THE REVISION OF THE OLD LAW (_continued_)
AFTER dealing thus with three of the Ten Commandments our Lord proceeds
to deal with two other prescriptions or ideas of the old covenant. As
He had done to the commandments, He deepens and intensifies them till
they reach that standard which commends itself to His holy and perfect
mind. In both cases our Lord’s treatment of the older moral standard is
both profoundly interesting and at the same time the cause of no little
difficulty and scruple to Christian consciences.
THE LAW OF REVENGE
“Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil:
but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the
other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take
away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall
compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain. Give to him that
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not
thou away.”
Our Lord is here dealing with one interesting prescription of the old
law. It had definitely allowed revenge up to a certain point, but no
further. It might go to the point of exact reciprocity. So the law in
Exodus xxi. 24, 25 lays it down: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand
for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe
for stripe.”
1. Here we must remark, first, that the law of the old covenant was in
itself a limitation of human instinct. The savage instinct of revenge
is to rush blindly in, and do as much harm to an enemy as can be done.
The savage satisfies himself to the full; he kills the man that has
done him wrong and his wife and family. Now nothing is more striking
in the old covenant than that it checks barbarous habits and puts them
under restraint. It is so with the habit of animal sacrifice; it is
so in the law of revenge. The Mosaic law stands by, as it were, as a
policeman, and says, An eye? is that the wrong done? Then an eye may
be put out in return; but no more. You must stop there. The point
which needs emphasizing is that the old law worked by way of gradual
limitation, not of sudden abolition. God dealt with men gradually.
Their savage passions are restrained under the Old Testament as a
preparation for the time when they were to be brought under the perfect
discipline of the Son of Man. So now, when the fullness of the time
is come, our Lord lays on this passion of revenge a harder and deeper
prescription, and says in fact to each of His disciples: A wrong aimed
at thee as an individual is, so far as thy feeling goes, simply to be
an occasion for showing complete liberty of spirit and superiority to
all outrage. The Lord requires not moderation in revenge, but complete
self-effacement.
2. Secondly, we may notice that this requirement of self-effacement is
of the nature of an ascetic prescription, as when our Lord said “If thy
right eye offend thee, pluck it out; if thy right hand offend thee, cut
it off.” The necessity for this self-mutilation――cutting off a hand,
plucking out an eye――lay in the fact that these limbs, or faculties,
or functions of our nature had been so utterly misused that before
they could be again used legitimately they must be put under this stern
discipline of effacement.
So with this instinct of revenge. The instinct has in it something that
is right: something of the passion of justice. It is a true instinct
which makes us feel that for wrong done man should suffer wrong. It
is derived from the divine principle of justice. But in our own cases,
where our own interests are concerned, this passion of justice has come
to be so mixed up with selfishness, and with those excessive demands
which spring of selfishness――in a word, it has become so defiled with
sin――that our Lord imposes on it an absolute ban; He says “Vengeance
is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” He takes away from us, as
it were, the right to administer justice in our own case. “The wrath
of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”[51] He requires us as
individuals to acknowledge the law of self-effacement.
3. The requirement which our Lord lays on His disciples is not only
made in words. It was enforced, where the enforcement is most striking,
in our Lord’s example. You watch our Lord in His passion; and when
you look delicately and accurately at the details of the treatment He
received, you observe how almost intolerably hard to bear were many
of His trials. We can hardly conceive what to Him it must have been to
bear the hideous insults and injustices of men. Think for example, to
take a subtle but impressive instance,[52] of those false accusations
brought against Him which had in them the sound of truth. “And there
stood up certain, and bear false witness against him, saying, We heard
him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in
three days I will build another made without hands.”[53] He had said in
fact not that, but something like it. He had said “Destroy this temple,
and in three days I will raise it up.”[54] That is, Suppose you destroy,
then I will rebuild. There was a great difference between what He had
said and what He was accused of saying. But you know in what atmosphere
it is that such accusations are brought. The crowd does not consider
details; it listens to the vague sound of the words; it is easily
convinced: “He said something of that sort. If he defends himself, he
has to quibble.” And thus they rush off and put down to the accused man
not what he said, but what he was supposed to have said. Now our Lord
had that delicate instinct of the pastor. He knew there were people
watching Him, and wondering whether He were the true Messiah or no. To
have an accusation brought against Him which sounded as if true, and,
though it was not true, excited such fierce animosity against Him――this
was a profound trial of spirit: and it is only one instance in which
a little imagination, if we bring it to bear, shows us the depth of
what our Lord had to endure not only in the way of insults, but of
injustices. Yet “when he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he
suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth
righteously.”[55]
4. When our own personal feeling has been utterly suppressed, then it
is quite possible that another duty, the duty of justice, the duty of
maintaining the social order, may come into prominence again. Thus our
Lord is in another passage[56] recorded to have said something that may
appear at first sight plainly contradictory to what He says here. “If
thy brother sin against thee”――are you simply to take no notice of it?
