The Nature and Source of True Philanthropy
“And let us consider one another, to provoke unto love, and to good works.” — Heb. X. 24.
We may wind off this coil best by grasping the line at its outer extremity, and working our way inward to the heart. Or, we may explore this river best by entering its mouth from the sea, and threading our way upward till we reach its source. We begin our examination of the text, then, not at the beginning, but at the end.
I. “Works.” Work is the condition of life in the world. The law of both kingdoms alike is, “If any man will not work neither should he eat,” Work has been made a necessity in the constitution of nature, and declared a duty in the positive precepts of Scripture. Idleness is both sin and misery. In the authoritative and necessary alternation of work and rest, whether the regulating law is fixed in creation or written in the Bible, God has wisely and kindly accommodated his ordinances to the condition of his creatures. The week’s labour makes the Sabbath welcome; the Sabbath fits the labourer for the exertion of the week. The varied activity of the day makes the weary hail with gladness the approaching
night; silent night restores the waste, and sends forth a new man to the work of a new day. These terrestrial circles are as wise in their plan, and as sweet in their movements as the heavenly spheres.
Work seems the law of the universe. Witness the ceaseless race of the heavenly bodies. Witness these unwearied burden-bearers hastening along over our heads, carrying water to refresh a world, and pouring it out on the central ridges of continents, that it may supply every portion of the land on its way back to the sea. Witness the rivers how they flow onward night and day, summer and winter, rejoicing to run their race. Witness the flowers, how they struggle through the earth in early spring, and hasten to unfold their blossoms, and after that to ripen their seed, that it may be filled and fit for sowing ere the winter come. When you ascend to animate nature, you find a still more articulate activity, —
“How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour!”
Everything is working. A non-productive class is an anomaly in creation.
When a sinner is saved — when a man becomes a new creature in Christ, he is not set free from this comprehensive law. The Lord has a work of righteousness on hand, and the disciple yields himself a willing instrument. His heart is more hopeful now, and his hand more skilful. More honourable work is prescribed, and better wages wait him. The prodigal had his hands full, no doubt, and his day all occupied, when, in the strange and famine - stricken land, the double task was laid upon him of finding husks in the field both for himself and for his master’s swine. When he returned to his father’s house, his life was happier, but not idler. He had cleaner work and better pay, but he was obliged to work: love obliged him. The elder brother, we incidentally learn, was in his father’s fields that day: the younger, we may be assured, was there too the next.
The sowing, and the planting, and the grafting, and the fencing, and the watering, — all is done with a view to fruifc. The cumberer of the ground is condemned to be cast out. “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.”
Christ was a worker. He went about doing. “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,”
Christ was a worker, and Christians are like him. The world is a field. It must be subdued and made the garden of the Lord. Son, daughter, “go work TO-DAY in my vineyard.”
Fix it, then, firmly in your minds as a practical rule of life for all, that if you have tasted the mercies of God, you must — you will give yourselves to him as willing sacrifices. If you are bought with a price, you must- — you will serve the Lord that bought you. To serve is the calling of all Christians, with all their talents, all their days. The Lord requires it, and will give no exemption; the disciple loves it, and will ask none.
II. ‘’Good works.” It is not any work that will please God, or be profitable to men. A bustling life will not make heaven sure. Here is a group of workmen claiming their reward: “Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?” So far their plea; now its answer: “I never knew you; depart from me, ye workers.” Idleness was not their sin; they came to heaven’s gate with a back-load of works, but in the estimate of the Judge they were not ‘^ good works: “” Depart, ye workers of iniquity.*’
The works must be good in design and character. The motive must be pure, and the effect beneficent.
