Transcript
QUEEN CHARITY THE REV. J. EDGAR HILL, M.A., B.D.
St. Paul has, by universal acclaim, been declared the poet, par excellence, of Christian love. IJnapproached for depth of pathos, breadth of treatment, and fidelity of execution, this mag nificent eulogy will ever stand without a rival, and without a peer, the wonder and the ad miration of the world. Not a little enhanced, in the estimation of thoughtful Christians, is this glowing panegyric, that it is the product of a highly cultivated and wellbalanced mind. St. Paul was no vapid sentimentalist nor oneideaed, uncultured, religious enthusiast. Though he glorifies love as the Queen of the Holy Triad, he is not unfaithful to her noble sisters. They are all to him, "crowned vir tues," and he lays at the feet of each, the homage which is hers, by right. More than once he uses Habakkuk's pithy maxim to sum up his high appreciation of Faith, '* the just shall live by faith." He could hardly say more for Hope, than is conveyed in these words to the Eoman Christians, " for we were saved by hope." Hope was the very wine of life in early Christian days — hope of the master's speedy return in glory and majesty. In Chap ter XII, the Apostle extols many spiritual gifts
4 QUEEN CHARITY. — the fruits of faith and the inspired of hope. In Chapter XIII, he magnifies love as the grand motiveprinciple of all religious activity, the inspiration of all Christian inspirations, But lest he should be misunderstood, lest it should be supposed, that in the glorification of love, he had forgotten the honour due to the sister graces, he returns in Chapter XIY, to magnify
those spiritual gifts which, for the moment, he had seemed to forget. " Follow after love," he says, " but desire earnestly spiritual gifts." Thus he safeguards the rank of both Faith and Hope, and preserves his reputation as a broad, compre hensive exponent of Christian life and thought. In this thirteenth chapter, he presents the supremacy of love among the graces : 1. By a comparison of certain great, and much prized religious gifts without love, and with love. Without love an individual may be eloquent, or scholarly, or charitable, or faithful, or heroic, and yet be nothing spiritu ally in the Christian sense. "With love he will be something spiritually before Grod and man. 2. By an analysis of love into its principal component parts, if we may be allowed such an expression in treating of anything so spiritual as love, he shows how completely it covers the broad field of human thought and action, and how essential is the spirit of love to a worthy, helpful, and creditable life.
QUEEN CHARITY. 5 3. By urging the eternity of love alone among the graces. This thought is to be taken relatively only. Faith and Hope taken absolutely are as eternal as love. The apostle is writing with reference to the second advent. Faith and Hope, he asserts, will, in the Parou sia, or second appearing of the Lord, be done away ; but Love will abide. These three chapters then, are to be studied as a complete practical instruction, concerning the comparative importance of the gifts of the Christian religion, and the spirit of the Christian religion. Spiritual gifts in the Corin thian church had been vastly overestimated, misunderstood, and therefore abused. The gifted ones claimed, that these gifts were the grand essentials of the Christian religion, and their devotees applauded the assumption to the
echo. St. Paul says : " No ! the spirit is the grand essential, and that spirit is love. Grifted Christians, without the Christian spirit, are but as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. On the other hand, loving Christians, without the gifts, are also lacking ; not as individuals, but as helpers in the planting of the church." The gifted Christian and the loving Christian made up St. Paul's perfect man in Christ Jesus Our Lord. In thus exalting the spirit of Christianity, he would not disparage the gifts of Christianity. " Follow love," he says, " but covet earnestly
6 QUEEN CHAEITY. the best gifts." While love is the elixir of the holy life, he knew very well that ungifted love would be less efficient, in those circum stances, than gifted love. He desired, for his Corinthian disciples, the highest rank in the Christian church. They were gifted above others, and so capable of being helperson of Christianity beyond any other church. But they did not love. Sectarian strife — that worst enemy of religion — had tarnished the Corin thian name, and the lustre of their gifts had been dimmed. Unloving, it had been better for themselves that they had been ungifted also ; for their gifts were a snare, and their zeal a hindrance to the progress of the truth. The apostle realized most deeply, the highly critical condition of this famous church ; for he tells them flatly, that while they were boasting of their spiritual gifts, their sectarianism showed that they were essentially carnal. In his intense anxiety, and yearning love for them, therefore, he breaks out into this splendid laudation of Queen Charity. It is a giant effort to arrest a giant evil ; it is a special pleading to meet a special emergency. Nevertheless, it is so selfevidently true, so sublimely perfect, and so allembracing, that there is no set of circum stances to which it cannot be applied with perfect propriety. More could not be said for any effort of inspired genius.
