© 2001 Matthew Block
© 2001 The Urantia Book Fellowship
This essay explores the relationship between one section of The Urantia Book’s, “The Life and Teachings of Jesus”—section 3 of Paper 159—and a previously published book, Leslie D. Weatherhead’s Jesus and Ourselves,[1] which was clearly its main source. It is the first in a series of essays and books I am preparing which submit various sections and papers of Part IV to a new method of study, that of comparative analysis with their respective source texts. This approach has been made possible by the recent discovery, that much of the content of hundreds of sections in Part IV was derived from a relatively small number of American and British books published between the 1880’s and the 1930’s. It is hoped that these source studies, which identify the source books and their authors and trace their textual parallelisms with material in Part IV, will contribute to a greatly enhanced understanding of “The Life and Teachings of Jesus,” both of its individual sections and as a whole.
My own eight-year-long experience in studying these sources and seeing how they were used, has allowed me to appreciate Part IV in a more acute way, not only as a portrait of Jesus’ life and teachings which is unsurpassed in spiritual power and narrative detail, but as a work of rare literary intelligence and skill. Having become familiar with Part IV’s major references and many of its minor ones, I am better able to distinguish the original from the derived elements of the narratives, and to perceive how ingeniously these elements were woven together. I now see “The Life and Teachings of Jesus” as a masterpiece of both originality and adaptative creativity. It is the product of a stunningly bold and independent writer who drew confidently and artfully from the work of scores of 19th and 20th century Christian writers, pooling their insights into a narrative that enlarges upon the Gospels and reframes the whole story of Jesus with an amazingly new and intriguing cosmic-theological explanation of his mission and ministry.
The fact that considerable portions of Part IV (as well as a large percentage of The Urantia Book) are composed of close and extensive paraphrases of then-recently published books, comes as a surprise even to longtime readers who have carefully read the Acknowledgment on page 1343 and who consider themselves knowledgeable about the origin of the Jesus papers. Indeed, my pursuit and discovery of the sources has been accomplished as much by going against the grain of the available information as by following its leads. The Acknowledgment credits “the minds of the men of many races,” and “more than two thousand human beings” who “have lived on earth from the days of Jesus down to the time of the inditing of these revelations” for providing “ideas and concepts … and even some … effective expressions” which have enabled the midwayer author to “create the most effective portraiture of Jesus’ life …” Readers naturally infer from this that books, if used at all, played a minor role as sources of suitable concepts and expressions. These statements in the Acknowledgment, supplemented by recent documents stating that the Urantia Papers were hundreds of years in the planning,[2] ensure that virtually no one would guess that late 19th and early 20th century publications from the liberal Protestant, English-speaking world provided the lion’s share of direct sources from the post-New Testament era.
For sixty-five years the vast and intricate connection between the Jesus papers and Anglo-American Protestant literature could have been investigated rather easily, in spite of the vaguely worded Acknowledgment. When “The Life and Teachings of Jesus” first appeared (in the mid 1930s, according to a first-hand account[3]) the source books I’ve found were readily available and widely read by Christian students and scholars in America and Britain. Why then, has this connection only recently begun to be detailed? One can only surmise. Apparently, few if any of the Forumites were serious students of contemporary Christian literature, and if any of them were, they were handicapped by not being able to scrutinize the papers for long periods at a time or take them home for comparative study. By the time “The Life and Teachings of Jesus” was published as a component of The Urantia Book in 1955, the sources, which had been so popular earlier in the century, were eclipsed by the emergence in the Protestant world of neo-orthodoxy, a trend of thought which scorned liberalism’s concepts of Jesus, God, human nature, religion, modern culture, and the church, the very type of concepts which the author of Part IV so freely incorporated into the narratives.[4] Further, older Christian scholars in the third quarter of the 20th century, who still would have been able to recognize many of the sources, either had never heard of The Urantia Book or refused to take seriously an academically unaccredited book with revelatory claims.
In any case, while the inspirational purpose and value of “The Life and Teachings of Jesus” has been appreciated by its readers from the day the work was made available, its anatomy as an ingenious literary composition is only now coming to be explored. I am grateful for this opportunity to take one of the first steps into this previously uncharted territory and to share my findings with my fellow Urantia Book readers.
Leslie D. Weatherhead’s Jesus and Ourselves: A Sequel to ‘The Transforming Friendship’ has been chosen as the subject of the first source study because its straightforward relationship with a single section in Part IV lends itself well for presentation in a magazine article. Several other source books are used in a more piecemeal fashion, their content being spread throughout a number of different sections, but Jesus and Ourselves is one of the books whose use is confined mainly, though not exclusively, to one section. Moreover, the book is the primary factor in the section. Many other sections in Part IV are dominated or determined by a single source book (either the New Testament or a modern source) but a considerable number of sections appear either to combine more than one source or to have used no direct source in biblical or modern literature. As with several other books which dominate a section or paper, material from Jesus and Ourselves is drawn in consecutive order; the culling and paraphrasing begins on the first page of the first chapter and proceeds more or less continuously from there. Because the writer of Part IV, in characteristic fashion, retains much of the source author’s wording, I was able to identify this book as a source within a few minutes of browsing through its pages. I found Jesus and Ourselves in November of 1996 at a secondhand book and record shop in Manchester, England while visiting Urantia Book-reading friends.
Jesus and Ourselves was published in 1930 as the sequel to Weatherhead’s first hook, The Transforming Friendship: A Book about Jesus and Ourselves (1928). Its eighteen chapters are revisions of sermons Weatherhead preached to his congregation at Brunswick Wesleyan Church in Leeds, a city in the north of England. Many of the chapters were originally published in The Methodist Recorder and in The British Weekly. Weatherhead thanks his “Friday Night Fellowship,” a group made up largely of students from the University of Leeds “whose honest, fearless, and sincere thinking is constantly a stimulus and help to my own,” for discussing some of the chapters with him.[5]
Weatherhead’s central message, as he writes in the prologue, is that “Jesus can be to us in this twentieth century a real personal friend.”[6] He is emphatic in affirming, “Christianity is Christ. Christianity’s greatest appeal is Christ. The man who finds that Christianity gives him all he needs . . . knows that satisfaction is derived, not from any way in which organized Christianity is presented to him, not in the logic of the creeds, not in ritual or ceremony, but in the offer of a personal relation between the soul and Jesus Christ.”[7] Each chapter extols an aspect of the way of Jesus and encourages the reader to become inspired and transformed by this loving but inexorable Friend, so as to meet the trials of daily life in a more Christ-like way. In common with other preachers of the past and present, Weatherhead uses Bible passages, anecdotes, poetry, humor, and contemporary research and literature to illustrate his themes. He credits his sources by name, and nowhere in the book does he claim, or lead the reader to suspect, that he’d received any of his ideas or insights by unusual means.
