The Basis Of Christian Love
IX.
THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN LOVE.
THe stage of the Christian life at which we have now arrived may be called the flower of New
Testament morality.
That morality, as we have seen, is essentially an evolution; it begins in a tiny germ, in a single act of faith ; and thence, in everwidening circles, it spreads from within to without.
Its final stage, to which we have now come, is love.
It is described by St. Paul as the most excellent of all ways, and is honoured by him with one of the most eloquent eulociums in the whole range of sacred literature—the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians.
We intend to take this chapter as the basis of our present inquiry.
Our object is to discover the distinctive nature of Christian love—that which separates the Christian idea of love from all other ideas of it.
How can we better achieve that object than by consulting the testimony of a document, beyond all question genuine, which offers a direct description. of Christian love from the experience of one contemporaneous with the birth of Christianity ? If any man was qualified to speak
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on such a subject, it was Paul.
His was no onesided mind.
He had seen all the sides of the question, and had been impressed by each in turn.
He had passed through the experience of the Jew; he had felt the influence of the Gentile; he professed himself indebted both to the civilised and to the barbarian.
He had studied many minds, and he had seen some good in them all.
When he broke out into an eulogium on the beauty of Christian love, he spoke from a standpoint of comparison.
He knew in what respects it was like, and in what unlike, the love of surrounding religions.
His description is therefore above all measure valuable : it is the voice of a witness on the spot, the testimony of an actor in the scene.
And the result of this comparison is that Paul is willing to peril the question of Christianity's religious permanence on the distinctive character of its final stage of moral evolution.
It is in the nature of the conception it has formed of love that he finds the surest guarantee for its absolute dominion and its endless duration.
He sees in Christianity itself something which is essential, and something which is only accidental.
He is not blind to the fact that even in this religion there are elements whose functions are only temporary, and which in due season are destined to pass away.
'' Whether there be prophecies," he says, "they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it
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shall vanish away."
Nay; he would even seem to go further still.
He appears to imply that all forms of merely intellectual activity are of necessity fleeting and changeful, and that the only absolute, unfleeting, changeless element in our nature is morality in the form of love.
'" We know in part, and we prophecy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part is done away."
It is a great mistake to imagine that by "that which is perfect" he means a future state of existence.
He means Christian love, in whatever state of existence it may be found, present or future.
What he designs to say is this: All mere systems of thought are, by their very nature, evanescent.
None of them, nor all of them united, can express the whole truth; they can, at best, reveal only part of the ways of God, and God is more than they.
But love is not a part of the ways of God; it is His essence; it is His Spirit; it is Himself.
To reveal love is to reveal God; and the moment that revelation comes, we find that all previous revelations were but poor and inadequate expressions, mere fragments of the true.
We are ushered into an atmosphere where the old measurements no longer apply, where the old language is no longer suitable.
We are made aware that feeling is larger than thought. We learn that there is a religion of the heart which can remain unaffected by the transmutations of its intellectual forms, and which, in a single breath of its aspira-
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tion, can express more than has been uttered by all the intellectual forms united—a religion which develops not with the future, and fades not with the past; but which, in the freshness of eternal youth, is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ;
"love never faileth."
Paul, then, regards the Christian conception of Jove as that element in Christianity which is eternal and immutable.
It is worth while to inquire— What is this conception of love?
The greater number of religions have, in words at least, recognised some form of love; but in Christianity alone has the form of love survived the decay of the intellectual form.
Why is this?
Men who do not agree on a single article of faith are found to glory in the common name of Christian, and to glory in that name by reason of a special phase of moral life which the possession of Christianity involves.
What is that phase of moral life? and where lies its speciality?
We may be sure that its special feature is that which constitutes its power.
If we would understand this power, we must try to see wherein the idea of love as revealed in Christianity differs from the idea of love as manifested in other faiths.
If in doing so we should cast our eye on oround already traversed, it must be remembered that such a process is not of necessity a repetition.
When seen from the top of the hill, the old ground has a different aspect from that which it presented in the act of climbing.
When that which is per-
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fect is come, that which is in part loses its partial character.
In the second chapter of this book, we pointed out that Judaism differs from Christianity, not in the extent, but in the quality of its love.
We showed that the Jew was not only willing but eager to embrace the stranger within his fold.
He wanted to love all the world, but he insisted that, in the first instance, all the world should love him
—should agree with that system of doctrine which he held to be the only truth.
