Let us go over the items of this list of the wardrobe of the consecrated
soul.
"A heart of compassion." So the Revised Version renders the words given
literally in the Authorised as "bowels of mercies," an expression which
that very strange thing called conventional propriety regards as coarse,
simply because Jews chose one part of the body and we another as the
supposed seat of the emotions. Either phrase expresses substantially the
Apostle's meaning.
Is it not beautiful that the series should begin with _pity_? It is the
most often needed, for the sea of sorrow stretches so widely that
nothing less than a universal compassion can arch it over as with the
blue of heaven. Every man would seem in some respect deserving of and
needing sympathy, if his whole heart and history could be laid bare.
Such compassion is difficult to achieve, for its healing streams are
dammed back by many obstructions of inattention and occupation, and
dried up by the fierce heat of selfishness. Custom, with its deadening
influence, comes in to make us feel least the sorrows which are most
common in the society around us. As a man might live so long in an
asylum that lunacy would seem to him almost the normal condition, so the
most widely diffused griefs are those least observed and least
compassionated; and good, tender-hearted men and women walk the streets
of our great cities and see sights--children growing up for the gallows
and the devil, gin-shops at every corner--which might make angels weep,
and suppose them to be as inseparable from our "civilization" as the
noise of wheels from a carriage or bilge water from a ship. Therefore we
have to make conscious efforts to "put on" that sympathetic disposition,
and to fight against the faults which hinder its free play. Without it,
no help will be of much use to the receiver, nor of any to the giver.
Benefits bestowed on the needy and sorrowful, if bestowed without
sympathy, will hurt like a blow. Much is said about ingratitude, but
very often it is but the instinctive recoil of the heart from the unkind
doer of a kindness. Aid flung to a man as a bone is to a dog usually
gets as much gratitude as the sympathy which it expresses deserves. But
if we really make another's sorrows ours, that teaches us tact and
gentleness, and makes our clumsy hands light and deft to bind up sore
hearts.
Above all things, the practical discipline which cultivates pity will
beware of letting it be excited and then not allowing the emotion to
act. To stimulate feeling and do nothing in consequence is a short road
to destroy the feeling. Pity is meant to be the impulse toward help, and
if it is checked and suffered to pass away idly, it is weakened, as
certainly as a plant is weakened by being kept close nipped and hindered
from bringing its buds to flower and fruit.
"Kindness" comes next--a wider benignity, not only exercised where there
is manifest room for pity, but turning a face of goodwill to all. Some
souls are so dowered that they have this grace without effort, and come
like the sunshine with welcome and cheer for all the world. But even
less happily endowed natures can cultivate the disposition, and the best
way to cultivate it is to be much in communion with God. When Moses came
down from the mount, his face shone. When we come out from the secret
place of the Most High we shall bear some reflection of His great
kindness whose "tender mercies are over all His works." This "kindness"
is the opposite of that worldly wisdom, on which many men pride
themselves as the ripe fruit of their knowledge of men and things, and
which keeps up vigilant suspicion of everybody, as in the savage state,
where "stranger" and "enemy" had only one word between them. It does not
require us to be blind to facts or to live in fancies, but it does
require us to cherish a habit of goodwill, ready to become pity if
sorrow appears, and slow to turn away even if hostility appears. Meet
your brother with kindness, and you will generally find it returned. The
prudent hypocrites who get on in the world, as ships are launched, by
"greasing the ways" with flattery, and smiles, teach us the value of the
true thing, since even a coarse caricature of it wins hearts and disarms
foes. This "kindness" is the most powerful solvent of illwill and
indifference.
Then follows "humility." That seems to break the current of thought by
bringing a virtue entirely occupied with self into the middle of a
series referring exclusively to others. But it does not really do so.
From this point onwards all the graces named have reference to our
demeanour under slights and injuries--and humility comes into view here
only as constituting the foundation for the right bearing of these.
Meekness and longsuffering must stand on a basis of humility. The proud
man, who thinks highly of himself and of his own claims, will be the
touchy man, if any one derogates from these.
