The Teaching of Jesus Part 6

"Which do we live on--a splendid one, or a blighted one?"

"A blighted one."

Or, turn to the works of George Eliot. No prophet of righteousness ever bound sin and its consequences more firmly together, or proclaimed with more solemn emphasis the certainty of the evil-doer's doom. "Our deeds are like children that are born to us," she says; "nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never"--this is the note one hears through all her books. If we have done wrong, it is in vain we cry for mercy. We are taken by the throat and delivered over to the tormentors until we have paid the uttermost farthing.

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

And this is all that writers such as these have to say to us.

Retribution they know, but not Redemption. "There are no arresting angels in the path"--only the Angel of Justice with the drawn sword.

But this is not the teaching of Jesus concerning sin. He is not blind, and if we give ear to Him He will not suffer us to be blind, either to its character or its consequences; but He says that sin can be forgiven, and its iron bondage broken. Jesus believed in the recoverability of man at his worst. It is a fact significant of much that the first mention of sin in the New Testament is in a prophecy of its destruction: "Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for it is He that shall save His people from their sins." And throughout the first three Gospels sin is named almost exclusively in connection with its forgiveness.[36] What Christ hath joined together let no man put asunder. Herein is the very gospel of G.o.d, that Christ came not to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. "Do you know what Christ would say to you, my girl?" said a missionary to a poor girl dying. "He would say, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee.'" "Would He, though, would He?" she cried, starting up; "take me to Him, take me to Him." Yes, thank G.o.d, we know what to do with our sin; we know what we must do to be saved.

Let us go back again for a moment over the ground we have already travelled. We are in debt, with nothing to pay; but Christ has taken the long account, and has crossed it through and through. We are in bondage, with no power to set ourselves free; but Christ has come to rend the iron chain and proclaim deliverance to the captives. We are wrong, wrong within, wrong at the core; but again He is equal to our need, for concerning Him it is written that He shall take away not only the "sins"

but the "sin" of the world. Is anything too hard for Him? Just as a lover of pictures will sometimes discover a portrait, the work of an old master, marred and disfigured by the dirt and neglect of years, and will patiently cleanse and retouch it, till the lips seem to speak again, and the old light s.h.i.+nes in the eyes, and all its hidden glory is revealed once more, so does Christ bring out the Divine image, hidden but never lost, in the sinful souls of men. And all this He can do for all men; for Christ knows no hopeless ones.

One of the saddest sights in a great city is its hospital for incurables. Who can think but with a pang of pity and of pain of these--old men and little children joined in one sad fellows.h.i.+p--for whom the physician's skill has done its best and failed, for whom now nothing remains save to suffer and to die? But in the world's great hospital of ailing souls, where every day the Good Physician walks, there is no incurable ward. He lays His hands on the sick, and they are healed; He touches the eyes of the blind, and they see; unto the leper as white as snow his flesh comes again as the flesh of a little child; even souls that are dead through their trespa.s.ses and sins He restores to life. But never, never does He turn away from any, saying, "Thou art too far gone; there is nothing that I can do for thee." "I spake to Thy disciples," cried the father of the child which had a dumb spirit, "I spake to Thy disciples that they should cast it out; and they were not able." "Bring him unto Me," said Jesus. Then He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying unto him, "Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I command thee, come out of him and enter no more into him." Verily, with authority He commandeth even the unclean spirits and they obey Him.

Therefore let us despair of no man; therefore let no man despair of himself. If we will, we can; we can, because Christ will. "I was before," says St. Paul, "a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious; howbeit I obtained mercy." "I am a wretched captive of sin," cries Samuel Rutherford, "yet my Lord can hew heaven out of worse timber."

There is no unpardonable sin--none, at least, save the sin of refusing the pardon which avails for all sin. "'Mine iniquity is greater than can be forgiven.'[37] No, Cain, thou errest; G.o.d's mercy is far greater, couldst thou ask mercy. Men cannot be more sinful than G.o.d is merciful if, with penitent hearts, they will call upon Him."

