Still it is not only Christ's personal appeal, fresh. and us as it is, but also and especially His doctrines that make Him-our "contemporary. For it is unbelievably strange but equally true that the wdFld in which He lived and to which He addressed His teachings was closely similar to Ours in a thousand startling ways. The Rome of Christ's highly' organized, fully policed, elaborately developed and thoroughly centralized the graftzidden empire. State domination was an exact science, and state worship was not a mere theory but a practical fact and an accepted worship. And the Jewish nation in which' Christ traveled and preached was Rome's most highly civilized province, adding to the Roman developments an ancient and fully organized civilization and government of its own. And this complexus had given rise to moral and political problems of which our own are exact duplicates.
Divorce among both the Romans and the Jews was so common and easy that our modern divorce courts seem puritanical in their demands for sufficient grounds. Free love was the accepted fashion of the day. Lust was mot only a philosophy but a religion. Scopticism was the prevailing attitude of mind, even-among the Jews. Religion for the Romans was for the most part a mere civic obligation, while im Judea supernatural faith had given way to out-and out materialism or rigid external "formalism. And as a result, superstition-was rampant, for contrary to "the common opinion, "this does not result from religion but tries to substitute for it when it has become weak.
Business had developed on a gigantic scale; trade and commerce were worldwide and private fortunes equalled those of our modern multimillionaires; and then, as now, this resulted in an army of unemployed. To keep these hungry mobs from causing disturbances, an elaborate 3 of dole was instituted.—tree bread and circuses which our modern counterparts have yet. to equal, To this strikingly modern world the teaching of Jesus Christ appeared, as it does to the ultra-modern of to-day, absurdly fantastic. He opposed the doctrine of state absolutism and state worship by insisting on the sacred rights of the individual and the infinite value of a single human soul. He established a Church with such sharply defined rights and authority that it was then and always has been regarded as a menace by all forms of state absolutism such as we see in many of our modern European nations. ' He insisted on the abolition of divorce-and on the fact that subsequent remarriage was adultery. He -|sHowed that the rotten conditions brought about by the universal practice of divorce could only be cured by the complete removal of the evil. And the Jews and Romans liked this new doctrine no more than do the present day advocates of the easy rupture of the marriage tie.
Our modern devotees of free love laugh at Christ's doctrine of personal purity for all without exception, but "when He opposed the open filth and immorality that was prevalent in the Roman Empire with His "Blessed are the pure of heart," He was acclaimed ús a madman and a fool. The Roman soldier, the senator, the theatrical the' priests and priestesses of Venus, the philosophers, the much-married "matrons and merchants,—all openly sneered at and persecuted those' who preached and practiced such foolishness.
'Nor were the big business men who were engaged in exploiting the wealth of the provinces, or the Jewish traders and money makers any more pleased' by Christ's "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Christ saw what His Chürch sees to-day, big business enslaving mankind, building up a ruthless system of monopolies and high prices, and He proposed then what His Church proposes now, poverty of spirit and detachment from wealth. In fact, Christ's teachings regarding capital and labour are so modern that when we read them as expressed in the encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, they appear surprisingly radical, Atd how were all these new doctrines received? Christ's words fell on sceptical ears exactly the same way nineteen centuries ago as they do in this our modern day and age. Yet, in spite of incredulity and um belief, He demanded implicit faith in the supernatural; He stressed the future life, a system of unseen grace, the power of prayer, supernatural reward' and punishment,—all of "which His Church teaches to-day in a manner no less insistent, speaking as it does, as one having authority; uttering those truths that are as fresh and vigorous and applicable to modern conditions as they were when the Sermon on the Mount was first preached. For Christ is the modern of moderns; He understands us better than we understand ourselves.
Christ, however, forces Himself on no one, He gives us His doctrines; He proposes His solutions to our modern problems that are age-el and He patiently waits for our acceptance. Other doctrines, other solutions we have heard and discussed, but none of these has ever made any lasting' impression on the world,—many, even, have been rejected during the lifetime of their author. But Christ and His theories of living, whether we approve or disapprove, we cannot ignore or overlook; they are of the immediate day, for Christ is of all time. He spoke His doctrines under the open skies, and till the skies have fallen, His doctrines will remain, always ancient, always new, always modern:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.