"Humility," or lowly-mindedness, a lowly estimate of ourselves, is not
necessarily blindness to our strong points. If a man can do certain
things better than his neighbours, he can hardly help knowing it, and
Christian humility does not require him to be ignorant of it. I suppose
Milton would be none the less humble, though he was quite sure that his
work was better than that of Sternhold and Hopkins. The consciousness of
power usually accompanies power. But though it may be quite right to
"know myself" in the strong points, as well as in the weak, there are
two considerations which should act as dampers to any unchristian fire
of pride which the devil's breath may blow up from that fuel. The one
is, "What hast thou that thou hast not received?" the other is, "Who is
pure before God's judgment-seat?" Your strong points are nothing so very
wonderful, after all. If you have better brains than some of your
neighbours, well, that is not a thing to give yourself such airs about.
Besides, where did you get the faculties you plume yourself on? However
cultivated by yourself, how came they yours at first? And, furthermore,
whatever superiorities may lift you above any men, and however high you
may be elevated, it is a long way from the top of the highest molehill
to the sun, and not much longer to the top of the lowest. And, besides
all that, you may be very clever and brilliant, may have made books or
pictures, may have stamped your name on some invention, may have won a
place in public life, or made a fortune--and yet you and the beggar who
cannot write his name are both guilty before God. Pride seems out of
place in creatures like us, who have all to bow our heads in the
presence of His perfect judgment, and cry, "God be merciful to me a
sinner!"
Then follow "meekness, long-suffering." The distinction between these
two is slight. According to the most thorough investigators, the former
is the temper which accepts God's dealings, or evil inflicted by men as
His instruments, without resistance, while the latter is the long
holding out of the mind before it gives way to a temptation to action,
or passion, especially the latter. The opposite of meekness is rudeness
or harshness; the opposite of long-suffering, swift resentment or
revenge. Perhaps there may be something in the distinction, that while
long-suffering does not get angry soon, meekness does not get angry at
all. Possibly, too, meekness implies a lowlier position than
long-suffering does. The meek man puts himself below the offender; the
long-suffering man does not. God is long-suffering, but the incarnate
God alone can be "meek and lowly."
The general meaning is plain enough. The "hate of hate," the "scorn of
scorn," is not the Christian ideal. I am not to allow my enemy always to
settle the terms on which we are to be. Why should I scowl back at him,
though he frowns at me? It is hard work, as we all know, to repress the
retort that would wound and be so neat. It is hard not to repay slights
and offences in kind. But, if the basis of our dispositions to others be
laid in a wise and lowly estimate of ourselves, such graces of conduct
will be possible, and they will give beauty to our characters.
"Forbearing and forgiving" are not new virtues. They are meekness and
long-suffering in exercise, and if we were right in saying that
"long-suffering" was not _soon_ angry, and "meekness" was not angry at
all, then "forbearance" would correspond to the former and "forgiveness"
to the latter; for a man may exercise forbearance, and bite his lips
till the blood come rather than speak, and violently constrain himself
to keep calm and do nothing unkind, and yet all the while seven devils
may be in his spirit; while forgiveness, on the other hand, is an entire
wiping of all enmity and irritation clean out of the heart.
Such is the Apostle's outline sketch of the Christian character in its
social aspect, all rooted in pity, and full of soft compassion; quick to
apprehend, to feel, and to succour sorrow; a kindliness, equable and
widespread, illuminating all who come within its reach; a patient
acceptance of wrongs without resentment or revenge, because a lowly
judgment of self and its claims, a spirit schooled to calmness under all
provocations, disdaining to requite wrong by wrong, and quick to
forgive.
The question may well be asked--is that a type of character which the
world generally admires? Is it not uncommonly like what most people
would call "a poor spiritless creature." It was "a new man," most
emphatically, when Paul drew that sketch, for the heathen world had
never seen anything like it. It is a "new man" still; for although the
modern world has had some kind of Christianity--at least has had a
Church--for all these centuries, that is not the kind of character which
is its ideal. Look at the heroes of history and of literature. Look at
the tone of so much contemporary biography and criticism of public
actions. Think of the ridicule which is poured on the attempt to
regulate politics by Christian principles, or, as a distinguished
soldier called them in public recently, "puling principles." It may be
true that Christianity has not added any new virtues to those which are
prescribed by natural conscience, but it has most certainly altered the
perspective of the whole, and created a type of excellence, in which the
gentler virtues predominate, and the novelty of which is proved by the
reluctance of the so-called Christian world to recognise it even yet.
