The Five Great Philosophies of Life Part 12

VII

THE SUPREMACY OF LOVE

Jesus' Spirit of Love is capable of absorbing into itself whatever we have found valuable in the four previous systems.

The Epicurean's varied and spontaneous joy in life is not diminished, but enhanced, by the Christian Spirit, which multiplies this joy as many times as there are persons whom one knows and loves. The Epicurean lives in the little world of himself, and a few equally self-centred companions. The Christian lives in the great world of G.o.d, and shares its joys with all G.o.d's human children. It is the absence of this larger world, the exclusive concern for his own narrow pleasures, that makes the consistent Epicurean, with all his polish and charm, the essentially mean and despicable creature we found him to be.

To be sure, Mill, Spencer, and others have endeavoured to graft the altruistic fruits of Christianity on to the old Epicurean stock. There is this great difference, however, between such Christianised Epicureanism as that of Mill and Spencer, and Christianity itself.

These systems have no logical bridge, no emotional bond by which to pa.s.s from the pleasures of self to the pleasures of others. They can and do point out the incompleteness of merely egoistic Epicureanism; they exhort us to care for the pleasures of others as we do for our own. But the logical nexus, the moral dynamic, the spiritual motive, is lacking in these systems; and consequently these systems fail to work, except with the few highly altruistic souls who need no spiritual physician.

This logical bond, this moral dynamic, this spiritual motive which impels toward altruistic conduct, the Christian finds in Christ. He certainly did love all men, and care for their happiness as dearly as He cared for His own. But this same Christ is the Christian's Lord and Master and Friend. Yet friends.h.i.+p for Him, the acceptance of Him as Lord and Master, is a contradiction in terms, unless one is at the same time willing to cultivate His Spirit, which is the Spirit of service, the Spirit which holds the happiness and welfare of others just as sacred and precious as one's own. He that hath not this Spirit of Christ is none of His. Hence what men like Mill and Spencer preach as a duty, and support by what their critics have found to be very inadequate and fallacious logical processes, Christianity proclaims as a fact in the nature of G.o.d, as embodied in Christ, and a condition of the divine life for everyone who desires to be a child of G.o.d, a follower and friend of Jesus Christ. Christianity, therefore, includes everything of value in Epicureanism, and infinitely more. It has the Epicurean gladness without its exclusiveness, its joy without its selfishness, its naturalness without its baseness, its geniality without its heartlessness.

In like manner Christianity takes up all that is true in the Stoic teaching, without falling into its hardness and narrowness. The truth of the Stoic teaching consisted in its power to transform into an expression of the man himself, and of the beneficent laws of Nature, whatever outward circ.u.mstance might befall him, Now put in place of the abstract self the love of the perfect Christ, and instead of universal law the loving will of the Father for all His children, and you have a deepened, sweetened, softened Stoicism which is identical with a st.u.r.dy, strenuous, and virile Christianity.

If a man has in his heart the earnest desire to be like Christ, and to do the things that help to carry out Christ's Spirit in the world, it is absolutely impossible that he should ever find himself in a situation where what he most desires to do cannot be done. Now a man who in every conceivable situation can do what he most desires to do is as completely "master of his fate" and "captain of his soul" as the most strenuous Stoic ever prayed to be. And yet he is saved from the coldness and hardness and repulsiveness of the mere Stoic, because the object of his devotion, the aim of his a.s.sertion, is not his own barren, frigid, formal self, but the kindly, sympathetic, loving Christ, whom he has chosen to be his better self. Like the Stoic, he brings every thought into captivity; but it is not the captivity of a prison, the empty chamber of his individual soul, swept and garnished; it is captivity to the most gracious and gentle and generous person the world has ever known,--it is captivity to Christ.

When misfortune and calamity overtakes him, he transforms it into a blessing and a discipline, not like the mere Stoic through pa.s.sive resignation to an impersonal law, as of gravitation, or electricity, or bacteriology, but through active devotion to that glory of G.o.d which is to be furthered mainly by kindness and sympathy and service to our fellow-men. The man who has this love of Christ in his heart, and who is devoted to the doing of the Father's loving will, can exclaim in every untoward circ.u.mstance, "I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me." He can shout with more than Stoic defiance: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" In all the literature of Stoic exultation in the face of frowning danger and impending doom, there is nothing that can match the splendid outburst of the great Apostle: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princ.i.p.alities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of G.o.d, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Everything that we found n.o.ble, and strong, and brave in Stoicism we find also here; the power to transform external evil into internal good, and to hold so tightly to our self-chosen good that no power in earth or heaven can ever wrest it from us,--a good so universal that the circ.u.mstance is inconceivable in which it would fail to work. Yet with all this tenacious, world-conquering strength, there is, drawn from the divine Source of this affection a gentleness, and sympathy, and tenderness, and humble human helpfulness, which the Stoic in his boastfulness, and hardness, and self-sufficiency could never know.

