PROFESSED Christians of every shade of belief are altogether at-one in declaring that Christ Jesus is the world's greatest Exemplar, the authoritative guide in' all matters of faith, of conduct, and of endeavor. There is hardly a sermon or prayer heard in any Christian church that does not thus recognize him in some statement or phrase, and yet a comparison of the teaching and doings of the Master with the thought and works of most Christians cannot fail to disclose many and grievous contrasts, differences in point of view and in deed which indicate how much he has been and is honored by the lips alone.
Christ Jesus was our Wayshower in his unflinching loyalty to God and His demands; in his purity and unselfishness of life, and in his brotherliness, his truly democratic, caste-ignoring humanitarianism. More than this, he was our Wayshower in his concept of God and of man, in his estimate of and attitude toward evil and its claims, and in his entire reliance upon Spirit and spiritual power for the solution of the human problem, all of which gives point and pertinence to St. Paul's emphasis of the necessity of conformity to the Master as our model. To the Ephesians he said, "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man." Everywhere in his writings the great apostle presents the thought that, if they would advance safely and surely, his followers must place their feet in the footprints the Master left in the path of spiritual ascent, and that to be indifferent in their work and methods to the pattern he supplied, is to dishonor him and invite failure.
The consideration which, in all the years, professed Christians have given to creedal conformity, is manifest in the conflicts and divisions resulting from their inability to think alike respecting the exact meaning of Jesus' statements. The unnumbered strifes and sanguinary contentions recorded in the pages of religious history all tell of convictions respecting this matter which prompted ofttimes to the most heroic struggle and sacrifice, and yet nothing is more manifest from our present point of view than that in these long-time struggles for what has been deemed conformity, the great body of believers, since the era of "the early church," have been guilty of a mistake which harks back to that of the ritualistic Jews to whom Jesus said, "Woe unto you, . . . for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters."
