The Five Great Philosophies of Life Part 9

CHAPTER V

THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF LOVE

I

THE TEACHING OF LOVE

Jesus taught His philosophy of life in three ways: the personal, by example; the artistic, by parable; and the scientific, by propositions.

The first, though most vital and effective of all, is expensive and wasteful. For in life principles are so embedded in "muddy particulars,"

trivial and sordid details, that they are liable to get lost. The Master may be a long time with His disciples, and yet not really be known. Even the disciples themselves, after months of such teaching, like James and John may not know what manner of spirit they are of. Indeed it may become expedient for them that the Master go away, that His Spirit may be more clearly revealed.

The artistic method, too, has drawbacks. For though it gives the principles a new artificial setting, with carefully selected details to catch the crowd, yet the crowd catch simply the story. Only the initiated are instructed; those who do not already know the principles learn nothing, but "seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not understand," as Jesus, past master of this art though He was, so often lamented.

The third or scientific method is dry and prosaic. It observes what qualities go together, or refuse to go together, in the swift stream of life; pulls them out of the stream; fixes them in concepts; marks them by names; and states propositions about them. It may go one short step farther: it may arrange its propositions in syllogisms, and deduce general conclusions, or laws. It may take, for instance, as its major premise, Love is the divine secret of blessedness. Then for its minor premise it may take some plain observed fact, Humility is essential to Love. Then the conclusion or law will be, The humble share the divine life and all the blessings it brings. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Of course no one but a pedant draws out his teaching in this laboured logical form. The syllogism is condensed; the major, and perhaps even the minor, premise is omitted, and often only the conclusion appears.

At its best this method is hard and dry; yet this is the method employed in such sayings as those handed down in the summary called the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps that is why the teaching of the "Sermon," in spite of its clear-cut form, is much less studied and understood than the teaching of Jesus' life and parables. To recover this largely lost teaching one must warm and moisten the cold, dry terms; supply, when necessary, omitted premises; use some one word rather than many for the often suppressed middle term; and so draw out the latent logic that underlies these laws.

The middle term of all this argument is Love. For that old-fas.h.i.+oned word, in spite of its sentimental a.s.sociations, much better than its modern scientific synonyms, such as the socialising of the self, expresses that outgoing of the self into the lives of others, which, according to Jesus, is the actual nature of G.o.d, the potential nature of man, the secret of individual blessedness and the promise of social salvation.

In the two or three cases where the logic of His principle, applied to our complex modern life, points clearly to a modification of His literal precepts, as in the management of wealth and the bestowal of charity, I shall not hesitate to put the logic of the teaching in place of the letter of the precept, citing the latter afterward for comparison.

A logical commentary like this will be most helpful if it reverses the order usual in commentaries of mere erudition, and introduces the steps of the argument before rather than after the pa.s.sage they seek to make clear.

In whichever of the three ways it is taught, Love s.h.i.+nes by its own light and speaks with its own authority to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

A person who loves carries with him a generous light-heartedness, a genial optimism, which show all his friends that he has found some secret which it is worth their while to learn.

Every well-told parable or fable, every artistically constructed novel or play, makes us take sides with the large-hearted hero against the mean, selfish villain.

In the same way Love's formulated laws, showing on what conditions it depends and to what results it leads, convince every one who has the experience by which to interpret them (and only to him who hath experience is interpretation given) that Love is the supreme law of life, and its requirements the right and reasonable conditions of individual and social well-being.

II

THE FULFILMENT OF LAW THROUGH LOVE

Jesus was born in a nation which had developed law to the utmost nicety of detail, and recognised all laws as expressions of the good will of G.o.d seeking the welfare of men. Prolonged experiments in living had proved certain kinds of conduct disastrous, and the states of mind corresponding to them, despicable. Law had prohibited this disastrous conduct, and the prophets had denounced these despicable traits.

Of course latent in the prohibitions of law was the const.i.tution of the blessed Kingdom that would result if the law were observed; and dimly foreshadowed in the figurative expressions of the prophets was the vision of the glorified human society that would emerge when the despicable traits should be extirpated and the better order introduced.

This negative and latent implication of law Jesus developed into Love as the positive and explicit principle of life; and this figuratively foreshadowed prophet's vision He translated into the actual fact of a community united in Love. He fulfilled the law by putting Love in the heart, and fulfilled the prophets by establis.h.i.+ng a community based on Love. Jesus taught us to make every human interest we touch as precious as our own, and to treat all persons with whom we deal as members of that beneficent system of mutual good-will which is the Kingdom of Heaven. But the moment we begin to do that, law as law becomes superfluous; for what the law requires is the very thing we most desire to do: prophecy as prophecy is fulfilled; for the best man's heart can dream has come to pa.s.s.