We have all read of the pa.s.sing of William MacLure in Ian Maclaren's touching idyll. "A'm gettin' drowsy," said the doctor to Drumsheugh, "read a bit tae me." Then Drumsheugh put on his spectacles, and searched for some comfortable Scripture. Presently he began to read: "In My Father's house are many mansions;" but MacLure stopped him. "It's a bonnie word," he said, "but it's no' for the like o' me. It's ower guid; a' daurna tak' it." Then he bid Drumsheugh shut the book and let it open of itself, and he would find the place where he had been reading every night for the last month. Drumsheugh did as he was bidden, and the book opened at the parable wherein the Master tells what G.o.d thinks of a Pharisee and a penitent sinner. And when he came to the words, "And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner," once more the dying man stopped him: "That micht hae been written for me, Paitrick, or ony ither auld sinner that hes feenished his life, an' hes naething tae say for himsel."

Nothing to say for ourselves--that is what it comes to, when we know the truth about ourselves. And when at last our mouth is stopped, when our last poor plea is silenced, when with penitent and obedient hearts we seek the mercy to which from the first we have been utterly shut up, then indeed we

"have found the ground wherein Sure our soul's anchor may remain."

"Not by works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to His mercy He saved us."

CONCERNING RIGHTEOUSNESS

"I spend my whole life in going about and persuading you all to give your first and chiefest care to the perfection of your souls, and not till you have done that to think of your bodies, or your wealth; and telling you that virtue does not come from wealth, but that wealth, and every other good thing which men have, whether in public, or in private, comes from virtue."--SOCRATES.

IX

CONCERNING RIGHTEOUSNESS

"_Seek ye first_ ... _His righteousness._"--MATT. vi. 33.

Righteousness, as it was understood and taught by Christ, includes the two things which we often distinguish as religion and morality. It is right-doing, not only as between man and man, but as between man and G.o.d. The Lawgiver of the New Testament, like the lawgiver of the Old, has given to us two tables of stone. On the one He has written, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind "; and on the other, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." In these two commandments the whole law is summed up, the whole duty of man is made known. It is well to emphasize this two-fold aspect of the truth at a time when we are often tempted to define religion wholly in the terms of morality, and, while insisting on the duties which we owe to each other, to forget those which we owe to G.o.d. If there be a G.o.d righteousness must surely have a meaning in relation to Him; it cannot be simply another name for philanthropy.

Christ at least will not call that man just and good who does right to all except his Maker. In the Christian doctrine of the good life room must be found for G.o.d. At the present moment, however, it is the subject in its man-ward aspect that I wish specially to keep in view, partly because some limitation is obviously necessary, and partly also because it is this of which Christ Himself had most to say.

I

What, then, is Christ's idea of righteousness? In other words, what did He teach concerning the good life? Now here also, as in His teaching about G.o.d, Christ did not need to begin _de novo_. Those to whom He spoke had already their own ideals of duty and holiness. True, these were sadly in need of revision and correction. Nevertheless, such as they were, they were there, and Christ could use them as His starting-point. Consequently, therefore, we find His ideas of righteousness defined largely by contrast with existing ideas. "It was said to them of old time ... but I say unto _you_." This is the note heard all through the Sermon on the Mount. The contrast may be stated in two ways.

(1) In the first place, Christ said that the righteousness of His disciples must exceed that of publicans and heathen: "If ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the Gentiles the same?" There are virtues exhibited in the lives of even wholly irreligious men. There are rudimentary moral principles which they that know not G.o.d nevertheless acknowledge and obey. It was so in Christ's time; it is so still. The popular American ballad, "Jim Bludso," and Ian Maclaren's touching story of the Drumtochty postman, are familiar ill.u.s.trations of self-sacrificing virtues revealed by men of coa.r.s.e and vicious lives. Nor ought we to deny the reality of such virtues; still less ought we to follow the bad example of St. Augustine and call them "splendid vices." Such was not Christ's way. He a.s.sumed the existence and reality of this "natural goodness," and with familiar ill.u.s.trations of it on His tongue turned upon His disciples with the question, "What do ye more?"

"What do ye more?" Yet in some respects, it is to be feared, the morality of the Church sometimes falls behind that of the world. One of the most painful pa.s.sages in St. Paul's epistles is that in which he tells the Corinthian Christians that one of their own number had been guilty of immorality such as would have shocked even the conscience of an unbelieving Gentile. And it was but the other day that I came across this sentence from the pen of an observant and friendly critic of contemporary religious life: "I am afraid," he said, "it must be admitted that the idea of honour, though in itself an essential part of Christian ethics, is much stronger outside the Churches than within them." How far facts justify the criticism I will not stay to inquire; but the very fact that a charge like this can be made should prove a sharp reminder to us of the stringency of the demands which Jesus Christ makes upon us. There is no kind of sound moral fruit which is to be found anywhere in the wide fields of the world which He does not look for in richer and riper abundance within the garden of His Church.

