The secret of Christ is Love. However we interpret His words, however we are led to follow His example, this is always to be the light we walk in, this is always to be the motive that constrains us. His life breathes one spirit—and that spirit is love. Throughout His life He showed forth love, and in His death He threw Himself utterly on God, loving men to the last, and turning away from every weapon which love could not sanctify, and every thought which love could not own. In that supreme act we are taught that, if evil is to be overcome in the world, even the eternal God has no surer weapon than self-sacrificing love.
All the words of Jesus lead up to the emphatic enunciation of universal indiscriminating love to one’s neighbour, even to one’s enemy. “All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them” (Mat_7:12). If it be the Evangelist who adds the words, “for this is the law and the prophets,” (Mat_7:12) he is only bringing out the very deepest and most characteristic thought of his Master. The law of God which was of universal obligation was the law of universal love, the law which regards every other human being as of equal intrinsic importance to oneself, as equally entitled to have his true good promoted by every other rational being. The most certain thing about the teaching of Jesus is that He did teach this doctrine of universal love. Anyone who admits that He did so, and that He taught nothing inconsistent therewith, and who also regards this teaching as the fundamental truth of morality, is already a disciple of Jesus, in a very distinctive and definite sense.
1. There were those who had walked with God before He came, though none ever walked with God as He did. And many had spoken wonderfully the truths concerning our state, and even concerning our hopes; they had sounded great depths in the sea of wisdom; they had drawn the line between what is solid and what is vain in life; they had caught firmly and clearly what was worth living for; they had measured truly the relative value of the flesh and the spirit. But none but He had so combined with the sternest reason the deepest love. This was what made Him new and without parallel in the world. It was that, in Him, truth, duty, religion, ended in love—love inexhaustible, all-pervading, infinitely varied.
It is this new commandment, new to the world, but as old as the eternal Word who brought it, which turns the Sermon on the Mount from a code of precepts into the expressions and instances of a character. Its words do not stand by themselves; they are not as the definite commandments of a law; they cannot be represented or exhausted by any rules; they have their interpretation and their reason in that divine temper which had come with Jesus Christ to restore the world. The purity, the humility, the yielding and forgiving mind, the ungrudging and unflagging. goodness they speak of, were but some among the infinitely varied ways of acting out the meaning of His last charge — “That ye love one another as I have loved you” (Joh_15:12); and of His last prayer — “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them” (Joh_17:26).
His life, and the character revealed in it, is the interpreter of what He means by love. A great deal may be said of love without ever really touching what is its vital essence. But here our sympathies are appealed to. We see how Jesus Christ showed what it is to lead a life of love. He showed how it could be carried out to the uttermost in what we call an extreme case of our human condition.
Love came down at Christmas and we see the weakest thing in the world, the child—new-born—in swaddling clothes, laid in the manger because there was no room in the inn. The weakest thing in the world? Not so. There is one thing weaker still—that solitary figure, in the darkness, on the cross! And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit”; and having said thus, He gave up the Ghost. The will to love brought the child in the manger even to this! He was taken from prison and from judgement; He was cut off out of the land of the living; He was “lifted up.” If that were the end of the story Christ was weak indeed, but it is not the end—He was lifted up, and He drew all men unto Him.
So the Galilean conquers always wherever the exhibition of His love is made, and the old “strong gods” go down before Him because in the end He is stronger than they. His power begins in the cradle and goes on through the cross. He was cut off out of the land of the living and is alive for evermore. The sure and certain hope of the Christian lies in Bethlehem and Calvary and the open grave. [Note: G. H. Leonard, in Papers in War Time, xi. 12.]
2. But is the practice of love of absolutely universal application? If we seek for some definite point below which force is proper, but above which it should be avoided, it must be found by considering the psychology of the person to be coerced. The lunatic, the criminal, and to a less extent the animal or the child, have to be coerced just so far as they cannot respond to a higher motive. That is to say, we ought never to apply force where there is the power of appreciating and being influenced by reason, justice, shame, mercy, or a sense of duty, and where there is time to call out such motives. These ought to be tried so far as they will go, and they will go much further than the thick thumb of mankind has usually probed. With violent criminals particularly —who are grown men in possession of all their faculties—the records of the Society of Friends and of the Salvation Army show many decisive victories of the spirit of love.