The Jewish condition of love was equality of mind, union of sentiment, participation in a common ritual; outside of this there was recognised no room for fellowship.
We have now to observe, however, that the statement we have made concerning the Jew is equally applicable to all pre-Christian religions in which the sentiment of love is found at all.
The demand for an equality of standpoint as the basis of a mutual love is by no means peculiar to Judaism; it is only more conspicuous in Judaism from its historical contact with Christianity.
Take, for example, the vast circle of Indian religions, and what do we find?
We see immense communities of men united by a tie of brotherhood, but what is the ground of that brotherhood?
It is caste—the common possession of a particular social status.
The man who loses caste, who, as we should say in modern times, becomes an outcast, is thereby separated from the circle of earthly brotherhood.
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may be thought, it for a Jong time was thought, that Buddhism forms a grand exception to this rule.
It is a popular opinion that the Buddhist had for his direct mission the abolition of caste.
As Professor Kuenen, however, has pointed out, this is a grand mistake.* In point of fact, the Buddhist never did look upon himself as a revolutionary ; he would have said at all times that he came not to destroy but to fulfil.
He did not view himself as a man who came to overturn the traditions of his fathers; he was, in his own eyes at least, an orthodox disciple of Brahmanism in all that related to the present world.
What distinguished him from the Brahman was his larger hope —hope for altered conditions outside the present world.
He wanted caste to be abolished so far as to give to all an equal chance of salvation, 2.¢., of admission into the Nirvana, Buddhism was at hest, however, only a prospective brotherhood.
It was the promise of a common share in things not belonging to the earth, but it guaranteed no community of earthly possessions.
In all temporal concerns the principle of caste remained.
The spirit of brotherhood was only theoretical and ideal ; it had not learned to penetrate the institutions of the secular life.
The same may be said of the state religion of China.
There is much in the doctrine of Confucius * See the chapter on Buddhism in his Hibbert Lectures; " National
Religions and Universal Religions."
1882.
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which suggests the idea of brotherhood, but it is still the brotherhood of a caste.
It is no longer, indeed, as with Brahman and Buddhist, the caste of a family, but it is the caste of a nation.
It does not occur to the Chinaman that there is a world beyond the portals of his native soil; and if the thought of such a world did occur to him, he would treat it with contempt.
With him the Empire is the world.
All his legislation, moral and political, is made on the supposition that the Chinese form of civilisation is the only perfect form.
So far as Confucian morality ever reached the standard of love, so far as it ever succeeded in rising above the influence of utilitarian motives, it only attained a brotherhood commensurate with its national limits.
Its love was determined by the caste of a common patriotism; it was confined to the children of the great Celestial Empire.
Outside the walls of that Empire was the Chaos—the world without form and void, for which no legislation as yet was possible; it would only become an object for love when it had become a subject of the Chinese commonwealth.
Passing now to the Western world, and especially to that portion of it whose philosophic era was contemporaneous with the dawn of Christianity, we find that the only two systems which challenge comparison with the principle of love in the new faith are the doctrines of the Stoic and the Platonist: the Epicurean may be left out of account, as his
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principle is that of se/flove.
Let us begin, then, with the Stoic.
We have pointed out in our opening chapter that Stoicism was by no means a negative creed; it really did contemplate the benefit of mankind.
The peculiarity of Stoicism as a positive creed lay in the nature of that benefit which it wished to confer.
It sought not so much the happiness as the dignity of man.
It looked upon man outside its own system as a very undignified beine—a being not to be loved, but despised.
It saw him driven about with every wind of fortune, uplifted by the sunbeam and depressed by the shade; and it was unable either in the one case to congratulate, or in the other to condole.
The Stoic pitied man for a state of mind which could lead to either of these experiences ; but his pity was akin to contempt.
He despised a human being who allowed himself to be overjoyed at fortune's smile, or sad at fortune's frown ; and he sought to raise him up to his own standard
—one of indifference to the lot of life.
But the point for us is that until the process of raising was complete there was no brotherhood.
The fellowship of Stoicism is a fellowship within the sect.
Those who meet together in the Porch are the men who have reached a common feeling—shall we not rather say a common want of feeling.
It is again a brotherhood constituted by caste, only the caste is not one of birth nor of nationality, but one that has its ground in an unity of philosophic sentiment.
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a Mt The Stoic was in philosophy what the Jew was in religion—an advocate for mental uniformity.