Leslie Dixon Weatherhead (1893-1976) was 37 years old and a Methodist minister when Jesus and Ourselves was published. In 1936 he moved to London to become the well-known minister of the City Temple, the only non-Anglican church in the City of London (London’s financial district). He reached the height of his fame as a preacher and writer in the 1950s, when he was characterized by the General Secretary of the British Council of Churches as “almost a household word in the English-speaking Protestant world.”[8] One British scholar recently described Weatherhead as “a popular and controversial author, preacher, lecturer, and counsellor who was a pioneer in relating psychology, religion, and healing in the twentieth century.”[9]
I have found no evidence that Weatherhead ever knew about the Urantia Papers or was connected with the Forum in any way. The only link I’ve been able to trace between Weatherhead and Dr. Sadler is that Weatherhead’s well-known 1929 book, Psychology in Service of the Soul is listed, with nineteen other books, as a reference for Chapter 73 (“Religious Therapy”) of Sadler’s 1936 book, Theory and Practice of Psychiatry.
Assuming then, that Jesus and Ourselves was written before, and in complete independence of Part IV’s “Instruction for Teachers and Believers,” the latter text can be seen as the product of a conscious adaptation of the former. Indeed, the section appears to have been created as a vehicle for incorporating material from Weatherhead. The project which the author of 159:3 apparently set for him/herself was to draw material from Weatherhead’s 20th century book of sermons and convert it into a heretofore unrecorded (i.e., in human literature) instruction, “[s]ummarized and restated in modern phraseology,” given by Jesus himself during an evangelical tour of the Decapolis in the summer of A.D. 29.
From what I can tell, New Testament scholars are unaware of such a tour of the Decapolis, which occurred, according to The Urantia Book, between the Transfiguration and the period of his Perean ministry. Only in Mark 7:31 is mention made of Jesus passing through or near the Decapolis: “And again he went out from the borders of Tyre, and came through Sidon unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the borders of Decapolis.” The succeeding passages in Mark report an incident in which Jesus heals a deaf-mute (Mark 7:32), and then feeds four thousand people with seven loaves of bread and a few small fishes (Mark 8:1). But the preamble of Paper 159 (“The Decapolis Tour”) pointedly states: “Throughout this tour no miracles of healing or other extraordinary events occurred.”
The preamble also describes how the four week-long Decapolis tour was organized: Jesus directed each of the apostles to pair off with one of the twelve evangelists, to lead twelve groups of missionaries who would labor in various cities and towns of the Decapolis and surrounding areas. Each group worked independently of the others and received occasional visits from Jesus. The first five sections of Paper 159 recount five episodes in which Jesus visits a different group and delivers a sermon, a discourse, or some other form of instruction, usually in response to a question from an apostle or a disciple.
Students of the New Testament recognize that sections 1 (“The Sermon on Forgiveness”) and 2 (“The Strange Preacher”) enlarge upon Gospel episodes and discourses that Matthew and Mark record as having taken place in Capernaum.[10] Section 1 derives from Matt. 18:12 and 10:8, Mark 9:33, and Luke 9:46 and 15:4. Section 2’s Gospel sources are Mark 9:38 and Luke 9:49.
Sections 4 (“The Talk with Nathaniel”) and 5 (“The Positive Nature of Jesus’ Religion”), like Section 3 (“Instruction for Teachers and Believers”), are adaptations of material from early 20th century books regarding the modern use of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. (Sections 4 and 5 will be treated in later source studies.) Section 6 (“The Return to Magadan”) provides details of the progress of the Decapolis tour that are intrinsic to the original narrative of Part IV.
Each of the three sections derived from modern sources frames the teachings of Jesus in a different way. Section 4 puts Jesus’ answer to Nathaniel’s question in quotation marks, giving the impression that a direct translation/transcription of his words has been provided. Section 5 discusses Jesus’ teachings in essay form, referring to Jesus in the third person. “Instruction for Teachers and Believers” employs the less commonly used device of presenting Jesus speaking in the first person but not in quotation-marked sentences. A few other sections in Part IV use this technique, e.g., Paper 133:7.
To facilitate the comparative study of Jesus and Ourselves and “Instruction for Teachers and Believers,” a two-column chart displaying the parallels appears below. These are the parallels I’ve been able to determine as of February 2001, after three close readings of Weatherhead during which I found the obvious correlations first, and the subtler or more oblique ones later.
In the right column is the complete, sequential text of “Instruction for Teachers and Believers.” A small numeral precedes each of the section’s fourteen paragraphs. An underlined numeral (e.g., 2) indicates a paragraph that in the original 1955 printing of The Urantia Book and in all subsequent editions, is separated from its preceding paragraph by more than one line.
In the left column are the passages from Jesus and Ourselves and, in a few cases, from the Bible and The Urantia Book that parallel segments of “Instruction for Teachers and Believers.” Passages from the Bible and The Urantia Book are printed in smaller type to distinguish them visually from the Weatherhead material. Certain portions of the Jesus and Ourselves excerpts are also printed in smaller type when of secondary importance to the grasping of the parallels. The passages from The Urantia Book are identified both by paper, section and paragraph (e.g., 141:7.10 means Paper 141, section 7, paragraph 10) and by their Urantia Foundation-edition page numbers. The page numbers given at the end of each Weatherhead passage are from the 1930 Epworth Press edition.
In presenting the Weatherhead passages, I’ve usually excerpted not only the sentences that directly parallel material in UB 159:3 but enough of the paragraphs in which they occur so that the reader is provided with more context. In each parallel row I have tried to align the segment of 159:3 with the line in the Weatherhead paragraph where the direct parallel begins. It was impossible to do this with perfect exactitude, however, so the reader should study the left and right passages in the parallel row to judge for him/herself where the exact parallel occurs.
Because Jesus and Ourselves was used so consecutively, the left column of the parallel chart reads more or less coherently. It would profit the reader to read this column from top to bottom before studying the parallel rows, to get the gist of Weatherhead’s discourses and a sense of his writing style. (Note: The notation [cont’d] means that the successive passages from Jesus and Ourselves follow each other directly in the book, without intervening words or sentences. The notation [cont’d from above] means the same thing, except that the consecutive textual passages from Weatherhead are separated from each other in the left column by one or more other passages.)
The chart features only the portions of the Weatherhead text that were chosen by the author of UB 159:3 for incorporation into the section, but a full understanding of the author’s selective use of Jesus and Ourselves can be had only by reading the entire book, to study the portions that were not used as well. Therefore, the full text of Jesus and Ourselves has been made available on The Urantia Book Fellowship’s Web site: www.urantiabook.org.
As you study the parallels, reading each parallel row from left to right, observe how artfully the adaptation was done. Notice not only the similarities between the parallel pairs but the deviations. See how the author variously condenses, revises, refines, supplements, and even does word plays on the Weatherhead passages. Observe how some of the parallels are more conceptual than verbal. Notice too, how a couple are purely verbal and not conceptual, i.e., they hinge on shared words alone. Then, after focusing on all these details, appreciate the adaptative work as a whole. Observe how the author, while having scrupulously adhered to the general train and sequence of Weatherhead’s text, has invested the derived material with a distinctly different character.
