_THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL._
Whatever of truth there may be in the charge of "other-worldliness," as
brought against the modern exponents of Christianity, such a charge
could not even be whispered against its Divine Founder. It is just
possible that the Church had been gazing too steadfastly up into heaven,
and that she had not been studying the science of the "Humanities" as
zealously as she ought, and as she has done since; but Jesus did not
allow even heavenly things to obliterate or to blur the lines of earthly
duty. We might have supposed that coming down from heaven, and familiar
with its secrets, He would have much to say about the New World, its
position in space, its society and manner of life. But no; Jesus says
little about the life which is to come; it is the life which now is that
engrosses His attention, and almost monopolizes His speech. Life with
Him was not in the future tense; it was one living present, real,
earnest, but fugitive. Indeed, that future was but the present projected
over into eternity. And so Jesus, founding the kingdom of God on earth,
and summoning all men into it, if he did not bring commandments written
and lithographed, like Moses, yet He did lay down principles and rules
of conduct, marking out, in all departments of human life, the straight
and white lines of duty, the eternal "ought." It is true that Jesus
Himself did not originate much in this department of Christian ethics,
and probably for most of His sayings we can find a symphony struck from
the pages of earlier, and perhaps heathen moralists; but in the wide
realm of Right there can be no new law. Principles may be evolved,
interpreted; they cannot be created. Right, like Truth, holds the
"eternal years;" and through the millenniums before Christ, as through
the millenniums after, Conscience, that "ethical intellect" which speaks
to all men if they will but draw near to her Sinai and listen, spoke to
some in clear, authoritative tones. But if Jesus did no more, He
gathered up the "broken lights" of earth, the intermittent flashes which
had played on the horizon before, into one steady electric beam, which
lights up our human life outward to its farthest reach, and onward to
its farthest goal.
In the mind of Jesus conduct was the outward and visible expression of
some inner invisible force. As our earth moves round its elliptic in
obedience to the subtle attractions of other outlying worlds, so the
orbits of human lives, whether symmetrical or eccentric, are determined
mainly by the two forces' Character and Circumstance. Conduct is
character in motion; for men do what they themselves are, _i.e._ as far
as circumstances will allow. And it is just at this point the ethical
teaching of Jesus begins. He recognizes the _imperium in imperio_, that
hidden world of thought, feeling, sentiment, and desire which, itself
invisible, is the mould in which things visible are cast. And so Jesus,
in His influence upon men, worked outward from within. He sought, not
reform, but regeneration, moulding the life by changing the character;
for, to use His own figure, how could the thorn produce grapes, or the
thistle figs?
And so when Jesus was asked, "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal
life?" He gave an answer which at first sight seemed to ignore the
question entirely. He said no word about "doing," but threw the
questioner back upon "being," asking what was written in the law: "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as
thyself" (x. 27). And as Jesus here makes Love the condition of eternal
life, its _sine qua non_, so He makes it the one all-embracing duty, the
fulfilling of the law. If a man love God supremely, and his neighbour as
himself, he cannot do more; for all other commandments are included in
these, the sub-sections of the greater law. Jesus thus sought to create
a new force, hiding it within the heart, as the mainspring of duty,
providing for that duty both aim and inspiration. We call it a "new"
force, and such it was practically; for though it was, in a way,
embedded in their law, it was mainly as a dead letter, so much so that
when Jesus bade His disciples to "love one another" He called it a "new
commandment." Here, then, we find what is at once the rule of conduct
and its motive. In the new system of ethics, as taught and enforced by
Jesus, and illustrated by His life, the Law of Love was to be supreme.
It was to be to the moral world what gravitation is to the natural, a
silent but mighty and all-pervasive force, throwing its spell upon the
isolated actions of the common day, giving impulse and direction to the
whole current of life, ruling alike the little eddies of thought and the
wider sweeps of benevolent activities. To Jesus "the soul of improvement
was the improvement of the soul." He laid His hand upon the heart's
innermost shrine, building up that unseen temple four-square, like the
city of the Apocalypse, and lighting up all its windows with the warm,
iridescent light of love.
With this, then, as the foundation-tone, running through all the spaces
and along all the lines of life, the thoughts, desires, words, and acts
must all harmonize with love; and if they do not, if they strike a note
that is foreign to its key-tone, it breaks the harmony at once, throwing
jars and discords into the music. Such a breach of the harmonic law
would be called a mistake, but when it is a breach of Christ's moral law
it is more than a mistake, it is a wrong.
