Chapter 8: The Wisdom of the Simple

THE WELL

When Galilee took morning’s flame
Thro’ fields of flowers the Master came.
He stopped before a cottage door,
And took from humble hands the store
Of crumbs that from the table fell,
And water from the living well.
He smiled, and with a great content
Upon the road of flowers went.
Foredoomed upon the road of shame
With bleeding feet the Master came,
And found the cottage door again.
“No wine have we to ease Thy pain,
But only water in a cup.”
The Master slowly drank it up.
“Thy kindness turns it into wine,”
He said, “and makes the gift divine.”
Upon a day the Master trod
The road of stars that leads to God,
All tasks for men accomplished.
“They gave Me hate,” He softly said,
“But Love in larger measure gave,
And therefore was I strong to save.
I had not reached the Cross that day
But for the Well beside the way.”

If these things be true, if the whole tradition of Jesus is an exposition of love as the law of life, the deduction is entirely simple, and as logical as it is simple. That deduction has been already stated. It is that Christianity is a method of life by which men and women are taught and inspired to love as Jesus loved, and to live loving and lovable lives. It has little to do with creeds, and still less with formal codes of conduct. For this reason such a definition of Christianity will satisfy neither the theologian nor the philosopher. Jesus never expected that it would. He knew that the one would regard it as heretical, and the other as so deficient in subtlety as to seem foolish. Therefore He made His appeal to simple and natural people, saying that what was hidden from the wise and prudent, was revealed to babes.

The simple and natural people understood Jesus; they always do. The sophisticated and artificial people did not understand Him; they never will. With scarcely an exception the people of intelligence and culture regarded Him with disdain, withdrew from Him, or violently opposed Him. The reason for their conduct lay not so much in either their culture or their intelligence, as in the kind of life that seemed to be necessary to them as the expression of their culture.

Thus, they were full of prejudices, prepossessions, and foregone conclusions, all of which had the sanction of their culture. It was enough for them to know that Jesus came from Nazareth and was unlettered; this produced in them violent scorn and antipathy. They were still further offended because He used none of the shibboleths with which they were familiar. Nor could they conceive of any life as satisfactory but the kind of life they lived, and that was a life of social complexity, ruled by conventional usages and maxims, and essentially artificial in ideal and practice. Jesus, therefore, turned from them to the simple and natural people, fishermen, artisans, and humble women, in whom the natural instincts had fuller play. His reward was immediate; then, and ever since, the Common People heard Him gladly.