The duty of the wife is "subjection," and it is enforced on the ground
that it is "fitting in the Lord"--that is, "it is," or perhaps "it
became" at the time of conversion, "the conduct corresponding to or
befitting the condition of being in the Lord." In more modern
language--the Christian ideal of the wife's duty has for its very
centre--subjection.
Some of us will smile at that; some of us will think it an old-fashioned
notion, a survival of a more barbarous theory of marriage than this
century recognises. But, before we decide upon the correctness of the
apostolic precept, let us make quite sure of its meaning. Now, if we
turn to the corresponding passage in Ephesians, we find that marriage is
regarded from a high and sacred point of view, as being an earthly
shadow and faint adumbration of the union between Christ and the Church.
To Paul, all human and earthly relationships were moulded after the
patterns of things in the heavens, and the whole fleeting visible life
of man was a parable of the "things which are" in the spiritual realm.
Most chiefly, the holy and mysterious union of man and woman in marriage
is fashioned in the likeness of the only union which is closer and more
mysterious than itself, namely that between Christ and His Church.
Such then as are the nature and the spring of the Church's "subjection"
to Christ, such will be the nature and the spring of the wife's
"subjection" to the husband. That is to say, it is a subjection of which
love is the very soul and animating principle. In a true marriage, as in
the loving obedience of a believing soul to Christ, the wife submits not
because she has found a master, but because her heart has found its
rest. Everything harsh or degrading melts away from the requirement when
thus looked at. It is a joy to serve where the heart is engaged, and
that is eminently true of the feminine nature. For its full
satisfaction, a woman's heart needs to look up where it loves. She has
certainly the fullest wedded life who can "reverence" her husband. For
its full satisfaction, a woman's heart needs to serve where it loves.
That is the same as saying that a woman's love is, in the general,
nobler, purer, more unselfish than a man's, and therein, quite as much
as in physical constitution, is laid the foundation of that Divine ideal
of marriage, which places the wife's delight and dignity in sweet loving
subjection.
Of course the subjection has its limitations. "We must obey God rather
than man" bounds the field of all human authority and control. Then
there are cases in which, on the principle of "the tools to the hands
that can use them," the rule falls naturally to the wife as the stronger
character. Popular sarcasm, however, shows that such instances are felt
to be contrary to the true ideal, and such a wife lacks something of
repose for her heart.
No doubt, too, since Paul wrote, and very largely by Christian
influences, women have been educated and elevated, so as to make mere
subjection impossible now, if ever it were so. Woman's quick instinct as
to persons, her finer wisdom, her purer discernment as to moral
questions, make it in a thousand cases the wisest thing a man can do to
listen to the "subtle flow of silver-paced counsel" which his wife gives
him. All such considerations are fully consistent with this apostolic
teaching, and it remains true that the wife who does not reverence and
lovingly obey is to be pitied if she cannot, and to be condemned if she
will not.
And what of the husband's duty? He is to love, and because he loves, not
to be harsh or bitter, in word, look or act. The parallel in Ephesians
adds the solemn elevating thought, that a man's love to the woman, whom
he has made his own, is to be like Christ's to the Church. Patient and
generous, utterly self-forgetting and self-sacrificing, demanding
nothing, grudging nothing, giving all, not shrinking from the extreme of
suffering and pain and death itself--that he may bless and help--such
was the Lord's love to His bride, such is to be a Christian husband's
love to his wife. That solemn example, which lifts the whole emotion
high above mere passion or selfish affection, carries a great lesson too
as to the connection between man's love and woman's "subjection." The
former is to evoke the latter, just as in the heavenly pattern, Christ's
love melts and moves human wills to glad obedience, which is liberty. We
do not say that a wife is utterly absolved from obedience where a
husband fails in self-forgetting love, though certainly it does not lie
in _his_ mouth to accuse, whose fault is graver than and the origin of
hers. But, without going so far as that, we may recognise the true order
to be that the husband's love, self-sacrificing and all-bestowing, is
meant to evoke the wife's love, delighting in service, and proud to
crown him her king.
