ETHICS 299 



Monistic writers show a strange distortion of this obvious 

 truth. Thus Buchner says : " It is clear from many 

 passages in the Gospels that the founder of Christianity 

 was an enemy of the Family. . . . One day, when he 

 was teaching the people and was called by his mother 

 and brothers during his discourse he asked, annoyed at 

 the interruption [?], ' Who are my mother and brothers ? ' 

 and answered himself by pointing to his disciples. Ac- 

 cording to Luke (xiv. 26) he made the hatred of one's 

 own parents and sisters a condition of discipleship, etc."i 

 To such absurdities will literalism carry people, who 

 cannot " read between the lines," or see deeper than 

 the actual words. 



The reader will find the true interpretation of our 

 Lord's words in Seeley's Ecce Homo : " He could have 

 neither part nor lot with men destitute of enthusiasm . . . 

 and once when it seemed that the magic of His presence 

 and words would draw His entire audience into the 

 number of His followers, alarmed lest He should find Him- 

 self surrounded by half-hearted or superficial and merely 

 excitable adherents, He turned suddenly upon the crowd, 

 and with one of those startling expressions which He 

 seldom, and yet all great reformers sometimes, employed, 

 declared that He could receive no man who did not hate 

 his father and mother and his own life." ^ 



Illustrations of this come only too often in practical 

 life : for it is a common thing for one member, say, the wife, 

 to see no harm in smuggling lace ; but it jars against the 

 husband's conscience, or vice versa ; and unpleasantness 

 at least ensues : or a husband tries to pass his son as 

 under age when over twelve. The wife is the more con- 

 scientious and remonstrates. It is not the person one 



^ Last Words on Materialism, p. 88. ^ P. 138. 