But does not the gospel decry good works? Is it not the distinguishing mark of an evangelical preacher, that he runs them down as worthless? We have much need to make our conceptions clear on this point, and keep them clear. Practically, a disastrous confusion of ideas prevails here. Two things, similar in sound, but essentially diverse in character, are confounded. You make a grand mistake if, because you are warned not to trust in good works, you grow less diligent in doing them. If a skilful architect, observing you expending your summer days, and your manhood’s strength, in an effort to build a house upon the sand, should benevolently warn you that the labour would be labour lost, you would poorly profit by his counsel, if you should, simply desist from the work, and loiter idle near the spot. The architect, your friend, did not object to the expenditure of your time and strength in building; but he saw that the higher your wall should rise on that foundation, the more certain and more destructive would be its fall. He meant that you should find the solid rocl, and build there, — build with aJl your might. The gospel rejects good works, not as the fruit of faith, but as the meritorious ground of hope before God, The place of man’s works in the Christian system decisively affects their natura Although in form they may be good, if they are made the foundation of the doer’s hope, they are dead, and therefore loathsome to the living. They are the offerings which guilt makes under the pressure of fear to the God whom the conscience dislikes because of his holiness. Those who work thus are workers of iniquity, although they give all their goods to feed th6 poor, and their bodies to be burned to boot. But when we labour to keep good works out of the wrong place, we do not disparage them in the right place. Beneath a sinner as the material of his confidence, they are not only useless but ruinous; in the life of a believer they are natural and necessary. Life does not spring from them; but they spring from life. As ciphers, added one by one in an endless row to the left hand of a unit are of no value, but on the right hand rapidly multiply its power, so although good works are of no avail to make a man a Christian, yet a Christian s good works are both pleasing to God and profitable to men.
Good works rendered by Christians to Christ, put forth upon a needy world, are not dangerous thing a Christians should be not jealous, but zealous of good works. The Lord requires them; disciples render them; the world needs them. What would the world be if it wanted the few that are agoinoj? Almost a hell. What would the world be if all its people should spend all their energies in doing them? Almost a heaven. Ascend now another step in our inquiry.
III. ‘’Love and good works.” Verily good works constitute a refreshing stream in this world, wherever they are found flowing. It is a pity that they are too often like Oriental torrents, “waters that fail” in the time of greatest need. When we meet the stream actually flowing and refreshing the land, we trace it upward in order to discover the fountain whence it springs. Threading our way upward, guided by the river, we have found at length the placid lake from which the river runs. Behind all genuine good works and above them, love will sooner or later certainly be found. It is never good works alone; uniformly in fact, and necessarily in the nature of things, we find the two constituents existing as a complex whole, “love and good works,” — the fountain and the flowing stream.
The love is manifestly in this case human in all its exercise. It is love from man to man. Like the water, it flows visibly out of the ground in the fountain, and along the ground in the river’s bed; but like the water, it comes secretly at first all from heaven. The uninstructed, seeing it bubbling up from the bottom, can trace it nrp further, and think that the bowels of the earth are the primal source of the spring; but science has made it plain, that the water which overflows there from subterranean cavities has descended all from the skies. In like manner, whatever of real love dwells in a human heart, and flows along to refresh the neighbourhood, has first come secretly from heaven to fill that heart and make it overflow. “Love one another, as I have loved yon.” Of that charity which “sufiereth long and is kind,” the pattern was shown, the fountain was opened, “ill the mount,” — not that which was covered with fire and smoke, but that which was stained with the blood of Christ. The love which springs there, is, as it courses through the life of a Christian, a great bearer of evil, a great doer of good.
Love, then, where it exists, will, according to its purity and power, issue in actual beneficence; but, alas, where is the love? How little of it is in the world, and how dreary the world is for want of it! If we had enough of love, we would have enough. Wanting it, the world is a wilderness; with it the world would be a paradise again. Give us this, and we shall possess all. The precise subject of which we speak here is, not the way of pardon, but the path of duty; and on this side the first, and the second, and the third quality of a good Christian is love. See 1 Cor. xiii. This is the gi-and practical want of the world: how shall it be supplied? For instruction on this point, ascend now another step of the text.
IV. “Provoke unto love and good works.” Let us attend carefully to the meaning of the term “provoke;” bearing in mind, however, as we proceed, that whatever kind of action the word may be found to indicate, it is action on ourselves, and not on our neighbours. As we use it at the present day, it is one of the most biting, scalding words in the language. If you have made an appointment and kept it; if, when you come to the appointed place at the appointed time, the other contracting party be not there to meet you; if, in consequence of his neglect, you lose your time and your trouble, and, perhaps, your temper, you say, It is provoking; and so it is. If a man who has nothing, and does nothing, contrive to fasten himself like a parasite upon your property and industry; if, in syite of all your efforts to keep him at bay, the bankrupt get hold of your name and involve you in his faU, he has provoked you, and you are accordingly provoked. But in all such cases, the person provoked is provoked not to love, but to anger. We might, therefore, conclude, from the nature of the case, that the provocation which the text commends and commands must be of another kind; and, in point of fact, we find that it is of another — an opposite kind.