Where there is such love, there will be no question of mere command and
obedience, no tenacious adherence to rights, or jealous defence of
independence. Law will be transformed into choice. To obey will be joy;
to serve, the natural expression of the heart. Love uttering a wish
speaks music to love listening; and love obeying the wish is free and a
queen. Such sacred beauty may light up wedded life, if it catches a
gleam from the fountain of all light, and shines by reflection from the
love that binds Christ to His Church as the links of the golden beams
bind the sun to the planet. Husbands and wives are to see to it that
this supreme consecration purifies and raises their love. Young men and
maidens are to remember that the nobleness and heart-repose of their
whole life may be made or marred by marriage, and to take heed where
they fix their affections. If there be not unity in the deepest thing of
all, love to Christ, the sacredness and completeness will fade away from
any love. But if a man and woman love and marry "in the Lord," He will
be "in the midst," walking between them, a third who will make them one,
and that threefold cord will not be quickly broken.
II. The Reciprocal Duties of children and parents--obedience and gentle
loving authority.
The injunction to children is laconic, decisive, universal. "Obey your
parents in all things." Of course, there is one limitation to that. If
God's command looks one way, and a parent's the opposite, disobedience
is duty--but such extreme case is probably the only one which Christian
ethics admit as an exception to the rule. The Spartan brevity of the
command is enforced by one consideration, "for this is well-pleasing
_in_ the Lord," as the Revised Version rightly reads, instead of "to the
Lord," as in the Authorised, thus making an exact parallel to the former
"fitting in the Lord." Not only to Christ, but to all who can appreciate
the beauty of goodness, is filial obedience beautiful. The parallel in
Ephesians substitutes "for this is right," appealing to the natural
conscience. Right and fair in itself, it is accordant with the law
stamped on the very relationship, and it is witnessed as such by the
instinctive approbation which it evokes.
No doubt, the moral sentiment of Paul's age stretched parental authority
to an extreme, and we need not hesitate to admit that the Christian idea
of a father's power and a child's obedience has been much softened by
Christianity; but the softening has come from the greater prominence
given to love, rather than from the limitation given to obedience.
Our present domestic life seems to me to stand sorely in need of Paul's
injunction. One cannot but see that there is great laxity in this matter
in many Christian households, in reaction perhaps from the too great
severity of past times. Many causes lead to this unwholesome relaxation
of parental authority. In our great cities, especially among the
commercial classes, children are generally better educated than their
fathers and mothers, they know less of early struggles, and one often
sees a sense of inferiority making a parent hesitate to command, as well
as a misplaced tenderness making him hesitate to forbid. A very
misplaced and cruel tenderness it is to say "would you like?" when he
ought to say "I wish." It is unkind to lay on young shoulders "the
weight of too much liberty," and to introduce young hearts too soon to
the sad responsibility of choosing between good and evil. It were better
and more loving by far to put off that day, and to let the children feel
that in the safe nest of home, their feeble and ignorant goodness is
sheltered behind a strong barrier of command, and their lives simplified
by having the one duty of obedience. By many parents the advice is
needed--consult your children less, command them more.
And as for children, here is the one thing which God would have them do:
"Obey your parents in all things." As fathers used to say when I was a
boy--"not only obedience, but prompt obedience." It is right. That
should be enough. But children may also remember that it is
"pleasing"--fair and good to see, making them agreeable in the eyes of
all whose approbation is worth having, and pleasing to themselves,
saving them from many a bitter thought in after days, when the grave has
closed over father and mother. One remembers the story of how Dr.
Johnson, when a man, stood in the market place at Lichfield, bareheaded,
with the rain pouring on him, in remorseful remembrance of boyish
disobedience to his dead father. There is nothing bitterer than the too
late tears for wrongs done to those who are gone beyond the reach of our
penitence. "Children obey your parents in all things," that you may be
spared the sting of conscience for childish faults, which may be set
tingling and smarting again even in old age.
The law for parents is addressed to "fathers," partly because a mother's
tenderness has less need of the warning "provoke not your children,"
than a father's more rigorous rule usually has, and partly because the
father is regarded as the head of the household. The advice is full of
practical sagacity. How do parents provoke their children? By
unreasonable commands, by perpetual restrictions, by capricious jerks at
the bridle, alternating with as capricious dropping of the reins
altogether, by not governing their own tempers, by shrill or stern tones
where quiet, soft ones would do, by frequent checks and rebukes, and
sparing praise. And what is sure to follow such mistreatment by father
or mother? First, as the parallel passage in Ephesians has it;
"wrath"--bursts of temper, for which probably the child is punished and
the parent is guilty--and then spiritless listlessness and apathy. "I
cannot please him whatever I do," leads to a rankling sense of
injustice, and then to recklessness--"it is useless to try any more."
And when a child or a man loses heart, there will be no more obedience.