I.THE GEEATEST GEAOE. " The greatest of these is charity," 1 Cor., 13.13. There was a dash of genius in the selection of the question which stands first in the General Assembly's, shorter catechism, " What is the chief end of man " ? The reply, is a like splendid tribute to the wise appreciation our forefathers had, of the essential spirituality of our most holy religion, "Man's chief end is to glorify Grod and to enjoy him for ever." Nothing truer, simpler, fuller, within so limited a compass, has ever been written or spoken, as the state ment of a manly Christian ambition. To make Grod glorious before men, to present in one's life and character the sublime spiritual charac teristics of the supreme at their human best, to be so godlike in thought and act that the Divine Being shall be the companion, with whom we walk as Enoch of old walked with Him, and to find in that fittest companionship
8 QUEEN CHAEITY. the earnest of the blessed fellowship which can know no ending — that surely must be the purest and noblest ambition of the human soul. It is, moreover, the highest dignity of man. Whatever can excite such a sublime ambition, and exalt to so high a dignity, must be what one has recently called it — the greatest thing in the world. That greatest thing is charity, the queen of the Christian graces. Charity or love is the greatest thing in the Holy Bible, it is the greatest thing in our Blessed Lord, it is the greatest thing in apostles and saints who have followed in the Lord's footsteps. Not only is it the greatest thing on earth, but it is the greatest thing in heaven — the very law and life of heaven — the very peace, and har mony, and fullness of energy, which make heaven the home of the saints' desire, the blessed everlasting rest, for which the tempest
tossed mariner on the ocean of life longs, like the sleepless sufferer for the first streaks of the golden dawn. Greater still than the greatest thing in earth or heaven, love is the greatest thing in the wide universe. For did not the apostle of love excel himself, when, with a pen plucked from an archangel's wing, and dipped
THE GREATEST GRACE. 9 in the hues of the rainbow, he touched the climax of all inspired thought and feeling, as he wrote these divine imperishable words, " Grod is love?" No higher could soul of genius soar. Here we are at the throne of the worlds, and its foundations are love. Is it not passing strange, that this funda mental attribute of God and man, should not have been universally regarded throughout the Christian ages as the fundamental attribute of that religion in which God and man come into closest fellowship ? Surely, if the great foun der of Christianity had been made the living example of the Christian life, and his spirit the absorbing topic of Christian thought, there could never have been any rival to dispute with love the sovereignty of the soul's devo tion. Surely, if apostolic words could illus trate and enforce the life, spirit, and teaching of the Master, the consensus of apostolic senti ment breathed in such phrases as this of St. Peter, " Above all things have fervent love among yourselves ; " and this of St. John, " He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in Grod ; " and these of St. Paul, " Walk in love," " Abound in love," " Knit together in love " —
10 QUEEN CHARITY. surely if the precepts of the servants could commend the life, and the precepts, of the master, no better testimony to almighty love has ever been paid than by the apostolic
w^riters. If everything else failed me, I should be content to rest my plea for Queen Charity on this thirteenth chapter of first Corin thians, and proclaim aloud to the four v^inds of heaven — Enough ! this is enough ! Love must be the greatest thing in the universe. But the history of Christianity has no records to show, that the queen of the Christian graces has ever been reverenced v^ith all true homage and fealty within the Christian church. It is a deplorably sad fact, but it is a fact, that the great names of history, which Christendom to day delights to honour most, were not borne by. men whose great inspiration in all their thought, and action was Queen Charity. Some names, indeed, are very highly honoured of men who were notoriously stout rebels against her supre macy. Some among them even died speaking with their latest breath the word, which caught up by zealous and indiscreet disciples, has gone across the world to be the tocsin of war and devastation in the Christian ranks wherever it
