Like all people who live apart from it, the Founder of the Christian
religion was possessed of a profound knowledge of the world. As,
according to the proverb, the woodlander sees nothing of the wood for
its trees, so those who live in the world know nothing of it. They know
its gaudy, glittering surface, its Crystal Palace fireworks, and the
paste-diamonds with which it bedecks itself; they know its music-halls
and its night clubs, its Piccadillys and its politics, its restaurants
and its salons; but of the bad--or good?--heart of it all they know
nothing. In more meanings than one, it takes a saint to catch a sinner;
and Christ certainly knew as well as saved the sinner.
But none of His precepts show a truer knowledge of life and its
conditions than His commandment that we should love our enemies. He
realised--can we doubt?--that, without enemies, the Church He bade His
followers build could not hope to be established. He knew that the
spiritual fire He strove to kindle would spread but little, unless the
four winds of the world blew against it. Well, indeed, may the Christian
Church love its enemies, for it is they who have made it.
Indeed, for a man, or a cause, that wants to get on, there is nothing
like a few hearty, zealous enemies. Most of us would never be heard of
if it were not for our enemies. The unsuccessful man counts up his
friends, but the successful man numbers his enemies. A friend of mine
was lamenting, the other day, that he could not find twelve people to
disbelieve in him. He had been seeking them for years, he sighed, and
could not get beyond eleven. But, even so, with only eleven he was a
very successful man. In these kind-hearted days enemies are becoming so
rare that one has to go out of one's way to make them. The true
interpretation, therefore, of the easiest of the commandments is--make
your enemies, and your enemies will make you.
So soon as the armed men begin to spring up in our fields, we may be
sure that we have not sown in vain.
Properly understood, an enemy is but a negative embodiment of our
personalities or ideas. He is an involuntary witness to our vitality.
Much as he despises us, greatly as he may injure us, he is none the less
a creature of our making. It was we who put into him the breath of his
malignity, and inspired the activity of his malice. Therefore, with his
very existence so tremendous a tribute, we can afford to smile at his
self-conscious disclaimers of our significance. Though he slay us, we
_made_ him--to 'make an enemy,' is not that the phrase?
Indeed, the fact that he is our enemy is his one _raison d'être_. That
alone should make us charitable to him. Live and let live. Without us
our enemy has no occupation, for to hate us is his profession. Think of
his wives and families!
The friendship of the little for the great is an old-established
profession; there is but one older--namely, the hatred of the little
for the great; and, though it is perhaps less officially recognised, it
is without doubt the more lucrative. It is one of the shortest roads to
fame. Why is the name of Pontius Pilate an uneasy ghost of history?
Think what fame it would have meant to be an enemy of Socrates or
Shakespeare! _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The Quarterly Review_ only
survive to-day because they once did their best to strangle the genius
of Keats and Tennyson. Two or three journals of our own time, by the
same unfailing method, seek that circulation from posterity which is
denied them in the present.
This is particularly true in literature, where the literary enemy is as
organised a tradesman as the literary agent. Like the literary agent, he
naturally does his best to secure the biggest men. No doubt the time
will come when the literary cut-throat--shall we call him?--will publish
dainty little books of testimonials from authors, full of effusive
gratitude for the manner in which they have been slashed and bludgeoned
into fame. 'Butcher to Mr. Grant Allen' may then become a familiar
legend over literary shop-fronts:--
'Ah! did you stab at Shelley's heart
With silly sneer and cruel lie?
And Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Keats,
To murder did you nobly try?
You failed, 'tis true; but what of that?
The world remembers still your name--
'Tis fame, _for you_, to be the cur
That barks behind the heels of Fame.'
Any one who is fortunate enough to have enemies will know that all this
is far from being fanciful. If one's enemies have any other _raison
d'être_ beyond the fact of their being our enemies--what is it? They are
neither beautiful nor clever, wise nor good, famous nor, indeed,
passably distinguished. Were they any of these, they would not have
taken to so humble a means of getting their living. Instead of being our
enemies, they could then have afforded to employ enemies on their own
account.
Who, indeed, are our enemies? Broadly speaking, they are all those
people who lack what we possess.
If you are rich, every poor man is necessarily your enemy. If you are
beautiful, the great democracy of the plain and ugly will mock you in
the streets. It will be the same with everything you possess. The
brainless will never forgive you for possessing brains, the weak will
hate you for your strength, and the evil for your good heart. If you can
write, all the bad writers are at once your foes. If you can paint, the
bad painters will talk you down. But more than any talent or charm you
may possess, the pearl of price for which you will be most bitterly
hated will be your success. You can be the most wonderful person that
ever existed, so long as you don't succeed, and nobody will mind. 'It is
the sunshine,' says some one, 'that brings out the adder.' So powerful,
indeed, is success that it has been known to turn a friend into a foe.
Those, then, who wish to engage a few trusty enemies out of place need
only advertise among the unsuccessful.
_P.S._--For one service we should be particularly thankful to our
enemies--they save us so much in stimulants. Their unbelief so helps our
belief, their negatives make us so positive.