(Note of Editor: as trying to achieve a visual paralellism between both texts implies to write content with a given column width, which is not desirable for web content, the paralellism has been visually highlighted using underline.)
| JESUS AND OURSELVES | “INSTRUCTION FOR TEACHERS AND BELIEVERS” |
|---|---|
| 3. INSTRUCTION FOR TEACHERS AND BELIEVERS | |
| 1 At Edrei, where Thomas and his associates labored, Jesus spent a day and a night and, in the course of the evening’s discussion, gave expression to the principles which should guide those who preach truth, and which should activate all who teach the gospel of the kingdom. Summarized and restated in modern phraseology, Jesus taught: | |
| I. JESUS’ RESPECT FOR OUR PERSONALITY (27) | 2 Always respect the personality of man. |
| There are at least four ways in which one man can impose his will on another… Let us see how Christ regarded these four methods. First of all, think of physical power. Jesus must have been in touch with resources of physical power which no one else could tap… He could end oppression, He could give men justice; and it might be argued that, if His aim were good, the use of this force would have been legitimate. Yet the striking thing is that, out of respect for man’s personality, Jesus will not try to win even a righteous cause by force (27-28). |
Never should a righteous cause he promoted by force; |
| I have seen a picture called ‘Victory’ which shows a hill-top, a standard floating proudly from a flag-staff, a captain standing with uplifted sword among the remnant of his followers, and the bodies of the beaten enemy lying around. Many would like to picture in their minds the victory of God like that (34). | spiritual victories |
| [con’t] They think of Him with all His enemies under His feet. I doubt if ever they will be. For in the heaven of heavens they will be standing by His side with you and me, captured, bound, broken down—by a willing response to love (34-35). | can be won only by spiritual power |
| It seems to me that the greatest contribution we can make to our age is to show forth the power of God in our own life in such a way that, as the leaven spreads, those who lead in industry and State will gradually begin to believe in the efficacy of spiritual power: a power greater than any released by devices made only by the intellect (201). | |
| This injunction against the employment of material influences refers to | |
| Turn, secondly, to the method we call personal psychic force. Think to what a degree Jesus possessed this!.. Are we surprised to hear one man say to Him, ‘I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest’? We are not surprised at that, but it is with tremendous appreciation that one notices the way in which Jesus deliberately stands away from men, as it were, in order that they may not be persuaded merely by the magnetism of His personality, hypnotized into decision (29-30). | psychic force |
| The first and crudest [way in which one man can impose his will on another] is by the use of physical force, supposing one man is stronger than the other (27). | as well as to physical force. |
| Turn, thirdly, to the method of mental superiority… Might He not have brought to bear on His followers such an enormous weight of evidence that they would have been mentally unable to acquiesce in anything else but His will, or in any other way but His way? (31) | Overpowering arguments and mental superiority |
| are of to be employed to coerce men and women into the kingdom. | |
| It is most impressive to notice that Jesus never crushed men’s minds by the sheer weight of argument which they had no trained faculty to disentangle or co-ordinate with the rest of their mental background (31) | Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic |
| or overawed by shrewd eloquence. | |
| Consider, fourthly, the method of appealing to emotion. Emotion is a much misunderstood thing. To some people it is a thing to be dreaded and distrusted. Do not let us despise it. No venture of the soul is made without it (32). | While emotion as a factor in human decisions cannot be wholly eliminated, |
| it should not be directly appealed to in the teachings of those who would advance the cause of the kingdom. | |
| Jesus’ preaching was so effective because of his unique personality, not so much because of compelling oratory or emotional appeal. Jesus spoke directly to men’s Souls. He was a teacher of man’s spirit, but through the mind (UB 141:7.10). While he made no appeal to human authority, he did speak directly to the consciences and souls of men. Though he did not resort to logic, legal quibbles, or Clever sayings, he did make a powerful, direct, clear, and personal appeal to the hearts of his hearers (UB 145:3.3). The second night of their sojourn at Gennesaret the Master again told the apostles the parable of the sower and added these words: “You see, my children, the appeal to human feelings is transitory and utterly disappointing; the exclusive appeal to the intellect of man is likewise empty and barren; it is only by making your appeal to the spirit which lives within the human mind that you can hope to achieve lasting success” (UB 152:6.3). |
Make your appeals directly to the divine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. |
| [Jesus] used emotion—for instance, He spoke words which kindled fear as no other words can kindle that emotion—but, out of a divine respect for human personality, He never pressed for decision while emotion was at its height, nor coerced a submission by an appeal to admiration, or pity, or fear (33). | Do not appeal to fear, pity, or mere sentiment. |
| In appealing to men, be fair; exercise self-control | |
| What a respect for personality! What a divine restraint! What a majestic love! (35) | and exhibit due restraint; show proper respect for the personalities of your pupils. |
| Between Him and the object of His passionate longing is only the frail barrier of the human will. If He lifted so much as a little finger, our paltry defences would go down in ruins, but, because of this tremendous respect for our personality, which reveals the eternal restraint of God, this great Lover of the soul will never be its burglar, but will wait on the threshold until we ourselves rise and let Him in. ‘Behold,’ He says, ‘I stand at the door and knock’ (35). | Remember that I have said: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open, I will come in.” |
| Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me (Rev. 3:20). | |
| II. JESUS’ CONCERN FOR OUR SELF-RESPECT (39) | 3 In bringing men into the kingdom, do not lessen or destroy their self-respect. |
| Rightly or wrongly, I conceive self-respect to be belief in one’s own worth—worth to God and worth to man. It may, of course, abnormally develop until it becomes pride, conceit, or arrogance, (39). | While overmuch self-respect may destroy proper humility and end in pride, conceit, and arrogance, |
| [cont’d] …or it may be minimized, making a man slack, careless, and shabby in character as in dress (39). | the loss of self-respect often ends in paralysis of the will.[11] |
| ‘The first thing to be done to help a man to moral regeneration,’ says Macdougall [William McDougall], the great psychologist, ‘is to restore if possible his self-respect’ (39). | It is the purpose of this gospel to restore self-respect to those who have lost it |
| and to restrain it in those who have it.[12] | |
| If you are bound constantly to rebuke a child for one fault which he often commits,… (43). | Make not the mistake of only condemning the wrongs in the lives of your pupils; |
| [cont’d] …do praise him for other qualities which he possesses (43). | remember also to accord generous recognition for the most praiseworthy things in their lives. |
| Jesus will stop at nothing to give a man back his self-respect (41). | I will stop at nothing to restore self-respect to those who have lost it, |
| and who really desire to regain it. | |
| [It] is so easy to wound a person’s self-respect, and again and again I have seen a timid soul shrink right inside his shell because there was a feeling of inability to meet the thrusts of a quicker mind (42). | 4 Take care that you do not wound the self-respect of timid and fearful souls. |
| [cont’d] Jesus was very careful in this not to wound men’s self-respect. He was never sarcastic at the expense of simple-minded people (42). | Be not indulge in sarcasm at the expense of my simple-minded brethen. |
| Be nor cynical with my fear-ridden children. | |
| It will be a mark of a Christian society to have a concern for people’s self-respect…The danger of unemployment, from a religious and psychological point of view, lies here. It tends to undermine a man’s self-respect (45). | Idleness is destructive of self-respect; |
