Part 19

Let us now cast a glance on that most characteristic and most widely bruited of all the Christian virtues, viz., LOVE; which under the name of Charity (not Ἔρως, the old satellite of Venus, but ἀγάπη), St. Paul in a famous chapter eulogizes as at once the crown and the epitome of all virtues most peculiarly Christian. We read also that “Love is the fulfilling of the law;” and a watchword so deliberately chosen and so emphatically sounded must always be pregnant with significance as to the moral character and efficiency of the religion to which it belongs. Now the plain significance which this blazon bears on the face of it is this, that if Love be the blossom of all virtue, the root of all vice is the opposite of Love, viz., Selfishness. And whosoever has looked into the moral world with any faculty of generalizing, will not fail to have observed that every form of vice is only a diverse manifestation of that untempered, voracious, and altogether monstrous egotism, which, in order to purchase for itself a slight advantage or a momentary titillation, would not scruple to plunge a whole universe into disorder and ruin; while, on the other hand, the virtuous man lives as much by sympathy with the desires of others as by the gratification of his own, and is ready at any moment to dash the bowl of blessedness from his lips, if he must purchase it by the consignment to misery of a singly human soul. And if we look at the lower organism of society, we shall find, that as in the republic of science knowledge prospers exactly in proportion as {221} the pure love of truth prevails, so in communities of human beings, the measure of the amount of that brotherly love which man feels to man, taken in its intensity and in its diffusion, furnishes an exact test of the amount of moral excellence and consequent happiness--as distinguished from mere material prosperity--which is found in any place. The greatest difficulties, indeed, which society has to encounter, spring fundamentally from a deficiency of brotherly love,--from every grade of carelessness, indifference, and coldness, down to niggardliness, shabbiness, and the wretched mania of hoarding jealously what he who hoards is afraid to use. Poor-laws, for instance, which are generally looked upon as a necessary evil, exist only because those social associations to which the administration of charity naturally belongs, viz., in a Christian country the Christian churches, are not powerful or zealous enough adequately to do their duty in relieving human misery; that is to say, because Love, which is professedly the soul of those associations, is either not intense enough where it exists, or not sufficiently diffused, to provide the necessary aid; and thus people are driven to supply the want of voluntary love in the community by the exaction of compulsory rates, which may, indeed, save a few individuals from starvation, but which certainly produce the double evil of weakening the healthy habit of self-support through all classes of the community, and of stopping the fountain-heads of that natural flow of brotherly aid, which is a virtue only so long as it is voluntary. Now to this selfishness, which may without exaggeration be termed the endemic taint of all human associations, Christianity has applied the antidote of Love, in the {222} triple form of love to Christ, love to the brethren, and love to the human race;--love to Christ as the incarnate type of unselfish benevolence and noble self-sacrifice; love to the brethren as fellow-soldiers in the same glorious human campaign; love to all men, as sheep of one common fold, which the further they have strayed the more diligently they are to be sought for. How much more intensely and extensively than in any other association this Love has operated in the Christian churches, from the days of Dorcas and her weeping widows down to Florence Nightingale and her Crimean campaign, need not be told; nine-tenths of the most active benevolence of the day in this country are Christian in their origin and in their character; and even those persons the favourite watchwords of whose social ethics are borrowed not from Christ but from Epicurus, will be found to have added a strange grace to the philosophy which they profess by a light borrowed from the religion which they disown. And if we inquire what are the causes of this superior prominence given to active benevolence in the Christian scheme of ethics, we shall find, as in other instances, that the peculiar character of the ethical fruit depends on the root of religion by which the plant is nourished, and the theological soil in which it was planted. For surely it requires very little thought to perceive that the root of all that surpassing love of the human brotherhood lies in the well-known opening words of the most catholic of prayers--“_Our_ FATHER _which art in Heaven;_” the aspect also of sin as a contumacy and a rebellion, and a guilt drawing down a curse, necessarily led to a more aggressive philanthropy, with the view {223} of achieving deliverance from that curse; but, above all, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the terrible consequences necessarily involved in the idea of an eternal banishment from the sunshine of the Divine presence, has created an amount of social benevolence and missionary zeal which under any less potent stimulus would have been impossible. The miseries of the more neglected and outcast part of humanity present an entirely different aspect to the calm Epicurean and to the zealous Christian. To the Christian the soul of the meanest savage and of the most degraded criminal is still an immortal soul. As when a conflagration bursts out in a high turret, where a little child is sleeping within the near enswathment of the flames, some adventurous fireman boldly climbs the ladder, and rushing through the suffocating smoke, snatches the little innocent from the embrace of destruction; so the Christian apostle flings himself into the eager host of idolatrous worshippers, and rejoices with exceeding joy when he saves if it were but one poor soul from the jaws of the destroying Siva to whom he was sold. But, as men’s actions are the offspring of their convictions, the Epicurean will find no spur strong enough to shake him out of his easy-chair at such a spectacle of human degradation. Let the poor sinner be worshipping Siva on the banks of the Ganges, or committing slow suicide by what, in the language of the Celtic islands, is strangely called the water of life,[223.1] your easy sensuous philosopher needs not vex himself about the matter. _Poor idiot! poor sot! poor devil! with his little feeble flame of smoky light which he calls life, let him flicker on another moment, or let him be_ {224} _snuffed out, it matters not; another bubble has burst on the surface of the waters, and the mighty ocean of cosmic vitality flows on as full and as free and as fathomless as before!_

