that I want to say about Him, four
notes in the music of His life.

First, spirituality. That is one of the words that needs redeeming
from abuse. He was the embodiment of the spiritual ideal in life. He
was spiritual in the high, true, full, broad, blest sense of that
word.

It may be well for a moment to note what spirituality did not mean in
the life of Jesus Christ. It did not mean asceticism. During all the
years of His ministry, during all the years of His teaching, you never
find a single instance in which Jesus Christ made a whip of cords
to scourge Himself. And all that business of scourging oneself--an
attempt to elevate the spirit by the ruin of the actual flesh--is
absolutely opposed to His view of life. Jesus Christ did not deny
Himself. The fact of His life was this--that He touched everything
familiarly. He went into all the relationship of life. He went to the
widow. He took up the children and held them in His arms, and looked
into their eyes till heaven was poured in as He looked. He didn't go
and get behind walls somewhere. He didn't get away and say: "Now, if I
am going to get pure I shall do it by shutting men o