THE GREATEST GRACE. 11 has come. Christians have fought for theoretical faith like demigods. For the truth, as they be lieved it, they have been eager to face every foe, and bear every trial. And I am not here to speak lightly, for a moment, of faith. The faith, which has so often lit up with heavenly lustre the martyr's eye, and plucked up by the roots the sycamine tree of solid difficulty, and cleft its way through the stolid ranks of despotism, and battered to the dust the Babeltowers of horrid selfishness, can never be celebrated in too lofty strains. Our modern civilization owes too much to the pioneers who started out into the forest primeval of barbarism, and hewed down the monarchs of the wood, to make paths for the feet of men of leading and of light to walk in, that we should speak lightly of the triumphs of faith. Christian faith has lit up too many bonfires, on the hilltops of these centuries, to be denied her rank among the sisters of the sacred
three. Neither would I speak lightly of the spark lingeyed queen, who has gilded a thousand times, with her holy and blessed light, both the path of life, and the bed of death for the faithful and good. Eob human life of its hope,
12 QUEEN CHARITY. and the stainless banner, excelsior, will fall headlong from the firm grasp of youth, and the maiden's young love burn up her heart, as it burnt up the heart of the Lily Maid of Astolat ; the mother's eye will droop in her watch by the couch where infant beauty sleeps, and the brand spring aimless from the lost patriot's hand. Blessed, beauteous hope ! with thee to encour age us, farewell dread of coming ills, and welcome even the last enemy of man. The miserable have in thee their only solace, the afflicted their only medicine, the bereaved their only balm, the exile his only home. "While no one dare belittle the victories of faith, or bedim the sheen of the pleasures of hope, these two fair queens must both take their places at the feet of queen charity. For she is their life, and without her they are nothing. The faith, which goes forth unin spired by love, may strike many a deadly blow and take many a strong fortress ; but she will be unable to hold what she has won. She may be like Elijah on Carmel or by the Kishon, " 25ealous even unto slaughter for the God of Israel, 'Gainst Ahab and the minions of the Tyrian Jezebel."
THE GEEATEST GRACE. 13 But though she has the glory of Carmel and the vengence of Kishon behind her, she will as surely have the flight to Horeb, and the humiliation of the cleft in the rock, before her.
Triumphant faith working without love has sooner or later to confess, like Elijah in the valley of repentance : " I smote you there on Carmel as I thought by God's com mands, But I smote my own heart also when your blood was on my hands." Hope without love has no pedestal for her feet. It is love that lends the brightness to the Christian mourner's eye ; it is love that prompts the worn covenanter's cry to heaven at the grave of a martyred comrade, " O to be wi' Richie." Take the love out of hope, and faith, and you have nothing left with which to glorify God or bless mankind. As the heart and soul of faith and hope, love is preeminently the greatest of the three. There is an agreeable disappointment about the uniform eulogy of love by the apostolic writers, inasmuch as it is precisely the Christian grace we should not have expected these old worthies to exalt. They had, one and all, been
14 QUEEN CHARITY. trained in a bad school. The religious atmo sphere they breathed from infancy, and the religious life into which they grew up, were loveless. John, who sang like a seraph of love, reflected the religious sentiment of his educa tion perfectly, when on a memorable occasion he said : " Master ! wilt thou, that we com mand fire to come down from heaven and destroy them, as Elias did ?" Peter was a foul traitor to love, when he swore his denial of the Master at a little servingmaid. And though Saul of Tarsus was the penman of the grandest eulogy of love, which genius has yet conceived, when we first meet with him, he is standing as the accepted champion of those, who were breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. Depend upon
it when John, and Peter, and Paul glorify love, they are not speaking out of the heart of early prepossession, or of maturer prejudice. I marvel at the fine development of the spirit of love, in the later years of men, who had so little of it to begin with. You may be sure, that nothing short of an overmastering conviction, ever brought Gamaliel's favourite pupil to pro claim as the very life of all human duty,
