Chapter 6
Now, this was the vary last kind of message that the Pharisees of Christ's day were looking for. They wanted the world put right--according to their own ideas of right--it is true; but to be told that they must begin with themselves was not at all what they wanted. Are not many of us in the same case to-day? We are all eager for reforms, at least so long as they are from without. We have a touching faith in the power of machinery and organization. We are quite sure that if Parliament would only pass this, that, and the other bit of legislative reform, on which our hearts are set, the millennium would be here, if not by the morning post, at least by the session's end. And there is much, undoubtedly, that Parliament can and ought to do for us. Nevertheless, was not Christ right? Instead of the old prayer, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me," some of us, as one writer says, would rather pray, "Create a better social order, O God; and renew a right relation between various classes of men." We are ready to begin anywhere rather than with ourselves, at any point in the big circumference rather than at the centre. "I don't deny, my friends," wrote Charles Kingsley to the Chartists, "it is much cheaper and pleasanter to be reformed by the devil than by God; for God will only reform society on the condition of our reforming every man his own self, while the devil is quite ready to help us to mend the laws and the Parliament, earth and heaven, without ever starting such an impertinent and 'personal' request as that a man should mend himself." Yet without self-reform nothing is possible. "The character of the aggregate," says Herbert Spencer, "is determined by the characters of the units." And he illustrates thus: Suppose a man building with good, square, well-burnt bricks; without the use of mortar he may build a wall of a certain height and stability. But if his bricks are warped and cracked or broken, the wall cannot be of the same height and stability. If again, instead of bricks he use cannon-balls then he cannot build a wall at all; at most, something in the form of a pyramid with a square or rectangular base. And if, once more, for cannon-balls we substitute rough, unhewn boulders, no definite stable form is possible. "The character of the aggregate is, determined by the characters of the units." Every attempt to reconstruct society which leaves out of account the character of the men and women who constitute society is foredoomed to failure. Behind every social problem stands the greater problem of the individual, the redemption of character. We may get, as assuredly we ought to get, better houses for the working-classes; but unless we also get better working-classes for the houses, we shall not have greatly mended matters. And no turn of the Parliamentary machine will produce these for us. We can pass new laws; only the grace of God can make new men. "For my part," says Kingsley once more, speaking through the lips of his tailor-poet, "I seem to have learnt that the only thing to regenerate the world is not more of any system, good or bad; but simply more of the Spirit of God." "_Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God._"
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CONCERNING MAN
"Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul?" TENNYSON.
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VII
CONCERNING MAN
"_There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth._"--LUKE XV. 10.
This is one of many sayings of our Lord which reveal His sense of the infinite worth of the human soul, which is the central fact in His teaching about man, and the only one with which in the present chapter we shall be concerned. Other aspects of the truth will come into view in the following chapter, when we come to consider Christ's teaching about sin.
I
"The infinite worth of the human soul"--this is a discovery the glory of which, it is no exaggeration to say, belongs wholly to Christ. It is said that one of the most magnificent diamonds in Europe, which to-day blazes in a king's crown, once lay for months on a stall in a piazza at Rome labelled, "Rock-crystal, price one franc." And it was thus that for ages the priceless jewel of the soul lay unheeded and despised of men. Before Christ came, men honoured the rich, and the great, and the wise, as we honour them now; but man as man was of little or no account. If one had, or could get, a pedestal by which to lift himself above the common crowd, he might count for something; but if he had nothing save his own feet to stand upon, he was a mere nobody, for whom nobody cared. We turn to the teaching of Jesus, and what a contrast! "Of how much more value," He said, "are ye than the birds!" "How much then is a man"--not a rich man, not a wise man, not a Pharisee, but a man--"of more value than a sheep!" "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" It was by thought-provoking questions such as these that Jesus revealed His own thoughts concerning man. And, of course, when He spoke in this way about the soul, when He said that a man might gain the whole world, but that if the price he paid for it were his soul, he was the loser, He was not speaking of the souls of a select few, but of the souls of all. Every man, every woman, every little child--all were precious in His sight. It is man as man, Christ taught, that is of worth to God.