By the side of its serene and lofty beauty, the "heroic virtues"
embodied in the world's type of excellence show vulgar and glaring, like
some daub representing a soldier, the sign-post of a public-house, by
the side of Angelico's white-robed visions on the still convent walls.
The highest exercise of these more gaudy and conspicuous qualities is to
produce the pity and meekness of the Christian ideal. More self-command,
more heroic firmness, more contempt for the popular estimate, more of
everything strong and manly, will find a nobler field in subduing
passion and cherishing forgiveness, which the world thinks folly and
spiritless, than anywhere else. Better is he that ruleth his spirit than
he that taketh a city.
_The great pattern and motive of forgiveness_ is next set forth. We are
to forgive as Christ has forgiven us; and that "as" may be applied
either as meaning "in like manner," or as meaning "because." The Revised
Version, with many others, adopts the various reading of "the Lord,"
instead of "Christ," which has the advantage of recalling the parable
that was no doubt in Paul's mind, about the servant who, having been
forgiven by his "_Lord_" all his great debt, took his fellow-servant by
the throat and squeezed the last farthing out of him.
The great transcendent act of God's mercy brought to us by Christ's
cross is sometimes, as in the parallel passage in Ephesians, spoken of
as "God for Christ's sake forgiving us," and sometimes as here, Christ
is represented as forgiving. We need not pause to do more than point to
that interchange of Divine office and attributes, and ask what notion of
Christ's person underlies it.
We have already had the death of Christ set forth as in a very profound
sense our pattern. Here we have one special case of the general law that
the life and death of our Lord are the embodied ideal of human character
and conduct. His forgiveness is not merely revealed to us that trembling
hearts may be calm, and that a fearful looking for of judgment may no
more trouble a foreboding conscience. For whilst we must ever begin with
cleaving to it as our hope, we must never stop there. A heart touched
and softened by pardon will be a heart apt to pardon, and the miracle of
forgiveness which has been wrought for it will constitute the law of its
life as well as the ground of its joyful security.
This new pattern and new motive, both in one, make the true novelty and
specific difference of Christian morality. "As I have loved you," makes
the commandment "love one another" a new commandment. And all that is
difficult in obedience becomes easier by the power of that motive.
Imitation of one whom we love is instinctive. Obedience to one whom we
love is delightful. The far off ideal becomes near and real in the
person of our best friend. Bound to him by obligations so immense, and a
forgiveness so costly and complete, we shall joyfully yield to "the
cords of love" which draw us after Him. We have each to choose what
shall be the pattern for us. The world takes Caesar, the hero; the
Christian takes Christ, in whose meekness is power, and whose gentle
long-suffering has been victor in a sterner conflict than any battle of
the warrior with garments rolled in blood.
Paul says, "Even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye." The Lord's
prayer teaches us to ask, Forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive.
In the one case Christ's forgiveness is the example and the motive for
ours. In the other, our forgiveness is the condition of God's. Both are
true. We shall find the strongest impulse to pardon others in the
consciousness that we have been pardoned by Him. And if we have
grudgings against our offending brother in our hearts, we shall not be
conscious of the tender forgiveness of our Father in heaven. That is no
arbitrary limitation, but inherent in the very nature of the case.
II. We have here the girdle which keeps all the garments in their
places.
"Above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness."
"Above all these" does not mean "besides," or "more important than," but
is clearly used in its simplest local sense, as equivalent to "over,"
and thus carries on the metaphor of the dress. Over the other garments
is to be put the silken sash or girdle of love, which will brace and
confine all the rest into a unity. It is "the girdle of perfectness," by
which is not meant, as is often supposed, the perfect principle of union
among men. Perfectness is not the quality of the girdle, but the thing
which it girds, and is a collective expression for "the various graces
and virtues, which together make up perfection." So the metaphor
expresses the thought that love knits into a harmonious whole, the
graces which without it would be fragmentary and incomplete.