No. You are to “shew him his fault between thee and him alone: if he
hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hear thee not, take
with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three
every word may be established. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it
unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be
unto thee as the Gentile and the publican.”
Here it is obvious our Lord is enjoining not an extreme measure of
personal meekness, but an extreme insistence on social justice. And
He Himself made a certain claim on justice in His trial: “And when he
had said this, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his
hand, saying, Answerest thou the high priest so? Jesus answered him,
If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why
smitest thou me?”[57] So St. Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, claims
justice: “I am standing before Cæsar’s judgement-seat, where I ought
to be judged: to the Jews have I done no wrong, as thou also very well
knowest. If then I am a wrong-doer, and have committed anything worthy
of death, I refuse not to die: but if none of those things is true,
whereof these accuse me, no man can give me up unto them. I appeal unto
Cæsar.”[58]
We observe therefore two opposite duties. There is the clear duty, so
far as mere personal feeling goes, of simple self-effacement. Only then,
when we have got our own wills thoroughly subordinated to God’s will,
when all the wild instinct of revenge is subdued, are we in a position
to consider the other duty and to ask ourselves what the maintenance of
the moral order of society may require of us.
This particular point gives us an opportunity to consider generally
our Lord’s method in teaching. We have been brought up against one
conspicuous instance in which our Lord appears to contradict Himself;
and the explanation of this lies in His method. At times we must notice
His method was metaphorical. When we were considering what He says
about asceticism, for example, we saw that the instances given were
plainly metaphorical. “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast
it from thee.” That is a metaphor for violently putting under restraint
any faculty which has been misused.
But here His instances are not metaphorical. They are such as
quite admit of actual and literal application. They are, however,
_proverbial_. You may notice in the proverbs of all nations that
they easily admit of appearing to be contradictory and yet of being
perfectly intelligible in the guidance they give us. One day you
will hear a man condemned as “penny wise and pound foolish”; another
day it is “take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of
themselves.” One day it is “look before you leap”; another “nothing
venture, nothing have.” The suggestions involved in these pairs of
proverbs are contradictory. The important matter according to the
one is to be careful about large sums, according to the other to be
careful about small sums: according to one to think before you act,
according to the other to be ready to run a risk. But each gives
what is obviously the right guidance to certain characters in certain
situations, and gives it after the manner of proverbs. A proverb
embodies a principle of common, but not universal, application in
an absolute and extreme form. Another proverb may embody another
principle in a similar form. And thus expressed they may easily appear
contradictory, and both alike impracticable, if taken literally,
because all the qualifying circumstances are left out.
Our Lord then teaches by proverbs. In emphasizing one principle He
expresses it as an absolute direction in an extreme instance: “If a
man will take thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.” In emphasizing
another principle He expresses it in a similar form: “If thy brother
trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault” and follow the matter
up to its extreme consequences.
And every one must recognize that the right application of each proverb
depends on the question, What is the particular principle which at a
particular moment is to be brought into play? No proverb could be ever
taken as a rule for constant action, but only as a type of action when
a particular principle is to be expressed.
Now we may take the injunctions which our Lord gives, and ask ourselves
how we can apply these particular proverbs to-day.
