_Friendship in God (continued)_
The official temper of mind is by no means the only bar to wide
fellowship. Exclusiveness and temperamental dislike are responsible for
a great many sins against brotherly love, and must be fought down by
every true follower of our Lord. When men are left to themselves, they
gravitate into mutually exclusive groups composed of congenial classes
or of congenial types. But Christianity steps in and breaks up these
little sets, in order to blend them into one varied and splendid whole.
The vision which S. John had revealed to him, was humanity in all its
variety--"out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and
tongues"--but at perfect unity with itself, a complete and harmonious
family.
Sec. 1. Probably there is no temper of mind more difficult to master than
that of exclusiveness. In the evolution of society class
differentiations have come into being, differentiations which, at the
time of their appearance, may have been a necessary phase of progress,
but which, in the development of Christian thought, should pass away. It
would not be right or wise to contend for the immediate obliteration of
all artificial distinctions in life, for conventionalities are often
social safeguards and have their place in civilization. But surely the
earnest disciple of Jesus must array all the forces at his command
against the continuance of customs that have been separated from their
usefulness, and are perpetuated only to be stumbling blocks to human
fellowship.
The worth of conventionalism has for its supreme test the life and
teaching of Jesus Christ. When He quieted the strife of the disciples,
who were filled with the ignoble lust of domination, He inaugurated a
new social order. "He that is the greater among you, let him become as
the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve." The old order
made kings the recipients of much service, the new calls them to give
much service; the old order led men to strive for honour, the new
inspires them to avoid honour unless bound up with an enlarged
opportunity to serve; the old order prized whatever privileges set men
above and apart from their fellows, the new seeks everything that will
bring them nearer to their fellows. So merit and reward, privilege and
responsibility, greatness and service must never be separated. Where
they have been separated in the past, as well as where they are in the
present, the result is exclusiveness. Men cling to prerogatives which in
common justice they have no real claim upon, beyond the flimsy plea of
hereditary right and the permission of society. Out of this have grown
those groups of persons who, though possessing nothing but a very common
humanity indeed, would, from a sense of superiority derived from a name,
or from the false prestige given by wealth and social position, withhold
their fellowship from all but a select few. If men could but realize the
cramping influence on character of exclusiveness, how quickly would they
hasten to divest themselves of every trace of the vice of snobbishness!
Dives lived in exclusive society after death because he did so before
death. He was no farther from Lazarus in the other world than he was in
this; the gulf created here was "fixed" there, that is all. And among
the "losses of the saved" will be lack of capacity for wide fellowship.
The dignity of humanity is so great that nothing can add to its
greatness, excepting what ennobles human nature itself. Wealth, social
position, mere intellectual attainment, no more deserve deference or
homage, than do the tatters of a pauper or the ignorance of a dolt. No
man insults human nature or demeans his personality so much as he who
bows down to these accidents, excepting only the man who receives homage
on the ground not of what he is but of what he has. We may neither pay
homage to, nor receive it for, any of those things which belong merely
to time and of which death will strip us bare; though piety, spiritual
wisdom, and all forms of moral power, always and everywhere, demand
homage and reverence.
The true basis on which Christian fellowship is begun and maintained, is
our common humanity--that which is essential and not that which is
accidental. Our Lord drew men to Himself and had human fellowship with
them, by virtue of the completeness and attractiveness of His splendid
manhood. He had none of the accidents of life to use, and He was not
weak without them. He was the most refined among men, and yet He found
companionship among the peasant folk. Social differentiations did not
enter into our Lord's reckoning. He ignored them, reaching through them
and past them. It is touching to remember that one of the earliest
companionships in Paradise of the human soul of Jesus, was the
resumption of almost His last intercourse on earth. As the soul of the
penitent outlaw and robber, "pale from the passion of death," went into
the society of Paradise, it was received and welcomed by the Man, Christ
Jesus.
