IS THE WAY OF JESUS EASY?

'EASY?' says my business‑man friend; and he says the word as though to ask the question at the head of this chapter were grievously to misunderstand the nature of modem business life. One can hear the tones of real sincerity in his voice as he explains that, with every desire to apply his Christian principles to his business, sometimes the Sermon on the Mount seems utterly unrelated to life as he faces it, and that, caught up as he is in the modem competitive system, it is one of the hardest things in the world to be a Christian.

I turn to my young girl friend and I say, 'Do you find it easy to be a Christian ? ' and she explains that the Christian way has always seemed so hard that she has never seriously begun to follow it. 'Why I Easy? ' she says. 'Look at the things I should have to give up I I am only young once, and I mean to have a jolly good time; whereas if I am going to be a Christian you would want me to teach in the Sunday school or get about among the poor, or perhaps go as a missionary. It is too hard.'

I turn to a clerk in an office and ask him the same question, and he answers in the same way. ' Why,' he says, ' if I showed my colours for a single moment the fellows would call me by the name goody‑goody, 148 the typists would giggle, and the other fellows would rag me to death. It is hard enough to play the game; to be a real Christian is too hard.'
I turn to a middle‑aged spinster whose life is more secluded and I ask her the same question. Why, she says, ' it is the hardest thing in the world I Every day I try not to lose my temper. Every night I register a failure. I go to church and class meetings and read books and go to Communion. But somehow to take Christianity seriously is the hardest thing in the world.'
I turn to a young mother with a growing family and no maid. ' Do you find it easy to be a Christian ? ' But she speaks of dishes to wash, clothes to mend, rooms to clean out, food to cook, and all this to do on money that won't go far enough. She is up early in the morning and in bed late at night. And she says, ' I suppose if I were a real follower of Jesus I should have family prayers, talk to the children about God, and live before them as Christ would have one live; but I get so tired and life is so full that it is the hardest thing in the world; so hard that, quite frankly, I have given it up.'
What these imaginary five people say, I suppose, would be said by hundreds in mills, factories, offices, universities, schools, and homes throughout the land, and I find it hard to answer them, although I know the answer to all of them.
I know that the answer to the business man is that, if he could only see life steadily and see it whole, then to follow the way of Christ would bring such a sense of inward peace and radiant well‑being, that in149the long run it would be an easier way than to follow what seems easy, but which brings constant recriminations and long‑drawn‑out conflict; but I know also that in the meantime he would lose money and prestige and be called a fool, and I should feel a hypocrite to tell him that the way of Christ is easy.
It would be the same with the young girl. I know that life will not work her way, for she imagines that a full life is a life full of cinemas and dances and excitement and what she calls thrill, and that very soon, as she will say herself, she will be ' fed up.' None of us can tell ourselves often enough that life will only work one way, and that is God's way, and that in the end self‑realization can only be found in the way Christ showed ; in a word, that His way is easier than any other. But then, I am middle‑aged and married, and the days when I wanted to whirl about from one diversion to another have gone, and it seems a hypocrite's game to denounce people for doing things when one has no temptation to do them oneself.
It is so in the case of the clerk in the office. I feel that if he followed Christ quite bravely, without caring what people thought or said, life would gain permanent enrichment. Perhaps God does not want anything in that clerk's office so much as He wants a man brave enough to show his colours and, by showing them, to make it easier for other people to be good. Youngsters, who are far too shy to stand up for the things that in their hearts they love, would be ready enough to do so if some one of stronger personality made it easier. But then, since I left the Army150I have never been sneered at for my religion, and therefore how can I ask some one else to make a stand which I have not to make myself ?
So with the spinster and mother. It is easy enough to talk to them, but they have the right to feel that talking is easiet than doing, and, though I cannot give them their answer, I believe that Christ can, if they will listen to His voice, a voice that, in spite of our protests that His way is too hard, comes to us down the ages, saying quite clearly and defin‑itely, 'My yoke is easy and My burden is light.'
If anybody else said this we should not believe him. To talk of leaving father and mother for His sake, of leaving wealth and position and taking up a cross, and of counting the world well lost if He be gained, and then to say that His yoke is easy, sounds like the word of one who cannot understand life as we have to live it. If any one else had said these words we should have been tempted to call him a fool ‑but Jesus said them, and He has never deceived men: and therefore we must listen to Him and try to understand what He means.One of the reasons why we think following Jesus is so hard is perhaps that we have never clearly realized what the essential thing in Christianity is. In my view it is a transforming friendship with Jesus. But there are thousands of wistful, lovable people in our Churches who have never realized that, and if one may 'say so, they have a 'try' religion in­stead of a 'Power' religion. They are familiar with creeds and phrases ; they have heard sermons and151