Consider how much is involved in the bare fact that Christ came into the world the son of a poor mother, and lived in it a poor man. "A man's life," He said, "consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." And the best commentary on the saying is just His own life; for He had nothing. There is something very suggestive in Christ's use of the little possessive pronoun "My." We know how we use the word. Listen to the rich man in the parable: "My fruits," "my barns," "my corn," "my goods." Now listen to Christ. He says: "My Father," "My Church," "My friends," "My disciples"; but He never says "My house," "My lands," "My books." The one perfect life this earth has seen was the life of One who owned nothing, and left behind Him nothing but the clothes He wore. And not only was Christ poor Himself, He spent His life among the poor. "To believe that a man with £60 a year," Canon Liddon once said, "is just as much worthy of respect as a man with £6000, you must be seriously a Christian." You must indeed. Yet that which is for us so hard never seems to have cost Christ a struggle. We cannot so much as think of mere money, more or less, counting for anything in His sight. The little artificial distinctions of society were to Him nothing, and less than nothing. He went to be guest with a man that was a sinner. A woman that was a harlot He suffered to wash His feet with her tears, and to wipe them with her hair. "This man," said His enemies, with scorn vibrant in every word, "receiveth sinners and eateth with them." And they were right; but what they counted His deepest shame was in reality His chiefest glory.
Now, what does all this mean but simply this, that it was for man as man that Christ cared? Observe the difference in the point at which He and we become interested in men. We are interested in them, for the most part, when, by their work, or their wealth, or their fame, they have added something to themselves; in other words, we become interested when they become interesting. But that which gave worth to man in Christ's eyes lay beneath all these merely adventitious circumstances of his life, in his naked humanity, in what he was, or might be, in himself. This is why to Him all souls were dear. We love them that love us, the loving and the lovable; Christ loved the unloving and the unlovable. He was named, and rightly named, "Friend of publicans and sinners." Then were bad men of worth to Christ? They were; for, as Tennyson says, "If there be a devil in man, there is an angel too." Christ saw the possible angel in the actual devil. He knew that the lost might be found, and the bad become good, and the prodigal return home; and He loved men, not only for what they were, but for what they might be.
It would be easy to show that this high doctrine of man underlies, and is involved in, the whole life and work and teaching of Jesus. It is involved in the doctrine of God. Indeed, as Dr. Dale says, the Christian doctrine of man is really a part of the Christian doctrine of God.[32] Because God is a Father, every man is a son of God, or, rather, every man has within him the capacity for sonship. It is involved in the doctrine of the Incarnation; that stupendous fact reveals not only the condescension of God but the glory and exaltation of man. If God could become man, there must be a certain kinship between God and man; since God has become man, our poor human nature has been thereby lifted up and glorified. The same great doctrine is implied in the truth of Christ's atonement. When He who knew Himself to be the eternal Son of God spoke of His own life as the "ransom" for the forfeited lives of men, He revealed once more how infinite is the worth of that which could be redeemed only at such tremendous cost.
Such, then, is Christ's teaching about man. And, as I have already said, it was a new thing in human history. Nowhere is the line which divides the world B.C. from the world A.D. more sharply defined than here. Before Christ came, no one dared to say, for no one believed, that the soul of every man, and still less the soul of every woman and child, was of worth to God, that even a slave might become a son of the Most High. But Christ believed it, and Christ said it, and when He said it, the new world, the world in which we live, began to be. The great difference between ancient and modern civilizations, one eminent historian has said, is to be found here, that while ancient civilization cared only for the welfare of the favoured few, modern civilization seeks the welfare of all. And when we ask further what has made the difference, history sends us back for answer to the four Gospels and the teaching of Jesus concerning the infinite worth of the soul of man.
II
And now, to bring matters to a practical issue, have we who profess the faith of Christ learnt to set, either upon others or upon ourselves, the value which Christ put upon all men? Far as we have travelled from ancient Greece and Rome, are we not still, in our thoughts about men, often pagan rather than Christian? Our very speech bewrayeth us, and shows how little even yet we have learnt to think Christ's thoughts after Him. He declared, in words which have already been quoted, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." Nevertheless, in our daily speech we persist in measuring men by this very standard; we say that a man "is worth" so much, though, of course, all that we mean is that he has so much. Again, we allow ourselves to speak about the "hands" in a factory, as if with the hand there went neither head nor heart. If we must put a part for the whole, why should it not be after the fashion of the New Testament? "And there were added unto them in that day"--so it is written in one place--"about three thousand souls"--"souls," not "hands."[33] And we may depend upon it there would be less soulless labour in the world, and fewer men and women in danger of degenerating into mere "hands," if we would learn to think of them in Christ's higher and worthier way.