It is a myth that the wise and cultured must confine their fellowship to
the wise and cultured.[15] By means of literature men and women of high
privilege, have joined hands with those whose lives were bare of
everything but character--with Adam Bede and with Uncle Tom. If this is
possible with the creations of fiction, it is capable of being widely
true in actual life. The richest human nature is often found in the most
obscure places, as the experience of every social worker from Edward
Denison to the resident in the newest "settlement," will testify. True
refinement is not the result of paltry conventionalism, the flimsy
creation of an artificial society; true refinement is the inalienable
possession of that character in which the Spirit of God rules, in which
the material is made the handmaid of the spiritual. At first men went
out into the highways of the city, armed with their privileges, thinking
that they had everything to give. But they soon learned that this spirit
could only end in condescension, which is fatal to fellowship, for
fellowship means give and take, and that the poor and unprivileged had
much to give. Unless representatives from the different classes of
society are contributing their special gifts to our lives, life is poor
indeed. Wealth of fellowship consists not in numbers, but in variety.
When men reach out for wider fellowship, they must not forget that no
man ever yet won his fellows through his own interests. He must, by the
subtle power of sympathy, dive beneath the surface of other lives and
court their interests. Even God failed to win men, until He made man's
concerns wholly His own by becoming Man. "For ye know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He
became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich."
Sec. 2. Temperamental dislike is another obstacle to Christian fellowship
to be conquered. It is something found wherever human nature is. And men
commonly excuse quarrelsomeness, rudeness and other unchristian conduct
on this score, though the excuse is by no means valid. Probably all of
us are afflicted with a natural antipathy to certain kinds of
temperament, but at least we need not humour it. It was part of God's
design, that human society should be enriched by variety of disposition.
That is a poor garden which contains but one kind of flower, beautiful
as its blossom may be. True beauty consists in variety; and monotony is
the height of ugliness. It is a reason for thankfulness that human
nature is so wonderfully diversified that no two human beings are
exactly alike, and that there is a whole gamut of temperamental
difference in the race.
Now it is a part of the work of Christianity, to reconcile dispositions
that are naturally antipathetic and jarring. And the process by which
this is brought to pass, is probably one of the most beneficial
disciplines to which men are subjected. The Church is a great mixing
bowl, in which all this vast variety is brought into close touch and
blended together into a harmonious whole. "The very purpose of the one
Church for all the men of faith in Jesus is that the necessity for
belonging to one body--a necessity grounded on divine appointment--shall
force together into a unity men of all sorts and different kinds; and
the forces of the new life which they share in common are to overcome
their natural repugnance and antipathies, and to make the forbearance
and love and mutual helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not
easy, at least possible for them."[16]
That society is at once the most beautiful and the most powerful which
is composed of the largest variety of temperaments, exercising their
various faculties in unity and mutual helpfulness. Some persons imagine
that the most desirable parochial life is where all the parishioners are
of one stripe, instead of that in which there is a finely disciplined
diversity. A parish of dead uniformity would be comfortable but not
educative, quiet but colourless and insipid.
Unquestionably certain natures are so constituted as to irritate us
every time we come near them. And unless we are very carefully on our
guard we will not treat such persons justly or courteously, much less
will we be ready to render them delicate service. Quite unconsciously
we exhibit our temper of mind. There may be the determination not to
allow our feelings to rise to the surface, but nevertheless before we
know it we have done the mischief; and somehow the bitterness we
entertain has been let loose, not by a word or a look, perhaps, but by
some subtle telepathic or psychic influence which opens the secret of
our soul to our companion. There is nothing more infectious than a
temper of mind. It seems to leap out of one soul and impart itself to
another without heeding the ordinary laws of transmission. Anger, lust,
suspicion, dislike, jealousy smirch not only the souls in which they lie
restrained though not conquered, but others that come within the radius
of their wide-reaching influence.
Fortunately this power of infection is not confined to evil passions,
but belongs even in a larger degree to those which are good. And herein
lies the remedy for temperamental dislike. If we stop short at choking
it down, we can never make a friend of one whose disposition is
naturally repugnant to us. Sooner or later our dislike will crop out and
a gulf be made. If, on the other hand, the dislike is displaced by
generous, full love--love that is a force and not a mere
emotion--fellowship, and eventually friendship, will become possible.