| [?][Y]ou must see God’s will in the job you are doing every day. If it cannot be reconciled with God’s will, you must get out of it… Your work is service to the community, and, if well done, is service to God … If you are a cobbler, be the very best cobbler you can be… You are doing His will as much as a minister or a doctor (219). | therefore, admonish your brethren ever to keep busy at their chosen tasks, |
| There was the widow with five children whose husband had been accidentally killed… [Jesus and Ganid] did not cease their efforts until they had found a position for the eldest boy so that he could help in the care of the family (UB 132:6.2). | and put forth every effort to secure work for those who find themselves without employment. [13] |
| 5 Never he guilty of such unworthy tactics as endeavoring to | |
| We shall always be God’s children, and He will guard our self-respect. We shall not be frightened into submission either in heaven or on earth (48). | frighten men and women into the kingdom. |
| [cont’d] The splendour of the beatific vision may break our hearts by its glory—a glory that may cause us pain, as even things on earth that are ineffably beautiful cause us pain; but the splendour of heaven will always be our Father’s glory, and we shall always be His children (48-49, italics added). | A loving father does not frighten his children |
| into yielding obedience to his just requirements. | |
| III. JESUS AND OUR TEMPTATIONS (53) | |
| ‘Lead us not into temptation’ is a petition which most of us use every day in reciting the Lord’s Prayer, yet perhaps few of us have either understood it or stopped to consider what it means. At their face value the words suggest that God is the kind of person who would deliberately lead us into temptation unless we besought Him not to do so… The reason why the words seem difficult is thar they contain a Jewish thought-form; an old Jewish way of thinking which is unfamiliar to us … |
|
| The first thing to notice is that the Jew could not leave God out of anything that happened or out of any process of the mind. Far more than is the case with ourselves, God was thought of as playing a part in the events of every day. Where we should simply say,… (53.54, italics added). | 6 Sometime the children of the kingdom will realize that strong feelings of emotion are not equivalent to |
| [con’t] …‘He went into the wilderness,’ they would say, ‘The Spirit led Him into the wilderness’ (54). | the leadings of the divine spirit. |
| [cont’d] Where we should say of a man that he decided to leave home and live in another land–decided it, possibly, in response to his best nature after consulting his friends and using his common sense, or as some great adventure of the spirit of a man who dares all in response to some mighty urge within him, pressing him far beyond the limits of common sense, prudence, or reason… (54). | To be strongly and strangely impressed to do something or to go to a certain place, |
| does not necessarily mean that such impulses are | |
| [con’t] …they would say, though the mental processes might be the same, ‘The Lord spake unto him saying, “Get thee from thy kindred . . . into a land that I will show thee”’ (54). | the leadings of the indwelling spirit. |
| V. JESUS AND OUR CONFLICTING HUNGERS (77) | |
| … The worldly man is as happy as he is able to be, but he is not able to be very happy… Like a shell-fish, he manufactures his own shell, thinks it is the world, and settles down… Fortunately for him, God has not forgotten him… God has made him for something else, and God has influences at work which can break up that shell just as one might break a shell of a shell-fish, and leave it on the shore of a boundless ocean. The self-enclosed life that felt itself so safe and so happy is awakened to the fact that there is another world… A certain mood creeps over a man … and [he] knows that he belongs to the Infinite and that the finite can never mean complete happiness. |
|
| You notice that this invasion is marked with a sense of unhappiness. The other world in which we have lived is broken up, and for a little while we are between two worlds, and for a time there will be a succession of conflicts within the soul (79-80). | 7 Forewarn all believers regarding the fringe of conflict which must be traversed |
| For some of us it will take a long time to resolve these conflicts by the very nature of the life we live. For instance, we have to make our living, and do our business in a material world where the world of the spiritual counts for so little… On Sunday night we really do honestly and sincerely desire God; by Monday night the lure of lower things fills all our world. | by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. |
| And that is why some people come to think of religion as not real at all, but as an emotional fringe on life (80-81). | |
| [con’t] That is also why, I think, so many religious people are miserable. They haven’t resolved their conflicts… In a way, they are not even as happy as the worldling, because the worlding, at any rate, has an undivided mind and is enjoying his pleasure to the full (81). | To those who live quite wholly within either realm, there is little conflict or confusion, |
| … Professor Drummond used to say that if you are going to seek the Kingdom of God you must seek it first, otherwise you had better leave it alone. It means putting the Kingdom first in every way: thinking of your business in terms of the Kingdom, of your friends in terms of the Kingdom. Then the whole of existence for you is an existence completely in a spiritual world, in which you will have no regrets, no lookings-back, and in which you will find perfect self-realization, the resolving of all conflicts, and the harmony of a complete life (82). | |
| [So many religious people] are … not quite satisfied that the spiritual world can bring them more happiness than the material world… [T]hough they are honestly desirous of becoming spiritual in mind and heart, there are so many lookings-back, and so many fears lest, after all, worldly people are having a better time of it … (81). | but all are doomed to experience more or less uncertainty |
| during the times of transition between the two levels of living. | |
| XI. IS THE WAY OF JESUS EASY? (147) | |
| In entering the kingdom, you cannot escape its responsibilities | |
| Many sermons fail because they insist on some obligation people must fulfil more than they emphasize a power which enables them to fulfil all their obligations and have energy left to be quiet of heart and radiant of soul (152, italics added). | or avoid its obligations, |
| It is easy enough to talk to [people] and tell them that the way of Jesus is ultimately the easiest and most re-warding way to live], but they have the right to feel that talking is easier than doing, and, though I cannot give them their answer, I believe that Christ can, if they will listen to His voice, a voice that, in spite of our protests that His way is too hard, comes to us down the ages, saying quite clearly and definitely, ‘My yoke is easy and My burden is light’ (150). | but remember: The gospel yoke is easy and the burden of truth is light. |
| For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt.11:30). (Cf. UB 144:8) | |
| [T]here are thousands of wistful, lovable people in our Churches who have never realized that [the essential thing in Christianity is a transforming friendship with Jesus], and if one may say so, they have a ‘try’ religion instead of a ‘power’ religion. They are familiar with creeds and phrases; they have heard sermons and lectures; they have read books and pamphlets; they have been to Keswick[14] and Swanwick; and their faces… (150-51). | 8 The world is filled with hungry souls |
| [cont’d] …as they walk up the aisle to the Communion table remind me of one of the saddest lines in English poetry, that line of Hardy’s in The Oxen[:][“]Hoping it might be so.[”] (151) | who famish in the very presence of the bread of life; |
| “Man goes forth searching for a friend while that very friend lives within his own heart” (UB 3:1.4). | men die searching for the very God who lives within them. |
| [cont’d from above] They have listened and studied and worried. Others who seem to be full of a radiant happiness have talked to them about their experience… For years they have fought God to get it, hammered on a door that is open, and sought with burning eyes and Men weary feet for a treasure that all the time has been within their reach (151). | seek for the treasures of the kingdom with yearning hearts and weary feet when they are all within the immediate grasp of living faith. |
| [S]o many people’s religion fails and shows itself to be a difficult thing, because of course it is difficult, as Dr. Maltby would say, if we insist on ‘carrying the thing that ought to be carrying us,’ for, as Samuel Rutherford said, ‘Religion ought to be the kind of burden that sails are to a ship, that wings are to a bird,’… (152). | Faith is to religion what sails arc to a ship; |
