life improperly so called, in connexion with the lower and transient self. The first kind of life was already a cherished ideal with Israel ('Thou wilt show me the path of life!');[1] and a man might be placed in it, Jesus said, by dying to the second. For it is to be noted that our common expression, 'deny himself,' is an inadequate and misleading version of the words used by Jesus. To deny one's self is commonly understood to mean that one refuses one's self something. But what Jesus says is: 'Let a man disown himself, renounce himself, die as regards his old self, and so live.' Himself, the old man, the life in this world, meant following those wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts which Jesus had, by his method, already put his disciples in the way of sifting and scrutinising, and of trying by the standard of conformity to conscience.
Thus, after putting him by his method in the way to find what doing righteousness was, by his secret Jesus put the disciple in the way of doing it. For the breaking the sway of what is commonly called one's self, ceasing our concern with it and leaving it to perish, is not, Jesus said, being thwarted or crossed, but living. And the proof of this is that it has the characters of life in the highest degree,—the sense of going right, hitting the mark, succeeding. That is, it has the characters of happiness; and happiness is, for Israel, the same thing as having the Eternal with us, seeing the salvation of God. 'The tree,' as Jesus said, and as men's common sense and proverbial speech say with him, 'is known by its fruits;'[2] and Jesus, then, was to be received by Israel as sent from God, because the secret of Jesus leads to the salvation of God, which is what Israel most desired. The word of the cross, in short, turned out to be at the same time the word of the kingdom.[3] And to this experimental
- ↑ Ps. xvi, 11.
- ↑ Matth., xii, 33.
- ↑ Ὁ λόγος τῆς βασιλείας.—Matth., xiii, 19.