3. Is then the love of our neighbour consistent with war? Is it not the height of absurdity, it may be asked, to speak at once of fighting people and of loving them? The inconsistency is certainly startling, and if the Christian cannot fight and love at the same time there can be no question which alternative he must choose. Christ demanded an allegiance transcending every other loyalty. To all who care for the world’s good, especially to those who look for the coming of God’s Kingdom, the most terrible thing in war is the spirit which drives it, and follows it—the spirit of venomous, murderous hate, with its legacy of enduring bitterness for the years to come. This spirit reached its climax in the tempest of hatred for our nation which at one time swept through the length and breadth of Germany. Some told us to repay atrocities with reprisals, slaughter with vengeance, hate with hate. Perhaps it is necessary to remind ourselves that for those who wish to retain the name of Christian such a response is utterly impossible. Christ had an ugly name for that hating temper of mind; He called it murder. But He went further than this; He even told men to love their enemies. Love our enemies Love the Germans, who forced this War on a peaceful world, who murdered Belgium, who hated and would have destroyed us if they could? The thing seems absurd, impossible. And yet—; Christianity is full of absurdities and impossibilities, that have a curious way of getting themselves turned into rational realities. Might not that happen in this case too? Is there really any limit to the influence of Christ’s spirit on the heart of man? All depends, indeed, on that transfiguring influence. Left to ourselves we might hate the Germans with a lusty hatred—but when we try to make any room for the Spirit of Christ—well, the hating business becomes frankly impossible. Move over to the side of Christ, and have a look at your enemy from that angle of vision—he begins to look different then; you even feel he may after all turn out to be one of the family. This is the only possible vantage-point from which to listen to and answer that German “Hymn of Hate”:
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in.
4. With what clearness and authority has the Church, amid an atmosphere of bitterness and hatred, proclaimed this truth? Many warnings against unthinking hate and unworthy retaliation have come from our soldiers. Can it be said that the utterances of the pulpit and of the religious press and the general temper of Christian people have been calculated to leave an unmistakable impression that those who profess the Christian name prize love above everything else? Yet this is the hall-mark of Christianity. If in the hour of testing the Church is forgetful of its first principles, can it hope to retain its moral authority over the minds of men? If the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? Ought not the whole world to know that Christian people, because they are Christians, unreservedly desire the good of all men, and are striving for the triumph of love over hate?
Some time ago I heard a minister of religion make play in a large meeting with the dread phrase of the Book of Revelation (Rev_6:16), “the wrath of the Lamb.” He spoke seriously enough and, I am sure, in all good faith. It was shortly after the publication of the report of Lord Bryce’s Commission, and no one could do otherwise than hope and pray that at least one consequence of the war would be to render the repetition of such barbarities as it disclosed impossible for all time. Still the question remains: “Is it the duty of the man of God to fan the flame even of righteous indignation, when the nation to whom he speaks is engaged in a war in which its own most vital interests are concerned?” Nothing is more difficult than to observe the apostolic injunction to “be angry and sin not” (Eph_4:26). To hate the sin and love the sinner is characteristic of God. For imperfect mortals like ourselves, the borderline between righteous wrath and personal hatred is soon passed. The glosses which have been made on the words “Love your enemies,” both in newspaper correspondence and even in sermons, make this sufficiently evident. People often seem utterly incapable of entertaining the notion that it is possible to love those who rain bombs on defenceless towns and destroy passenger ships! But does God love them? This is not a matter of hurling texts, but of interpreting the work of Christ. “God is love,” says St. John (Joh_4:8; Joh_4:16). And he finds the evidence of this in the very fact that He loved us, when we did not love Him, and “sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” In other words, what attracted Him towards us was what our inherent unattractiveness enabled Him to do for us. To Him “our sins” were infinitely more detestable than any German “frightfulness” can be to us. They included, not only that “frightfulness” but the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the iniquity of those who were disobedient before the Flood, and the hatred which cried: His blood be on us and on our children. And yet His love never let go until it found out the way to draw all men to Himself. [Note: J. G. Simpson, in War and the Kingdom of God, 119.]
I believe that in some measure it has come to each of us, and that we are going forth with bowed heads, having heard the words of our risen Master: “As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you” (Joh_20:21). We go to preach a new gospel, and yet the gospel which is given to us is no new one, but the same glorious gospel of love once for all given to men in Him who laid down His life on Calvary. [Note: H. T. Hodgkin, in Friends and the War, 105.]
5. Let us not only preach it but live it. It is the love of Christ which constrains us, when we seek to give effect to this Spirit in our lives. Towards those who misunderstand and despise us, towards those who vex us and make life a burden to us, towards those who put obstacles in our path and wrong us, this is the attitude which our Lord prescribes, and to which He Himself was ever faithful. There is no limit to the patience and forbearance which we ought to display for His sake, no length to which we ought not to be prepared to go in the way of endurance and gentleness. You will look in vain for indications in the Scriptures as to the precise circumstances that are to call forth this temper, and for explicit guidance with respect to the course that you ought to take on any given occasion. “A religion of love,” as Dr. Denney has said, “cannot be a statutory religion.” Every day of our lives, abundant opportunities are presented to us “to turn the other cheek also.” And the ability to recognize such opportunities, as well as the moral power to respond to them, cannot be acquired save through daily communion with the Spirit of Christ.