Before passing to the outer life Jesus pauses, in this Gospel, to
correct certain dissonances of mind and soul, of thought and feeling,
which put us in a wrong attitude towards our fellows. First of all, He
forbids us to sit in judgment upon others. He says, "Judge not, and ye
shall not be judged: and condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned"
(vi. 37). This does not mean that we close our eyes with a voluntary
blindness, working our way through life like moles; nor does it mean
that we keep our opinions in a state of flux, not allowing them to
crystallize into thought, or to harden into the leaden alphabets of
human speech. There is within us all a moral sense, a miniature Sinai,
and we can no more suppress its thunders or sheath its lightnings than
we can hush the breakers of the shore into silence, or suppress the play
of the Northern Lights. But in that unconscious judgment we pass upon
the actions of others, with our condemnation of the wrong, we pass our
sentence upon the wrong-doer, mentally ejecting him from the courtesies
and sympathies of life, and if we allow him to live at all, compelling
him to live apart, as a moral incurable. And so, with our hatred of the
sin, we learn to hate the sinner, and calling from him both our
charities and our hopes, we hurl him down into some little Gehenna of
our own. But it is exactly this feeling, this kind of judgment, the Law
of Love condemns. We may "hate the sin, and yet the sinner love,"
keeping him still within the circle of our sympathies and our hopes. It
is not meet that we should be merciless who have ourselves experienced
so much of mercy; nor is it for us to hale others off to prison, or
ruthlessly to exact the uttermost farthing, when we ourselves at the
very best are erring and unfaithful servants, standing so much and so
often in need of forgiveness.
But there is another "judging" that the command of Christ condemns, and
that is the hasty and the false judgments we pass on the motives and
lives of others. How apt we are to depreciate the worth of others who do
not happen to belong to our circle! We look so intently for their faults
and foibles that we become blind to their excellences. We forget that
there is some good in every person, some that we can see if we only
look, and we may be always sure that there is some we cannot see. We
should not prejudge. We should not form our opinion upon an _ex parte_
statement. We should not leave the heart too open to the flying germs of
rumour, and we should discount heavily any damaging, disparaging
statement. We should not allow ourselves to draw too many inferences,
for he who is given to drawing inferences draws largely on his
imagination. We should think slowly in our judgment of others, for he
who leaps to conclusions generally takes his leap in the dark. We should
learn to wait for the second thoughts, for they are often truer than
the first. Nor is it wise to use too much "the spur of the moment;" it
is a sharp weapon, and is apt to cut both ways. We should not interpret
others' motives by our own feelings, nor should we "suppose" too much.
Above all, we should be charitable, judging of others as we judge
ourselves. Perhaps the beam that is in a brother's eye is but the
magnified mote that is in our own. It is better to learn the art of
appreciating than that of depreciating; for though the one is easy, and
the other difficult, yet he who looks for the good, and exalts the good,
will make the very wilderness to blossom and be glad; while he who
depreciates everything outside his own little self impoverishes life,
and makes the very garden of the Lord one arid, barren desert.
Again, Jesus condemns pride, as being a direct contravention of His Law
of Love. Love rejoices in the possessions and gifts of others, nor would
she care to add to her own if it must be at the cost of theirs. Love is
an equalizer, levelling up the inequalities the accidents of life have
made, and preferring to stand on some lower level with her fellows than
to sit solitary on some lofty and cold Olympus. Pride, on the other
hand, is a repelling, separating force. Scorning those who occupy the
lower places, she is contented only on her Olympian summit, where she
keeps herself warm with the fires of her self-adulation. The proud heart
is the loveless heart, one huge inflation; if she carries others at all,
it is only as a steadying ballast; she will not hesitate to throw them
over and throw them down, as mere dust or sand, if their fall will help
her to rise. Pride, like the eagle, builds her nest on high, bringing
forth whole broods of loveless, preying passions, hatreds, jealousies,
and hypocrisies. Pride sees no brotherhood in man; humanity to her
means no more than so many serfs to wait upon her pleasure, or so many
victims for her sacrifice! And how Jesus loved to prick these bubbles of
airy nothings, showing up these vanities as the very essence of
selfishness! He did not spare His words, even though they stung, when
"He marked how they chose out the chief seats" at the friendly supper
(xiv. 7); and one of His bitter "woes" He hurled at the Pharisees just
because "they loved the chief seats in the synagogues," worshipping
Self, when they pretended to worship God, so making the house of God
itself an arena for the sport and play of their proud ambitions. "He
that is least among you all," He said, when rebuking the disciples' lust
for pre-eminence, "the same is great." And such is Heaven's law:
humility is the cardinal virtue, the "strait" and low gate which opens
into the very heart of the kingdom. Humility is the one and the only way
of heavenly preferments and eternal promotions; for in the life to come
there will be strange contrasts and inversions, as he that exalted
himself is now humbled, and he that humbled himself is now exalted (xiv.