The Christian abhors lying and stealing, scolding and slandering, slavery and prost.i.tution, meanness and murder, not less but far more than the Stoic. But he refrains from these things, not under constraint of abstract law, but because he cares so deeply and sensitively for the people whom these things affect that he cannot endure the thought that any word or deed of his should bring them pain or loss or shame or degradation. Thus he gets the Stoic strength without its hardness, the Stoic universality without its barrenness, the Stoic exaltation without its pride, the Stoic integrity without its formalism, the Stoic calm without its impa.s.siveness.

Christianity is as lofty as Platonism; but it gets its elevation by a different process. Instead of rising above drudgery and details, it lifts them up into a clearer atmosphere, where nothing is servile or menial which can glorify G.o.d or serve a fellow-man.

The great truth which Plato taught was the subordination of the lower elements in human nature to the higher. In the application of this truth, as we saw, Plato went far astray. His highest was not attainable by every man; and he proposed to enforce the dictates of reason by fraud and intimidation on those incapable of comprehending their reasonableness. Thus he was led into that fallacy of the abstract universal which is common to all socialistic schemes. Christianity takes the Platonic principle of subordination of lower to higher; but it adds a new definition to what the higher or rather the highest is; and it introduces a new appeal for the lowliest to become willing servants and friends of the highest, instead of mere constrained serfs and slaves.

This highest principle is, of course, Love of the G.o.d who loves all His human children, friends.h.i.+p to the Christ who is the friend of every man.

Consequently there are no humble working-men to be coerced and no unfortunate women to be maltreated; no deformed and ill-begotten children to be exposed to early death, as in Plato's exclusive scheme.

To the Christian every child is a child of G.o.d, every woman a sister of Christ, every man a son of the Father, and consequently no one of them can be disregarded in our plans of fellows.h.i.+p and sympathy and service; for whoever should dare to leave them out of his own sympathy and love would thereby exclude himself from the Love of G.o.d, likeness to Christ, and partic.i.p.ation in the Christian Spirit.

Thus Christianity gives us all that was wise and just in the Platonic principle of the subordination of the lower elements in our nature to the higher; but its higher is so much above the highest dream of Plato that it guards certain forms of social good at points where, even in Plato's ideal Republic, they were ruthlessly betrayed.

Christianity finally gathers up into itself whatever is good in the principle of Aristotle. The Aristotelian principle was the devotion of life to a worthy end and the selection of efficient means for its accomplishment. On that general formula it is impossible to improve. "To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world," is Jesus' justification of His mission, when questioned by Pontius Pilate.

"One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of G.o.d in Christ Jesus," is Paul's magnificent apology for his way of life. The concentration of one's whole energy upon a worthy end, and the willing acceptance of pains, privations, and penalties which may be incidental to the effective prosecution of that end, is the comprehensive formula of every brave and heroic life, whether it be the life of Jew or Gentile, Greek or Christian. It is not because it sets forth something different from this wise and brave prosecution of a n.o.ble end that Christianity is an improvement on the teaching of Aristotle; it is because the end at which the Christian aims is so much higher, and the fort.i.tude demanded by it is so much deeper, that Christianity has superseded and deserves to supersede the n.o.blest teaching of the greatest Greeks. What was the end which Aristotle set before himself and his disciples? Citizens.h.i.+p in a city state half free and half enslaved, with leisure for the philosophic contemplation of the learned few, bought by the constrained toil of the ignorant, degraded many; the refined companions.h.i.+p of choice congenial spirits for which it was expected that the mult.i.tude would be forever incapacitated and from which they would be forcibly excluded. Over against this aristocracy of birth, opportunity, leisure, training, and intelligence Jesus sets the wide democracy of virtue, service, Love.

Whoever is capable of doing the humblest deed in Love to G.o.d and service to man becomes thereby a member of the kingdom of the choicest spirits to be found in earth or heaven, and ent.i.tled to the same courteous and delicate consideration which the disciple would show to his Master. The building up of such a kingdom and the extension of its members.h.i.+p to include all the nations of the earth and all cla.s.ses and conditions of men within its happy fellows.h.i.+p, and in its n.o.ble service, is the great end which Jesus set before himself and which He invites each disciple to share.

