means so little by itself. It is one of the secrets of
Jesus, that it is action that illuminates. What is it that makes the
poem? The poet sees beggar children running races, or little Edward
and the weather-cock, or something greater if you like--the light on
a woman's hair, or a flower; and you say, he has his poem. He has
not. He must work at the thing. When we study the great poets, we
realize how these things are worked out to the point of nerve-strain
and exhaustion. The poet devotes himself heart and soul to the work;
he alters this and that, once and again; he sees a fresh aspect of
the thing, and he alters all again; he writes and rewrites, getting
deeper and deeper into the essential values of the thing all the
time. Where in all this is the artistic temperament? It gave him the
impulse, but something else achieves the work of art. I have a
feeling that the great works of art are achieved by the shopkeeper
virtues in addition to the artistic temperament that sees and feels
them at the beginning. It is action that gives the value of a
thought. Jesus sees that. He says that frankly to his disciples. If
you want to understand in the long run, it is carrying the cross
that will teach you the real values.

I have been treating him almost as if he were an authority on
pedagogy. Fortunately, he never discussed pedagogy, never used the
terms I have been using. But he dealt with men, he taught and he
influenced them, and it is worth our study to understand how he did
it--to master his methods. "One loving spirit sets another on fire."
As for the effects of his words at once, as Seeley put it, they were
"seething effervescence . . . broodings, resolutions, travail of
heart." Men were brought face to face with a new issue; it was a
time of choice; things would not be as they were men must be "with
him or against him"--must accept or reject the new teaching, the new
teacher, the new life. As he said, "I came to send fire on the
earth" (Luke 12:49), to divide families, to divide the individual
soul against itself, till the great choice was made; and so it has
always been, where men have really seen him. We have to notice
further the transformation of the disciples, who definitely accepted
him. "Very wonderful to me," wrote Phillips Brooks, "to see how the
disciples caught his method." The promise was made to them that they
should become fishers of men (Mark 1:17), and it was fulfilled.
Jesus made them strong enough to de