“When a Christian spirit is spoken of, “says the author of ‘Ecce Homo,’ “it may be remarked that a forgiving spirit is usually meant.”
(1) In private life we are called upon to check our actions at every point by the principle of love. Our conversation, our expenditure, our domestic life, our business, must come under review, and the ultimate decision as to what is legitimate for us must be determined by love. If we hate war between nations we are compelled to admit that the spirit which makes war finds expression in family hatreds, personal dislikes and grudges, in class envy or contempt. So far as these feelings are given a place within our hearts, or expression in our acts, we are sinning against the light. Even the fundamental presuppositions of all our thinking must be subject to this scrutiny. What is really involved in an acceptance of the principle is a revaluation of life. We speak of things that are “worth fighting for.” If fighting (in the sense of opposing evil with evil) is the surrender of the soul, is anything of this supreme value? What shall a man give in exchange for his own soul? The whole universe which has determined our standards of value is influenced by ideals of self-interest. The “man of the world” has a standard which even the spiritual babe realizes to be false. Spiritual manhood, the state in which we “put away childish things,” is based upon a growth, not so much in prophecy, in faith or in knowledge, as in Love.
(2) In national life what vistas open out to us as waiting to be redeemed by the spirit of love. The same spirit which chafes against the war-demon among the nations must seek with a passionate desire for a release from the chains of the present competitive system, from business methods which crush the weakest and reward relentless efficiency, from methods of manufacture which reducemen to machines, from a penal system that scarcely attempts to be remedial, from conditions of life that can hardly fail to destroy both body and soul. What is demanded is, of course, no indiscriminate “charity.” It is rather a grouping together of men and women who will apply the principle of love with thoroughness to all these great national problems, relying upon it entirely, and who will be bold enough to make experiments, however hopeless they may seem to be when judged by the ordinary standards of society. This may have to be done, in the first place, in a small way. There may be many apparent failures as we seek to work out the national life on the basis of love. Those who believe, however, that we have not only a basis, but the only satisfactory basis for human life in this kind of love, are called upon to try, and to go on trying to apply it. It may be that small communities of those who accept this view of life could achieve more by living and working together than could be done either by individual effort or by attempts at legislative reform. What is supremely required is that, in our relations with one another, we should give the principle of love a fair trial. Whether this would ultimately lead to the elimination of force in the machinery of the State it is, perhaps, impossible to say at the present stage of society. Certainly there are many things which must first be dealt with. As one problem is solved the way to the solution of the next will probably become clear.
(3) In our international relations we are called upon to think out far more thoroughly what would be involved in a world State whose ultimate sanctions were mutual trust and goodwill as between the component nationalities. Nothing less than this should be our aim. We may be far nearer to it today than we realize. There can be no doubt that very many, including especially, perhaps, those who have had personal experience of warfare, are ready to consider any reasonable proposition which can be brought forward with a view to bringing an end to war. It goes without saying that those who agree with the dictum of Bernhardi, that the law of love “can claim no significance for the relations of one country to another,” will not be prepared to accept any such proposals. Our contention, however, is that, since love is the ultimate force behind the universe, it does actually supply the principle upon which the relations of nations to one another can be determined. The opposite principle has certainly failed lamentably. We might almost say that the European war demonstrates the fact that the principle of force cannot be a satisfactory basis for human society, and is, therefore, not the ultimate principle on which the universe rests. We have tried to erect a civilization which is really grounded on a pagan philosophy of life, and the fact that we call it Christian has blinded many of us to the fact that its fundamental presuppositions are utterly un-Christian. This fact has been suddenly revealed to us. Dare we face the consequences? Have we courage and wisdom enough to set about the reconstruction of our international life upon a genuinely Christian basis?
O, who shall win, and who shall lose, and who shall take the glory
Here at the meeting of the roads, where every cause is right?
O, who shall live, and who shall die, and O, who shall tell the story?
Each strikes for faith, and fatherland, in that immortal fight.
High on the grey old hills of Time the last immortal rally,
Under the story of the last great tattered flag, shall laugh to see
The blood of Armageddon roll from every smoking valley,
Shall laugh aloud, then rush on death for God and chivalry.
Kings of the earth, Kings of the earth, O, which of you then shall inherit
The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory? For the world’s old light grows dim,
And the cry of you all goes up all night to the dark enfolding Spirit,
Each of you fights for God and home; but God, ah, what of Him? [Note: Alfred Noyes.]
