These four poor lepers had not had much kindness dealt out to them in
their lives, and they might have been pardoned if in their moment of
joy they had remained in the isolation to which they had been condemned
by reason of their disease. But they think to themselves of the hollow
eyes in Samaria there, and the hideous meals, that might stay hunger
but brought no nourishment, and of the king with sackcloth beneath his
royal robes, and, forgetting everything but their abundance and these
people's empty stomachs, they say, '_Not thus_ must we do,' as the
Hebrew might be translated, 'this is a day of good tidings, and we hold
our peace; and that is a sin. And if we continue dumb, then before
morning some kind of punishment will come down upon us.'
Now, let me put what I have to say on this matter into two sentences.
First of all, I say that such silence is inhuman. You would all
recognise that in the case of an actual, literal, instead of a
metaphorical, famine. What would you say about a man who contented
himself with sitting in his own back room, where nobody could see his
abundance, and feasting to the full, whilst his fellow-citizens were
dying of starvation? Why! you would say he was a brute. And if
Christian people believed as thoroughly that men and women without 'the
Bread of God which comes down from Heaven' were starving and dying of
hunger, as they believe that men without literal bread must die, there
would not be so many dumb ones amongst them; and they would feel more
distinctly than any of us feel now, the responsibility that is laid
upon them, and the inhumanity of the sin.
Dear brethren! God has made this strange brotherhood of humanity in
which we live, all intertwined and intertangled together, mainly in
order that there may be scope for brotherly impartation to the needy,
of the gifts that each possesses. And He has given to each of us
something or other which, by the very terms of the gift and the purpose
of the bestowment, we are bound to impart to others. The meaning of our
being born into the brotherhood of humanity is that God's grace, in
some shape or other, may fructify through us to all; and I say that the
man who possesses any kind of gift, and, especially, God's highest
gifts of wisdom and of knowledge, and most of all, the highest gift of
spiritual knowledge and moral and religious truth, and keeps them to
himself, in his idleness is sinfully active, and in his selfishness is
inhuman and cruel. The very constitution of humanity says to us that
'we do not well,' if in the 'day of good tidings' of any sort 'we hold
our peace.' The possession of mere physical or abstract truth does not
turn its possessors into its apostles, but the possession of moral and
spiritual truth does. We are, every one of us, responsible for all the
eyes which we could have opened and which are still dark, and for every
soul that gropes in ignorance, if we possess something that would
enlighten its darkness.
But then, further, let me say that this sin of silence is in sheer
contradiction of every principle of Christianity. Why has God given you
His grace, do you suppose? For what purpose comes it that you are
Christians? Were you converted that you might go by yourselves into a
solitary heaven, do you think? Are you important enough to be an
ultimate end of God's mercy? Or are you indeed an end, but only that in
your turn you might be a means of transmitting? Does the electric
influence terminate when it reaches you, or is it turned on to you that
from you it may be passed to others? The very purpose of the existence
of a Christian Church is counterworked and thwarted by dumb Christians.
We Nonconformists can talk abundantly when ecclesiastical assumptions
have to be fought against, about the priesthood of all believers. Very
well, if that principle is a true one--and it _is_ a true one--it has
other applications than simply controversial, and is meant for other
uses than simply that you should brandish it in the face of sacerdotal
claims and priest-ridden churches. 'Ye are all priests,' that is to
say, the meaning of the existence of a Christian Church is to raise up
a cloud of witnesses, and make every lip vocal with the name of Jesus
Christ the Lord. And you, dear brethren, you, the idlers of a church
and congregation, are doing all that you can to thwart the divine
purpose, and to destroy the very meaning of the existence of the church
to which you belong.
And let me remind you, too, that such silence is clearly contrary to
all Christian principle, inasmuch as one main purpose of the Gospel
being given us is to shift our centre from ourselves, first to Christ,
and then, if I may so say, to others. The very thing from which
Christianity is meant to deliver us is the very thing that these idle,
silent believers are indulging in, namely, the possession of God's
gifts for their own profit and enjoyment. What is the use of your
saying that you are Christian people if, in your very religion, you are
practising the very vice that Jesus Christ has come to destroy?
Selfishness is the opposite, the formal contradiction, of Christianity,
and in the measure in which your religion is self-regarding, it is no
religion at all. You are doing your best to counterwork the very main
purpose of the Gospel upon yourselves, when in silence you possess, or
fancy that you possess, the gift of His love.
And then, still further, let me remind you that this absolutely
un-Christian character of silence is manifested, if you consider that
the end of the Gospel for each of us is to bring us into full and happy
sympathy with Christ, and likeness to Him. And how is that purpose
being effected in His professed 'followers,' if they know nothing of
the experience of looking on the world with Christ's eyes, or of the
thrill of pity caught from Him, and have no sympathy with, in the sense
of any reflected experience of, the sense of obligation to help the
helpless which nailed Him to the Cross? We say that we are followers of
One who 'so loved the world' that He died for it; we say that we long
to be transformed into His likeness, and yet we put away from ourselves
the spirit that regards our brethren as He regarded us all; and never
dream of copying, howsoever feebly in our lives and efforts, the
pattern that was set before us in His death.
O dear brethren! 'if a man see his brother have need, and shutteth up
his bowels of compassion against him, how dwelleth the love of God in
him?' And if a Christian looks upon a world without Christ, and has
only a tepid sympathy and a faint realisation of the misery, and never
does anything to lighten it by a grain, how can he pretend that he
takes Jesus Christ for his Pattern and Example? Silence is manifestly a
sin by reason of its inhumanity, and its contrariety to every principle
of the Gospel.