Paul's theory of the training of children is closely connected with his
central doctrine, that love is the life of service, and faith the parent
of righteousness. To him hope and gladness and confident love underlie
all obedience. When a child loves and trusts, he will obey. When he
fears and has to think of his father as capricious, exacting or stern,
he will do like the man in the parable, who was afraid because he
thought of his master as austere, reaping where he did not sow, and
therefore went and hid his talent. Children's obedience must be fed on
love and praise. Fear paralyses activity, and kills service, whether it
cowers in the heart of a boy to his father, or of a man to his Father in
heaven.
So parents are to let the sunshine of their smile ripen their children's
love to fruit of obedience, and remember that frost in spring scatters
the blossoms on the grass. Many a parent, especially many a father,
drives his child into evil by keeping him at a distance. He should make
his boy a companion and playmate, teach him to think of his father as
his confidant, try to keep his child nearer to himself than to anybody
beside, and then his authority will be absolute, his opinions an oracle,
and his lightest wish a law. Is not the kingdom of Jesus Christ based
on His becoming a brother and one of ourselves, and is it not wielded in
gentleness and enforced by love? Is it not the most absolute of rules?
and should not the parental authority be like it--having a reed for a
sceptre, lowliness and gentleness being stronger to rule and to sway
than the "rods of iron" or of gold which earthly monarchs wield?
There is added to this precept, in Ephesians, an injunction on the
positive side of parental duty: "Bring them up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord." I fear that is a duty fallen wofully into
disuse in many Christian households. Many parents think it wise to send
their children away from home for their education, and so hand over
their moral and religious training to teachers. That may be right, but
it makes the fulfilment of this precept all but impossible. Others, who
have their children beside them, are too busy all the week, and too fond
of "rest" on Sunday. Many send their children to a Sunday school chiefly
that they themselves may have a quiet house and a sound sleep in the
afternoon. Every Christian minister, if he keeps his eyes open, must see
that there is no religious instruction worth calling by the name in a
very large number of professedly Christian households; and he is bound
to press very earnestly on his hearers the question, whether the
Christian fathers and mothers among them do their duty in this matter.
Many of them, I fear, have never opened their lips to their children on
religious subjects. Is it not a grief and a shame that men and women
with some religion in them, and loving their little ones dearly, should
be tongue-tied before them on the most important of all things? What
can come of it but what does come of it so often that it saddens one to
see how frequently it occurs--that the children drift away from a faith
which their parents did not care enough about to teach it to them? A
silent father makes prodigal sons, and many a grey head has been brought
down with sorrow to the grave, and many a mother's heart broken, because
he and she neglected their plain duty, which can be handed over to no
schools or masters--the duty of religious instruction. "These words
which I command thee, shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them
diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in
thine house."
III. The Reciprocal Duties of servants and masters--obedience and
justice.
The first thing to observe here is, that these "servants" are slaves,
not persons who have voluntarily given their work for wages. The
relation of Christianity to slavery is too wide a subject to be touched
here. It must be enough to point out that Paul recognises that "sum of
all villanies," gives instructions to both parties in it, never says one
word in condemnation of it. More remarkable still; the messenger who
carried this letter to Colossae carried in the same bag the Epistle to
Philemon, and was accompanied by the fugitive slave Onesimus, on whose
neck Paul bound again the chain, so to speak, with his own hands. And
yet the gospel which Paul preached has in it principles which cut up
slavery by the roots; as we read in this very letter, "In Christ Jesus
there is neither bond nor free." Why then did not Christ and His
apostles make war against slavery? For the same reason for which they
did not make war against _any_ political or social institutions. "First
make the tree good and his fruit good." The only way to reform
institutions is to elevate and quicken the general conscience, and then
the evil will be outgrown, left behind, or thrown aside. Mould men and
the men will mould institutions. So Christianity did not set itself to
fell this upas tree, which would have been a long and dangerous task;
but girdled it, as we may say, stripped the bark off it, and left it to
die--and it _has_ died in all Christian lands now.
But the principles laid down here are quite as applicable to our form of
domestic and other service as to the slaves and masters of Colossae.
Note then the extent of the servant's obedience--"in all things." Here,
of course, as in former cases, is there presupposed the limit of supreme
obedience to God's commands; that being safe, all else is to give way to
the duty of submission. It is a stern command, that seems all on the
side of the masters. It might strike a chill into many a slave, who had
been drawn to the gospel by the hope of finding some little lightening
of the yoke that pressed so heavily on his poor galled neck, and of
hearing some voice speaking in tenderer tones than those of harsh
command. Still more emphatically, and, as it might seem, still more
harshly, the Apostle goes on to insist on the inward completeness of the
obedience--"not with eyeservice (a word of Paul's own coining) as
men-pleasers." We have a proverb about the worth of the master's eye,
which bears witness that the same fault still clings to hired service.