He too wanted to save all men and to call them brethren; he too refused to call them brethren until they had been saved.
The most which an outlying humanity could claim from him was the promise of a love to come and a brotherhood to come; there was no room for a Stoic's sympathy beyond the limits of the Stoic faith.
When we turn to Platonism, we find a similar limit to the power of love.
Platonism professes to deal with that which is essential, and not accidental, in the nature of man, and therefore we should expect that here, if anywhere, we should be brought into contact with an universal love.
But the truth is, aS we have indicated in our opening chapter, it is the very universalism of the Platonic creed that here constitutes its weakness.
It tells man to love in man only his abstract ideas— those elements which he shares in common with the Mind of the Universe.
It bids him not to love the man but his manhood ; not the person but his personality ; not the mind but its qualities.
It makes the physical life an accident, a shadow, a dream, and against the wants of that life it seals its sympathy.
It abstracts from the domain of love at least one half of human nature, and that the most indigent half.
Itis in our lower nature that we are most dependent.
Our intellectual wants may carry with them a sense of pain, but it is a pain which itself
life
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carries the joy of a revelation, the testimony that our present powers do not exhaust the possibilities of our being.
But the wants of common life bear with them no prophecy ; they speak only of defect and weakness.
In hunger and thirst, in war and pestilence, in dangers of the land and perils of the sea, man feels himself in the truest sense to be a dependent being ; it is here that specially he needs the humanity of his brother man.
Yet, if the Platonic view be correct, it is here that specially the humanity of man is denied.
In this creed there is no provision for the lower life, nor for the wants of the lower life.
Love, whether it be divine or human, is limited to the sphere of the intellect, and it cannot be exercised on that which is suggestive only of defect.
It is concerned with ideas but not with sensations.
Sensations are but fleeting and transitory; therefore they are not divine, and not worthy of love.
Privation, poverty, pain, weariness, are but shadows, and because they are but shadows they cannot waken any pity which is akin to immortal love.
Love must have for its object something endowed with its own immortality, and it must find it, not in fugitive Feeling, but in permanent Thought.
Now, we do not criticise this theory ; our object here is not criticism, but comparison.
All we have to say is that this Platonic love, be it false or true, does not in any material sense differ from the form of love assumed by other faiths and philosophies
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iH of the pre-Christian world.
It does not really transcend the limits of caste.
It is just as circumscribed in its horizon as is the religion of the Brahman or the creed of the Stoic.
Unlike the Pauline charity, it is a love that "seeketh her own," that will only be united to those who are already in harmony with herself.
For this brings us back to the passage we selected as the basis of our present inquiry.
If we examine the descriptions of Christian love in 1 Corinthians xlli., we shall find that there is one aspect in which it differs from all the other views here enumerated.
In all these, as we have scen, the duty of love was limited to men of the same caste.
The caste in some cases was physical; in others intellectual, and in others moral; but making allowance for this diversity, the principle was the same—a principle of exclusiveness.
In this chapter of St. Paul, however, we have a love whose essential nature is power to pass outside the favoured circle.
The distinctive power of the love depicted by St. Paul is a power to seek for objects and to lavish itself upon objects which are at present unworthy of it, and which it knows to be so.
In truth, our English word charity, in its common use, however bad it may be as a translation of St. Paul's Greek, is in our opinion a thoroughly good rendering of his meaning.
Charity, in its common English sense, means generosity to those in need, whether the need be bodily or spiritual: in either case the idea
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of need is present.
We never speak of being charitable to our father or mother considered as such; we profess to love them.
But if our father or mother should sacrifice toward us the parental relation, if they should seem to act in a manner unbecoming a parent, and if in spite of that fact we should make such allowances for them as should enable us to love them still, we should be said to exercise charity.
Charity always imples a bending down, a stooping from the height of our own caste.
There is in it an element of resistance to the self-nature of a man, something which prompts him to do what another part of his nature would bid him refrain from doing.. Take this chapter of St. Paul, and you will find at every line of his description that he regards Christian love as a love that can exist in spite of temptations to lovelessness.
It is a love which makes its way through barriers, a love which manifests itself in struggle.
It " suffers long," "is not easily provoked," " envies not," "doth not behave itself unseemly," "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."
It 'never faileth," not even when prophecies fail and tongues cease and knowledge vanishes away; it has in it the power to persist through all changes.
In every one of these statements there is contained the same common idea—love batthng against difficulties.
