The Love of Man
Matt v. 23, 24, 38-
48.
vi. 1-5, 12.
xviii. 15-17.
xix. 16-22.
xx. 25-28.
xxii. 21, 39,
Mark iii. 4. Luke
vi. 37, 38, 41,
vii. 34.
x. 19.
xii. 28*34.
vi. 27-38, 41
42.
x. 25-37.
xi. 42.
xviii. 1-8, 18
27.
O the second great commandment —” Thou
X shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” — -Jesus rendered a still greater service than to the first by lifting it out of the place where it occurs in the Old Testament and stamping it with His imprimatur; as may be seen by anyone who will take the trouble to look it up in the Book of Leviticus; for there it will be found side by side with a law forbidding the wearing of clothing made partly of wool and partly of linen, and another forbidding the sowing of a field with divers kinds of seeds.
It would appear, indeed, from the record of the life of Jesus, that the scribes in His day had not altogether overlooked this commandment. On the contrary, it had come under their frequent notice; but they had given to it a distortion which exposes what manner of teachers they were; for, assuming that it could not possibly mean what it said, they read it in this way: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.” Nor did this remain a mere speculation or dead letter: it is well known how
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the Jews did actually hate the Samaritans, putting them on the same level with the heathen, and how, even among their own fellow-countrymen, they extended the same dislike and hostility to the publicans and sinners. Nor was this inability to comprehend the philanthropy which lies at the root of this great law of the Old Testament confined to the Jews. The cultivated peoples of the West divided mankind into Greeks and barbarians, the latter being objects of aversion and contempt. Among both Greeks and Romans it was esteemed, as is remarked in Ecce Homo, the highest praise of a dead man to say that none had done more good to his friends or more harm to his foes; and, amongst savage races, the hatred of enemies has usually been regarded as a religious duty.
Once, when Jesus was quoting the second great commandment from the Old Testament, He was confronted with this monstrous limitation of its sweep and application, by a scribe among the by¬ standers asking, “But who is my neighbour?” Evidently the man desired the term “neighbour” to have a limited scope, while he craved permission to hate the immeasurable circle of his fellow-creatures lying beyond. Jesus answered by narrating the parable of the Good Samaritan — one of the divinest of His inspirations. It would not be easy to comprise the teaching of this great utterance in any brief formula. The conduct of the priest and the Levite was intended to show how zeal for God may be attended with total lack of sympathy with man; while the appearance of the Samaritan proves how far, sometimes, the simple instincts of nature may outrun the artificial training of religion. But undoubtedly the point of the parable lies in the scope assigned to the term “neighbour”; and never was there an instance which more fully demonstrated how Jesus could impose an utterly novel point of view on opinion and conduct. The definition is found by Him, not in the claim of the person to be loved, but in the heart of the person who loves. The conduct of the Samaritan could not but command admiration; and Jesus concludes from it that all should act in such a way as to secure similar acknowledgment. It is the identical sentiment which He has stamped forever as the Golden Rule: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
There is no reason to doubt that much virtue may reside in the mere elevation of this command¬ ment to the position assigned to it by Jesus; and a great deal may be done by merely repeating the precepts in which it is more fully formulated and urging these on the attention of all. Learning may also help to throw them into relief by comparing and contrasting them with the ethical precepts of other systems. For example, there has been much discussion as to whether the Golden Rule can be
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demonstrated to have been ever enunciated by any moralist before our Lord. I believe the result of such investigations has been to establish His originality;. the nearest approach to the Christian precept being the negative one: Do not to others anything which you would not that they should do to you. *
Still, I should doubt, whether the ethical originality of Jesus is to be chiefly sought in the difference between His ethical precepts and those of other masters. To give utterance to such sentiments, how¬ ever sublime, is a comparatively easy thing; and multitudes have been able to utter such, or at least to admire them when uttered by others, without exhibiting the smallest disposition to practise them. The real difficulty appears rather to lie in quickening the will in such a way that it may be disposed to follow the lofty path, when it is descried; and, therefore, we do not so much inquire what ethical precepts Jesus uttered which were novel and superior to those already made current by others as ask what new motives He was able to bring into play, to stimulate the sluggish will and thereby give the commandments a chance of being fulfilled.