One has only to look at the next set of bricklayers one sees on a
scaffold, or of haymakers one comes across in a field, to see it. The
vice was venial in slaves; it is inexcusable, because it darkens into
theft, in paid servants--and it spreads far and wide. All scamped work,
all productions of man's hand or brain which are got up to look better
than they are, all fussy parade of diligence when under inspection and
slackness afterwards--and all their like which infect and infest every
trade and profession, are transfixed by the sharp point of this precept.
"But in singleness of heart," that is, with undivided motive, which is
the antithesis and the cure for "eyeservice"--and "fearing God," which
is opposed to "pleasing men." Then follows the positive injunction,
covering the whole ground of action and lifting the constrained
obedience to the earthly master up into the sacred and serene loftiness
of religious duty, "whatsoever ye do, work heartily," or from the soul.
The word for _work_ is stronger than that for _do_, and implies effort
and toil. They are to put all their power into their work, and not be
afraid of hard toil. And they are not only to bend their backs but their
wills, and to labour "from the soul," that is, cheerfully and with
interest--a hard lesson for a slave and asking more than could be
expected from human nature, as many of them would, no doubt, think. Paul
goes on to transfigure the squalor and misery of the slave's lot by a
sudden beam of light--"as to the Lord"--your true "Master," for it is
the same word as in the previous verse--"and not unto men." Do not think
of your tasks as only enjoined by harsh, capricious, selfish men, but
lift your thoughts to Christ, who is your Lord, and glorify all these
sordid duties by seeing _His_ will in them. He only who works as "to
the Lord," will work "heartily." The thought of Christ's command, and of
my poor toil as done for His sake, will change constraint into
cheerfulness, and make unwelcome tasks pleasant, and monotonous ones
fresh, and trivial ones great. It will evoke new powers, and renewed
consecration. In that atmosphere, the dim flame of servile obedience
will burn more brightly, as a lamp plunged into a jar of pure oxygen.
The stimulus of a great hope for the ill-used, unpaid slave, is added.
Whatever their earthly masters might fail to give them, the true Master
whom they really served would accept no work for which He did not return
more than sufficient wages. "From the Lord ye shall receive the
recompense of the inheritance." Blows and scanty food and poor lodging
may be all that they get from their owners for all their sweat and toil,
but if they are Christ's slaves, they will be treated no more as slaves,
but as sons, and receive a son's portion, the exact recompense which
consists of the "inheritance." The juxtaposition of the two ideas of the
slave and the inheritance evidently hints at the unspoken thought, that
they are heirs because they are sons--a thought which might well lift up
bowed backs and brighten dull faces. The hope of that reward came like
an angel into the smoky huts and hopeless lives of these poor slaves. It
shone athwart all the gloom and squalor, and taught patience beneath
"the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely." Through long, weary
generations it has lived in the hearts of men driven to God by man's
tyranny, and forced to clutch at heaven's brightness to keep them from
being made mad by earth's blackness. It may irradiate our poor lives,
especially when we fail, as we all do sometimes, to get recognition of
our work, or fruit from it. If we labour for man's appreciation or
gratitude, we shall certainly be disappointed; but if for Christ, we
have abundant wages beforehand, and we shall have an overabundant
requital, the munificence of which will make us more ashamed of our
unworthy service than anything else could do. Christ remains in no man's
debt. "Who hath first given, and it shall be recompensed to him again?"
The last word to the slave is a warning against neglect of duty. There
is to be a double recompense--to the slave of Christ the portion of a
son; to the wrong doer retribution "for the wrong that he has done."
Then, though slavery was itself a wrong, though the master who held a
man in bondage was himself inflicting the greatest of all wrongs, yet
Paul will have the slave think that he still has duties to his master.
That is part of Paul's general position as to slavery. He will not wage
war against it, but for the present accept it. Whether he saw the full
bearing of the gospel on that and other infamous institutions may be
questioned. He has given us the principles which will destroy them, but
he is no revolutionist, and so his present counsel is to remember the
master's rights, even though they be founded on wrong, and he has no
hesitation in condemning and predicting retribution for evil things done
by a slave to his master. A superior's injustice does not warrant an
inferior's breach of moral law, though it may excuse it. Two blacks do
not make a white. Herein lies the condemnation of all the crimes which
enslaved nations and classes have done, of many a deed which has been
honoured and sung, of the sanguinary cruelties of servile revolts, as
well as of the questionable means to which labour often resorts in
modern industrial warfare. The homely, plain principle, that a man does
not receive the right to break God's laws because he is ill-treated,
would clear away much fog from some people's notions of how to advance
the cause of the oppressed.