I shall endeavour to explain this. I am anxious to rescue this precious precept from the misunderstanding in which it is apt to be involved by the modern meaning of the word in our language. Even the English word in its origin means simply to call forth; the unsavoury signification is altogether secondary. The term in the original Greek of the New Testament literally and really signifies, For the purpose of stirring up, or sharpening, oi kindling love. We need not be surprised to find that injunction here. The love that is current in the Church is defective in kind and quality. It greatly needs to be stirred up. It is like a fire smouldering, and ready to die. Oh, for a breath from heaven to quicken it! We would fain see it bursting into a blaze, and hear all our jealousies and hollow hypocrisies crackling off in the flame. Love must be kindled into a paroxysm; for that is the original term untranslated, and that term, even in our own language, truly indicates the inspired apostle’s mind. All the really effective machinery for doing good in the world depends for propulsion on the love that glows in human breasts: with all the revival of our own favoured times, the wheels, clogged with the thick clay of a predominating selfishness, move but slowly. Up with the impelling love into greater warmth, that it may put forth greater power!
The only other example of precisely the same word in the New Testament is in Acts xv. 89,” And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other.’’ The conflict of judgment between Paul and Barnabas on that occasion is described as a paroxysm. There, in the history, it was intensity of disagreement; here, in the precept, it is intensity of love; but in the two cases the same word is used in the same meaning. Alas, it is easier to kindle anger than love in the breasts of the fallen! The Worse is lighted oftener, and blazes higher amongst us, than the better emotion. A disagreement bursts out between two or three persons in high positions, and, as a direct effect, armies march and fleets sail, thousands bleed, and fruitful lands are devastated. The devouring flame, kindled by a spark, spreads far and fast, leaving a broad black belt of desolation across a continent. Christians, our flame is as powerful for results on the world as theirs; but the spark that lights it, like the fire which consumed the sacrifice in Israel, must be brought from heaven.
We see, then, that there should be a paroxysm of love; but what shall produce the paroxysm? For this, ascend another step.
Y. “Consider one another to provoke unto love and good works.” The exercise prescribed for provoking unto love conclusively determines the persons on whom the provocation was expected to take efiect. It is the considerer, not the considered, who is provoked unto love. By thinking of my brother in his need I may be stirred up to pity him, but the mental process that goes on within my breast does not touch him for good or for evil. He may not know that I am considering his case; he may not know that there is such a person in the world. When we consider the heathen in India and China our meditation takes effect, not on them, but on ourselves. It stirs up, not them to love ns, but us to love them.
The question here, let it be remembered, concerns not the divine cause of love, but the human agency employed in kindling it. It is the Spirit that quickeneth; but at present we look only to the lower side — the instrumentality of men. When fire is kindled by light direct from the sun, the same two must always conspire — the descent of the burning ray from heaven, and the preparation for receiving it on earth. The solar rays must be concentrated on combustible material, by means of a glass with a convex surface, held in a certain attitude, and at a certain distance. Without these preparations, even the sun in the heavens cannot kindle a flame.
Thus it becomes a question of deep interest, What attitude must we assume, and what preparation must we make, in order that love, by the ministry of the Spirit, jnay be kindled in our hearts? Here is the prescription, short and plain: “Consider one another.”
It is a Christian’s duty to consider various objects, each in its own place and time. It is necessary that each should consider himself: “Let a man examine himself;” ‘•’ Prove your own selves whether ye be in the faith.” It is also necessary that each should “consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.” These two, simultaneous or alternate, are precious and needful exercises. Look in, that you may know the patient’s need; and up, that you may know the Physician’s power. But it is another and different exercise which this text prescribes. To consider ourselves may be the means of begetting in us a desire for mercy: to consider Christ may be the means of begetting in us a trust in the Saviour; but in order to kindle in our hearts a self-denying, brother-saving love to men, the true specific is to “consider one another.” Self-pleasing is the bane of the world and the Church. It is not the mind which was in Christ Jesus; “Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.’’ Now, as well as in the days of the apostles, there are many antichrists; and most certainly a selfish epirit is one of them. He considered us, and at the sight of our sin and misery self-sacrificing love glowed in his breast. When we consider one another as he considered us, the sight of a brother’s distress will make our compassion flow. It was” in the bowels of Jesus Christ’* that Paul so “greatly longed after” all the brethren at Philippi.
