We have not to look for the more severe and gross kinds of persecution.
The tendency of the age is to visit no man with penalties for his
belief, but to allow the utmost freedom of thought.
The effect of Christianity upon popular morality has been to bring men
up towards the standard of Christ's righteousness.
The long proclamation of Christian truth in England has the effect of
making mere profession of it a perfectly safe and even proper thing.
But the antagonism remains at bottom the same.
Let a man earnestly accept even the creeds of established religion and
live by them, and he will find that out. Let him seek to proclaim and
enforce some of those truths of Christianity whose bearing upon social
and economical and ecclesiastical questions is but partially understood.
Let him set up and stick to a high standard of Christian morality and
see what comes of it, in business, say, or in social life.
'All that will live godly will suffer persecution.'
4. The present forms are perhaps not less hard to bear than the old
ones.
They are, no doubt, very small in contrast with the lions in the arena
or the fires of Smithfield. The curled lip, the civil scorn, the
alienation of some whose good opinion we would fain have, or, if we
stand in some public position, the poisonous slanders of the press, and
the contumacious epithets, are trivial but very real tokens of dislike.
We have the assassin's tongue instead of the assassin's dagger. But yet
such things may call for as much heroism as braving a rack, and the
spirit that shoots out the tongue may be as bad as the spirit that
yelled, _'Christianos ad leones.'_
5. The great reason why professing Christians now know so little about
persecution is because there is so little real antagonism. 'If ye were
of the world, the world would love his own.' The Church has leavened the
world, but the world has also leavened the Church; and it seems agreed
by common consent that there is to be no fanatical goodness of the early
primitive pattern. Of course, then, there will be no persecution, where
religion goes in silver slippers, and you find Christian men running
neck and neck with others, and no man can tell which is which.
Then, again, many escape by avoiding plain Christian duty, shutting
themselves up in their own little côteries.
(a) Let us be sure that we never flinch from our Christian character to
buy anybody's good opinion.
It is not for us to lower our flags to whoever fires across our bows. Do
you never feel it an effort to avow your principles? Do you never feel
that they are being smiled away in society? Are you not flattered by
being shown that this religion of yours is the one thing that stands
between you and cordial reception by these people?
(b) Let us be sure that it is righteousness and Christ which are the
grounds of anything of the sort we have to bear, and not our own faults
of temper and character.
(c) Let us be sure that we are not persecutors our selves.
To be so is inherent in human nature.
Men have often been both confessors and inquisitors. The spirit of
censorious judgment, of fierce hate, of impatient intolerance, has
often disgraced Christian men. It is for us to be only and always meek,
merciful peace-bringers; and if men will not accept truth, to seek to
win and woo them, not to be angry.
It is very hard to be both firm and tolerant, not letting the foolish
heart expand into a lazy glow of benevolence to all beliefs, and so
perilling one's own, nor letting intense adherence to our own
convictions darken into impotent wrath against their harshest opponents.
But let us remember that as God is our great example of mercy, so Christ
is our great example of patience, both under the world's unbelief and
the world's persecution.