The two ideas of commandment and love do not go well together. You
cannot pump up love to order, and if you try you generally produce,
what we see in abundance in the world and in the Church, sentimental
hypocrisy, hollow and unreal. But whilst that is true, and whilst it
seems strange to say that we are commanded to love, still we can do a
great deal, directly and indirectly, for the cultivation and
strengthening of any emotion. We can either cast ourselves into the
attitude which is favourable or unfavourable to it. We can either look
at the facts which will create it or at those who will check it. We can
go about with a sharp eye for the lovable or for the unlovable in man.
We can either consciously war against or lazily acquiesce in our own
predominant self-absorption and selfishness. And in these and in a
number of other ways, our feelings towards other Christian people are
very largely under our own control, and therefore are fitting subjects
for commandment.
Our Lord lays down the obligation which devolves upon all Christian
people, of cherishing a kindly and loving regard to all others who find
their place within the charmed circle of His Church. It is an
obligation because He commands it. He puts Himself here in the position
of the absolute Lawgiver, who has the right of entire and authoritative
control over men's affections and hearts. And it is further obligatory
because such an attitude is the only fitting expression of the mutual
relation of Christian men, through their common relation to the Vine.
If there be the one life-sap circling through all parts of the mighty
whole, how anomalous and how contradictory it is that these parts
should not be harmoniously concordant among themselves! However unlike
any two Christian people are to each other in character, in culture, in
circumstances, the bond that knits those who have the same relations to
Jesus Christ one to another is far deeper, far more real, and ought to
be far closer, than the bond that knits either of them to the men or
women to whom they are likest in all these other respects, and to whom
they are unlike in this central one. Christian men! you are closer to
every other Christian man, down in the depths of your being, however he
may be differenced from you by things that are very hard to get over,
than you are to the people that you like best, and love most, if they
do not participate with you in this common love to Jesus Christ.
I dread talking mere sentiment about this matter, for there is perhaps
no part of Christian duty which has been so vulgarised and pawed over
by mere unctuous talk, as that of the fellowship that should subsist
between all Christians. But I have one plain question to put,--Does
anybody believe that the present condition of Christendom, and the
relations to one another even of good Christian people in the various
churches and communions of our own and of other lands, is the sort of
thing that Jesus Christ meant, or is anything like a fair and adequate
representation of the deep, essential unity that knits us all together?
We need far more to realise the fact that our emotions towards our
brother Christians are not matters in which our own inclinations may
have their way, but that there is a simple commandment given to us, and
that we are bound to cherish love to every man who loves Jesus Christ.
Never mind though he does not hold your theology; never mind though he
be very ignorant and narrow as compared with you; never mind though
your outlook on the world may be entirely unlike his. Never mind though
you be a rich man and he a poor one, or you a poor one and he rich,
which is just as hard to get over. Let all these secondary grounds of
union and of separation be relegated to their proper subordinate place;
and let us recognise this, that the children of one Father are
brethren. And do not let it be possible that it shall be said, as so
often has been said, and said truly, that 'brethren' in the Church
means a great deal less than _brothers_ in the world. Lift your eyes
beyond the walls of the little sheepfold in which you live, and hearken
to the bleating of the flocks away out yonder, and feel--'Other sheep
He has which are not of this fold'; and recognise the solemn obligation
of the commandment of love.