| [cont’d] …an added power rather than an added burden (152). | it is an addition of power, not an added burden of life. |
| Some people will say to me, ‘But does not St. Paul say that the Christian life is a battle? Is not his word “fight the good fight”?’ No! His exhortation is ‘Fight the good fight of faith’ (153). | and that is to fight the good fight of faith. |
| Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses (1 Tim 6:12). | |
| [cont’d from above] The only battle is with your doubt that there is a power to be received, a life to be laid hold on; and in the first century the writers of the New Testament could hardly understand why people insisted on making life such a hard thing, in struggling to make both ends meet, like those stricken down with poverty, when within their reach there were the unsearchable riches of Christ (153). | The believer has only one battle, and that is against doubt— |
| [con’t] The position is as though God had put a million pounds into a man’s account and because of his doubts he would not believe it; and he would not risk drawing one miserable little cheque lest it should not be honoured, complaining meanwhile how hard he found it to make ends meet (153, italics added). | unbelief. |
| 9 In preaching the gospel of the kingdom, you are simply teaching | |
| One of the reasons why we think following Jesus is so hard is perhaps that we have never clearly realized what the essential in Christianity is. In my view it is a transforming friendship with Jesus (150). | friendship with God. |
| XII. IS THE RELIGION OF JESUS EFFEMINATE? (165) | |
| And this fellowship will appeal alike to men and women in that | |
| [It] is an amazing thing that, although Christ was a man, and though most women think that no man can ever understand them, yet no woman has ever felt that Christ could not understand her most womanly feelings. Tennyson used to speak of the man-woman in Jesus, and it is one of the glorious facts of our religion that womanhood finds all its ideals realized in Him (167). | both will find that which most truly satisfies their characteristic longings and ideals. |
| This is a man’s religion as well as a woman’s religion. This is the religion which has captured the most heroic souls in history (171). | |
| [I]f we are brave enough to follow where He leads, we shall find that His is the way to true womanhood; His is the way to manhood: His is the way to life (172). | |
| XIV. THE RELENTLESS LOVE OF JESUS (185) | |
| … We must remind ourselves that He who patiently knocks is the King of Kings, the Judge of all the earth, the Lover of Souls, but a Lover whose love has relentless, inexorable qualities in it besides those of the ‘Gentle Jesus.’ … I am in such danger myself of over-emphasizing the tender and winsome qualities of the Master that I want in this chapter to point out that… (185-86). | Tell my children that |
| [cont’d] …He is not only a Physician who can use a tender touch, but a Surgeon who can, and may have to use cold steel (186). | I am not only tender of their feelings and patient with their frailties, but that 1 am also ruthless with sin |
| But don’t think of love, as least His love, as something soft and kindly and tolerant (192-93, italics added). | and intolerant of iniquity. |
| So violent is Jesus sometimes, so stern, so austere, so surgical, so insistent on reality, so relentless, so inexorable, that I sometimes wonder whether, when He said, ‘I am meek and lowly in heart’—a strange thing to say—it was because He had definitely to tell them that this was His real nature, lest men should gather a wrong impression from the vehemence of some of His words (189). | I am indeed meek and humble in the presence of my Father, |
| Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30). | |
| Your friendship with Him, which I think is the centre of all Christian experience, will only be on His terms, and He is a relentless, inexorable, violent Lover who loves us relentlessly so as to save us from the hard heart and the impenitent spirit, and that awful death of the soul which makes us unconscious that we are doing wrong (193). | but I am equally and relentlessly inexorable where there is deliberate evil-doing and sinful rebellion against the will of my Father in heaven. |
| XVI. THE RADIANCE OF JESUS (205) | |
| … [T]he bad name the Christian has got for himself as a person of long face and solemn demeanour partly derives from a picture of Christ which depicted him as the Man of Sorrows (207). | 10 You shall not portray your teacher as a man of sorrows. |
| One of the glorious things about the thinking of this generation is that we are getting into our minds a Future generations more complete picture of Jesus (207). | Future generations |
| I am not trying to prove that Jesus was a humorist, but trying to correct the picture most of us have of the Man of Sorrows, by emphasizing the other side, in order that we may see running through every part of His life manifestations of a radiant spirit,… (210). | shall know also the radiance of our joy, |
| It was the Master’s purpose that we should enter into His radiance. ‘These things have 1 spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be fulfilled’ (213, italics added). | |
| And if there was one word more often on His lips than another, it was ‘Be of good cheer.’ That is the word of a radiant spirit (213). | the buoyance of our good will, |
| [cont’d from above] …of which a sense of humour is one of the signs (210). | and the inspiration of our good humor.[15] |
| There is only one word for the Christianity of the New Testament. It is radiant. | |
| You remember how fast it spread. That speaks for its radiance. It spread like a glorious infection, not so much taught as caught. It was called a ‘gospel,’ which means ‘good news,’… (215). | We proclaim a message of good news |
| [cont’d] …and it spread with the infectious power good news always has (215). | which is infectious in its transforming power. |
| And for one man to say to another, ‘You must try to be like Christ’ is not a gospel. You must go and live with Him. That is His gospel, and the greatest transforming power in the world (154, italics added). | |
| [cont’d from above] The men who exemplified it in their lives were radiant men. They revelled in the new life which that good news had brought them… Life could never be the same again. Life was thrilling with new meaning. Life was throbbing with new power. All things had become new. They were radiant men teaching a radiant religion. (215, italics added). | Our religion is throbbling with new life and new meanings. |
| [repeated] It was the Master’s purpose that we should enter into His radiance. ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be fulfilled’ (213). | Those who accept this teaching are filled with joy |
| [cont’d from above] Yet it was not because outward circumstances were easy… It was after Paul had been five times flogged, stoned, and three times shipwrecked, that, with one ankle chained to a ring in the wall of his cell and one wrist chained to a Roman sentry, he wrote from a Roman prison, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice’ (215). | and in their hearts are constrained to rejoice evermore. |
| Rejoice evermore (1Thes. 5:16) | |
| Jesus derived His radiance from three sources. (1) He had no sense of sin. (2) lie was doing God’s will. (3) He was certain of God… | Increasing happiness is always the experience of all who are certain about God. |
| … You can have a certain kind of happiness without these sources, but it is not deep enough to stand any of the tests of life or to carry you through the deep places of pain. Happiness may spring from the heels, but radiance only springs from the heart … (220, italics added). | |
| XVII. THE SYMPATHY OF JESUS (225) | |
| 11 Teach all believers to avoid leaning upon the insecure props of | |
| Let us look first at three kinds of false sympathy which Mr. Fearon Halliday has described in his book “Psychology and Religious Experience” (225). | false sympathy. |
| [cont’d] The first is an identification with the sufferer which is neither constructive nor creative, and which perhaps can best be described as ‘a fellowship in misery.’ … Very often such a false sympathy includes a subtle form of self-pity, driving both the sufferer and the sympathizer to a morbidity which is disintegrating, pulling the personality down and not building it up (226, italics added). | You cannot develop strong characters out of the indulgence of self-pity; honestly endeavor to avoid the deceptive influence of mere fellowship in misery. |
| Extend sympathy to the brave and courageous while you withhold overmuch pity from | |