“But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever
smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
The actual words need of course no explanation. But can we see how
we are to apply the precept? would it “do” to obey it exactly and
literally? Well, there are occasions when it might be obeyed, if not
literally――because people may seldom, or perhaps never, smite us on the
right cheek――yet nearly literally; occasions when nothing is concerned
but our own instinct of revenge or our own pride, and we had better
simply take meekly some insult or wrong, and make no effort to defend
ourselves.
For example: there is a nasty thing said about you in the newspaper or
a nasty thing whispered about you in the circle where you move, and you
know quite well who has put it into the newspaper or given it currency.
You cannot be mistaken; there is evidence; only one person could
have done it. And the statement made is really untrue. No one can be
subjected to that kind of wrong, without being brought face to face
with the question whether he intends to be a thorough-going Christian.
For there is no doubt what we ought to do. We ought not to be content
till we have utterly crushed out of ourselves the least desire, as far
as our own personal feeling is concerned, to take any kind of revenge
whatever. We are to efface ourselves utterly, we are to turn the other
cheek. That means, of course, that we decline to show in any way that
we know who has done the wrong, and that we are at pains to look out
for an opportunity of kindness to the person who has wronged us. That
would be not a literal but a practical application of the principle,
and there are numerous occasions in any man’s life when it is right
to act thus, and any other course of conduct at all is more or less
morally wrong, because no social duty compels us to assert our just
cause.
The next injunction is:
“And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy
coat, let him have thy cloke also.”
There again, it is quite plain what is meant. It is to refuse to
resist legal injustice. Very often it can and ought to be literally
obeyed. “Nay, already it is altogether a defect in you, that ye have
lawsuits one with another. Why not rather take wrong? why not rather be
defrauded?”[59] But there are also instances in which to act literally
on this precept would be, in any sober judgement, doing a great wrong
to society and to the man who is himself the wrong doer. But the
question is, am I able to look at the matter from that point of view?
The difficulty to almost all of us is to get into such a state of mind
that we can honestly say, As far as my own will goes, I am ready to
suffer this and more; and not to let the question of legal proceedings
come into our minds at all till we are sure that our motive is the
general interest of society and of the wrong doer.
Then, once more:
“And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him
twain.”
There was a public transport service which passed from the Persian
into later empires. Our Lord then says “When any public officer presses
thee into the transport service for a certain way, be prepared to take
double the impost.” That is――do not resent public claims upon you, bear
the public burdens, and be willing that, as far as you are concerned,
they should be double what they are. But how we dislike the rates and
taxes! How few there are who take a Christian view of paying them, and
are glad, up to their means, to accept the burden which membership in
this great nation lays upon them. Something more is our duty than to
make barely honest returns for an income tax.
“Give to him that asketh thee,” and (in St. Luke) “of him that
taketh away thy goods ask them not again.”
Probably most of us know the old sculpture on the back of the screen
behind the high altar in our abbey of Westminster. It is one of those
in which are represented the traditions about our (almost) patron saint,
Edward the Confessor. The king is resting after the labours of the day,
and Hugolin, his chamberlain, has brought out the chest of money to pay
his various retainers. But he leaves it open while he is out of the way;
a scullion comes in, and thinking the king is asleep, twice he carries
off treasure out of the chest. While he is enriching himself the third
time, the king, who has seen all, quietly observes: “Fly, fellow, as
quickly as you can, for Hugolin is coming back, and he will not leave
you so much as a half-penny.” Hugolin does come, and, finding out what
has occurred, questions the king. The king however will not disclose
who has taken the treasure: “He needed it more than we; Edward has
surely enough treasure. As Jesus Christ teaches us, worldly property
ought to be common to all those who have need of it.”[60]
We need not doubt that occasions still occur when even fantastic
acts of generosity, such as this, are the things needed to make an
impression on hardened or embittered or careless hearts. Every one
knows Victor Hugo’s story of the bishop and the convict in _Les
Miserables_, and no doubt it represents realities in life and
experience.
