The Fire That Melts an Enemy

If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him vrater to drink: for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.” — xxv. 21, ’22.

I HE germ of this most precious moral lesson was deposited in the earth at an early period of its history. In the laws of Moses it takes a form suited to the simplicity of primeval times: “If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray thou shalt surely bring it back to him again” (Ex. xxiii. 4). Jesus in his day found it in the Pharisee’s hands, covered over with an encrustation of Rabbinical traditions, which not only obscured, but utterly perverted its meaning; as corrupted by the Jews the precept ran, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.” When the Lawgiver incarnate had stripped the encumbering glosses from his own Command, the vital germ, released from the imprisonment of ages, budded and burst and blossomed in the Light: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. v. 44, 45). This is the ripened fruit which the simple Mosaic precept produces for our use in the new dispensation; for Christ came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fufil. In the lips of Jesus the lesson attained its fullest dimensions and divinest form. Paul, delighting in all things to follow his Master’s footsteps, took up the ancient law, as Solomon had expressed it, and wove it for ornament and strength into his greatest treatise at its practical turning point: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. xii. 19-21).

But we have not reached the origin of this wonderful law when we have traced it up to Moses: his and all subsequent expressions of it are copies merely. The original is indeed a deep thing of God: that which he commands us to do to one another He had already done to us in the everlasting covenant. He saw mankind in active enmity against Himself. He visited his enemies not to condemn, but to save. He gave food to the hungry, and water to the thirsty. He gave all good in Christ. He gave that unspeakable gift to enemies. He gave it, as coals of fire, to melt the hardened. This is the pattern after which all true morality is fashioned: the soul of social duty is, “Love one another as I have loved you!”

To love an enemy is a principle that comes from heaven; it is not indigenous on earth. Even after it has been planted in a human heart its growth is generally stunted, for want of a soft soil and a genial atmosphere; it is a tender exotic, and its fruit seldom comes to perfection in the cold damp field of the world. Some who seem to excel in other graces, fall far short here. This is peculiarly the “grace of the Lord Jesus.” One who knew it well represented it as the distinguishing feature of his work, that “whila we were yet enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom. v. 10). Those disciples, accordingly, who walk most closely with their Master will be found to excel the most in this rare attainment. It is only when the same mind is in us that was also in Christ Jesus, that we love our enemies and do them good. When he was lifted up on the cross he gave out the key-note of the Christian life: “Father, forgive them.” The gospel must come in such power as to turn the inner world upside down ere any real progress can be made in this difficult department of social duty. When we learn like Paul to “long after” our neighbours “in the bowels of Jesus Christ” (Phil. i. 8), we shall like him long after them all without exception. It is in proportion as a disciple loses the sense of his separate identity, and realizes his union as a member in the body of Christ, that his charity is able to cover the high provocations of those who deliberately do him wrong. As water, though it be actually low within the distributing channel, will rise again to the

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height of its source, so when the compassion that flows through a believer in the body is the very compassion that flows into him from Christ, it is a good of sufficient power to overcome the most formidable manifestations of eviL Practice directly depends on faith: when duty is difficult, faith must be strong. Accordingly it was when the Master enjoined his disciples to forgive an enemy seven times a- day, that they cried out, “Lord, increase our faith” (Luke xvii. 4, 5). They felt the force of mercy in their own hearts utterly inadequate to the difficult work which was prescribed, and with the true instincts of the new creature, sought a remedy suited to their want — a sealed union of the empty channels with the upper spring of abounding grace.

This method of treating an enemy is prescribed, not merely because it is abstractly right in principle, but also as the best practical means of obtaining a specific beneficial result. Do him good in return for evil, “for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.” The idea of a furnace is introduced here with reference to the smelting of mineral ore, and not to the torture of living creatures. The coals of fire suggest not the pain of punishment to the guilty, but the benefit of getting his hard heart softened, and the dross removed from his character. Love poured out in return for hatred will be what the burning coals are to the ore: it will melt and purify.

In the smelting of metals, whether on a large or a small scale, it is necessary that the burning coals should be above the ore as well as beneath it. The melting fuel and the rude stones to be melted are mingled together, and brought into contact particle by particle throughout the mass. It is thus that the resistance of the stubborn material is overcome, and the precious separated from the vile. The analogy gives an impressive view both of the injurer’s hardness and the power of the forgiver’s love. Christians meet much obdurate evil in the world. It is not their part either peevishly to fret or proudly to plan revenge. The Lord has in this matter distinctly traced a path for his disciples, and hedged it in. It is their business to render good for evil; it is their business to pile forgiveness over injuries, layer upon layer, as diligently and patiently as these swarthy labourers heave loads of coals over the iron ore within the furnace; and that not merely in conformity with an abstract idea of transcendental virtue, but with an object as directly and as substantially utilitarian as that which the miner pursues. The Christian’s aim, like the miner’s, is to melt, and so make valuable, the substance which, in its present state, is hard in itself, and hurtful to those whom it touches.