In the ideal home, between well-married husband and wife, child and parent, brother and sister, this sweet law prevails. In choice circles of intimate friends it is found. Jesus extended this interpretation of others in terms of ourselves, and of both others and self in terms of the system of relations in which both self and others inhere, so as to include all the dealing of official and citizen, teacher and pupil, dealer and customer, employer and employee, man and man.

Jesus does not judge us by the formal test of whether we have kept or broken this or that specific commandment, but by the deeper and more searching requirement that our lives shall detract nothing from and add something to the glory of G.o.d and the welfare of man.

Is the world a happier, holier, better world because we are here in it, helping on G.o.d's good-will for men? If that be the grand, comprehensive purpose of our lives, honestly cherished, frankly avowed, systematically cultivated, then, no matter how far below perfection we may fall, that single purpose, in spite of failure, defeat, and repented sin, pulls us through. If we have this Spirit of Love in our hearts, and if with Christ's help we are trying to do something to make it real in our lives and effective in the world, our eternal salvation is a.s.sured. On the other hand, is there a single point on which we deliberately are working evil? Is the lot of any poor man harder, or the life of any unhappy woman more sad and bitter, for aught that we have done or left undone?

Is any good inst.i.tution the weaker, or any bad custom more prevalent, for aught that we are deliberately and persistently withholding of help or contributing of harm? If so, if in any one point we are consciously and unrepentingly arrayed against G.o.d's righteous purpose, and the human welfare which is dear to G.o.d; if there is a single point on which we are deliberately setting aside His righteous will, and doing intentional evil to the humblest of His children; then, notwithstanding our high rank on other matters, our lack of the right purpose, at even a single point, makes us guilty of the whole; we are unfit for His kingdom.

Jesus' principle of Love, though for clearness and incisiveness often stated in terms of mere altruism, or regard for others, yet taken in its total context, in the light of His never absent reference to the Father's will and the Kingdom of Heaven, is much deeper and broader than that. It gives each man his place and function in the total beneficent system which is the coming Kingdom of G.o.d, and then treats him not merely as he may wish to be treated, or we may wish to treat him, but as his place and function in that system require.

Mere altruism is often weakly kind, making others feebly dependent on our benefactions instead of st.u.r.dily self-supporting; making others unconsciously egotistic as the result of our superfluous ministrations or uncritical indulgence; and even fostering a subtle egotism in ourselves, as the result of the fatal habit of doing the easy, kind thing rather than the hard, severe thing that is needed to lift them to their highest attainment. A true mother is never half as sentimentally altruistic toward her child as a grandmother or an aunt; she does not hesitate to reprove and correct, when that is what the child needs to suppress the low and lazy, and rouse the higher and stronger self. The just administrator discharges the incompetent and exposes the dishonest employee, not merely because the good of the whole requires it; but because even for the person discharged or exposed, that is better than it would be to allow him to drag out an unprofitable and c.u.mbersome life in tolerated uselessness or countenanced graft.

"Treat both others and yourself as their place and yours in G.o.d's coming Kingdom require;" that is the Golden Rule in its complete form. "All things, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you"

(remembering that both you and they have places and functions in the Father's Kingdom of Love); "even so do ye also unto them: for this is the law and the prophets."

This fulfilment of law is a very different thing from selfishly breaking the law. That such a reformer as Jesus ever took the conservative side of any question seems at first sight so preposterous that most candid critics believe that He never said the words attributed to Him about breaking one of the least of these commandments, or else that He said them in a lost context which would greatly alter their meaning. That, however, is not quite sure. For Love at its best is never rudely iconoclastic. Every good law in its original intent is aimed to lift men out of their sensuality and selfishness into at least an outward conformity to the requirements of social well-being. And however grotesque, fantastic, and superfluous such a law under changed conditions may become, its original intent will always keep it sacred and precious, even after its purpose can be accomplished better without it. To fulfil is not to destroy, or to take delight in destruction.

"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth shall pa.s.s away, one jot or one t.i.ttle shall in no wise pa.s.s away from the law, till all things be accomplished."

