He was the initiator; we are the interpreters and agents.
Nor has he been outstripped like an early inventor and discoverer whose
crude work is honored only because others were able to improve on it.
Quite the contrary; the more vividly these spiritual convictions glow in
the heart of any man, the more will he feel that Jesus is still ahead,
still the inspiring force. As soon as we get beyond theory to life and
action, we know that we are dependent for the spiritual powers in modern
life on the continued influence of Jesus Christ over the lives of others.

II

We saw in the second place that Jesus had a social ideal, the Reign of God
on earth, in which God's will would be done. This ideal with him was not a
Utopian and academic fancy, but the great prize and task of life toward
which he launched all his energies. He called men to turn away from the
evil ways of the old order, and to get a mind fit for the new. He set the
able individuals to work, and put the spirit of intense labor and devotion
into them. He proposed to effect the transition from the old order to the
new by expanding the area of moral obligation and raising the standards of
moral relationships.

By having such a social ideal at all, he draws away from all who are
stationary and anchored in the world as it is; from all who locate the
possibility of growth and progress in the individual only; and from all
whose desire for perfection runs away from this world to a world beyond
the grave.

By moving toward the new social order of the Kingdom of God with such
wholeness of determination, he is the constant rebuke for all of us who
are trying to live with a "divided allegiance," straddling between the
iniquities of force, profit, and inhumanity, and the fraternal
righteousness of the Gospel we profess to believe. Jesus at least was no
time-server, no Mr. Facing-both-ways, no hypocrite; and whenever we touch
his elbow by inadvertence, a shiver of reality and self-contempt runs
through us.

III

We saw in the third place that Jesus dealt with serious intelligence with
the great human instincts that go wrong.

The capacity for leadership and the desire for it have fastened the
damning institutions of tyranny and oppression on humanity and tied us up
so completely that the rare historical chances of freedom and progress
have been like a tumultuous and brief escape. Yet Jesus saw that ambition
was not to be suppressed, but to be yoked to the servic