We can conceive of all the dispositions already named as existing in
some fashion without love. There might be pity which was not love,
though we know it is akin to it. The feeling with which one looks upon
some poor outcast, or on some stranger in sorrow, or even on an enemy in
misery, may be very genuine compassion, and yet clearly separate from
love. So with all the others. There may be kindness most real without
any of the diviner emotion, and there may even be forbearance reaching
up to forgiveness, and yet leaving the heart untouched in its deepest
recesses. But if these virtues were thus exercised, in the absence of
love they would be fragmentary, shallow, and would have no guarantee for
their own continuance. Let love come into the heart and knit a man to
the poor creature whom he had only pitied before, or to the enemy whom
he had at the most been able with an effort to forgive; and it lifts
these other emotions into a nobler life. He who pities may not love, but
he who loves cannot but pity; and that compassion will flow with a
deeper current and be of a purer quality than the shrunken stream which
does not rise from that higher source.
Nor is it only the virtues enumerated here for which love performs this
office; but all the else isolated graces of character, it binds or welds
into a harmonious whole. As the broad Eastern girdle holds the flowing
robes in position, and gives needed firmness to the figure as well as
composed order to the attire; so this broad band, woven of softest
fabric, keeps all emotions in their due place and makes the attire of
the Christian soul beautiful in harmonious completeness.
Perhaps it is a yet deeper truth that love produces all these graces.
Whatsoever things men call virtues, are best cultivated by cultivating
it. So with a somewhat similar meaning to that of our text, but if
anything, going deeper down, Paul in another place calls love the
fulfilling of the law, even as his Master had taught him that all the
complex of duties incumbent upon us were summed up in love to God, and
love to men. Whatever I owe to my brother will be discharged if I love
God, and live my love. Nothing of it, not even the smallest mite of the
debt will be discharged, however vast my sacrifices and services, if I
do not.
So end the frequent references in this letter to putting off the old and
putting on the new. The sum of them all is, that we must first put on
Christ by faith, and then by daily effort clothe our spirits in the
graces of character which He gives us, and by which we shall be like
Him.
We have said that this dress of the Christian soul which we have been
now considering does not include the whole of Christian duty. We may
recall the other application of the same figure which occurs in the
parallel Epistle to the Ephesians, where Paul sketches for us in a few
rapid touches the armed Christian soldier. The two pictures may
profitably be set side by side. Here he dresses the Christian soul in
the robes of peace, bidding him put on pity and meekness, and above all,
the silken girdle of love.
"In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,"
then "put on the whole armour of God," the leathern girdle of truth, the
shining breastplate of righteousness, and above all, the shield of
faith--and so stand a flashing pillar of steel. Are the two pictures
inconsistent? must we doff the robes of peace to don the armour, or put
off the armour to resume the robes of peace? Not so; both must be worn
together, for neither is found in its completeness without the other.
Beneath the armour must be the fine linen, clean and white--and at one
and the same time, our souls may be clad in all pity, mercifulness and
love, and in all the sparkling panoply of courage and strength for
battle.
But both the armour and the dress of peace presuppose that we have
listened to Christ's pleading counsel to buy of Him "white raiment that
we may be clothed, and that the shame of our nakedness do not appear."
The garment for the soul, which is to hide its deformities and to
replace our own filthy rags, is woven in no earthly looms, and no
efforts of ours will bring us into possession of it. We must be content
to owe it wholly to Christ's gift, or else we shall have to go without
it altogether. The first step in the Christian life is by simple faith
to receive from Him the forgiveness of all our sins, and that new nature
which He alone can impart, and which we can neither create nor win, but
must simply accept. Then, after that, come the field and the time for
efforts put forth in His strength, to array our souls in His likeness,
and day by day to put on the beautiful garments which He bestows. It is
a lifelong work thus to strip ourselves of the rags of our old vices,
and to gird on the robe of righteousness. Lofty encouragements, tender
motives, solemn warnings, all point to this as our continual task. We
should set ourselves to it in His strength, if so be that being clothed,
we may not be found naked--and then, when we lay aside the garment of
flesh and the armour needed for the battle, we shall hear His voice
welcoming us to the land of peace, and shall walk with Him in victor's
robes, glistening "so as no fuller on earth could white them."