The Americans have a tract on this subject, entitled The Man who Killed his Neighbours. It contains, in the form of a narrative, many useful practical suggestions on the art of overcoming evil with good. It is with kindness, — modest, thoughtful, generous, persevering, unwearied kindness, — that the benevolent countryman kills his churlish neighbour; and it is only the old evil man that he kills, leaving the new man to lead a very different life in the same village after the dross has been purged away. If any one desires to try this work, he must bring to it at least these two qualifications, modesty and patience. If he proceed ostentatiously, with an air of superiority and a consciousness of his own virtue, he will never make one step of progress; the subject will day by day grow harder in his hands. But even though the successive acts of kindness should be genuine, the operatoi must lay his account with a tedious process and many disappointments. Many instances of good rendered for evil may seem to have been thrown away, and no symptom of penitence appear in the countenance or conduct of the evil-doer; but be not weary in this well-doing, for in due season you shall reap if you faint not. Although your enemy has resisted your deeds of kindness even unto seventy times seven, it does not follow that all, or that any one of these has been lost. At the last, the enmity will suddenly give way, and flow down in penitence under some single act, perhaps not greater than any of those which preceded it; but every one that preceded it contributed cumulatively to the glad result. The miner does not think that his coals of fire are wasted, .although he has been throwing them on for several successive hours, and the stones show no symptom of dissolving: he knows that each portion of the burning fuel is contributing to the result, and that the flow will be sudden and complete at last. Let him go and do likewise who aspires to win a brother by the subduing power of self-sacrificing love.

The practical effect of kindness in subduing the evil-doer, as well as its originating principle, is exhibited in the covenant of grace before it can appear in the life of believers. In this department as in others, Christians are not inventors, — they must be “imitators of God as dear children.” If any one succeed in melting a neighbour’s hard heart by undeserved love, he has borrowed the method whereby Jesus won his own. Led to repentance himself, when he was seared in sin, by the undeserved goodness of God, a renewed man instinctively repeats the process on a smaller scale wherever he can find a subject, as little children imitate in a diminutive sphere the actions of their father. The saved know the effect which goodness from God in return for evil has produced on their own hearts, and therefore are ever, according to their measure, trying the same process on their fellow-men.

NOT does this unmeasured mercifulness impede the action of righteousness either in God or in man: mercy to sinners, as it appears in the gospel, is totally diverse from indulgence to sin. God knows how to be both just and the justifier of them that believe in Jesus. The perfect adjustment of righteousness and mercy in the Pattern should be sufficient to keep the imitator right. It is possible to forgive freely a brother’s sin, and yet thereby give him no encouragement to repeat it. No man can supply a directory which shall tell the learner, in every case that occurs, wherein and how far he should, in the interests of justice, maintain his rights against an evil-doer; and wherein and how far he should, in the interest* of mercy, forgive. No such external rules exist; no such external teaching is possible. It is not lo here and lo there; the kingdom of God and its laws are within the hearts of its loyal subjects. When you love both righteousness and your erring brother as Christ loved both righteousness and you, the difficulties will vanish like mist as you go forward to meet them. If you get upon the traces of the Lord’s goings, the way will be easy and the issue sure. If you are willing to follow him, he will lead you through. Your forgiveness of wrong, when you see your way to bestow it freely, will not embolden thu transgressor to think lightly of the law; your stand for righteousness, when you see meet to make it, will not detract from mercy’s melting power upon the transgressors heart. Be mercifully righteous, and righteously merciful, like the Lord; and as he has thereby won you, you will thereby win your brother.

The workman in this department is worthy of his hire, and he will get it. The Master who prescribes the task has promised the <T) 33 labourer Iris wages: “The Lord shall reward thee.” Those who fulfil this “royal law” will receive from the King a royal recompense. The wages are not “corruptible things, as silver and gold;” “the winner’s reward is the brother whom he has won. The Lord himself expressly announced, as the profit accruing from a cognate labour, “Thou hast gained thy brother” (Matt, xviii. 15). No work is so well paid as this; and no efficient workman goes away discontented. Those who would not value this kind of reward are precisely the persons who never try this kind of work. To render good for evil without limit as to time and quantity, is a hard effort; and to turn a neighbour’s hatred into love is all that can be made by it. He who does not value the pearl will not dive for it; but he who dives for it shows by the very act that he values the pearl. The same love that risks the outlay will count the return abundant. This is the way of the Lord; in the doing of his commandments is a great reward. Those who do his work cannot be deprived of their wages; for the work is wages and the wages is work.