| A second kind of false sympathy is that which is afraid to face the moral issue in the life of the person suffering. All of us know how easy it is, if people complain that they are suffering in any way in mind or body, to assent to the situation because of our love of the easiest way out, even though we can often see that people are lying down to their troubles instead of standing up and facing them (226-27). | those cowardly souls who only halfheartedly stand up before the trials of living. Offer not consolation to those who lie down before their troubles without a struggle. |
| There is a third kind of false sympathy which is the projection of ourselves and our need, our hunger for pity, on to other people, so that, though we appear to be giving them sympathy, we are really sympathizing with ourselves (229). | |
| We … come to see that a good deal of what passes as sympathy is really self-pity, a love of the easy way in which the moral issue is shirked, or a pretence of sympathy in order to win the sympathy of another (230). | Sympathize nor with your fellows merely that they may sympathize with you in return. |
| XVIII. THE PRESENCE OF JESUS (243) | |
| … Supposing before your eyes at this moment the form of Jesus should appear, speak, disappear. Supposing you went off for a meal and He appeared again, joined in the conversation, and disappeared. Suppose He joined you when you were speaking to a friend, and then disappeared. What would happen? … Your world would be full of Him… And this is what happened to [the apostles and disciples after the Resurrection]. Peter would never again walk by Galilee’s lake without Jesus, without being consciously sure and certain that Jesus was there (247). | 12 When my children once become self-conscious of the assurance of the divine presence, |
| such a faith will expand the mind, ennoble the soul, | |
| How … was His presence manifested to them after He had carried them beyond the need of vision and voice? I suggest that it was manifested in four ways: … | |
| (1) An inward reinforcement of the personality. I mean by this an inward strengthening which made a man feel that he could face any situation that might arise, certain of coming out on top, certain that nothing could happen which had any power to down his spirit (249) | reinforce the personality, |
| (2) A transcendent happiness; a kind of infectious gaiety of spirit which others caught from those who knew His presence in their hearts (250). | augment the happiness, |
| (3) A deep serenity of spirit. What is more needed in these days of hectic rush than that inward peace, the only thing Christ left in His will, and which is one of the marks of his Presence? (250-51). | deepen the spirit perception, |
| (4) An outgoing love. The presence of Jesus meant, and means, a love that goes out to all men, to our critics and enemies, not merely loving the lovable, not only seeing what is lovable, but, seeking no reward, a love which is creative enough to make something lovable in all men … (251). | and enhance the power to love and be loved. |
| Now Jesus never said or implied that religion was an insurance from catastropre, we should be bribed to be good. Life would lose its power to educate us. Jesus never said or implied to His followers that His presence would mean immunity from disaster, nor does He promise this to us (253). | 13 Teach all believers that those who enter the kingdom are not thereby rendered immune to the accidents of time or to the ordinary catastrophes of nature. |
| [footnote] 2 Cf. Dr. W. R. Maltby: 'In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promised His disciples three things—that they would be entirely fearless, absurdly happy, and that they would get into trouble (253n). | Believing the gospel will not prevent getting into trouble |
| [cont’d] They did get into trouble, an found, to their surprise, that they were not afraid. They we absurdly happy for they laughed over their own troubles, and only cried over other people’s (Christ and Human Need, p.196)(253n). | but it will insure that you shall be unafraid when trouble does over overtake you. |
| [repeated] Jesus never said or implied to His followers that His presence would mean imm ity from disaste nor does He promise this to us… Indeed, He rather implies the opposite. To His men He said that not only would ordinary dangersassail them, but that other horrors would be added just because they were His (253-54). | If you dare to believe in me and wholeheartedly proceed to follow after me, you shall most certainly by so doing enter upon the sure pathway to trouble. |
| Jesus does not say, ‘I will deliver you from the waters,’ but something infinitely greater—When you pass through the waters I shall be there too’ (254). | I do not promise to deliver you from the waters of adversity, but I do promise to go with you through all of them. |
| 14 And much more did Jesus teach this group of believers before they made ready for the night’s sleep. And they who heard these sayings treasured them in their hearts and did often recite them for the edification of the apostles and disciples who were not present when they were spoken. |
The following notes are provided to stimulate further study and discussion.
(1) “Summarized and restated.” Jesus’ instruction for teachers and believers is prefaced by the words: “Summarized and restated in modern phraseology, Jesus taught:…” After reviewing the parallels, we see that an equally apt, if more cumbersome, introduction would be: “Summarized (with slight revisions and supplementation), and already stated in modern phraseology, Weatherhead taught: …”
The phrase “Summarized and restated in modern phraseology” or variations thereof (e.g., “Put into the words of today, in substance Jesus said …”[16]) precede several discourses of Jesus (e.g., UB130:2,4; UB 132:1-3; UB 133:5-6; UB 144:7; UB 150:3; UB 151:3; UB 155:5; UB 156:5; UB 178:1). Rodan’s addresses in Paper 160 are similarly introduced. My findings indicate that in about three-quarters of the cases, the discourse that follows such a preface is based on a modern text, much as UB 159:3 is based on Jesus and Ourselves. The preface can thus be read, in most instances, as a message signifying that the passages to follow are mainly derived from a recently published book.
“Instruction for Teachers and Believers” is composed primarily of material drawn from ten of Weatherhead’s eighteen chapters—Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, and 18—and the course of the instruction parallels the sequence of these chapters. The risk of threading together bits of material drawn from various chapters is that the resulting text might lack coherence. In the case of UB 159:3, a degree of discontinuity is indeed apparent. Paragraphs 2 to 5, deriving from Weatherhead’s similarly themed first and second chapters (“Jesus’ Respect for Our Personality” and “Jesus’ Concern for Our Self-Respect”), flow easily; there is a natural connection between the sentences in each paragraph and between the paragraphs themselves. But from paragraph 6 to the end of the instruction, the points seem more randomly presented. Paragraph 9, for instance, embraces material from three different chapters, and the transition between sentences is not always smooth. Such rough transitions characterize other sections in The Urantia Book that condense and combine material from diverse chapters, e.g., several sections in Papers 99 to 103.
Nevertheless, 159:3 does have an overall consistency and a unified voice. The section’s multi-faceted nature may be readily accounted for as the representation of a wide-ranging evening discussion during which Jesus “gave expression to the principles which should guide those who preach truth …”
(2) The voice of Jesus. Weatherhead’s exuberant testimonies about Jesus are transformed into instructions given by Jesus. To accomplish this change of voice and perspective, the author distills Weatherhead’s discourses into a series of pithy injunctions and assertions expressed with masterful authority: “Always respect the personality of man…,” “Do not appeal to fear, pity, or mere sentiment…,” “Make not the mistake of…,” “Take care that you do not…,” “Tell my children that…,” “You shall not…,” “Teach all believers that…,” etc. One obvious advantage of such a distillation is its effective brevity; the taut, pointed prose makes the points themselves more memorable. One drawback is the loss of nuance and context. Weatherhead’s illustrations of his themes, none of which appear in UB 159:3, are helpful and often humorous; he candidly recognizes how difficult it can be for us to follow the way of Jesus and offers inspiring examples of people doing so in modern life. It would not be accurate, therefore, to characterize The Urantia Book’s gleaning of Weatherhead as separating the wheat from the chaff, or as appropriating only the “best” or “highest” of his insights. The case is rather that Weatherhead’s illustrations are unnecessary to Part IV as a whole; “The Life and Teachings of Jesus” is already rich with examples of people experiencing the challenges and blessings of Jesus’ teachings.