11).
Tracing now the lines of duty as they run across the outer life, we find
them following the same directions. As the golden milestone of the Forum
marked the centre of the empire, towards which its roads converged, and
from which all distances were measured, so in the Christian commonwealth
Jesus makes Love the capital, the central, controlling power; while at
the focal point of all the duties He sets up His Golden Rule, which
gives direction to all the paths of human conduct: "And as ye would that
men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (vi. 31). In this
general law we have what we might call the ethical compass, for it
embraces within its circle the "whole duty of man" towards his fellow;
and it only needs an adjusted conscience, like the delicately poised
needle, and the line of the "ought" can be read off at once, even in
those uncertain latitudes where no specific law is found. Are we in
doubt as to what course of conduct to pursue, as to the kind of
treatment we should accord to our fellow? we can always find the _via
recta_ by a short mental transposition. We have only to put ourselves in
his place, and to imagine our relative positions reversed, and from the
"would" of our supposed desires and hopes we read the "ought" of present
duty. The Golden Rule is thus a practical exposition of the Second
Commandment, investing our neighbour with the same luminous atmosphere
we throw about ourselves, the atmosphere of a benevolent, beneficent
love.
But beyond this general law Jesus gives us a prescript as to the
treatment of enemies. He says, "Love your enemies, do good to them that
hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use
you. To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other: and
from him that taketh away thy cloak withhold not thy coat also" (vi.
27-29). In considering these injunctions we must bear in mind that the
word "enemy" in its New Testament meaning had not the wide and general
signification it has to-day. It then stood in antithesis to the word
"neighbour," as in Matt. v. 43; and as the word "neighbour" to the Jew
included those, and those only, who were of the Hebrew race and faith,
the word "enemy" referred to those outside, who were aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel. To the Hebrew mind it stood as a synonym for
"Gentile." In these words, then, we find, not a general and universal
law, but the special instructions as to their course of conduct in
dealing with the Gentiles, to whom they would shortly be sent. No matter
what their treatment, they must bear it with an uncomplaining patience.
Stripped, beaten, they must not resist, much less retaliate; they must
not allow any vindictive feelings to possess them, nor must they take in
their own hot hand the sword of a "sweet revenge." Nay, they must even
bear a good-will towards their enemies, repaying their hate with love,
their spite and enmity with prayers, and their curses with sincerest
benedictions.
It will be observed that no mention is made of repentance or of
restitution: without waiting for these, or even expecting them, they
must be prepared to forgive and prepared to love their enemies, even
while they are shamefully treating them. And what else, under the
circumstances, could they have done? If they appealed to the secular
power it would simply have been an appeal to a heathen court, from
enemies to enemies. And as to waiting for repentance, their "enemies"
are only treating them as enemies, aliens and foreigners, wronging them,
it is true, but ignorantly, and not through any personal malice. They
must forgive just for the same reason that Jesus forgave His Roman
murderers, "for they know not what they do."
We cannot, therefore, take these injunctions, which evidently had a
special and temporary application, as the literal rule of conduct
towards those who are unfriendly or hostile to us. This, however, is
plain, that even our enemies, whose enmity is directly personal rather
than sectional or racial, are not to be excluded from the Law of Love.
We must bear them neither hatred nor resentment; we must guard our
hearts sacredly from all malevolent, vindictive feelings. We must not
be our own avenger, taking vengeance upon our adversaries, as we let
loose the barking Cerberus to track and run them down. All such feelings
are contrary to the Law of Love, and so are contraband, entirely foreign
to the heart that calls itself Christian. But with all this we are not
to meet all sorts of injuries and wrongs without protest or resistance.
We cannot condone a wrong without being accomplices in the wrong. To
defend our property and life is just as much our duty as it was the
wisdom and the duty of those to whom Jesus spoke to offer an
uncomplaining cheek to the Gentile smiter. Not to do this is to
encourage crime, and to put a premium upon evil. Nor is it inconsistent
with a true love to seek to punish, by lawful means, the wrong-doer.
Justice here is the highest type of mercy, and pains and penalties have
a remedial virtue, taming the passions which had grown too wild, or
straightening the conscience that had become warped.