A parallel to this precept, most interesting and instructive, is found in the record of the apostle’s own experience, Acts xvii. 1 6 1 “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” The term “stirred” in that passage is, in the original, the same as “provoke” in our text, except that the one is in the form of a verb, and the other in the form of a noun; as one might say, He greatly loves his child, or He has great love for his child, using now the verb and now the noun, but the same word, and in the same signification.
Twice in one day, sights which met his eye at Athens suddenly and totally changed the apostle’s plans. His first intention was to labour there, for a time at least, alone; but as soon as he caught a glimpse of the city from a neighbouring eminence, he sent back to Berea an urgent request that Timothy and Silas should join him with all speed. His purpose then was to wait till these two faithful friends should come up, that they might begin their mission in partnership, and sustain each other in its toils. But in forming this resolution, Paul knew neither Athens the field, nor himself the labourer. The spirit of the prophet was not, on that occasion, subject to the prophet. Determined to postpone the commencement of the work till the arrival of his brethren, Paul passed through the gates of the Grecian capital and walked along its sti’eets. Blind alike to the symmetiy of its marble monuments and the polish of its living inhabitants, he saw only the vile idolatry with which it teemed. Idols, idols everywhere, but nowhere a glimpse of the true God, or the need of sinners! He looked and mused; as he was musing the fire burned. He could not bide his time; he could not hold his peace. The fire that burned quickly burst through. Neither counting the cost nor caring for consequences, he instantly struck in with all his might, to turn the idolaters “from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.’”’
So a single soldier, marching far in advance of the army, to obtain information and probe for danger, comes suddenly and unexpectedly upon the main body of the enemy in battle array. Kindling at the sight, he first turns round, and by a trumpet blast summons his comrades to come quickly up; then draws his sword, and strikes home, alone against a host. Well done, good soldier of Jesus Christ!
Thus we see clearly how the prescription operated in that case. This man considered these idolaters, and the instant effect was a paroxysm of love in his heart, issuing in beneficent effort. But will the same application be in all cases followed by the same result? If one man consider another, and see him in distress, will self-denying, efiicient love to the sufferer forthwith fill the observer’s heart, as effect follows cause in nature? Ah! surely that rule does not always hold good.
See an opposite result in the smallest of human affairs,.
and the largest. Here is a young child with a toy in his hand, which has been in his possession a whole day, and of which, consequently, he is weary, looking on a still younger child playing with a toy that seems new. This human being is considering that other human being, and, according to the sequence marked in the text, he should be stirred up to love and good works; but, instead, you see the elder child snatch the coveted plaything from the younger, and beat him when he reclaims against the wrong. On a larger scale you may see the same process repeated. A king and government look across the border, and observe a neighbouring king and government in trouble. Instead of love, covetousness is kindled; and instead of good works, invasion and robbery follow. Between those two extremes of smallest and greatest, the space is occupied by whole legions of similar examples. “Consider one another;” so we do, but alas! the consideration does not always stir up love and draw forth kindness.
Something is wanting yet. The love and the look on one another which seemed, when we saw them first, to be the head waters of our river, turn out to be but tarns on the elevated moorland, which must themselves be filled by deeper and more perennial springs that rise on a higher level.
One step higher, and we reach the real spring at last.
VI. “And consider one another, to provoke unto love and good works.” I would not play with a word; I would not extract the doctrines of grace from a copulative conjunction. But in this passage, the little word “and”
is the link by which all that we have yet gotten hangs on the higher, — hangs on the highest.
The exhortation to consider is the last of three which are given in an exact logical series, occupying verses 22-24. You will better observe their relation if yo read the precepts alone in succession, omitting the matter, most precious in itself, which fills the interstices. “Let us draw near,” — “let us hold fast,” — “and let us consider.” The last does not stand alone. Alone it would be of no avail. As well might you expect a cure, if you should administer only the last of three ingrelients in your physician’s prescription.