A great Christian preacher has given an admirable ill.u.s.tration of one way in which we may examine ourselves in this matter. He has grouped together a number of precepts from the writings of some of the great heathen moralists, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then has urged the question how far we who profess to be the disciples of a loftier faith are true even to these ancient heathen ideals.[38]

Perhaps, however, this is not a method of self-examination which is open to us all. But this, at least, we can do: we can test ourselves by that moral law, which G.o.d gave to the Jews by Moses, and which Christ reinterpreted in the Sermon on the Mount. "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery"--all these commandments in their literal meaning we must observe; yet this is not enough; "do not even the publicans the same?" and Christ's demand is, "What do ye more than others?" The murderous thought, Christ says, that is murder; the l.u.s.tful look, that is adultery. "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you." As we listen to words like these must not we also confess, "Either these sayings are not Christ's, or we are not Christians"?

(2) Christ's idea of righteousness is further defined by contrast with that of the Pharisees: "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." What was the Pharisees' idea of religion?

Let us take the words which Christ Himself put into the lips of a representative of his cla.s.s: "G.o.d, I thank Thee, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week; I give t.i.thes of all that I get." This is a full-length portrait of the finished Pharisee. Religion to him was a round of prescribed ritual, a barren externalism, a subjection to the dominion of the letter, which never touched the heart, nor bowed the spirit down in penitence and humility before G.o.d. The Pharisee's whole concern was with externals; but Christ declared that he who is only right outwardly is not right at all. There is no such thing, He said, as goodness which is not from within. The alms-deeds, the prayer, the fasting of the Pharisee were all done before men, to be seen of them; and so long as that which men saw was right and seemly, he was satisfied. But Christ went back behind the outward act to the heart. A man is really, He said, what he is there. You may hang grapes on a thorn-bush, that will not make it a vine; you may put a sheep's fleece on a wolf's back, but that will not change its wolfish heart. And men are what they are within. Just as to get good fruit you must first of all make the tree good, so to secure good deeds you must first make good men. This was the truth which Pharisaism ignored; with what results all the world knows. In the long history of man, it remains, perhaps, the supreme ill.u.s.tration of the fatal facility with which religion and morality are divorced when once the emphasis is laid upon the outward and ceremonial instead of the inward and spiritual. All experience helps us to understand how the system works. There is no deliberate intention of setting ritual above righteousness, but it is so much easier to count one's beads than to curb one's temper, so much easier to fast in Lent than to be unswervingly just, that if once the easier thing gets attached to it an exaggerated importance, fidelity in it is allowed to atone for laxity in greater things, and the last result is Pharisaism, where we see conscience concerned about the t.i.thing of garden herbs, but with no power over the life, and religion not merely tolerating but actually ministering to moral evil. It was in the name of religion that the Pharisees suffered a man to violate even the sanct.i.ties of the Fifth Commandment, and to do dishonour to his father and mother. The righteous man in their eyes was not he who loved mercy, and did justly, and walked humbly with his G.o.d, but he who observed the traditions of the elders.

So that, as Professor Bruce says,[39] it was possible for a man to comply with all the requirements of the Rabbis and yet remain in heart and life an utter miscreant. "Outwardly," said Christ, "ye appear righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity."

Is it any wonder that He should call down fire from heaven to consume a system which had yielded such bitter, poisonous fruits as these?

But let us remember, as Mozley well says,[40] there are no extinct species in the world of evil. The value for us of Christ's condemnation lies in this, that it is a permanent tendency of human nature which He is condemning. Pharisaism is not dead. Have I not seen the Pharisee dressed in good broad-cloth and going to church with his Bible under his arm? And have I not seen him sitting in church and reading the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and thinking to himself what shockingly wicked people these men must have been of whom Christ spoke such terrible words, and never once supposing that there is anything in the chapter that concerns him? No, Pharisaism is not dead; and when we read of those who devoured widows' houses and for a pretence made long prayers, using their religion as a cloak for their villainy, let us remember that Christ says to His disciples to-day, even as He said to them centuries ago, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven."