And so Jesus, speaking of the "offences," the occasions of stumbling
that would come, said, "If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he
repent, forgive him" (xvii. 3). It is not the patient, silent
acquiescence now. No, we must _rebuke_ the brother who has sinned
against us and wronged us. And if this is vain, we must tell it to the
Church, as St. Matthew completes the injunction (xviii. 17); and if the
offender will not hear the Church, he must be cast out, ejected from
their fellowship, and becoming to their thought as a heathen or a
publican. The wrong, though it is a brother who does it, must not be
glossed over with the enamel of a euphemism; nor must it be hushed up,
veiled by a silence. It must be brought to the light of day; it must be
rebuked and punished; nor must it be forgiven until it is repented of.
Let there be, however, a genuine repentance, and there must be on our
part the prompt and complete forgiveness of the wrong. We must set it
back out of our sight, amongst the forgotten things. And if the wrong be
repeated, if the repentance be repeated, the forgiveness must be
repeated too, not only for seven times seven offences, but for seventy
times seven. Nor is it left to our option whether we forgive or no; it
is a duty, absolute and imperative; we must forgive, as we ourselves
hope to be forgiven.
Again, Jesus treats of the true use of wealth. He Himself assumed a
voluntary poverty. Silver and gold had He none; indeed, the only coin
that we read He handled was the borrowed Roman penny, with Cæsar's
inscription upon it. But while Jesus Himself preferred poverty, choosing
to live on the outflowing charities of those who felt it both a
privilege and an honour to minister to Him of their substance, yet He
did not condemn wealth. It was not a wrong _per se_. In the Old
Testament it had been regarded as a sign of Heaven's special favour, and
amongst the rich Jesus Himself found some of His warmest, truest
friends--friends who came nobly to the front when some who had made
louder professions had ignominiously fled. Nor did Jesus require the
renunciation of wealth as the condition of discipleship. He did not
advocate that fictitious _égalité_ of the Commune. He sought rather to
level up than to level down. It is true He did say to the ruler, "Sell
all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor;" but this was an
exceptional case[5] and probably it was put before him as a test
command, like the command to Abraham that he should sacrifice his
son--which was not intended to be carried out literally, but only as far
as the intention, the will. There was no such demand made from
Nicodemus, and when Zacchæus testified that it had been his practice
(the present tense would indicate a retrospective rather than a
prospective rule) to give one-half of his income to the poor, Jesus does
not find fault with his division, and demand the other half; He commends
him, and passes him up, right over the excommunication of the rabbis,
among the true sons of Abraham. Jesus did not pose as an assessor; He
left men to divide their own inheritance. It was enough for Him if He
could put within the soul this new force, the "moral dynamic" of love to
God and man; then the outward relations would shape themselves,
regulated as by some automatic action.
[5] This demand was made from the Apostles (xii. 33), but not from
others beyond the Apostolic circle.
But with all this, Jesus recognized the peculiar temptations and dangers
of wealth. He saw how riches tend to engross and monopolize the thought,
diverting it from higher things, and so He classed riches with cares,
pleasures, which choke the Word of life, and make it unfruitful. He saw
how wealth tended to selfishness; that it acted as an astringent,
closing up the valves of the heart, and thus shutting down the outflow
of its sympathies. And so Jesus, whenever He spoke of wealth, spoke in
words of warning: "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God!" He said, when He saw how the rich ruler set wealth
before faith and hope. And singularly enough, the only times Jesus, in
His parables, lifts up the curtain of doom it is to tell of "certain
rich" men--the one, whose soul swung selfishly between his banquets and
his barns, and who, alas! had laid up no treasures in heaven; and the
other, who exchanged his purple and fine linen for the folds of
enveloping flames, and the sumptuous fare of earth for eternal want, the
eternal hunger and thirst of the after-retribution!
