en who felt that
being good meant obeying the law, keeping the rules, ordering one's
life in accordance with the endless specifications outlined in the
Sacred Books. If a man could get through the day without having gotten
off the path for an inch, then he might be esteemed good. And the race
groaned under the burdens which this system had bound upon the
consciences of men. It was all outward, formal, mechanical, impossible.

Jesus set Himself against that whole conception and method of goodness.
"Except your righteousness exceeds that," He said to the men of His
day, "you will not in any wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Goodness
must be inward, vital, spontaneous. A good tree brings forth good
fruit. It cannot otherwise. It does it as naturally as a bird sings.
Therefore, make the tree good and let the fruit come as it will--it
will be all right. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart
brings forth good deeds. He does it spontaneously. Therefore, make
the heart right and let the man do as he pleases. Love God with an
honest heart and love your neighbours as well as yourself, and then do
as you like. Love works no ill, either Godward or manward; therefore,
love is the fulfilling of all law. Here is the great underlying
principle of all righteousness to which all our ethical considerations
must be adjusted. As men rise from the practice of keeping outward
rules into the more exacting but more joyous liberty of the spirit,
they become genuinely good.

In the third place Jesus put within our reach a power which would
change our hearts. If you are made as I am, and as I have found
hundreds of other men, you feel oftentimes that your life is weak and
thin and mean. You do not love God with an honest heart and strive to
be what He would have you. You do not love your neighbours as you
ought, and give expression to that love in unselfish action. You lag
back when you ought to be forging ahead. You lie down where you ought
to climb. You muddle along in a dull, commonplace way when your
aspirations and your high resolves should be mounting up with wings
like eagles.

When you are frankly honest with yourself you say, as I have said to
myself, and as Paul said before us, "The good that I would I do not,
and the evil that I would not, that I do. O wretched man that I am,
who shall deliver me!"

Here was One who knew that men are weak and thin and mean, yet He
believed that every one of them thr