ing look of desire, because the look of desire if not repressed is repeated and a look passes into a word, into a kiss, and into love which spares no lover. To think of, to imagine, to desire a betrayal is already a betrayal. He alone who cuts the first thread can save himself from the great net of perversity which, starting from a glance, grows until not even death can break it. And Jesus advises expressly to pluck out the eye and cast it away if evil comes from the eye, and to cut off the hand and throw it away if evil comes from the hand,-advice which dismays the cowardly and even the strong. Yet even the most cowardly, when threatened by cancer, have their arms or legs cut off, and if a tumor grows in the bowels, are ready to have their bodies cut open to save their lives. Men are concerned to save the body, but grudge any sacrifice necessary to keep in health the soul, without which the body is only an insensate machine of flesh and blood.

"Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

"But I say unto you, Swear not at all, neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

"Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

"Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

"But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."

He who swears to the truth is afraid, he who swears to the false is a traitor. The first believes that the power invoked could punish him, the other is an impostor who profits by the faith of others the more readily to deceive them. In both cases swearing is wrong. For us impotent men to call on a superior power to bear witness or to be a judge in our miserable quarrels of opposed interest, to swear by our heads or by our sons' heads when we cannot change the appearance of the smallest part of our body, is an absurd challenge, a blasphemy. He who always speaks the truth not through dread of penalties, but through natural desire of his soul, needs no oaths.

Oaths can almost always be called in question, and never serve to give perfect security even to those who seem to be satisfied with them. In the history of the world there are more stories of broken oaths than of oaths kept, and he who uses most words to swear is precisely the man who is already thinking of breaking his oath.

"Ye have heard it said, Honor thy father and thy mother, but I say unto you, he that loveth his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me." And also, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Here also the old precept which ties the new order to the old order with the tether of reverence is brusquely reversed.

Jesus does not condemn filial love, but He puts it in its right place, which is not first of all, as the people of antiquity thought. For Him the greatest love, the purest is paternal love. The father loves in the son the future, what is new; the son loves in the father, the past, the old. But Jesus comes to change the past, to destroy the old. Homage paid to parents, shutting oneself up in tradition and in the family, is a barrier to the renovation of the world. Love of all men is a greater thing than love for those who gave us life. Salvation for all men is infinitely preferable to the service of the few who make up a family. To have the greater, one must needs abandon the less. It would be more convenient to love only those of our family and to make this love (often forced and simulated) an excuse for not being friendly to any one else. But he who is devoting his life to something which transcends him has a great undertaking which takes all his strength and every moment of his every hour until the last. He who wishes to serve the universe with a broad spirit must give up, and if that is not enough, deny the common affections. He who wishes to be Father in the divine sense of the word, even without physical paternity, cannot be merely a son. "Let the dead bury their dead." In the old law, and more than ever in the learned traditions, there were hundreds of precepts for the purification of the body, minute, tiresome, complicated precepts without any

true earthly or heavenly foundation. The Pharisees made the best part of religion consist in the observance of these traditions because it is much less trouble to wash a cup than your own soul. For a dead thing like a cup a little water and a towel are enough; for the soul there must be tears of love and the fire of desire. "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. Do ye not understand that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man; but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man."

The bath with water from the well or from the fountain, the bodily and ritual bath, does not take the place of the essential inner purification, and it is better to eat with hands soiled with sweat than to repel a hungry brother with hands washed in three waters. Filth issues from the body, disappears into the vaults and enriches orchards and fields. But there are many finely dressed gentlemen so full to the throat with another sort of filth that the stench of it comes out with the words from their mouths, vainly washed and rinsed. And this filth does not disappear into underground vaults, but soils every one's life, poisons the air, befouls even the innocent. From these excremental men we should stand far away, even if they are washed twelve times a day; the soaping of the skin is not enough if the heart sends up noisome thoughts. The sewer-cleaner, if he thinks no evil, is certainly cleaner than the rich man who, while splashing in the perfumed water of his marble bath tub, is meditating some new fornication or fraud.

NONRESISTANCE

But Jesus had not yet arrived at the most stupefying of His revolutionary teachings. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say

unto you, That ye resist not evil: But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."

There could be no more definite repudiation of the old law of retaliation. The greater part of those who call themselves Christians not only have never observed this new Commandment, but have never been willing to pretend to approve of it. For an infinite number of believers this principle of not resisting evil has been the unendurable and inacceptable scandal of Christianity.

There are three answers which men can make to violence: revenge, flight, turning the other cheek. The first is the barbarous principle of retaliation, now smoothed over and emasculated in the legal codes, but nevertheless prevailing in usage: evil is returned for evil, either in one's own person or by the means of intermediaries, representatives of our tribal lack of civilization, called judges or executioners. To the evil committed by the first offender are added the evils committed by the officers of justice. Often the punishment turns on the punisher and the terrible chain of violence from one revenge to another stretches out intern.inably. Wrong is two-edged; it fails even if inflicted with the desire of doing good, in nations, or families or individuals. A first crime brings after it a train of expiations and punishments which are distributed with sinister impartiality between offenders and offended. The law of retaliation can give a bestial relief to him who is first struck, but instead of lessening evil it multiplies it.

Flight is no better than retaliation. He who hides himself redoubles his enemies' courage. Fear of retaliation can on rare occasions hold back the violent hand, but the man who takes flight invites pursuit. He who hides invites his adversary to make an end of him. His weakness becomes the accomplice of the ferocity of others. Here also evil begets evil.

In spite of its apparent absurdity the only way is that commanded by Jesus. If a man gives you a blow and you return another blow, he will answer with his fists, you in turn with

kicks, weapons will be drawn and one of you may lose your life, often for a trivial reason. If you fly, your adversary will follow you and emboldened by his first experience will knock you down. Turning the other cheek means not receiving the second blow. It means cutting the chain of the inevitable wrongs at the first link. Your adversary who expected resistance or flight is humiliated before you and before himself. He was ready for anything but this. He is thrown into confusion, a confusion which is almost shame. He has the time to come to himself; your immobility cools his anger, gives him time to reflect. He cannot accuse you of fear because you are ready to receive the second blow, and you yourself show him the place to strike. Every man has an obscure respect for courage in others, especially if it is moral courage, the rarest and most difficult sort of bravery. An injured man who feels no resentment and who does not run away shows more strength of soul, more mastery of himself, more true heroism than he who in the blindness of rage rushes upon the offender to render back to him twice the evil received. Quietness, when it is not stupidity, gentleness, when it is not cowardice, astound common souls as do all marvelous things. They make the very brute understand that this man is more than a man. The brute himself when not incited to follow by a hot answer or by cowardly flight, remains paralyzed, feels almost afraid of this new, unknown, puzzling force, the more so because among the greatest exciting factors for the man who strikes, is his anticipated pleasure in the angry blow, in the resistance, in the ensuing struggle. Man is a fighting animal; but with no resistance offered the pleasure disappears; there is no zest left. There is no longer an adversary, but a superior who says quietly, "Is that not enough? Here is the other cheek; strike as long as you wish. It is better that my face should suffer than my soul. You can hurt me as much as you wish, but you cannot force me to follow you into a mad, brutal rage. The fact that some one has wronged me cannot force me to act wrongly."

Literally to follow this command of Jesus demands a mastery possessed by few, of the blood, of the nerves, and of all the instincts of the baser part of our being. It is a bitter and re