Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.—Jesus.
THE paradox of what has been described as the self-effacement and self-assertion of Jesus has always appealed forcibly to certain types of thinkers. The seeming inconsistency of the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount with the Messianic claims has made "the interpretation of the personality of Jesus the storm-center of the theological controversy" of the later as well as of the earlier centuries of the Christian era. To reconcile these contradictions the most radical and ingenious arguments have been employed. As an example of the former, the whole-hearted negation of the Fourth Gospel may be instanced; as an example of the latter, the discovery of Dr. Martineau that, properly understood, Jesus' reply to Peter, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven," contains a stern repudiation of the Messianic claims. These amazing arguments have become imperative, owing to the necessity, in the minds of their authors, of insisting on the humility of Jesus. Almost unconsciously they appear to have become aware that there was something in this humility which separated him from the founders of all other religious systems, and in the attempt to substantiate this along the ordinary lines of theology and science, they have piled the Pelion of paradox upon the Ossa, and have only avoided the Charybdis of one exaggeration to be driven upon the Scylla of another.
It never seems to have occurred to these critics that there might be an explanation of their difficulties based on a different interpretation of Jesus' teaching, though occasionally an original thinker, like Mr. Chesterton, may fling out such an obiter dictum as, "Christianity had taught men to be humble that they might realize how bad things were. Francis was the first (after Christ himself) to teach men to be humble that they might realize how good things were." Even Mr. Chesterton, however, fails apparently to see that St. Francis' self-renunciation was based on humiliation rather than humility, and that there was much justice in Mr. Matthew Arnold's disapproval of his reference to the body as "my brother the ass."