The conversion to the voice of Jesus is effected by other means as well. In several cases a simple shift from the third person to the first is all that is necessary. For example, Weatherhead’s “Jesus will stop at nothing to give a man back his self-respect” is changed to “I will stop at nothing to restore self-respect to those who have lost it…”
Another means is to shift the time sense, with Jesus prophesying to his students about the more advanced mentality of future generations (i.e., Weatherhead’s generation). Paragraph 6’s “Sometime the children of the kingdom will realize…” and paragraph 10’s “Future generations shall know…” both correlate with statements made by Weatherhead about the difference between ancient and contemporary ways of thinking. Where Weatherhead looks back to the ancient past, Jesus projects into the future.
Another time-related modification occurs in paragraph 4, where Weatherhead’s modern-sounding word, “unemployment,” is changed to the less period-specific “idleness.” Similarly, Weatherhead’s observation in paragraph 8, “[There are thousands of wistful, lovable people in our Churches,” is universalized to “The world is filled with hungry souls…”
One of the more puzzling results of the conversion is that Jesus expresses New Testament sayings not known to have been made by him during his ministry. For example, in paragraph 2 Jesus says, “Remember that I have said: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock…’” This saying, as Bible students know, occurs only in the Book of Revelation and is attributed to Jesus after his resurrection. Nor is it recorded in the papers that precede Paper 159. This lack of an earlier citation does not rule out that Jesus had previously used the saying, of course. Another example is in paragraph 8 where Jesus says, “There is but one struggle for those who enter the kingdom, and that is to fight the good fight of faith.” “Fight the good fight of faith” occurs in Paul’s letter to Timothy and is commonly thought to be original with Paul. But the incorporation of post-Jesus New Testament passages is by no means unique to UB 159:3. Both Ganid’s “Our Religion” (UB 131:10) and Jesus’ “Lesson on Self-Mastery” (UB 142:2), for instance, borrow heavily from such passages.
Another result of the conversion is a significant theological shift, as Weatherhead’s “Jesus-centrism” gives way to Jesus’ emphasis on the Thought Adjuster. As stated in his preface and indicated by the book and chapter tides, Weatherhead’s sole inspirational focus is Jesus. In UB 159:3, even though the discussion at Edrei takes place after the Transfiguration, Jesus presents himself as “your teacher” and not as the focus of worship or as a model for living. Rather, in paragraphs 2, 6, 8, and 12 he points to the indwelling divine spirit as the individual’s guiding light. Further, in paragraph 9, Weatherhead’s comment that Christianity is “a transforming friendship with Jesus” is counterpointed by Jesus’ assertion that “In preaching the gospel of the kingdom, you are simply teaching friend-ship with God.”
(3) The Art of Culling and Paraphrasing. At first glance, the 17-page parallel chart appears to be nothing more than an exhibit of plagiarism. But a closer analysis of the parallels reveals that the author of UB 159:3, far from being either a lazy plagiarist or a mere workman-like paraphraser, practiced a rare editorial art that required high intelligence, creative imagination, discrimination, and discipline.
Though ignoring standard citation procedures, the author does appear to have conscientiously followed a self-prescribed set of rules of restatement. These rules seem to have entailed the scrupulous adherence to the trend and substance of the source text while, at the same time, revising, supplementing and otherwise adjusting the culled material when deemed necessary. As the author explains in the Acknowledgment: “Although I have sought to adjust the verbal expression the better to conform to our concept of the real meaning and the true import of the Master’s life and teachings, as far as possible, I have adhered to the actual human concept and thought pattern in all my narratives.”[17]
In most of the paraphrases adhering and adjusting go hand in hand and it is usually impossible to identify a pure example of either. But a provisional distinction will be made here for the purpose of analysis.
(a) Adherence. Though nearly every sentence in 159:3 derives from passages from Jesus and Ourselves, there is not a single case of a word-for-word lifting of an entire sentence. Rather the author has, in several cases, borrowed clauses and other word-clusters. Some examples are: “righteous cause,” “psychic force,” “mental superiority,” “pride, conceit, and [or] arrogance,” “restore … self-respect,” “sails are to a ship,” “infectious … power,” “false sympathy.”
More obliquely, a single shared word serves to mark a parallel, as for example the “victory”/“victories” coupling in paragraph 2, the “generation”/“generations” coupling in paragraph 10, and the “obligation”/“obligations” pairing in paragraph 7.
The conscientious attempt to import Weatherhead’s words results, in a couple of cases, in a complex parallel in which two different passages from Weatherhead supply components of the corresponding Urantia Book passage. For example, in paragraph 10, the second half of the sentence “We proclaim a message of good news which is infectious in its transforming power” is constructed from two widely separated passages in Jesus and Ourselves. Other artful combinations occur when a passage from Weatherhead is joined with a passage from the Bible to construct The Urantia Book’s corresponding sentence, as in paragraph 10’s “and in their hearts are constrained to rejoice evermore.”
The few cases of verbal infelicities in UB 159:3 result from this attempt to preserve and combine Weatherhead’s words, as in the redundancy of “I am equally and relentlessly inexorable” in paragraph 9, and the oxymoronic “ordinary catastrophes of nature” in paragraph 13.
A case of structural and conceptual adherence combined with verbal adjustment occurs in paragraph 9: Weatherhead’s “He is nor only a Physician who can use a tender touch, but a Surgeon who can, and may have to use cold steel” is counterparted with “I am not only tender of their feelings and patient with their frailties, but … I am also ruthless with sin.”
(b) Adjustment. Every parallel row offers an opportunity to appreciate the author’s linguistic nimbleness and versatility in paraphrasing.
In a few cases, the paraphrase is made by a simple substitution of synonyms, as when Weatherhead’s “depicted him as the Man of Sorrows” is replaced by “portray your teacher as a man of sorrows” in paragraph 10. More often the adjustments are more creative, and in a couple of cases playfully so, as in paragraph 1, where Weatherhead’s “Jesus never crushed men’s minds by the sheer weight of argument” is revised to “Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic,” and in paragraph 8, where “sought with burning eyes and weary feet” is modified to “seek … with yearning hearts and weary feet.”
An instance of brilliant punning occurs in paragraph 8 as well, where Weatherhead’s image of thousands of churchgoers wistfully “walk[ing] up the aisle to the Communion table” is changed to “hungry souls who famish in the very presence of the bread of life.”