lectures ; they have read books and pamphlets ; they have been to Keswick and Swanwick; and their faces as they walk up the aisle to the Com­munion table remind me of one of the saddest lines in English poetry, that line of Hardy's in The Oxen,

        "Hoping it might be so."

They have listened and read and studied and worried. Others who seem to be full of a radiant happi­ness have talked to them about their experience. They have tried to get it; they are always 'hoping it might be so,' but it never is, and the reason is that they are trying to get something which can only be received as a gift. For years they have fought God to get it, hammered on a door that is open, and sought with burning eyes and weary feet for a trea­sure that all the time has been within their reach.

Perhaps the point can be got over like this. If you went to India you would find almost every Indian extremely interested in the problems of personal religion. India had a settled religion when we were uncultured savages. If an Indian asked you in a sentence what was your religious quest, would you say, ' Trying to be good,' or ' Trying to be like Jesus'; or would you say, 'Seeking a deeper experience of fellowship with Christ ' ? I think hundreds of people would say the first, and quite clearly that is not a gospel at all. A gospel means ' good news.' No missionary would ever be justified in going to India or China and saying, 'Now we must try to be good' or 'Try to be like Jesus.' That is an added152burden instead of an added power, and the Indian knew the importance of effort before the birth of Christianity. It is just here that so many people's religion fails and shows itself to be a difficult thing, because of course it is difficult, as Dr. Maltby would say, if we insist on ' carrying the thing that ought to be carrying us,' for, as Samuel Rutherford said, ' Religion ought to be the kind of burden that sails are to a ship, that wings are to a bird,' an added power rather than an added burden. Many sermons fail because they insist on some obligation people must fulfil more than they emphasize a power which enables them to fulfil all their obligations and have energy left to be quiet of heart and radiant of soul.

Let me try to get the point over like this. It is possible to imagine two people in a boat which is a motor‑boat, though they do not know this fact. Therefore they are rowing it. It is all right in the morning when the sun is shining, when spirits are high, muscles untired, and tempers unruffled. But at length the night comes down, and spirits flag, tempers are irritable, muscles are tired. The rowers cannot understand why it is that other people pass them, apparently in boats that speed over the foam, others whose faces have a laugh in them and who seemingly enjoy the tang of the sea and the salt on their faces, until one of the rowers notices a tin of petrol under a seat, and the other notices an engine in the stern of the boat, and a few minutes afterwards they too are speeding over the sea. What was effort has become power. I am not disparaging in any sense the will. The rowers will still have to steer
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their vessel, but they have discovered an inward power that carries them along; and there is all the difference between rowing and steering, as every boating man knows, and it is the difference between having a try religion and a power religion.

Some people will say to me,' But does not St. Paul say that the Christian life is a battle ? Is not his word " fight the good fight "? ' No I His exhorta­tion is ' Fight the good fight of faith.' The only battle is with your doubt that there is a power to be received, a life to be laid hold on; and in the first century the writers of the New Testament could hardly understand why people insisted on making life such a hard thing, in struggling to make both ends meet, like those stricken down with poverty, when within their reach there were the unsearchable riches of Christ. The position is as though God had put a million pounds into a man's account and because of his doubts he would not believe it; and he would not risk drawing one miserable little cheque lest it should not be honoured, complaining meanwhile how hard he found it to make ends meet.
When Peter met Jesus, he did not say to himself, 'Now I must try to be a good man,' the thing that we say every watch‑night, every Communion, every birthday, when life comes into our home or passes out of it. This is a singularly futile thing to say, and our sins openly laugh at our good resolu­tions. What Peter did was to yield himself to the friendship of Jesus, knowing that, not by trying, but by living in the presence of Jesus, he would be enabled to do that which effort would never make154him do. The love of Christ strengtheneth where the will to do fails. And Jesus Himself must more than once have pointed out that the lily became beautiful, not by the effort of trying, but by growth brought about by yielding to the friendship of the sun, the wind, and the rain.