* The Book of Tobit, iv. 15, says: “And what thou thyself hatest, do to no man.” Hillel is reported to have said, “What is disagreeable to thyself, that do not to thy neighbour.” See the subject investigated by Barth, Die Hauptprobleme des LeOens Jesu, p. 85.
In speaking in a previous chapter of the contribution made by Jesus to the first great commandment — that which enjoins the love of God — I remarked that it was not so much by bringing this command¬ ment forth out of obscurity, or by reiterating and emphasizing it, that He secured for it a new hold on the attention of men; but rather by making it easier to love God; this being effected by showing the divine Being to be more lovable; and a similar statement may now be made concerning this second commandment: it was not by uttering the command¬ ment in a louder voice or repeating it more frequently that Jesus secured for it new attention, but by making it easier to love man — by showing how worthy of reverence and regard human nature is.
There are no more characteristic elements in the Gospel and none which have exerted profounder influence in history than those which bring out the infinite worth attaching to the meanest member of the human species. Such is the great saying, commented on in a previous chapter: “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Such are the parables in the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke, which reveal the joy there is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Such is the great discourse on offences, also commented on already, where the Teacher deprecates the mishandling of the very least of those who believe in Him as a sacrilege worthy of the direst punish-THE ETHIC OF JESUSment.* To the same kind of impression the uniform behaviour of Jesus to the poor and suffering, to children and to women, immensely contributed. It is to the generation of such sentiments of respect and tenderness for all human beings, even the smallest, the meanest and the worst, that the transformations wrought by Christianity in the behaviour
* Nothing is more characteristic of great literature than the power of uttering, in felicitous and arresting language, profound ethical principles, which flash into the abysses of human nature or irradiate vast tracts of human life. Of these I have collected, not without care, some forty, which will convey an impression of the wealth, in this respect, of the words of Jesus. I should not wonder if a book on the subject of this volume might be written with these as the mottoes of the chapters; and, at all events, I venture to commend them to anyone who may be stimulated by the reading of this book to give, in the pulpit, a course of lectures on the ethical teaching of Jesus.
They that are whole have no need ot the physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.
But many that are first shall be last, and the last first.
The disciple is not above his master nor the servant above his lord.
Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
First cast the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And, if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
No man can enter into a strong man’s house and spoil his of man to man in the course of the centuries have been principally due.
Jesus never despised the body. How could He, when it is His Father’s handiwork? “The very
hairs of your head,” He said, “are all numbered.” He recognised the needs of the body when He taught men to pray, “Give us this day our daily
goods, except he will first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his house.
For, whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
A prophet is not without honour but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
There is nothing from without a man that, entering into him, can defile him; but the things which come out of him, these are they that defile the man.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel’s, the same shall save it.
If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.
He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth.
He that is not against us is on our part. For whosoever will give you a cup of cold water to drink, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward. And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in Me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
With God all things are possible
No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old: if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles j else the new wine will
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bread.” By His miracles of healing He imparted a
new dignity to that art which has the body for its
care. He permitted His own body to be anointed
with the costliest spikenard, saying that this was
done against His burial, and thus He sanctified the
reverent disposal even of the corpse. Yet He
esteemed the honour of the body nothing in com-
- - - - - - - - - - - — - - - —
burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles will perish.
But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.
With the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
Wisdom is justified of all her children.
To whom little is forgiven the same loveth little.
No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel or putteth it under a bed, but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter may see the light.
No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
One thing is needful.
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in m uch
No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate parison with that of the soul: a single soul is worth the whole of the material universe, of which the body forms a part. When He thought or spoke of the soul, He saw, with the mind’s eye, not only its present condition but its future possibilities — all it could grow to and would grow to — in union with Himself.* To the greatest thinkers of the race
the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
The labourer is worthy of his hire.
Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.
Salt is good; but, if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill.
If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.
But I say unto you, that, every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.
If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
Wheresoever the carcase is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.
All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
* This thought is well worked out in the sixth chapter of E. Grimm’s Die Ethik Jesu — an able book on our subject, but one which I never open without annoyance that we have not received a greater one from the man who was able to write a work so brilliant as Das Problem Friedrich Nietzsches.
