CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY 279
be convinced of the sin of the lack. 1 Not obedience, but loving impulse is the key to noble living. The members of his new society are to be not servants but friends, 2 and conventional duties are no measure of what friendship may prompt. 3
Chief among these basal desires of men Jesus would class the desire to know God. To know him not merely as a truth or principle, but as a person. The cry of Philip, "Show us the Father," 4 was the outburst of humanity's heart, and the answer it drew forth has satisfied generations. The chief significance of the life of Jesus may be said in the light of history to have lain in himself rather than in his teaching. He was the revealer of God. So his contemporaries judged him, though at first but dimly. So the second century thought of him exclusively. 5 And although Jesus does not describe with any detail the nature of this want of a more perfect knowledge of God, and treats it more as a need than as a desire, it is always present as a postu- late controlling his preaching and life. 6 He had come that men might receive the divine life more abundantly. 7
And similarly in regard to the relations existing between men themselves, Jesus, while never analyzing the psychology of ethics, addresses himself to that which was even more sadly evident in his day than in ours, men's need of some standard and motive for better dealings with their fellows. For this reason it was, that, according to the oldest source of our gospel, he received so sympathetically the rich young man who
- John 16:8-10. In this connection one recalls the eagerness with which Je>us
met an honest seeker after truth like Nathaniel and Thomas, Zacchreus and Martha, as well as the earnestness, not to sav severity, with which he answered those whose ignorance was in part due to their own failure to follow their better instincts, as Nicodemus and Philip. Compare also the philosophy by which the fourth gospel accounts for the presence or absence of the faith th.it accepts Jesus. John 3 : 18-21.
"John 15:15. ^ I. uke 17: 10. * John 14:8.
5 If there were need reference might here be made to the epistles of Clement of Rome and Barnabas, but the fact is so uniformly admitted that argument seems gratu- I low deep an impression this conception of Jesus had made by the very begin- ning of the second century is to be seen in our fourth gospel.
'This is especially felt in reading the fourth gospel. Thus, John 6:57, 17:1-26.
'John 10: 10.
