Christianity is a New Kind of Life
What must strike every person about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is that it is not metaphysical, but ethical. What He lays stress upon are such points as these: the Fatherhood of God over the human family; His perpetual and beneficent providence for all His children; the excellence of simple trust in God over the earthly care of this world; the obligation of God’s children to be like their Father in heaven; the paramount importance of true and holy motives; the worthlessness of a merely formal righteousness; the inestimable value of heart righteousness; forgiveness of sins dependent on our forgiving our neighbor; the fulfilling of the law, and the play of the tender and passive virtues.
Upon the man who desired to be His disciple and a member of God’s Kingdom were laid the conditions of a pure heart, of a forgiving spirit, of a helpful hand, of a heavenly purpose, of an unworldly mind. Christ did not ground His Christianity in thinking, or in doing, but, first of all, in being. It consisted in a certain type of soul—a spiritual shape of the inner self. Was a man satisfied with this type, and would he aim at it in his own life? Would he put his name to the Sermon on the Mount, and place himself under Jesus’ charge for its accomplishment? Then he was a Christian according to the conditions laid down by Jesus in the fresh daybreak of His religion.
When one turns to the creeds, the situation has changed, and he finds himself in another world. They have nothing to do with character; they do not afford even an idea of character; they do not ask pledges of character; they have no place in their construction for character From their first word to the last they are physical or metaphysical, not ethical.
—John Watson.
Uniformity of thought and belief is impossible; uniformity of good feeling alone is essential. That is the mission of Christianity, not to make people think and believe alike.
Alternate Reading: Proverbs 28.