But, on the other hand, this warning may look towards the masters also;
and probably the same double reference is also to be discerned in the
closing words to the slaves, "and there is no respect of persons." The
servants were naturally tempted to think that God was on their side, as
indeed He was, but also to think that the great coming day of judgment
was mostly meant to be terrible to tyrants and oppressors, and so to
look forward to it with a fierce un-Christian joy, as well as with a
false confidence built only on their present misery. They would be apt
to think that God did "respect persons," in the opposite fashion from
that of a partial judge--namely, that He would incline the scale in
favour of the ill-used, the poor, the down-trodden; that they would have
an easy test and a light sentence, while His frowns and His severity
would be kept for the powerful and the rich who had ground the faces of
the poor and kept back the hire of the labourer. It was therefore a
needful reminder for them, and for us all, that that judgment has
nothing to do with earthly conditions, but only with conduct and
character; that sorrow and calamity here do not open heaven's gates
hereafter, and that the slave and master are tried by the same law.
The series of precepts closes with a brief but most pregnant word to
masters. They are bid to give to their slaves "that which is just and
equal," that is to say, "equitable." A startling criterion for a
master's duty to the slave who was denied to have any rights at all.
They were chattels, not persons. A master might, in regard to them, do
what he liked with his own; he might crucify or torture, or commit any
crime against manhood either in body or soul, and no voice would
question or forbid. How astonished Roman lawgivers would have been if
they could have heard Paul talking about justice and equity as applied
to a slave! What a strange new dialect it must have sounded to the
slave-owners in the Colossian Church! They would not see how far the
principle, thus quietly introduced, was to carry succeeding ages; they
could not dream of the great tree that was to spring from this tiny
seed-precept; but no doubt the instinct which seldom fails an unjustly
privileged class, would make them blindly dislike the exhortation, and
feel as if they were getting out of their depth when they were bid to
consider what was "right" and "equitable" in their dealings with their
slaves.
The Apostle does not define what _is_ "right and equal." That will come.
The main thing is to drive home the conviction that there are duties
owing to slaves, inferiors, employes. We are far enough from a
satisfactory discharge of these yet; but, at any rate, everybody now
admits the principle--and we have mainly to thank Christianity for that.
Slowly the general conscience is coming to recognise that simple truth
more and more clearly, and its application is becoming more decisive
with each generation. There is much to be done before society is
organized on that principle, but the time is coming--and till it is
come, there will be no peace. All masters and employers of labour, in
their mills and warehouses, are bid to base their relations to "hands"
and servants on the one firm foundation of "justice." Paul does not say,
Give your servants what is kind and patronising. He wants a great deal
more than that. Charity likes to come in and supply the wants which
would never have been felt had there been equity. An ounce of justice is
sometimes worth a ton of charity.
This duty of the masters is enforced by the same thought which was to
stimulate the servants to their tasks: "ye also have a Master in
heaven." That is not only stimulus, but it is pattern. I said that Paul
did not specify what was just and right, and that his precept might
therefore be objected to as vague. Does the introduction of this thought
of the master's Master in heaven, take away any of the vagueness? If
Christ is our Master, then we are to look to Him to see what a master
ought to be, and to try to be masters like that. That is precise enough,
is it not? That grips tight enough, does it not? Give your servants what
you expect and need to get from Christ. If we try to live that
commandment for twenty-four hours, it will probably not be its vagueness
of which we complain.
"Ye have a Master in heaven" is the great principle on which all
Christian duty reposes. Christ's command is my law, His will is supreme,
His authority absolute, His example all-sufficient. My soul, my life, my
all are His. My will is not my own. My possessions are not my own. My
being is not my own. All duty is elevated into obedience to Him, and
obedience to Him, utter and absolute, is dignity and freedom. We are
Christ's slaves, for He has bought us for Himself, by giving Himself for
us. Let that great sacrifice win our heart's love and our perfect
submission. "O Lord, truly I am Thy servant, Thou hast loosed my bonds."
Then all earthly relationships will be fulfilled by us; and we shall
move among men, breathing blessing and raying out brightness, when in
all, we remember that we have a Master in heaven, and do all our work
from the soul as to Him and not to men.