II

Thus far we have considered Christ's idea of righteousness only in contrast with other ideas. When we seek to define it in itself we fall back naturally on the words of the two great commandments which have already been quoted: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Righteousness, Christ says, is love, love to G.o.d and love to man.

But to them of old time it was said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour."

Where, then, is the difference between the old commandment and the new?

It lies in the new definition of "neighbour." The old law which said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour," said also, "and hate thine enemy"; which meant that some are and some are not our neighbours, and that toward those who are not love has no obligations. But Christ broke down for ever the middle wall of part.i.tion, and declared the old distinction null and void. In His parable of the Good Samaritan He taught that every man is our neighbour who has need of us, and to whom it is possible for us to prove ourselves a friend. As we have opportunity we are to do good unto all men. The same lesson with, if possible, still greater emphasis, Christ taught in the Upper Room: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." A love that goes all the way with human need, that gives not itself by measure, that is not chilled by indifference, nor thwarted by ingrat.i.tude, that fights against evil until it overcomes it--such was the love He gave, and such is the love He asks. And in that command all other commands are comprehended. Christ might have made His own the daring word of St. Augustine, "Love, and do what you like."

When first men heard this law of the heavenly righteousness how wondrous simple it must have seemed in contrast with the elaborate scribe-made law which their Rabbis laid upon them. Pharisaism had reduced religion to a branch of mechanics, a vast network of rules which closed in the life of man on every side, a burden grievous and heavy to be borne, which crushed the soul under its weary load. This was the yoke of which Peter said that neither they nor their fathers were able to bear it. Was it any marvel that from such a system men should turn to Him who cried, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light"? But if Christ's law of love is simpler it is also far more exacting than the old law which it superseded. It has meshes far finer than any that Pharisaic ingenuity could weave. Rabbinical law can secure the t.i.thing of mint and anise and c.u.min, the was.h.i.+ng of cups and pots, and many such like things; it can regulate the life of ritual and outward observance; and after that it has no more that it can do. But Christ's law of love is a mentor that searches out the deep things of man. The inside of the cup and platter, the things that are within, the hidden man of the heart--it is on these its eyes are fixed. It gives heed both to the words of the mouth and the meditations of the heart.

And, sometimes, when the lips are speaking fair, suddenly it will fling open the heart's door and show us where, in some secret chamber, Greed and Pride and Envy and Hate sit side by side in unblest fellows.h.i.+p.

Verily this law of love is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.

There is no room to do more than mention the fact which crowns the revelation of this new law of righteousness. Christ's words about goodness do not come to us alone; they come united with a life which is their best exposition. Christ is all His followers are to be; in Him the righteousness of the kingdom is incarnate. From henceforth the righteous man is the Christ-like man. The standard of human life is no longer a code but a character; for the gospel does not put us into subjection to fresh laws; it calls us to "the study of a living Person, and the following of a living Mind."[41] And when to Jesus we bring the old question, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" He does not now repeat the commandments, but He says, "If thou wouldest be perfect, follow Me, learn of Me, do as I have done to you, love as I have loved you."

III

Such, then, is the good life which Christ reveals, and to which He calls us. To say that to Him we owe our highest ideal of righteousness, is only to affirm what no one now seriously denies. John Stuart Mill has, it is true, alleged certain defects against Christianity as an ethical system, yet Mill himself has frankly admitted that "it would not be easy now, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract to the concrete, than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life." If Christ be not our one Master in the moral world, it will at least be soon enough to discuss a rival's claims when he appears; as yet there is no sign of him. But the point I am most anxious to emphasize just now is not simply that Jesus has put before us an ideal, the highest of its kind in the world, but that there is nothing of any kind to be desired before it. To be good as Christ was good, here in very truth is the _summum bonum_ of life, the greatest thing in the world, that which, before all other things, a man should seek to make his own, There are times, perhaps, in the lives of all of us when we are tempted to doubt it--times when the kingdoms of this world, the kingdoms of wealth and power and knowledge lie stretched at our feet, and the whispering fiend at our elbow bids us bow and enter in. But once again, if we be true men, the moment comes,

"When the spirit's true endowments Stand out plainly from its false ones,"