THE GREATEST GRACE. 15 " love is the fulfilling of the law." I cannot imagine a saying more likely to arouse and astound the Hebrew mind, steeped as it was in the narcotism of tradition and formula. Nevertheless it fell from the lips of one, who was educated in the straitest sect of Pharisaism, and who, before his conversion, had been re garded as the rising hope of his ancestral faith. One can but ill conceive the shock which those devotees of an elaborate and conventional reli gious system received, when they were told that a new law, as brief as theirs was lengthy, simple as theirs was intricate, and easy as theirs was diffi cult, was destined to supersede the old, and even tually to command the homage, not only of one nationality, but of all the nations of the earth. These old loyal Judaists knew very well, how rocky was the road they had to travel to heaven. Still, with all its hardness, it was the path by which their fathers had ascended, and the glory of their national life haloed around the brows of the mighty dead. How should they abandon it for any untried path, and least of all for a path drenched with the blood of the crucified Nazarene ? Moreover, was it not sus picious, that the substitute for their venerable
16 QUEEN CHARITY. and elaborate law should be presented, in the form of a single precept ? To us, its simplicity is the charm, and the strength of the Christian
law. But to them, the contrast was too striking, the change too risky, the good news too good to be true. It seemed, as if they were called to pass at a step, from climax to anticlimax — from a law which had authority to a love which had none. Indeed, the high spiritual teaching of Our Lord so transcended the current ideals of his countrymen, that they were actually unable to follow it ; and in their incapacity to appreciate, they developed a remarkable capacity to depre ciate. Those who stigmatised him, as a destroyer of the law and the prophets, were not the illiter ate or the vicious, but educated, pious people, puremotived and conscientious ; very much indeed like those earnest evangelical Anglicans, who, in our own day, have believed that they could not honor Grod, and his Christ better, than by pointing the finger of scorn at such manly Christians as Charles Kingsley, and Frederick Denison Maurice, and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. History is constantly repeating itself. The reign of law in the popular religion is far more popular today than the reign of love.
THE GREATEST GRACE. 17 Saul of Tarsus was the very last man to surrender lightly his ancestral faith, and, by that act, brand his people as the betrayers and murderers of their noblest son and king. No one shall ever know what it cost that pharisee of the Pharisees, to lay down the sword of the per secutor, and take up the cross of the persecuted. Only those know something of the ordeal through which he passed, who have had to fight, "foot to foot and hand to hand," spectre after spectre of the mind — those whose souls have .^been scarred and furrowed all over, in the struggle to reach the light and liberty of the spirit of the Christ. Only such as those know, that love and not law was their best ally in the battle, and, that it was only by her power they fought and endured hardness like good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Not every one is ftufficient for this trial. But they, who can re ceive power from on high to fight that battle,
need fear no other foe. St. Paul had that power in a remarkable degree ; and he never gave better proof of it than when he put aside at one sweep the whole traditional code of his early training, and declared unhesitatingly that the simple law of love is " the law of laws, the
18 QUEEN CHARITY. rule for fulfilling all rules, the new command ment for keeping all the old commandments, the one secret of the holy, helpful life." It was the greatest triumph of Christianity, in the first age, this conversion of Saul, from the con ventionalism of Pharisaic law and tradition acquired by long and weary toil, to the simpli city of a single precept, selfevidently true, and so farreaching, that it entirely superseded, not only the holy ten words, but all the wisdom of the Eabbis. Not only superseding them, but proving itself greater, just as simple nature is greater than elaborate art. It must have been a great shock to him to find, that without love not only does the life go out of the ten commandments, and all other commandments whatsoever, but that with love, whatever is good and true in all religious precept must be effective and immortal. And yet there is no evidence of the shock in the writings of St. Paul. Because the possession of this greatest gift grew into his consciousness,' as the pale dawn grows into the midday glory. Could the history of those dark days of Damascus have been written, or of those two contemi)lative years in Arabia, one might have been able to