The author is as comfortable and skilled in condensing as in elaborating. Examples of condensing are found in paragraph 7, where Weatherhead’s musings on the states of mind of the worldling and the kingdom believer are distilled to “To those who live quite wholly within either realm, there is little conflict or no confusion…,” and in paragraph 9, where his discussion of the appeal of the religion of Jesus to both sexes is summarized as “both will find that which most truly satisfies their characteristic longings and ideals.”
An example of elaborating occurs in paragraph 3, where Weatherhead’s “do praise him for other qualities he possesses” is restated more formally as “remember also to accord generous recognition for the most praiseworthy things in their lives.”
(4) Supplementations and Departures. The vast majority of the paraphrases pivot on the Weatherhead passages in such a way that the revision manages to preserve his original point. In these cases, any supplementations that occur act as grace notes to enrich Weatherhead’s observations. For instance, in the right column of paragraph 1, “or overawed by shrewd eloquence” is appended to the Weatherhead-paralleling clause, “Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic.” In paragraph 3, a similar appending occurs: “It is the purpose of this gospel to restore self-respect to those who have lost it and to restrain it in those who have it.”
In this section, only one sentence introduces a thematic supplementation—“Make your appeals directly to the divine spirit that dwells within the minds of men” (paragraph 1). Up to this point in the paragraph, the author has followed Weatherhead’s points about where and how not to make one’s appeals; but when Weatherhead fails to suggest exactly where to make the appeals, The Urantia Book fills the void, and in doing so, refers back to similar statements made in previous papers about the indwelling spirit to which Jesus directly appealed. Indeed, Part IV’s references to the Thought Adjuster occur as thematic supplements in many sections that draw from modern source books, whose authors have vaguer notions about our spiritual endowments.
The only case in UB 159:3 of a direct and contrary departure from Weatherhead’s line of thinking is in paragraph 4. Here, Weatherhead accepts unemployment as a sad fact of life that sometimes can only be remedied by unemployment compensation (see endnote 13). In the right column, Jesus entertains no such possibility, insist-ing rather that one’s brethren should be admonished “to keep busy at their chosen tasks” and instructing the kingdom believer to “put forth every effort to secure work for those who find themselves without employment.” The first clause has a dubious parallel in Weatherhead’s prescription, “If you are a cobbler, be the very best cobbler you can be.” The second clause is reminiscent of Jesus’ unceasing effort, during the Mediterranean tour, to find a job for the oldest son of a recently widowed woman with five children (UB 132:6.2). One is led to wonder how literally Jesus’ instruction to the kingdom believer to “put forth every effort to secure work for those who find themselves without employment” is to be taken. Is this instruction meant to be understood as applying only to Jesus’ contemporaries or to modern believers as well, many of whom live in first-world countries where job placement counselors have long been part of the economic landscape?
(5) Human Sources. In the introduction to this article it was mentioned that “a relatively small number” of books appear to have been used in preparing “The Life and Teachings of Jesus.” Is there a discrepancy, then, with the author’s claim that “over two thousand human beings” provided source material? Not necessarily. Jesus and Ourselves is the conduit of several source authors besides Weatherhead himself. Among those cited by Weatherhead in the passages used in UB 159:3 include: William McDougall, a Scottish psychologist well-respected at the time; a Professor Drummond (probably liberal Christian professor Henry Drummond, author of the influential Natural Law in the Spiritual World); Samuel Rutherford; the Apostle Paul; Fearon Halliday; and Weatherhead’s mentor, Dr. W. R. Maltby. Other source books similarly cite ancient and contemporary God-knowing men and women whose insights are faithfully and creatively brought to bear in the pages of Part IV.
Matthew Block has been studying_The Urantia Book_ for twenty-five years. His first book, The Sources of The Urantia Book: Papers 99-103, is due out soon. Information about his past work and forthcoming publications is available at www.squarecircles.com.
Leslie D. Weatherhead, M.A., Jesus and Ourselles: A Sequel to ‘The Transfrinning Frumaship’ (London: The Epworth Press, 1930). ↩︎
From “100 Years of Rewlation—A Historic Perspec-tiw: The 50th Anniversary Commemorative History of Urantia Foundation” (compiled by Barbara Newsom, Carolyn Kendall, and Urantia Foundation staff): “On February 11, 1924, Machiventa Melchizedek announced to the contact group the plan to initiate the Urantia Papers. This was the first time the Contact Commission learned of the project, although the Revelatory Commission had been planning The Urantia Book since the Middle Ages” (p.6). ↩︎
From a copy of the original, unpaginated manuscript of Dr. William S. Sadler’s “History of the Urantia Movement”: “The first three parts lof the Urantia Papers; were completed and certified to us in A.D.1934. The Jesus Papers were not so delivered to us until 1935.” This statement, assigning 1934 as the year Part III was completed, disagrees with The Urantia Book’s own statement, on UB 119:8.9, that Part II was “indited … in the year A.D. 1935 of Urantia rime.” In any case, Sadler indicates that Part IV appeared one year after the first three parts. ↩︎
Kenneth Cauthen provides an excellent introduction to the history and themes of American religious liberalism in his The Impact of American Religious Liberalism (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962). ↩︎
Weatherhead, Jesus and Ourselves, Page 9. ↩︎
Ibid. page19. ↩︎
Page 16. ↩︎
Kenneth Slack in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, September 30, 1958. Quote found in December 2000 in an article by Dr. Lynne Price of the University of Birmingham describing the Leslie Wearherhead Collection. The Internet site on which the article appeared was deactivated in January or February 2001. ↩︎
Ibid., Dr. Lynne Price. ↩︎
Matt 17:24: “And when they were come to Capernaum …” Mk 9:33: “And they came to Capernaum.” ↩︎
Compare the verbal similarity between “the loss of self espect often ends in paralysis of the will” and the following passage from Weatherhead’s Psychology in Service of the Soul: “Confession is for many the only way of getting back that lost sense of power. Unless sin is confessed it produces a brooding disposition characterized by great depression; by the paralysis of further effort. . . ” (italics added). ↩︎
Compare “It is the purpose of this gospel to restore self-respect to those who have lost it and to restrain it in those who have it” with Matt 23:12: "And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.* ↩︎
Commenting on Britain’s Depression-era policy of unemployment compensation, Wearherhead states: “A lot of fun has been made in regard to ‘the dole,’ and probably in many cases it has been misused. But I do plead with Christian people not to regard it as a kind of national charity, but rather to regard it as a retaining fee paid to worthy men and women whom society would be glad to use but for the rottenness of the economic conditions prevailing, for which in a sense we are all responsible… .” (p.45). ↩︎
The website www.keswickconv.com describes Keswick as an annual two-week convention that provides and promotes “[d]epth of insight into the Bible, depth of insight into human nature and the commitment to pass on those insights with clarity, compassion and power.” The convention is held at Keswick, Cumbria, in the heart of England’s lake district. The year 2001 marks its 125th year of operation. ↩︎
Compare “Future generations shall know also the radiance of our joy, the buoyance of our good will, and the inspiration of our good humor” with a similarly constructed sentence in Weatherhead: “Jesus fills [life) with the sunshine of His glory, the radiance of His abiding presence, and the strength of His ineffable peace” (p.143). ↩︎
UB 121:8.12. Italics are mine. ↩︎