Whatever hards.h.i.+p and toil, whatever pain and persecution, whatever reviling and contumely, whatever privation and poverty may be necessary to the accomplishment of this great end the Master himself gladly bore, and He asks His followers to do the same. In a world full of hypocrisy and corruption, pride and pretence, avarice and greed, cruelty and l.u.s.t, malice and hate, selfishness and sin, there are bound to be many trials to be borne, much hard work to be done, many blows to be received, much suffering to be endured. All that is inevitable, whatever view one takes of life. Christ, however, shows us the way to do and bear these things cheerfully and bravely as part of His great work of redeeming the world from the bondage and misery of these powers of evil, and establis.h.i.+ng His kingdom of Love. To keep the clear vision of that great end before our eyes, to keep the sense of His companions.h.i.+p warm and glowing within our hearty never to lose the sense of the great liberation and blessing this kingdom will bring to our downtrodden, maltreated brothers and sisters in the humbler walks of life, Jesus tells us is the secret of that sanity and sacrifice which is able to make the yoke of useful toil easy, and the burden of social service light; and to transform the cross of suffering into a crown of joy.

Each of these four previous principles is valuable and essential; and the fact that Christianity is higher than them all, no more warrants the Christian in dispensing with the lower elements, than the supremacy of the roof enables it to dispense with the foundation and the intervening stories. Both for ourselves, and for the world in which we live, we need to make our ideal of personality broad and comprehensive. We need to combine in harmonious and graceful unity the happy Epicurean disposition to take fresh from the hand of nature all the pleasures she innocently offers; the strong Stoic temper that takes complacently whatever incidental pains and ills the path of duty may have in store for us; the occasional Platonic mood which from time to time shall lift us out of the details of drudgery when they threaten to obscure the larger outlook of the soul; the shrewd Aristotelian insight which weighs the worth of transient impulses and pa.s.sing pleasures in the impartial scales of intellectual and social ends; and then, not as a thing apart, but rather as the crown and consummation of all these other elements, the generous Christian Spirit, which makes the joys and sorrows, the aims and interests, of others as precious as one's own, and sets the Will of G.o.d which includes the good of all His creatures high above all lesser aims, as the bond that binds them all together in the unity of a personal life which is in principle perfect with some faint approximation to the divine perfection.

The omission of any truth for which the other ancient systems stood mutilates and impoverishes the Christian view of life. Ascetic Puritanism, for instance, is Christianity minus the truth taught by Epicurus. Sentimental liberalism is Christianity without the Stoic note.

Dogmatic orthodoxy is Christianity sadly in need of Plato's search-light of sincerity. Sacerdotal ecclesiasticism is Christianity that has lost the Aristotelian disinterestedness of devotion to intellectual and social ends higher and wider than its own inst.i.tutional aggrandis.e.m.e.nt.

The time is ripe for a Christianity which shall have room for all the innocent joys of sense and flesh, of mind and heart, which Epicurus taught us to prize aright, yet shall have the Stoic strength to make whatever sacrifice of them the universal good requires; which shall purge the heart of pride and pretence by questionings of motive as searching as those of Plato, and at the same time shall hold life to as strict accountability for practical usefulness and social progress as Aristotle's doctrines of the end and the mean require. It is by some such world-wide, historical approach, and the inclusion of whatever elements of truth and worth other systems have separately emphasised, that we shall reach a Christianity that is really catholic.

To take the duties and trials, the practical problems and personal relations.h.i.+ps of life up into the atmosphere of Love, so that what we do and how we treat people becomes the resultant, not of the outward situation and our natural appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions, but of the outward situation and Love within our hearts,--this is what it means to live in the Christian Spirit; this is the essence of Christianity. Strengthened character and straightened conduct are sure to follow the maintenance of this spiritual relations.h.i.+p. Not that it will transform one's hereditary traits and acquired habits all at once, or save one from many a slip and flaw. Even the Christian Spirit of Love takes time to work its moral transformation. The tendency of it, however, is steady and strong in the right direction; and in due time it will conquer the heart and control the action of any man who, whether verbally or silently, whether formally or informally, maintains this conscious relations.h.i.+p to that Love at the heart of things which most of us call G.o.d. Jesus and all who have shared His spiritual insight tell us that the maintenance of this relations.h.i.+p, close, warm, and quick, is the pearl of great price, the one thing needful, the potency of righteousness, the secret of blessedness; and that there is more hope of a man with a bad record and many besetting sins who honestly tries to keep this relations.h.i.+p alive within his breast, than there is of the self-righteous man who boasts that he can keep himself outwardly immaculate without these inward aids.

Christianity of this simple, vital sort is the world's salvation.

Criticised by enemies and caricatured by friends; fossilised in the minds of the aged, and forced on the tongues of the immature; mingled with all manner of exploded superst.i.tion, false philosophy, science that is not so, and history that never happened; obscured under absurd rites; buried in incredible creeds; professed by hypocrites; discredited by sentimentalists; evaporated by mystics; stereotyped by literalists; monopolised by sacerdotalists; it has lived in spite of all the grave-clothes its unbelieving disciples have tried to wrap around it, and holds the keys of eternal life.