On the whole, however, it is seldom that it would be right to let the
thief have his own way. But it is always right to deal very mercifully
with first offences and to take trouble to give the offenders a clear
fresh chance. And even if the law is let to take its course with a
criminal, yet kindness to him while he is suffering his sentence and
after it――kindness which does not shrink from taking a great deal of
trouble――can produce the same moral impression as a literal application
of the divine proverb like King Edward’s.
“Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee, turn not thou away.”
What are we to say to the beggar, of whatever grade? Now, first of
all, there are a great many cases where help is needed, and “asked
for” therefore, whether by a spoken or an unspoken appeal, by people of
whom we know the character and circumstances antecedently. Misfortunes
happen to people who are such as can profitably be helped, that is,
such as when they are helped in a temporary difficulty will be enabled
to resume the normal course of a self-helping life: or such as will
need permanent help indeed, as they are permanently incapacitated, but
have the will and character to work. Or there are cases where help can
be given to educate a young man or woman for the priesthood or some
other honourable career. There are in fact no lack of cases in which
we can with the greatest profit help individuals, and that largely and
generously, to say nothing of innumerable societies and institutions
which need and ask, but find few to give regularly and bountifully.
This sort of regular generosity costs us much more than giving coppers
to beggars or shillings to applicants by post. “Let thine alms sweat
into thine hand, until thou knowest to whom thou shouldest give,” was
the advice given in a very early Christian community.[61]
Next, let us take notice that we can “make inquiries.” People shrink
from this because it takes trouble and implies methodical principles.
But there is no equally secure means of sifting out cases of honest
need from those of professional begging. The “professionals” will not
come near a house where it is known that inquiries are made. And the
fact that we take kindly trouble about them, should appeal to what is
good in any man’s conscience.
But as to indiscriminate charity? It has been encouraged very often
by the teachers of Christianity.[62] But if a tree is known by its
fruits, the system is all condemned. It is in fact an indulgence of our
feelings of compassion, with little trouble to ourselves, and at the
expense of society. To give indeed to any beggar the plainest broken
food may do no harm. But it is very seldom welcomed. Again we can do
something to indicate friendly, kindly feeling towards an applicant,
if we take pains. Perhaps, for instance, we can get a boy-beggar on to
a training ship. At least, so far as we can, let us not resent taking
trouble about people who have no “special claim” on us. And when our
Christian judgement can approve it, let us not resent expense. Let our
whole conduct make it evident that we welcome and do not resent claims
either on our purse, or on our heart, or on our intelligence. But our
intelligence must be brought to bear upon our charity as well as our
heart. To illustrate how this is forgotten I will only repeat a story
of the saintly William Law. He seems to have distributed as much as
£2,500 a year, chiefly in doles to applicants who came into his back
yard; he succeeded in getting rid of his money, and in demoralizing the
neighbourhood.[63] But it is plainly not our Lord’s will that we should
do manifest harm.
Indiscriminate charity is not enjoined, but a self-sacrificing
generosity is. And it would be well if every Christian who is wealthy
or “comfortably-off” would, before passing on from this passage, kneel
upon his knees as in God’s presence and ask himself if he is making a
serious attempt to accept loyally the claim upon his time and money
which his Lord makes on behalf of those who want.
THE TREATMENT OF ENEMIES
“Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour,
and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and
pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your
Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the
evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.
For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not
even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only,
what do ye more than others? do not even the Gentiles the same?
Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
perfect.”