Let me try to show, by two or three examples, how Christ's teaching about man is needed through all our life.
(1) There was, perhaps, never a time when so many were striving to fulfil the apostle's injunction, and, as they have opportunity, to do good unto all men. More and more we busy ourselves to-day with the good works of philanthropy and Christian charity. And what we must remember is that our philanthropy needs our theology to sustain it. They only will continue Christ's work for man who cherish Christ's thoughts about man. Sever philanthropy from the great Christian ideas which have created and sustained it, and it will very speedily come to an end of its resources. All experience shows that philanthropy cut off from Christ has not capital enough on which to do its business. And the reason is not far to seek. They who strive to save their fellows, they who go down into the depths that they may lift men up, see so much of the darkened under-side of human life, they are brought so close up to the ugly facts of human baseness, human trickery, human ingratitude, that, unless there be behind them the staying, steadying power of the faith and love of Christ, they cannot long endure the strain; they grow weary in well-doing, perchance even they grow bitter and contemptuous, and in a little while the tasks they have taken up fall unfinished from their hands. "Society" takes to "slumming" for a season--just as for another season it may take to ping-pong--but the fit does not last; and only they keep on through the long, grey days, when neither sun nor stars are seen, who have learnt to look on men with the eyes, and to feel toward them with the heart, of Jesus the Man of Nazareth.
(2) "Whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on Me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great mill-stone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea." Once more is revealed Christ's thought of the worth of the soul. How the holy passion against him who would hurt "one of these little ones" glows and scorches in His words! Is this a word for any of us? Is there one among us who is tempting a brother man to dishonesty, to drink, to lust; who is pushing some thoughtless girl down the steep and slippery slope which ends--we know where? Then let him stop and listen, not to me, but to Christ. Never, I think, did He speak with such solemn, heart-shaking emphasis, and He says that it were better a man should die, that he should die this night, die the most miserable and shameful death, than that he should bring the blood of another's soul upon his head. It must needs be that occasions of stumbling come, but woe, woe to that man by whom they come, when he and the slain soul's Saviour shall stand face to face! Oh, if there be one among us who is playing the tempter, and doing the devil's work, let him get to his knees, and cry with the conscience-smitten Psalmist, "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation"; and peradventure even yet He may hear and have mercy.
(3) Let fathers and mothers ponder what this teaching of Jesus concerning man means for them in relation to their children. There came into your home a while ago a little child, a gift from God, just such a babe as Jesus Himself was in His mother's arms in Bethlehem. The child is yours, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, and it bears your likeness and image; but it is also God's child, and it bears His image. What difference is the coming of the little stranger making in you? I do not ask what difference is it making _to_ you, for the answer would be ready in a moment, "Much, every way"; but, what difference is it making _in_ you? Does it never occur to you that you ought to be a different man--a better man--that you ought to be a different woman--a better woman--for the sake of the little one lying in the cradle? Do you know that of all the things God ever made and owns, in this or all His worlds, there is nothing more dear to Him than the soul of the little child He has committed to your hands? What hands those should be that bear a gift like that! Perhaps we never thought of it in that way before. But it is true, whether we think of it or not. Is it not time to begin to think of it? This night, as we stand over our sleeping child, let us promise to God, for the child's sake, that we will be His.
(4) Last of all, we must learn to set Christ's value upon ourselves. This is the tragedy of life, that we hold ourselves so cheap. We are sprung of heaven's first blood, have titles manifold, and yet, when the crown is offered us, we choose rather, like the man with the muck-rake, in Bunyan's great allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and straws of the floor. In the times of the French Revolution, French soldiers, it is said, stabled their horses in some of the magnificent cathedrals of France; but some of us are guilty of a far worse sacrilege in that holy of holies which we call the soul. "Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold," but with blood, precious blood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we are ready to sell any day in the open market for a little more pleasure or a little more pelf. The birthright is bartered for the sorriest mess of pottage, and the jewel which the King covets to wear in His crown our own feet trample in the mire of the streets. The pity of it, the pity of it!