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before Him immortality had been only an occasional and dubious surmise, as indeed, even at the present day, the world’s greatest thinkers, apart from Him, are still involved in the same hesitation. But Jesus moved in an atmosphere of serene certainty on this subject; He dwelt in eternity, as in His proper home and fatherland; and His faith in immortality was not for Himself alone, but for all His brother men. It depended, in the last resort, on the consciousness of His return to the heavenly Father. But this faith also He cherished not only for Himself but also for His brethren. He knew that they had come from God and that they were going to God. Such was their dignity and such their destiny. And about beings concerning whom this could be said no mean thought should ever be cherished. In the eyes of Jesus this sovereign prerogative belonged to men without distinction; it was not. limited by race or creed, by class or age or sex; and this was the foundation laid by Him for the honour and the love He claimed for each and all.
It is only saying the same thing in different language if we assert that the chief service rendered by Jesus to this second commandment was to associate it so closely with the first. In the Old Testament they lie apart, with no indication of any connection between them; but He brought the two together in such a manner as to suggest that they have an intimate relation to each other. In reality they are twin commandments; and so closely are they connected that they cannot exist, or, at all events, they cannot have a healthy existence apart.
Even the first great commandment is not independent of the second; for, although in logic the first is primary, as it is in authority, yet in experience the second is first. It is through the domestic affections that the heart learns to know what love itself is, and, if it did not first love man, it would never love God. The growth and refinement of the natural affections prepare the heart for satisfactions which these cannot fully supply; and the intensity of human love supplies a standard by which we can measure our love to God. On the other hand, the first great commandment acts as a protection and a stimulus to the second. When love to God is thoroughly awakened, it is the most decisive of all breaks with selfishness, and, the spell of this entangle¬ ment once broken, every development of altruistic sentiment becomes possible. The love of man is commanded in the law of God and backed with all the sanctions by which the law is enforced.
Yet there has always existed a disposition to separate the two commandments from each other. In ancient times this manifested itself in the sacrifice of the second to the nrst. Ritual was substituted for righteousness, and men were able to believe them¬ selves the friends of God and the favourites of Heaven, whilst behaving with injustice and cruelty
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to their fellow-creatures. In the first chapter of Isaiah the eloquence of the great prophet is hurled against this abuse, and there is no point to which the indignation of subsequent prophets is more frequently directed. Jesus had to take up the same strain; for this was one of the most crying evils of His time. With many a keen and cutting sarcasm did He attack the opinions and practices of His contemporaries, who thought themselves pleasing to God in heaven, on account of their fasts, prayers and Sabbaths, while grinding the faces of God’s children on earth and devouring the property of widows and orphans. Of all His sayings of this nature the most unmistakeable perhaps was this: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way: first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” In this saying, as well as in some others, He appears to put the second commandment first. This, how¬ ever, was not really His intention: it was only by the perversity of the time that He was constrained to speak so strongly as to have the appearance of doing so.
The disposition to make religion a substitute for morality has not yet died out of the world; there are persons in whose breasts zeal for God seems to burn up sympathy with man; perhaps there are even races specially reliable to this aberration; and
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it may be a besetting temptation of the clerical profession. But, in modern times, the opposite mistake is commoner — namely, the tendency to put asunder the two commandments by the sacrifice of the first. The service of man is set up as a rival to the service of God; and morality without religion is, in certain circles, a watchword of modern progress. There can be little doubt, however, that such a notion would have been even more painful to Jesus than that against which He protested, and that He would have discerned in it not only blasphemy against the Father whom He loved but, at the same time, a subtle and insidious attack upon the honour and highest interests of man. The way in which He tried to raise man in the esteem of his brother was by surrounding him with a halo of supernatural dignity in the spirit of the eighth Psalm, where man is declared to have been made but a little lower than God; all the rest of the creation being put under his feet. But, if this halo is evaporated and man reduced to the level of the animals, with no destiny before him more sacred than that of the worm or the clod, his defence is taken away, and he is exposed to the contempt of every passer-by. In the teaching of Jesus the fatherhood of God was the pre-supposition of the brotherhood of men; and the way in which He hoped to get men to love one another was by getting them to love their common Father in heaven.
