enthusiasm

163:4.134. Zeal and ini­tia­tive. They must be pos­sessed with zeal and in­tel­li­gent en­thu­si­asm; they must at­tend strictly to their Mas­ter’s busi­ness. Ori­en­tal salu­ta­tion was a lengthy and elab­o­rate cer­e­mony; there­fore had they been in­structed to “salute no man by the way,” which was a com­mon method of ex­hort­ing one to go about his busi­ness with­out the waste of time. It had noth­ing to do with the mat­ter of friendly greet­ing.

163:6.1On Fri­day, De­cem­ber 30, while Je­sus was away in the near-by hills with Pe­ter, James, and John, the sev­enty mes­sen­gers were ar­riv­ing by cou­ples, ac­com­pa­nied by nu­mer­ous be­liev­ers, at the Pella head­quar­ters. All sev­enty were as­sem­bled at the teach­ing site about five o’clock when Je­sus re­turned to the camp. The evening meal was de­layed for more than an hour while these en­thu­si­asts for the gospel of the king­dom re­lated their ex­pe­ri­ences. David’s mes­sen­gers had brought much of this news to the apos­tles dur­ing pre­vi­ous weeks, but it was truly in­spir­ing to hear these newly or­dained teach­ers of the gospel per­son­ally tell how their mes­sage had been re­ceived by hun­gry Jews and gen­tiles. At last Je­sus was able to see men go­ing out to spread the good news with­out his per­sonal pres­ence. The Mas­ter now knew that he could leave this world with­out se­ri­ously hin­der­ing the prog­ress of the king­dom.

100:7.4The Son of Man was al­ways a well-poised per­son­al­ity. Even his en­e­mies main­tained a whole­some re­spect for him; they even feared his pres­ence. Je­sus was un­afraid. He was sur­charged with di­vine en­thu­si­asm, but he never be­came fa­nat­i­cal. He was emo­tion­ally ac­tive but never flighty. He was imag­i­na­tive but al­ways prac­ti­cal. He frankly faced the re­al­i­ties of life, but he was never dull or pro­saic. He was coura­geous but never reck­less; pru­dent but never cow­ardly. He was sym­pa­thetic but not sen­ti­men­tal; unique but not ec­cen­tric. He was pi­ous but not sanc­ti­mo­nious. And he was so well-poised be­cause he was so per­fectly uni­fied.

100:7.12Je­sus was con­sis­tently cheer­ful, not­with­stand­ing he some­times drank deeply of the cup of hu­man sor­row. He fear­lessly faced the re­al­i­ties of ex­is­tence, yet was he filled with en­thu­si­asm for the gospel of the king­dom. But he con­trolled his en­thu­si­asm; it never con­trolled him. He was un­re­servedly ded­i­cated to “the Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” This di­vine en­thu­si­asm led his un­spir­i­tual breth­ren to think he was be­side him­self, but the on­look­ing uni­verse ap­praised him as the model of san­ity and the pat­tern of su­preme mor­tal de­vo­tion to the high stan­dards of spir­i­tual liv­ing. And his con­trolled en­thu­si­asm was con­ta­gious; his as­so­ciates were con­strained to share his di­vine op­ti­mism.

99:3.8There is al­ways the great dan­ger that re­li­gion will be­come dis­torted and per­verted into the pur­suit of false goals, as when in times of war each con­tend­ing na­tion pros­ti­tutes its re­li­gion into mil­i­tary pro­pa­ganda. Love­less zeal is al­ways harm­ful to re­li­gion, while per­se­cu­tion di­verts the ac­tiv­i­ties of re­li­gion into the achieve­ment of some so­ci­o­logic or the­o­logic drive.

149:4.3On this same oc­ca­sion the Mas­ter talked to the group about the de­sir­abil­ity of pos­sess­ing well-bal­anced char­ac­ters. He rec­og­nized that it was nec­es­sary for most men to de­vote them­selves to the mas­tery of some vo­ca­tion, but he de­plored all ten­dency to­ward over­spe­cial­iza­tion, to­ward be­com­ing nar­row-minded and cir­cum­scribed in life’s ac­tiv­i­ties. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that any virtue, if car­ried to ex­tremes, may be­come a vice. Je­sus al­ways preached tem­per­ance and taught con­sis­tency—pro­por­tion­ate ad­just­ment of life prob­lems. He pointed out that over­much sym­pa­thy and pity may de­gen­er­ate into se­ri­ous emo­tional in­sta­bil­ity; that en­thu­si­asm may drive on into fa­nati­cism. He dis­cussed one of their for­mer as­so­ciates whose imag­i­na­tion had led him off into vi­sion­ary and im­prac­ti­cal un­der­tak­ings. At the same time he warned them against the dan­gers of the dull­ness of over­con­ser­va­tive medi­ocrity.

137:1.3Soon af­ter Je­sus and An­drew re­turned to the camp, An­drew sought out his brother, Si­mon, and tak­ing him aside, in­formed him that he had set­tled in his own mind that Je­sus was the great Teacher, and that he had pledged him­self as a dis­ci­ple. He went on to say that Je­sus had ac­cepted his prof­fer of ser­vice and sug­gested that he (Si­mon) like­wise go to Je­sus and of­fer him­self for fel­low­ship in the ser­vice of the new king­dom. Said Si­mon: “Ever since this man came to work in Zeb­e­dee’s shop, I have be­lieved he was sent by God, but what about John? Are we to for­sake him? Is this the right thing to do?” Where­upon they agreed to go at once to con­sult John. John was sad­dened by the thought of los­ing two of his able ad­vis­ers and most promis­ing dis­ci­ples, but he bravely an­swered their in­quiries, say­ing: “This is but the be­gin­ning; pres­ently will my work end, and we shall all be­come his dis­ci­ples.” Then An­drew beck­oned to Je­sus to draw aside while he an­nounced that his brother de­sired to join him­self to the ser­vice of the new king­dom. And in wel­com­ing Si­mon as his sec­ond apos­tle, Je­sus said: “Si­mon, your en­thu­si­asm is com­mend­able, but it is dan­ger­ous to the work of the king­dom. I ad­mon­ish you to be­come more thought­ful in your speech. I would change your name to Pe­ter.”

133:8.3Ga­nid had a very in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in An­ti­och. This young man had proved him­self an apt pupil and al­ready had be­gun to make prac­ti­cal use of some of Je­sus’ teach­ings. There was a cer­tain In­dian con­nected with his fa­ther’s busi­ness in An­ti­och who had be­come so un­pleas­ant and dis­grun­tled that his dis­missal had been con­sid­ered. When Ga­nid heard this, he be­took him­self to his fa­ther’s place of busi­ness and held a long con­fer­ence with his fel­low coun­try­man. This man felt he had been put at the wrong job. Ga­nid told him about the Fa­ther in heaven and in many ways ex­panded his views of re­li­gion. But of all that Ga­nid said, the quo­ta­tion of a He­brew proverb did the most good, and that word of wis­dom was: “What­so­ever your hand finds to do, do that with all your might.”

99:3.7The great weak­ness of all this un­rec­og­nized and un­con­scious type of re­li­gious ac­tiv­ity is that it is un­able to profit from open re­li­gious crit­i­cism and thereby at­tain to prof­itable lev­els of self-cor­rec­tion. It is a fact that re­li­gion does not grow un­less it is dis­ci­plined by con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, am­pli­fied by phi­los­o­phy, pu­ri­fied by sci­ence, and nour­ished by loyal fel­low­ship.