There may be grounds often for our antipathies. Some people have the
misfortune to be graceless, awkward and repellant; others are
unattractive if not positively disagreeable to every one--bad-tempered,
perhaps, or mischief-makers. To educate these in Christian fellowship is
probably as large a public service as could be readily rendered. "It is
no great matter," says Jeremy Taylor,[17] "to live lovingly with
good-natured, with humble and meek persons; but he that can do so with
the froward, with the wilful, and the ignorant, with the peevish and
perverse, he only hath true charity."
Sec. 3. A third bar to Christian fellowship is what, for want of a better
phrase, may be termed a weakness for interesting people. That is to say,
the humanity that is within easy reach seems commonplace and
uninteresting, so that men of our intimate acquaintance often appear to
be hardly worth while labouring for. Hence it is a common habit to
reserve our best thought, our best manners and our best service for
strangers, making little positive effort to love and serve those with
whom we are thrown into daily contact. Nowhere is human perversity more
glaring than in the sad truth lurking behind the proverb: "A prophet is
not without honour, save in his own country and house." The value of
those who stand nearest to us is lowered by means of their very
nearness. On the other hand the persons who are outside our immediate
circle, however comprehensive it may be, seem to be more interesting
than the very average folk who are our ordinary companions. We long for
companionship with men of this finer type.
Of course this is all a delusion. Human nature is full of interest
wherever we find it, that which is nearest as well as that which is
farthest removed. The men we would like to know and serve, are no more
worthy of attention than the men who stand shoulder to shoulder with us.
But those who have the largest claim upon our attention and service, are
our immediate friends and neighbours. Indeed the only way to arm
ourselves against disappointment, as the boundaries of our fellowship
are enlarged, is so to attach ourselves to the people near at hand as to
learn the true dignity of all human nature and the almost unfathomable
depths of every personality. Otherwise an acquisition in
acquaintanceship will, after the first glow of novelty has worn off,
only reveal one more uninteresting person.
Sec. 4. There is one other duty that ought to be at least touched upon in
this connection, though it has been referred to in a former chapter--the
duty of praying for others. There is no more delicate service in the
whole round of human action than that of intercessory prayer. It is so
hidden as to have a special beauty on that account. While men are all
unconscious that we are thinking of them, we fold our arms about them
and bring them up before God for blessing and guidance. Intercessory
prayer might be defined as loving our neighbour on our knees. The common
objection, "What good can it do? Will not God bless men just as much
without our prayers as with them?" seems to have a certain amount of
weight. But a very little reflection shows that it does not amount to
much. Even though intercessory prayer did nothing more than put us who
pray in a desirable frame of mind toward those for whom we pray, it
would be an exercise of great value. However, as a matter of fact, it
accomplishes much more than this. Besides making our feeling of
fellowship stronger, it really brings something to those for whom we
offer our petitions. Human life is as closely bound up on the spiritual
as on any other side of our being. It is quite certain that if we
withhold the duties of service in other ways God does not supply our
lack, so far as we can see, but human life suffers through our neglect.
If all else in our experience is governed by law, why should we believe
that the spiritual part of life stands alone and is not affected by
spiritual service? There is from analogy every reason to suppose, that
those who are not prayed for suffer spiritual loss on that account.
But the immediate point to be made is that the height of Christian
friendship cannot be reached without intercession. It has been pointed
out by a spiritual teacher[18] that it makes a great difference in our
feelings towards others if their needs and their joys are on our lips in
prayer; as also it makes a vast difference in their feelings towards us
if they know that we are in the habit of praying for them. There is no
chasm in society that cannot be firmly and permanently bridged by
intercession; there is no feud or dislike that cannot be healed by the
same exercise of love.
Here, then, as in all else, if we are to come anywhere near the ideal we
must lift our eyes to God. Friendship in God is possible only for those
who bring society before God in prayer.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] _Cf. Browning's verses in_ Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, _where the
result of false culture, or the abuse of culture, is referred to_:--
_Man is made in sympathy with man
At outset of existence, so to speak;
But in dissociation, more and more,
Man from his fellow, as their lives advance
In culture; still humanity, that's born
A mass, keeps flying off, fining away
Ever into a multitude of points,
And ends in isolation, each from each._
[16] _Gore on Ephesians, p. 189._
[17] _Works: Vol. vii. 624._
[18] _Canon Gore._