is simply bread and
water, the daily necessity, the fundamental food, the universally
essential and normal satisfaction of the natural hunger and the human
thirst. Let us, of all things, hold fast to the naturalness,
simplicity, and wholesomeness of the religious life. Religion is not a
luxury added to the normal life; it is the {31} rational attitude of
the soul in its relation to the universe of God. It is not an accident
that the central sacrament of the Christian life is the sacrament of
daily food and drink. This do, says the Master, so oft as ye eat and
drink it, in remembrance of me.

And how elementary are the sources of religious confidence! They lie,
not in remote or difficult regions of authority, or conformity, or
history, but in the witness of daily service, and of commonplace
endeavor. "The word is very nigh thee," says the Old Testament. The
satisfying revelation of God reaches you, not in the exceptional,
occasional, and dramatic incidents of life, but in the bread and water
of life which you eat and drink every day. As one of our most precious
American poets, too early silent, has sung of the routine of life:--

"Forenoon, and afternoon, and night!--Forenoon,
And afternoon, and night!--Forenoon, and--what?
The empty song repeats itself. No more?
Yea, that is Life: make this forenoon sublime,
This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer,
And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won." [1]

[1] E. R. Sill. Poems, p. 27 "Life." Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1888.

{32}

XII

THE RECOIL OF JUDGMENTS

_Matthew_ vii. 1.

When Jesus says "Judge not that ye be not judged," he cannot be
forbidding all severity of judgment, for no one could be on occasion
more severe, or unsparing, or denunciatory than he. "Woe unto you,
hypocrites," he says to some of the respectable church-leaders of his
time. "Beware of false prophets," he says in this passage, "for they
are inwardly ravening wolves." No, Jesus certainly was not a
soft-spoken person or one likely to plead for gentle judgments so as to
get kindness in return. What he is in fact laying down in this passage
is a much profounder principle,--the principle of the recoil of
judgments. Your judgments of others are in reality the most complete
betrayal of yourself. What you think of them is the key to your own
soul. Your careless utterances are like the boomerang of some clumsy
savage, often missing the mark toward {33} which