Through The Gates of Good, or, Christ And Conduct

Summary

"The Teachers of mankind are few. A thousand years may pass by without the advent of such a one; but when the True Teacher does appear, the distinguishing feature by which he is known is his life. His conduct is different from that of other men, and his teaching is never derived from any man or book, but from his own life. The Teacher first lives, and then teaches others how they may likewise live. The proof and witness of his teaching is in himself, his life.

[...]

Men everywhere, in their inmost hearts though they may deny it argumentatively, know that Goodness is divine; and Jesus is worshipped as God, not for any claim he made, nor because of any miraculous circumstance connected with his life, but because he never departed from the Perfect Goodness, the Faultless Love. "God is Love," Love is God. Man knows no God except Love manifesting in the human heart and life in the form of stainless thoughts, blameless words, and deeds of gentle pity and forgiveness, and he can only know this God in the measure that he has realized Love in his own heart by self-subjugation. The God which forms the subject of theological argument, and whose existence or non-existence men are so eager to prove, is the God of hypothesis and speculation. He who, by overcoming self, has found, dwelling within him, the Supreme Love, knows what that Love is far beyond the reach of all selfish argument, and can only be lived; and he lives, leaving vain argument to those who will not come up higher."