If the point is not clear, think of a Madras coolie trying to be Eke a Gurkha who lives in the Himalaya mountains. In the case of the latter the granite precipices are in his face, the depths of the forests in his eyes, the cool snows are in his nerves, the strength of the hills is in his body as well as in his will. Is it any good the coolie saying to the Gurkha, 'I am going to try to be like you'? The Gurkha ‑keen, alert, with that physique of steel‑might truly say, ' It is no good trying to be like me. You must go and live with the mountains.' And for one man to say to another, 'You must try to be like Christ' is not a gospel. You must go and live with Him. That is His gospel, and the greatest transforming power in the world.

Look at another reason why Christianity seems hard. It seems hard because we are not looking at the whole of life; but I maintain that to follow Christ is easier in the long run than any other path. It is the way of the transgressor that is hard. Imagine a man standing where two roads fork. Before him in the distance is a single peak, to the top of which we will imagine he must ascend. The road on his right goes up ; the road on his left goes down. It is hard to go up ; it is easy to go down. But is it ?155Is it easy to go down if at the end of that down track there is a precipice up which one must climb ? I think we must be quite certain of this, that every man's destiny is only completed at that mountain summit of pure white radiance. It means fitness for communion with God; and all through the New Testament it seems to me that there runs the thought that every man must at last come face to face with God. No one ever escapes that ultimate destiny. If it takes you three million years, you must at last climb to the top of that peak. If one soul were lost along that journey it would be a divine failure, which, of course, is unthinkable. If we are thinking it easy to go along the downward track, we may ask whether we shall ever be able to climb up the pre­cipice at the end, a thought which reminds us of Matthew Arnold's line:

Mounting, and that hardly, to eternal life.

And if that last precipice is too much for us, it will do us good to remember that we shall have to go back along that road, which is uphill now. When I see the successful sinner, or the man whose soul is wrapped in a shroud of wealth, or whose success in life has made him indifferent to the needs of spirit; or the man who thinks religion is all right for elderly ladies, but not for virile youth; and when I see myself be­coming careless and prayerless and slipping down the road that seems easy, I say to myself and to my fel­lows: ' You have got all that way to go back, for life will only work one way, and that is God's way.'
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On the other hand, to take the upper track is hard, but not so hard as the j oumey in store for the one who first goes downhill; and I wish I could call youth to take that upward track just because it is upward ; not to taste the pleasures of sin and then, when they turn to dust and ashes in the mouth, turn back, but with all sin's allurement in sight, to climb the heights, to take that upper road, and, please God, to arrive at the summit of human life, not broken, dishevelled, bloodstained, beaten, and breathless, but with every spiritual nerve and muscle throbbing with the full­ness of spiritual health, able to enter without shame into the destiny of man, which is to look upon the face 'of God. Nor is that journey, which seems hard, nearly so lengthy as the journey down, for to those who take the high road there is a Guide.

We have a Guide and in His steps
When travellers have trod,
Whether beneath was flinty rock
Or yielding grassy sod
They cared not, but with force unspent,
Unmoved by pain they onward went,
Unstayed by pleasure still they bent
Their zealous course to God.

