though by a natural
law, we find, as we understand life in its fundamentals better, such a
person is seldom if ever given to judging, much less to gossip.

Life becomes rich and expansive through sympathy, good will, and good
cheer; not through cynicism or criticism. That splendid little poem of
but a single stanza by Edwin Markham, "Outwitted," points after all to
one of life's fundamentals:

He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

VI

JESUS THE SUPREME EXPONENT OF THE INNER FORCES AND POWERS: HIS PEOPLE'S
RELIGION AND THEIR CONDITION

In order to have any true or adequate understanding of what the real
revelation and teachings of Jesus were, two things must be borne in
mind. It is necessary in the first place, not only to have a knowledge
of, but always to bear in mind the method, the medium through which the
account of his life has come down to us. Again, before the real content
and significance of Jesus' revelation and teachings can be intelligently
understood, it is necessary that we have a knowledge of the conditions
of the time in which he lived and of the people to whom he spoke, to
whom his revelation was made.

To any one who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the former, it
becomes apparent at once that no single saying or statement of Jesus can
be taken to indicate either his revelation or his purpose. These must be
made to depend upon not any single statement or saying of his own, much
less anything reported about him by another; but it must be made to
depend rather upon the whole tenor of his teachings.

Jesus put nothing in writing. There was no one immediately at hand to
make a record of any of his teachings or any of his acts. It is now well
known that no one of the gospels was written by an immediate hearer, by
an eye-witness.

The Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel, or in other words the one written
nearest to Jesus' time, was written some forty years after he had
finished his work. Matthew and Luke, taken to a great extent from the
Gospel of Mark, supplemented by one or two additional sources, were
written many years after. The Gospel of John was not written until after
the beginning of the second century after Christ. These four sets of
chronicles, called the Gospels, written independently one of another,
were then collected many years after their authors were dead