live loving and lovable lives. It has little to do with creeds, and
still less with formal codes of conduct. For this reason such a
definition of Christianity will satisfy neither the theologian nor the
philosopher. Jesus never expected that it would. He knew that the one
would regard it as heretical, and the other as so deficient in subtlety
as to seem foolish. Therefore He made His appeal to simple and natural
people, saying that what was hidden from the wise and prudent, was
revealed to babes.

The simple and natural people understood Jesus; they always do. The
sophisticated and artificial people did not understand Him; they never
will. With scarcely an exception the people of intelligence and
culture regarded Him with disdain, withdrew from Him, or violently
opposed Him. The reason for their conduct lay not so much in either
their culture or their intelligence, as in the kind of life that seemed
to be necessary to them as the expression of their culture.

Thus, they were full of prejudices, prepossessions, and foregone
conclusions, all of which had the sanction of their culture. It was
enough for them to know that Jesus came from Nazareth and was
unlettered; this produced in them violent scorn and antipathy. They
were still further offended because He used none of the shibboleths
with which they were familiar. Nor could they conceive of any life as
satisfactory but the kind of life they lived, and that was a life of
social complexity, ruled by conventional usages and maxims, and
essentially artificial in ideal and practice. Jesus, therefore, turned
from them to the simple and natural people, fishermen, artisans, and
humble women, in whom the natural instincts had fuller play. His
reward was immediate; then, and ever since, the Common People heard Him
gladly.

The reason why simple and natural people readily understand Jesus is
that in the kind of life they live the primal emotions are supreme.
The very narrowness of their social outlook intensifies those emotions.
They have little to distract them; they are not bewildered by endless
disquisitions on conduct, and religion itself is for them an emotion
rather than a systematized creed. For the poor man home, children,
fireside affection, mean more than for the rich man, because they are
his only wealth. This is the lesson which Wordsworth has so nobly
taught in his "_Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_,"--

How, by heaven's grace this Clifford