In one of Dora Greenwell's simple and beautiful _Songs of Salvation_, a pitman tells to his wife the story of his conversion. He had got a word like a fire in his heart that would not let him be, "Jesus, the Son of God, who loved, and who gave Himself for me."
"It was for me that Jesus died! for me, and a world of men, Just as sinful, and just as slow to give back His love again; And He didn't wait till I came to Him, but He loved me at my worst; He needn't ever have died for me if I could have loved Him first."
And then he continues:--
"And could'st Thou love such a man as me, my Saviour! Then I'll take More heed to this wand'ring soul of mine, if it's only for Thy sake."
Yes, we are all of worth to God, but we must needs go to the Cross to learn how great is our worth; and, as we bow in its sacred shadow, may we learn to say: "For Thy sake, O Christ, for Thy sake, I'll take more heed to this wandering soul of mine."[34]
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CONCERNING SIN
"O man, strange composite of heaven and earth! Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth Choking corruption! weakness mastering power! Who never art so near to crime and shame, As when thou hast achieved some deed of name." NEWMAN.
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VIII
CONCERNING SIN
"_When ye pray, say.... Forgive us our sins._"--LUKE xi. 2, 4.
A recent writer has pointed out that sin, like death, is not seriously realized except as a personal fact. We really know it only when we know it about ourselves. The word "sin" has no serious meaning to a man, except when it means that he himself is a sinful man. And hence it comes to pass that we can still turn to the penitential Psalms, to the seventh chapter of Romans, to the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, or to the _Grace Abounding_ of John Bunyan, and make their words the language of our own broken and contrite hearts. For when Bunyan and Augustine and Paul and the psalmists spoke of sin, they spoke not the thoughts of others, but their knowledge of themselves; they looked into their own hearts and wrote. That is why their words "find" us to-day. Nevertheless, paradox though it may seem, our greatest Teacher concerning sin, Himself "knew no sin." Born without sin, living and dying without sin, Christ yet "knew what was in man," knew the sin that was in man, and from His own sinless height once for all revealed and judged and condemned it. Let us seek, then, to learn the mind of Christ on this great matter.
And once more, as I have had occasion to point out in a previous chapter, we must not look for anything formal, defined, systematic in Christ's teaching. We cannot open the Gospels, as we might some modern theological treatise, and read out from them a scientific exposition of sin--its origin, its nature, its treatment. The New Testament is not like a museum, where the flowers are dried and pressed, and the fossils lie carefully arranged within glass cases, and everything is duly classified and labelled. Rather it is like nature itself, where the flowers grow wild at our feet, and the rocks lie as the Creator's hand left them, and where each man must do the classifying and labelling for himself. Museums have their uses, and there will always be those who prefer them--they save so much trouble. But since Christ's aim was not to save us trouble, but to teach us to see things with our own eyes, to see them as He saw them, and to think of them as He thinks, it is no wonder that He has chosen rather to put us down in the midst of a world of living truths than in a museum of assorted and dead facts.
I
What, then, is the teaching of Jesus concerning sin? His tone is at once severe and hopeful. Sometimes His words are words that shake our hearts with fear; sometimes they surprise us with their overflowing tenderness and pity. But however He may deal with the sinner, we are always made to feel that to Jesus sin is a serious thing, a problem not to be slurred over and made light of, but to be faced, and met, and grappled with. Christ's sense of the gravity of sin comes out in many ways.
(1) It is involved in His doctrine of man. He who made so much of man could not make light of man's sin. It is because man is so great that his sin is so grave. No one can understand the New Testament doctrine of sin who does not read it in the light of the New Testament doctrine of man. When we think of man as Christ thought of him, when we see in him the possibilities which Christ saw, the Scripture language concerning sin becomes intelligible enough; until then it may easily seem exaggerated and unreal. It is the height for which man was made and meant which measures the fall which is involved in his sin.