At the same time Love is always changing and superseding laws and inst.i.tutions by pressure of adjustment to the changing demands of individual and social well-being. Laws and inst.i.tutions are made for men, rather than men for inst.i.tutions and laws; and the instant an old law ceases to serve a new need in the best possible way, Love erects the better service into a new law or inst.i.tution, superseding the old. Any law that fails to promote the physical, mental, social, and spiritual good of the persons and the community concerned, thereby loses Love's sanction and becomes obsolete. Law for law's sake, rather than for the sake of man and society, is the flat denial of Love. To exalt any tradition, inst.i.tution, custom, or prohibition above the human and social good it has ceased to serve, is to sink to the level of the scribe and Pharisee--the deadliest enemies of Jesus, and all for which He stood. "For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven."

In Love's eyes all anger, contempt, and quarrelsomeness are as bad as murder--indeed are incipient murder, stopped short of overt crime through fear. The look, or word, or deed of unkindness, the thought, or wish, or hope that evil may befall another, even the att.i.tude of cold indifference, is murder in the heart. And it is only because we lack the courage to translate wish into will that in such cases we do not do the thing which, if done without our responsibility, by accident or nature, we should rejoice to see accomplished.

From a strange and unexpected source there has come the confirmation of this New Testament conception of the prevalence, not to say the universality, of murder. A brilliant but grossly perverse English man of letters was sentenced to imprisonment a few years ago for the foulest crime. From the gaol in which he was confined there came a most realistic description of the last days and final execution within its walls of a lieutenant in the British army, who was condemned for killing a woman whom he loved.

The poem has the exaggeration of a perverted and embittered nature; but beneath the exaggeration there is the original truth, which underlies Jesus' identification of murder and hate. After describing the last days of the condemned man, his execution and his burial, the poem concludes as follows:--

"In Reading Gaol by Reading town There is a pit of shame, And in it lies a wretched man Eaten by teeth of flame, In a burning winding sheet he lies And his grave has got no name.

"And there, till Christ call forth the dead, In silence let him lie: No need to waste the foolish tear, Or heave the windy sigh: The man had killed the thing he loved, And so he had to die.

"And all men kill the thing they love, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word: The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword."

Charge up against ourselves as murder the bitter looks, the hateful words, the unkind thoughts, the selfish actions, which have lessened the vitality, diminished the joy, wounded the heart, and murdered the happiness of those whom we ought to love, whom perhaps at times we think we do love, and who can profess to be guiltless?

The harboured grudge, the unrepented injury, the offence for which we have not begged pardon, the employer's refusal to "recognise" his employees or their representatives, and treat with them on fair and equal terms, the workman's cultivated att.i.tude of hostility to his employer, are all such flagrant violations of Love that acts of formal piety or public wors.h.i.+p on the part of a person who harbours such feelings are an affront.

Controversies, lawsuits, industrial or political warfare in mere pride of opinion, cla.s.s prejudice, or greed of gain, without first making every effort to respect the rights and protect the interests of the other party and so bring about a reconciliation, are all violations of Love and doom the person who is guilty of them to dwell in the narrow prison-house of a hard and hateful secularity, where the last farthing of exacted penalty must be paid, and hate is lord of life. "Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the h.e.l.l of fire. If, therefore, thou art offering thy gift at the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art with him in the way; lest haply the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou have paid the last farthing."

Marriage to the Christian is an infinitely higher and holier estate than it could have been to any of the earlier schools. It is an opportunity to share with another person the creative prerogative of G.o.d. It brings opportunity for Love enhanced by the highest of complementary differences, under circ.u.mstances of tenderest intimacy, with the requirement of lifelong constancy.

From Love's point of view any lack of tender reverence for the person of another, whether in or out of marriage sinks man to the plane of the brute. Not that the normal exercise of any appet.i.te or pa.s.sion is base or evil in itself. All are holy, pure, divine, when Love through them a.s.sumes the lifelong responsibilities they involve. All that falls short of such tender reverence and permanent responsibility is l.u.s.t. Jesus established chast.i.ty on the broad, rational basis of respect for the dignity of woman and the sanct.i.ty of s.e.x. The logic of His teaching on this point is to place chast.i.ty on the eternal rock foundation of treating another only as Love and a true regard for the other's permanent welfare will warrant. In other words, Jesus permits no man to even wish to treat any woman as he would be unwilling another man should treat his own mother, sister, wife, or daughter. For, from His standpoint, all women are our sisters, daughters of the most high G.o.d.