The exact expression, “Thou shalt hate thine enemy,” nowhere occurs in
the Mosaic law; and there are, both in the law and elsewhere in the Old
Testament, passages which come nearer to the Christian standard.[64]
But on the whole we must accept Dr. Mozley’s conclusion:[65] “The whole
precept as it stands undoubtedly represents, and is a summary of, the
sense of the law”: nor can “the enemy” be regarded as meaning _only_
the enemies of Israel. Thus many Christian consciences are distressed
while psalms are being sung in our services which contain imprecations
upon enemies, such as the 109th. Some modern critics assure us that
these psalms express no individual feelings towards personal enemies,
but the feeling of righteous Israel towards the enemies of the Lord. It
may be doubted whether this is altogether the case. And even if it is
so, the psalms still fall short of the Christian standard both of hope
for the conversion of enemies and of love toward them in any case. No
doubt, if we take the Righteous One who speaks in them to be Christ,
we can find in them the divine principles of judgement; and so they are
interpreted in the New Testament. Still in their mode of expression,
and in the temper which they historically represent, they fall short
of the Christian standard. And this ought not to surprise us. The whole
Old Testament is on right lines of divine development: but it has not
reached the goal, which is Christ. “It was said to them of old ... but
I say unto you.”
Our Lord, in deepening and widening the Old Testament law of love,
inculcates kindliness in disposition, in word, in act. In disposition,
we are to “love our enemies.” Not of course that we can feel alike
towards all people; but we can set our will, or what the Bible calls
our heart, to do them good. And if we dispose ourselves aright towards
others, we shall probably end by feeling aright, though that can never
be a matter of commandment. And we are to show our disposition towards
them by kindly salutations, or the ordinary words which express human
goodwill, and by deeds, both earnest prayer for them and acts which
imitate the impartial beneficence of our Father in heaven.
Nothing is said about the effect which such kindness to professed
enemies may have. But there is no question that if we treat people as
if they were permanently and necessarily what they are at the moment,
we fix or do our best to fix them in their present condition. To make
people better, we must believe that God intends them to be better and
treat them as if we believed them in fact to be better than they are.
The clever barrister, Sidney Carton, in Dickens’ _Tale of Two Cities_,
who had been his own enemy, who had fallen from bad to worse, who had
ceased to believe in himself as his friends also had ceased to believe
in him, was recovered by a good and merciful woman who refused to
take him at the general estimate and would not give him up――recovered,
after many relapses, to the point of a final act of heroism by which
he lost his own life to save his true friend’s husband. So if we refuse
to treat people as our enemies, we have the best possible chance of
winning them to be our friends. God has redeemed men by treating them,
not as they are, but as they are capable of becoming.
Our Lord calls our attention to the fact that He is requiring such
conduct of us as only a supernatural motive, the motive of fellowship
with God, can account for. This is a consideration which we can apply
to other parts of Christian duty――for instance, to the obligation of
purity. But our Lord here applies it to kindliness. “You are kind to
your friends. Are not the publicans the same?” The publicans proper
were capitalists who “farmed” the Roman taxes, undertaking to hand over
a certain sum for a certain district and then getting as much as they
could out of the inhabitants. But the name was also applied to their
subordinates, the custom-house officers, as in the New Testament. These
were held in special odium by their countrymen and generally justified
a character for rapacity. But even such men are kind to their friends.
It requires no other motive than human convenience, the most ordinary
social virtue. But what our Lord asks of us is something which requires
the supernatural or divine motive to account for it. Here then we have
a serious question. Consider your actions, your ordinary dealings with
others. Are they such as can be accounted for by convenience and social
requirement, or does your conduct require the divine motive, the motive
of fellowship with God, to explain it and to make it possible? It is
only this latter sort of conduct that makes it――so to speak――worth
while that Jesus Christ should have come down from heaven and
sacrificed Himself for you. Are you walking worthily of the vocation
wherewith ye are called? For your principle of conduct is to be nothing
less than a real striving after the perfection of God, which is indeed
the character of Christ.
“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
perfect.”
Yet we must not despair. We have Christ’s Spirit working within us to
make us like Christ: and if only we have the right ideal in front of us
and are moving however slowly towards it, or even constantly recurring
to the pursuit of it, we shall be perfected at last. We have eternity
before us to grow in――not a year or two, or a life-time, but eternity.
And in our best moments we do really recognize that what is most worth
having in the world is the character of Christ. Only in proportion as
we feel the magnitude of what is asked of us, let us throw ourselves
upon the divine readiness to give strength and wisdom according to our
needs. Let us pray with Augustine “Give what Thou commandest and then
command what Thou willest.”