What, then, is the true use of wealth? and how may we so hold it that it
shall prove a blessing, and not a bane? In the first place, we must hold
it in our hand, and not lay it up in the heart. We must possess it; it
must not possess us. We may give our thought, moderately, to it, but our
affections must not be allowed to centre upon it. We read that the
Pharisees "were lovers of money" (xvi. 14), and that argentic passion
was the root of all their evils. The love of money, like an opiate,
little by little, steals over the whole frame, deadening the
sensibility, perverting the judgment, and weakening the will, producing
a kind of intoxication, in which the better reason is lost, and the
confused speech can only articulate, with Shylock, "My ducats, my
ducats!" The true way of holding wealth is to hold it in trust,
recognizing God's ownership and our stewardship. Bank it up, give it no
outlet, and your wealth becomes a stagnant pool, breeding malaria and
burning fevers; but open the channel, give it an outlet, and it will
bring life and music to a thousand lower vales, increasing the happiness
of others, and increasing your own the more. And so Jesus strikes in
with His frequent imperative, "Give"--"Give, and it shall be given unto
you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall
they give into your bosom" (vi. 38). And this is the true use of wealth,
its consecration to the needs of humanity. And may we not say that here
is its truest pleasure? He who has learned the art of generous giving,
who makes his life one large-hearted benevolence, living for others and
not for himself, has acquired an art that is beautiful and Divine, an
art that turns the deserts into gardens of the Lord, and that peoples
the sky overhead with unseen singing Ariels. Giving and living are
heavenly synonyms, and he who giveth most liveth best.
But not from the words of Jesus alone do we read off the lines of our
duty. He is in His own Person a Polar Star, to whom all the meridians of
our round life turn, and from whom they emanate. His life is thus our
law, His example our pattern. Do we wish to learn what are the duties of
children to their parents? the thirty silent years of Nazareth speak in
answer. They show us how the Boy Jesus is in subjection to His parents,
giving to them a perfect obedience, a perfect trust, and a perfect love.
They show us the Divine Youth, still shut in within that narrow circle,
ministering to that circle, by hard manual toil becoming the stay of
that fatherless home. Do we wish to learn our duties to the State? See
how Jesus walked in a land across which the Roman eagle had cast its
shadow! He did not preach a crusade against the barbarian invaders. He
recognized in their presence and power the ordination of God--that they
had been sent to chastise a lapsed Israel. And so Jesus spoke no word of
denunciation, no fiery word, which might have proved the spark of a
revolution. He took Himself away from the multitudes when they would by
force make Him King. He spoke in respectful terms of the powers that
were; He even justified the payment of tribute to Cæsar, acknowledging
his lordship, while at the same time He spoke of the higher tribute to
the great Over-Lord, even God. When upon His trial for life or death,
before a Roman tribunal, He even stayed to apologize for Pilate's
weakness, casting the heavier sin back on the hierarchy that had bought
Him and delivered Him up; while upon the cross, amid its untold agonies,
though His lips were glued by a fearful thirst, He opened them to
breathe a last prayer for His Roman executioners: "Father, forgive them;
for they know not what they do."
But was Jesus, then, an alien from His kinsmen according to the flesh?
Was patriotism to Him an unknown force? Did He know nothing of love of
country, that inspiration which has turned common men into heroes and
martyrs, that love which oceans cannot quench, nor distance weaken,
which throws an auroral brightness around the most sterile shores, and
which makes the emigrant sick with a strange _Heimweh_? Did the Son of
man, the ideal Man, know nothing at all of this? He did know it, and
know it well. He identified Himself thoroughly with His people; He
placed Himself under the law, observing its rites and ceremonies. After
the Childhood-exile in Egypt, He scarcely passed out of the sacred
bounds; no storms of rough persecution could dislodge the heavenly Dove,
or send Him wheeling off from His native hills. And if He did not preach
rebellion, He did preach that righteousness which gives to a nation its
truest wealth and widest liberty. He did denounce the Pharisaic shams,
the hollow hypocrisies, which had eaten away the nation's heart and
strength. And how He loved Jerusalem, forgetting His own triumph in the
vision of her humiliation, and weeping for the desolations which were
coming sure and fast! This, the Holy City, was the centre to which He
ever returned, and to which He gave His last bequest--His cross and His
grave. Nay, when the cross is taken down, and the grave is vacant, He
lingers to give His Apostles their commission; and when He bids them,
"Go ye out into all the world," He adds, "beginning at Jerusalem." The
Son of man is the Son of David still, and within His deep love for
humanity at large was a peculiar love for His "own," as the ark itself
was enshrined within the Holy of holies.
And so we might traverse the whole ethical domain, and we should find no
duty which is not enforced or suggested by the words or the life of the
great Teacher. As Dr. Dorner says, "There is only one morality; the
original of it is in God; the copy of it is in the Man of God." Happy is
He who sees this Polar Star, whose light shines clear and calm above the
rush of human years and the ebbs and flows of human life! Happier still
is he who shapes his course by it, who reads off all his bearings from
its light! He who builds his life after the Divine model, reading the
Christ-life into his own, will build up another city of God on earth,
four-square and compact together, a city of peace, because a city of
righteousness and a city of love.