It is no longer the Stoic embracing the followers of Stoicism, or the Platonist communing with the
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disciples of Plato, or the Brahman enfolding the men of his own caste.
It is the spirit of a human brotherhood grounded on the fact of humanity and disregarding every other fact.
It is a religion passing by the power of love outside the gates of its own circle and its own creed in order to claim a fellowship, a kindred with a circle and a creed not its own.
It does not merely look forward to claim such a fellowship in the future; it claims it now.
It asserts the fact of a present brotherhood with the whole race of man—a brotherhood which exists by reason of humanity and irrespective of all beside.
It loves, therefore, in spite of difference of sentiment, in defiance even of contradictions against itself; the spirit of Christian love is a spirit of charity.
It will be seen from all this that the Christian idea of love carries in the very heart of it an element of sacrifice.
It cannot be said that the love of the Brahman or the love of the Stoic is sacrificial; in neither of these cases does the man in loving his brother man pass beyond the circle of his own opinions—the man whom he acknowledges to be a brother must himself be a Brahman ora Stoic.
It would not, indeed, be far amiss to say that all preChristian brotherhood is a form of self-love.
What a man sees in the object of his brotherly affection is, aS it were, his own qualities reflected in a looking-glass.
He is pleased with another because he is the shadow of his own soul.
As long as that
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other is not his shadow he is nothing to him; he may be an object of pity, but he is not a subject for brotherhood.
In all this there is no sacrifice.
The man does not give up anything in order to love.
'The pleasure of love is to him the pleasure of having a mirror wherein he can see and approve—himeelf,
Far different is it with Christianity ; there the foremost thought is brotherhood.
Man looks out upon the world, and sees it lying in wickedness.
He does not, however, say, If I could only lift the world out of its wickedness, then would I claim brotherhood with it.
What he says in the Christian system is this: This world has gone all astray, but itis my brother.
I have not one opinion in common with it, but I owe it my love; I love it because it is human, and I am human.
I am anery with it on account of its impurity, and I am sorely tempted to recall my love, but love is stronger than I.
It forces me to stoop from my own purity into contact with the world's impurity; atits bidding
I have to leave my caste and to come down; my luve is older than my caste, and it conquers it.
Now, in all this we have the root of the idea of sacrifice—the passage out of self-life into the life of others.
It is often said that sacrifice is the manifestation of Christian love ; it would be more correct to say that Christian love is the fruit of the spirit of Christian sacrifice.
The element of sacrifice here lies deeper than the act; it lies in the thought, in the feeling ; it lies in the very power to extend our
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wae) sympathy beyond the limits of our caste, to give play to our hearts in a region which is not their own, to feel an interest in objects which are foreign to the soil of our being.
That is the reason why Christ Himself begins His moral teaching by the proclamation of sacrifice.
We might have expected it to have been otherwise.
It seems at first view a strange thing that He should not at the outset have altogether hid the form of the cross, that in promising the advent of a kingdom of glory
He should have coupled with the promise the condition that man should be poor in spirit and meekly self-restraining.
Why does He not conceal the condition of sacrifice until the initial stage is past ?
The reason is plain.
It is because the initial stage itself is one of sacrifice.
It is quite true, indeed, as we have said, that men were brought at first to Christianity by motives of worldly advantage.
But to be brought to Christianity is one thing—to embrace it is a very different thing.
In order to learn what it was, they had to be driven to it by something other than itself, but the moment they came near to it they saw that it must be accepted or rejected for itself alone.
And the object to be accepted or rejected was a sacrifice.
The instant Christianity revealed itself, it revealed itself as a sacrificial life.
It was not merely sacrificial in its consummation ; it was so, nay, most of all so, in its beginning.
It was here that the old love flashed into antagonism with the new.
Not only was the M
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way narrow; the very gate which led to it was strait.
The new love demanded a renouncement of the old self; it demanded it not as a pledge to be redeemed at the end of the way, but as the very condition of entering the gate.
Sacrifice itself was the gate, therefore love alone could enter in.
It will be seen from this that Christian love is a sign of power.
It is in the highest sense a spiritual force whose function is movement and struggle.
It comes not to send peace, but a sword —and not peace, but a sword does it receive.
We have seen that 1 Corinthians xi. is a record of love's struggles, and it is on that account a description of love's powers.
What are these powers?
In what direction lies the strength of that energy which has proved so mighty to the pulling down of unspiritual strongholds?
The answer to that question will be the subject of our next chapter.