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As we pursue our quest among the sayings of Jesus for the new motives by which He hoped to facilitate the keeping of the second great command¬ ment, we cannot help thinking of the wonderful statement of the duties of this commandment contained in the parable of the Last Judgment in the end of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew: “I was an hungred and ye gave Me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave Me drink,” and so on; with the solemn negative statement of the same truth: “I was an hungred and ye gave Me no meat,” and so on. No statement of duty to man more simple, searching or impressive could be conceived; but certainly the most striking thing in this parable is the assurance given to the righteous that what they had done to the poor and needy they had done to the J udge Himself; together with the opposite information, conveyed to the startled neglecters of the strangers and the prisoners, that the actions they had failed to perform to these had been accepted by the Judge as slights upon Himself. It is possible that the primary idea intended to be suggested is that, at the great day, all the compassionate and merciful will be treated as unconscious Christians, their alms-deeds being accepted as done to Christ, even if they have been unaware of His existence; but there is suggested, besides, a novel motive for conscious Christian benevolence; and this agrees with not a few other sayings, where He speaks of things being done for His sake or in His name, and thereby acquiring an extraordinary virtue and significance. As, in the family, connection with the same father imparts to the children the power of doing for one another far more than the ordinary man is able to do for a neighbour, or as, in the State, the patriotism felt for a common country makes it easy to do for a fellow-countryman what it would be impossible to do for a stranger, so Jesus would appear to have expected a common connection with Himself to enable men to love one another, and consequently to do to one another deeds of love, far beyond what is attainable under the impulse of ordinary motives. This was a wonderful hope for anyone to entertain about himself; yet in this case it has been fulfilled, and all the indications appear to show that it is secure of yet more ample fulfilment. Intelligent Christians look at this world through the eyes of Christ; they think and feel about all men as He did; and they cannot neglect or despise any for whom He died.
There remains still, however, to be mentioned a motive which emerges in the words of Christ and may perhaps be said to go deeper than the one just mentioned. Jesus applied the law of love to an extreme case when He said: “Love your
enemies.” To the same effect He commanded to forgive injuries, putting into the Lord’s Prayer the petition: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
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debtors,” and frequently affirming with solemnity that, unless we forgive men their trespasses, our heavenly Father will not forgive us. Nothing of the kind had been conceived in the world before; and it was to be expected that, when Jesus carried the application of the second commandment to this extremity, He would produce also the strongest of all motives for obeying it. Nor is this expectation disappointed. There is a parable of His about a king who would take account of his servants; and, when he began to reckon, there was brought to him one that owed him ten thousand talents — that is a fabulous sum, about two millions sterling. The culprit having no means of paying his debt, his lord commanded him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had. But the wretch, falling down at his feet, cried: “Have patience with me and I will pay
thee all”; and so moved was his lord with com¬ passion that he forgave him all the debt. As the forgiven servant went out from his lord’s presence, however, he encountered a fellow-servant who owed him a hundred pence — a mere bagatelle, half a millionth part of his own debt, which had been cancelled — and, seizing him by the throat, he demanded, “Pay me what thou owest.” The debtor fell down at his feet, crying, “Have patience with me and I will pay thee all.” But he would not, and threw him into prison, till the debt should be paid. This having come to the ears of the king, he sent for the unmerciful servant and thus accosted him: “0 thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldst thou not have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?” “And he was wroth and
delivered him to the tormentors.” By this graphic illustration Jesus showed whence, according to His mind, the spirit of forgiveness must come. Those who properly realise how vast is the debt they owe to God will not reckon at a high figure the injuries they may have sustained at the hands of their fellow-men, and those who have a proper estimate of the greatness of the forgiveness extended to themselves will not find it too difficult to forgive even their enemies. This is the most significant hint in the entire body of Christ’s teaching as to the origin of the love of man; and what it seems to show is that, according to the mind of Jesus, its true source is the copious presence in the heart of love to God, springing from an abiding consciousness of having been forgiven much.
1 So Weinel {Jesus im neunzehnteii Jahrhioidert, p. 127), commenting on Luke vii. 47, says: “Der letzte Satz wird
oft falsch gedeutet: man meint, Jesus sage, die Siinden seien ihr vergeben, weil sie ihm viel Liebe ervviesen habe. Das ist ganz falsch. Jesus wiil sagen, dem Gleichniss entsprechend: daran, das sie mir so viel Liebe erzeigt, erkenne ich, dass ihr viele Siinden vergeben sind, nur wem viele Siinden vergeben worden sind, der kann so viel dankbare Liebe zeigen.”