In the estimation of Christian love one of the most interesting points is its strongly pronounced contrast with what has been called Platonic love. As for that which is commonly called love in novels and in life, though capable of affording a very exquisite bliss in its little season, it is a matter with which mere puberty and the bloom of physical life has so much to do, that except in the way of regulation (which is anything but an easy matter), it does not come under the category of morals at all; only this general remark may be made with regard to it, that in all well-conditioned human beings it springs originally from a certain affinity of souls shining through the body, as much as from the mere attractions of physical beauty; and in so far as this is the case, the purely physical instinct is elevated into the sphere of genuine Platonic love. Now, what is Platonic love? As described by the great philosopher of Idealism in the _Phædrus_, its root lies plainly in the rapturous admiration of excellence, and its consummation in the metamorphosis of the admirer into the perfect likeness of that which he admires; whereas Christian love, most characteristically so called, has its root in an infinite depth of divine tenderness, and for its fruit broad streams of human pity and grand deeds of human kindness. Platonic love is more contemplative and artistic; Christian love more practical and more fruitful; the one is the luxury of an intellectual imagination, the other the appetite of a moral enthusiasm.

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It would be doing injustice to Christian love, however, to suppose that it has nothing at all in common with intellectual admiration, and that its only spring of movement is pity. “Visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction,” though in our present imperfect state the most characteristic, is not absolutely the most essential, feature in its exercise. If it were so, indeed, the Christian would never be comfortable except in the midst of misery; as a nurse can ply her vocation only at the bed of the sick or the wounded. But in fact his infinite tenderness for the lost sinner is produced and heightened by his experience of joy from communion with saints; and the contemplation and imitation of the image of moral perfection in the person of the great Captain of his salvation sustains him in his unwearied and often apparently hopeless endeavours to gather in recruits to serve under that so glorious captainship. We shall therefore justly say that without a Platonic love, that is, a fine spiritual passion for the character and person of Christ, the performance of the thousand and one works of social charity and mercy for which the Christian is so famous would be impossible. But we may say further, that the picture of Charity given in that wonderful chapter of St. Paul is very far from confining the sphere of Christian human-heartedness to that field of healing and of comforting in which so many charitable institutions in all Christian countries are the watch-towers. His picture evidently exhibits the ideal of a human being, not merely in the habit of lifting the fallen, healing the sick, and ministering, as the good Samaritan did, to those who may have fallen into the hand of robbers--these are extraordinary {226} occurrences, which will excite even the most sluggish to extraordinary demonstrations of human sympathy,--but the apostle of the Gentiles will have it that in our daily intercourse with our fellow-men we learn to live their lives sympathetically as intimately and as completely as we live our own; that we study on all occasions to identify ourselves with their position and feelings and interests, and then only pass a judgment on their conduct. “_Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things_.” What a problem is here, what a lesson of humanity, of catholicity, and of something far more human than that mere toleration, which the nations of Christendom have taken now nearly two thousand years to learn, since the first preaching of the gospel, and are scarcely learning even now! How much of our daily judgments, spoken and printed, seems leavened in any degree by the genuine humanity and manifest justice of this divine ideal? “Speaking the truth in love” is the acknowledged law of Christian intercourse; speaking lies in hatred were often a more appropriate text for certain large sections of British practice. We ought to pass judgment against our brother on our knees, fearful to offend; we do it rather, not seldom with pride and insolence and impertinence, mounted on the triumphal car of our own conceit, riding rough-shod over the real or imagined faults of our brother. So far does the ideal of Christian love, in the preaching of the {227} Christian apostle, transcend its reality in the lives of men who, if not Christians, at least breathe a Christian atmosphere, and ought to have received some benefit from the inhalation!

FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES is one of the special fruits of Christian charity, which has never been denied its due meed of acknowledgment, though not unaccompanied sometimes with the sarcastic observation that the pious zeal of Christian men has generally been more apt to flame into hatred than their love to blossom into forgiveness. No man has yet been able to say of Christians generally, as one may often have remarked justly of Quaker ladies, that they have too much milk in their blood; nor do British and French and German wars seem to have abated very much in intensity for the want of a Christian text saying--_Thou shalt love thy friends and hate thine enemies!_ Perhaps, also, some scholar may be able to string together from the pages of rare old Plutarch a longer chain of pretty specimens of lofty forgiveness of enemies than can readily be picked from modern Christian biographies. In the life of Pericles, by that mellow old Bœotian, I remember to have read that on one occasion this great statesman had to endure for a whole day in the agora a succession of impertinent and irritating attacks from one of those waspish little creatures who love to infest the presence of goodness; and he endured it with such untroubled composure that, without taking the slightest notice of his assailant, he executed quietly some incidental matters of business, whose urgency demanded immediate attention. In the evening the orator returned to his house, still pursued by the gibes and scurrilities of his spiteful {228} little adversary. But the great man remained unmoved; and as he entered his own gate, quietly said to the janitor--_Take a lamp and show that gentleman back to his home!_ A similar but more serious instance of large-minded forgiveness of enemies is recorded by the same author in his life of Dion, the noble Syracusan who about the middle of the fourth century before Christ made a brilliant dash upon Sicily, similar to that which in the middle of the last century Prince Charles Edward Stuart made upon Great Britain, with this difference, that while the one succeeded gloriously in his well-calculated enterprise, the other with his mock-sublime rashness ludicrously failed. This Dion, after having planted himself on the seat of power abandoned by the worthless usurper, found the cause of constitutional order, of which he was the champion, suddenly endangered by the intrigues of an ambitious demagogue called Heracleides; but his plots were timeously discovered, and political wisdom sealed to call upon the representative of public order to prevent the recurrence of such dangerous dissensions by the death of the conspirator. But the generosity of the disciple of Plato prevailed over the severity that would have guided a common politician. Dion forgave the offender; only, however, as it soon appeared, that the fox chased out of the hole might begin to burrow in another. In this case the Syracusan Platonist behaved like a modern Quaker--nobly as concerned the sentiment of the man, foolishly considering his position as a statesman; but while no sensible man might improve of such conduct in a ruler, every man feels that the heathen here performed an act of which, so far as motive is concerned, {229} the most accomplished Christian might be proud. Let the Greeks and Romans therefore have their praise in this matter; let “seekers after God” in heathen times be put forward prominently as ensamples to those who in Christian times rejoice to think that they have found Him;[229.1] nor let sympathy be refused to noble deeds because performed from somewhat different motives. The great heathen forgave his enemies because he was too high-minded to allow himself to be discomposed by petty assailants, and because a great indignation seems wasted upon a paltry offence; the true Christian forgives his enemies because he loves them too fervidly to have any room for hatred, and because his sidling pity overwhelms his wrath. There is no sin in the magnanimous pride of the heathen; there is more humanity in the quick sympathy of the Christian. Anyhow, Christianity may claim this peculiar merit, that it has set up that type of conduct as a general law for every man, which among the ancients was admired as the exceptive virtue of the few; and Voltaire certainly revealed one source of his uncompromising hostility to the Christian faith, and showed himself as far below the ideal of heathen as of Christian magnanimity, when he acted so that one of his most illustrious disciples could say of him that “he never forgives, and never thinks any enemy beneath his notice.”[229.2]

One of the most interesting of the contrasts generally drawn between Christian and heathen ethics, is that which concerns the very difficult virtue of SELF-ESTIMATE. “Let every man,” says St. Paul, {230} “strive not to think of himself beyond what he ought to think, but soberly, according as God has divided to every man the measure of faith.” And accordingly we find that in the lives of eminent Christians, as well as in formal treatises on Christian ethics, humility has always had a prominent place assigned to it in the roll of the virtues. But here again we must beware of running into a vulgar extreme, by imagining that the Greeks and Romans knew nothing of this virtue, and that they systematically fostered pride and self-importance. It is no doubt true, as every schoolboy knows, that the word ταπεινός, which in classical Greek signifies _mean_ and _paltry_, in New Testament Greek is used to designate that sort of person who thinks of himself modestly, or, as St. Paul in the verse quoted says, “soberly;” but the mere change in the shade of colour belonging to certain words when passing from Attic into Alexandrian Greek, proves nothing in such a case; and if the matter is to be settled by words, the phrase σωφρονεῖν used by St. Paul, taking the place of the ταπεινοφροσύνη of other passages, is the very word by which the Greek moralists constantly express that golden mean between a high and a low estimate of self, which Aristotle their spokesman lauds as the habitual tone of the perfectly virtuous man. So far indeed was the Hellenic mind from recognising no sin in pride, that it looked upon self-exaltation and ramping self-assertion in every form as not only a great sin, but the mother of all sins. This sin they designated by the significant term ὕβρις--a word which etymologically signifies _beyond the mark_, and which, if it had not already existed, might well have been coined by {231} Aristotle, had he been given, like Bentham, to the pedantry of making a language for himself.

“Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.”