Look at it in yet another way. It is held to be easy to sin, hard to do right ; but if we could look at life as a whole, we should realize at once that to sin makes life much harder than being virtuous. Do you remember the first time that you did some beastly thing? No one knew anything about it. You told no one and no one found out, no one condemned you. But how your face flushed, your blood raced,157your heart beat against your ribs I It may be per­spiration broke out on your brow as though‑what is really true‑your whole bodily nature was saying, ' It is hard to do wrong.' It is against nature. Life won't work this way. You went to bed that night, you tied a bandage round the eyes of your soul, you built a little shelter in which to hide, you tried to sleep, but no sleep came. You said to yourself, ' Other people do it,' or ' I had to do it,' or ' No one else can ever find it out.' But there were hands from the unseen world that came through the dark­ness and tore the bandage from the eyes of the soul, and smashed down the little shelter you had made for your cowering spirit, and a Voice came through the darkness that said to you, ' Man, man, why per­secutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.' You think sin is easy. Do you call that easy? Can any one think life is easy when a man is plunged into that black depression of the soul that is far from God, in a darkness deeper than a night in hell?
On the other hand, you remember that occasion when, instead of following the lure of the downward track, you kept up with your shoulders back, your eyes shining, your face to the mountains. You deliberately chose good and snatched it in the face of evil. Then what a sense of well‑being came, what a peace stole over the heart, what a triumphant sense of victory, a calm of mind and health of body; because it is easy to do right, hard to do wrong, if you only look far enough ahead.
I remember a man in Manchester, who became a158friend, telling me that he had done five years' penal servitude for forgery; and after our friendship had deepened he explained to me how hard it was at first to sin. It was not only the difficulty of copying the signature. It was that the heart raced and the pulse throbbed and the nerves were unsteady to do this awful deed. And I was reminded of Scott's story in The Talisman, where Coeur de Lion takes the wrist of his own physician between his fingers, feels the pulse for some moments, and then says, ' Ah, that is not the pulse of a poisoner of princes'; knowing that sin is so hard that the body rebels against it by quickening the pulse. Sin shatters the nerves, tears the mind asunder, undermines the health, leaves a man sleepless as well as hating him­self. ' It is hard to kick against the goad.'Here is a man whose case I have permission to use as an illustration, sent to me by a doctor who could find nothing the matter with his body. His organs are sound, there is no trace of insanity. Yet he cannot sleep, cannot digest his food, cannot control his muscular movements, complains bitterly of his nerves. What is the matter ?
To understand his case let us think of the human personality as a castle manned by a band of soldiers, each one being told off to do some specialized job. I think of that band of soldiers as the forces of the mind manning the castle of personality. It must be clearly recognized that in a true sense the body is run by the mind. Your digestion, circulation, heart­beat are controlled by mental forces, though these mental forces are, in a state of health, unconscious.159Now what has happened is that this man has done something thirty‑five years ago and he is determined to keep it a secret. No one is ever going to know anything about it, so he has put it deep down in one of the cellars underneath the castle, slammed down the trap‑door, and he is holding it down. But, in psychological language, the forces of repression are harder and harder to maintain, or, in the language of the parable, he cannot hold down the door by himself any longer, so he calls to one of the soldiers to help him hold it down. Then he calls another and another, until there are not enough left in the band of soldiers to man the castle, or, in other words, there are not enough forces of the mind to run the body. That force which ought to be available for controlling his digestion has been called away to another task. The force that should be contiol­ling his nerves has had to leave its post. Mental energy required for the business of living a normal, harmonious life is all being used up in repression.
The cure is Spartan, though not difficult when once the secret cellar is found. We may not only have to open the trap door, but blow a wall out of the castle to let in the sunshine and wind of God's health‑giving love and forgiveness. We must send the soldiers back to their proper tasks. To leave the figure, the man may have to pay, and pay dearly, for his sin, but, at any rate, his health can be restored. If he maintained his repression long enough, the con­flict is capable of tearing his mind in two, and even of leading to a condition hardly distinguishable160from insanity., No psychologist will ever agree to the statement that the ways of sin are easier than the ways of virtue.Look, finally, at the picture behind those words of Jesus which the world loves better than any other words He ever spoke. Here is a wise Eastern fanner. Hehastwobulls. One isstrong‑shouldered with enormous muscles, and with the patient eyes of strength. Here, on the other hand, is a smaller, weaker animal, not very much good, not able to pull anything by himself however he might try, much less a plough through that hard, inhospitable soil. Yet the little one must be trained, must play his part, does not want to be useless, wants to be the best he can be. The farmer yokes them together; the strong animal carries the heavy end of the yoke, is put on the furrow, and takes responsibility for the direction. The little one must just pull his weight, and over the field they go together. The tittle one is doing what he never could have done ; the impos­sible task, which would have burst his lungs, is done in a companionship with strength. There is effort, but it is effort without strain. The power to achieve what is impossible comes from his yoke‑fellow, and you are watching an example of the strength that comes to weakness when weakness is joined in fellowship with strength.
Let us leave the figure. There is a Presence with you now. Give up struggling by yourself and enter it, live in it, work in it, laugh in it, set your feet to the high road in the strength of it, revel in it, and161you will hear Him say, 'My Presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest. Come unto Me all ye that tabour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.'