This standard is searching and severe, no doubt; but it is reasonable and right. There is not a particle of asceticism about it. And the man who violates it is not merely departing a little from the beaten path of approved conventionalities. He is doing a cruel, wanton wrong. He is doing to another what he would bitterly resent if done to one whom he held dear. And what right has any man to hold any woman cheap, a mere means of his selfish gratification, and not an object of his protection, and reverence, and chivalrous regard? The worst mark of uneliminated brutality and barbarism which the civilised world is carrying over into the twentieth century, to curse and blacken and pollute and embitter human life for a few generations more, is this indifference to the Spirit of Love, as it applies at this crucial point.

To destroy a wife's health, to purchase a moment's pleasure at the cost of a woman's lasting degradation, or to partic.i.p.ate in practices which doom a whole cla.s.s of wretched women to short-lived disease and shame, and early and dishonoured death (a recent reliable report estimates the cost of lives from this cause alone in a single city as 5000 a year) is so gross and wanton a perversion of manhood, that in comparison it would be better not to be a man at all.

All the devices for gratifying s.e.xual pa.s.sions without the a.s.sumption of permanent responsibilities, such as seduction, prost.i.tution, and the keeping of mistresses, Christianity brands as the desecration of G.o.d's holiest temple, the human body, and the wanton wounding of His most sensitive creation,--woman's heart. The Greeks placed little restriction on man's pa.s.sions beyond such as was necessary to maintain sufficient physical health and mental vigour to perform his duties as a citizen in peace and in war. If the individual is complete in himself, with no G.o.d above who cares, no Christ who would be grieved, no Spirit of Love to reproach, no rights of universal brotherhood and sisterhood to be sensitively respected and chivalrously maintained, then indeed it is impossible to make out a valid claim for severer control in these matters than Plato and Aristotle advocate. If there are persons in the world who are practically slaves, persons who have no claim on our consideration, then licentiousness and prost.i.tution are logical and legitimate expressions of human nature and inevitable accompaniments of human society. Christianity, however, has freed the slave in a deeper and higher sense than the world has yet realised. Christianity does not permit any one who calls himself a Christian to leave any man or woman outside the pale of that consideration which makes this other person's dignity, and interest, and welfare as precious and sacred to him as his own. Obviously all loose and temporary s.e.xual connections involve such degradation, shame, and sorrow to the woman involved, that no one who holds her character, and happiness, and lasting welfare dear to him can will for her these woful consequences. One cannot at the same time be a friend of the kindly, generous, sympathetic Christ and treat a woman in that way. It is for this reason, not on cold, ascetic grounds, that Christianity limits s.e.xual relations to the monogamous family; for there only are the consequences to all concerned such as one can choose for another whom he really loves. If Christianity, at these and other vital points, asks man to give up things which Plato and Aristotle permit, it is not that the Christian is narrower or more ascetic than they; it is because Christianity has introduced a Love so much higher, and deeper, and broader than anything of which the profoundest Greeks had dreamed, that it has made what was permissible to their hard hearts forever impossible for all the more sensitive souls in whom the Love of Christ has come to dwell.

"Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to l.u.s.t after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into h.e.l.l. And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into h.e.l.l."

Divorce is a confession of failure in Love's supreme undertaking. No two Christians, who have caught and kept alive the Spirit of Love in the married state, ever were or ever will be, ever wished to be or ever can be, divorced. No one Christian who has the true Christian Spirit of Love toward husband or wife will ever seek divorce unless it be under such circ.u.mstances of infidelity or brutality, neglect or cruelty, as render the continuance of the relation a fruitless casting of the pearls of affection before the swinishness of sensuality. The determination of the grounds on which divorce shall be granted belongs to the sphere of the state, and is a problem of social self-protection. The Christian church makes a serious mistake when it spends its energies in trying to build up legal barriers against divorce. Its real mission at this point is to build up in the hearts of its adherents the Spirit of Love which will make marriage so sweet and sacred that those who once enter it will find, as all true Christians do find, divorce intolerable between two Christians; and tolerable even for one Christian only as a last resort against hopeless and useless degradation. To translate Christ's Spirit into the life of the family is a much more Christian thing to do than to attempt to enact this or that somewhat general and enigmatical answer of His into civil law. It is generally a mistake, a departure from the Spirit of the Master, when the Christian community as such turns from its specific task of positive upbuilding of personality to the legal prohibition of the things that are contrary to the Christian Spirit.

Laws and prohibitions, statutes and penalties against drunkenness, Sabbath-breaking, theft, murder, gambling, and divorce, we must have.