The first requisite, as written in the 2 2d verse, is to come yourself to the blood of Christ for pardon. The second, as wi-itten in the 23d verse, is to hold fast by hope what you have attained by faith. The third, as written in the 24th verse, is to consider one another with a view to stir up love and bring forth active beneficence. Come to the Saviour for the cleansing of your own conscience, and abide in peace under the light of his countenance: then and thence, look out upon your brother: the result of the combination will be thoughts of love and acts of kindness, as certainly and as uniformly as any of the sequences in natui-e. He who has drawn near, and is holding fast, — that is, he who has himself been forgiven through the blood of the Lamb, and is living in the consciousness of being accepted in the Beloved, cannot hate and hurt his brother.
The act of considering or looking upon an object is of no avail to direct aright your own course, apart from the position in which you stand when you make your observations. A red light shines aloft at the narrow entrance of a safe harbour. A ship sweeping along the coast in a storm, sees the light, and makes straight for it through the waves and the darkness. She strikes a rock, and goes down in deep water. Why? This is the harbqur, and the light she made for marks its mouth. Ah! it is not enough that you see the light; you must see it from a particular position, and make for it then. The right position is always correctly determined and laid down on the charts. Generally it is fixed by one or more other lights which you must see in line before you head for the harbour.
“Consider one another,” — that is the last and lowest of the three lights which lead to love. The course is marked for the Christian in his chart. One clause of the instructions is, Keep your eye on that light, and run in; but another clause in combination with it, equally divine and equally necessary, intimates, that ere you can go in with safety to yourself or benefit to others, you must get into line with these other two lights which stretch away dpward, and lean at last on heaven.
Authors who are under the guidance of divine inspiration, are not on that account less apt to repeat their own conceptions in other combinations and other forms. Elsewhere in Paul’s writings we meet the same things in the same order, in circumstances which demonstrate that the power of the last depends on the union of all, — that the lower links hang absolutely on the higher. Draw near, hold fast, and consider in order to love. “Faith, Hope, Charity these three.”’ Ay, these three you may, through the grace of the Spirit, get and keep; but the last one will note live alone. Severed from the group, it dies. He who has himself come to God in Christ and found mercy; who in all life’s tossings holds fast by his first hope, as the anchor of his soul, with every new strain of temptation fixing its fluke the deeper in sure bedding within the veil, — he, when he considers a neighbour in need, is, by the laws of the new creation, provoked unto love and good works.
You have more confidence in the physician’s prescription if you know that, in the same disease, himself has experienced its efficacy. Paul, we know, practised this course of spiritual exercise before he prescribed it. He lived it first, and preached it then. He had considered the Athenians, as they bowed before their idols, and cast their offerings on the altar of the unknown God. His heart had burned within him at the sight. That internal fire had precipitated him with all his force on the work of enlightening the ignorant, and liberating the enslaved. He had tried his own prescription on himself; having found it efficacious, he publishes it for the benefit of alL
But Paul had taken all the three ingredients together, ere his heart was stirred up to love by the sight of a brother in distress. From his own experience he knew that the last alone is utterly barren of good. Saul’s heart lay cold and still, like a frozen lake swept by a tempest, while the ruffian murderers, whom he hounded on, were shedding Stephen’s blood in his sight. The martyr’s eyes were raised to heaven, and a light from heaven made his face shine like an angel’s before the time; the martyr’s last prayer was uttered, and its gentle accents fell on the persecutor’s ear; but Saul of Tarsus felt no softness quivering then about his heart. A mighty change had passed upon the man, between the time when he saw unmoved Christ’s fii’st martyr die, and the time when the sight of Athenian idolatry kindled in his breast a holy jealousy for God, and threw him headlong, a solitary enthusiast, upon the hostility of a whole nation. While the objects remain similar, the observer’s stand-point has been changed. He has drawn near with a true heart in the full assurance of faith, and holds fast the blessed hope in Christ, which through faith he at first attained. Now, from the standing of a sinner saved, and in the spirit of a saint rejoicing, he looks forth upon a lost world; the look lights up all that is within him into a flame of self-sacrificino; love.