THE GREATEST GRACE 19 trace his dolorous way, out of the darkness of the pharisee, into the light of the Christian apostle. As it is, we know that the knowledge of the heavenly love must have come to him as the most natural thing in the world. Marvel lous though the change was, the method was
most simple. He who had hounded his country men to death, because they dared to cling to the dear memory of the Crucified One — he who would sacrifice not a jot or a tittle of pharisaic tradition, to tolerate a brother who could not be recreant to the spirit of the Pure One — this man and persecutor, for the love of Grod, was destined to be willing to surrender his own hope of heaven, if thereby the veil might be lifted from the Hebrew mind, and Israel accord ing to the flesh saved. What a magnificent victory was that for the spirit of love ! It recalls the Master's words, "greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." Nevertheless, the apostle was never so much himself, as when he was so possessed by the love of the Lord Jesus. Let no man dream — a woman cannot — that love is unna tural, and that when we celebrate the praises of this greatest power of the universe, we are
20 QUEEN CHARITY. speaking of that which is not humanity's very own. I protest that no one is ever so natural, as when he loves; nor so unnatural as when he hates. For proof of this assertion I ask : Is not the love of Jesus, the almighty and the most natural thing about his history, so far as we can apprehend it ? His tenderness at Can a, his thoughtfulness at Bethsaida, his tears at Bethaay, speak the most eloquent language that ever thrilled the human soul ; because these episodes reach human nature deepest down. To him who can grasp it, the sufclime love in those deeds awakens the echoes of his own affections and so possesses his whole being as to make him instinctively exclaim : " Surely, this son of man is the son of Grod." It is that true human naturalness, which makes this chief among the graces, the greatest thing in any man or woman today, as it was the greatest thing in the Apostle Paul. It is that same naturalness, which commends it to every one as a possible possession. It is that natural ness, which is love's true dignity in the soul of
man or woman. Conversely, it is the absence of that grace, which makes man or woman the poorest, because the most unnatural, being in
THE GREATEST GRACE 21 Grod's creation. For the heartless villain, who casts from him the jewel of love, which his selfish nature cannot appreciate, and treads it beneath his feet, we do not pollute the sacred name of manhood by calling him a man. On the other hand, the mother who dashes forward to pluck her boy from the jaws of death, only to give up her own life in saving his, we can onise among the noblest of her sex. The soul of the world judges rightly in both cases, and, in its judgment, we recognise the innate testi mony of the human bosom to the naturalness of love, and to the unnaturalness of anything else. A great modern poet has illustrated very strikingly this naturalness and unnaturalness : The scene is laid in a llussian village. A span of horses, with distended nostril and steaming flank, dash into the village, dragging a sleigh iu which sits a lonely weeping mother, in widow's weeds. She draws up at the door of a former peasantfriend, and proceeds to un fold her sorrowful tale. The day before, she had left her distant home, rendered desolate by the death of her husband, to return with her three children to the scene ot* her childhood. On the way she had been overtaken by wolves, and
22 QUEEN CHARITY. despite the best efforts of herself and her team, one after another of her children fell a prey to the hungry pack. The peasant sat mean while nervously sharpening his pruning hook on his knee, while in broken accents the widow recited her mournful story. Springing to his feet, when she had ended, with a voice of thun der he shouted, " And are you there to tell the tale ? " Then for an instant gleamed his sickle
in the air, and that unloving, unnatural mother fell to the ground a headless corpse. So tragi cally natural was love's avenging. This greatest thing of St. Paul may become the possession of every one who will be a true man or woman. It is the natural possession of every sharer of the divine image. " God is love," and God made us in the image of love. So true is this, that one must be deliberately unnatural not to love. "Without love we are nothing, we have nothing, we can do nothing. With love we draw to ourselves all the gifts, treasures, powers, of life worth the having. The great man is not he who bears a great his toric name, or fills a high place in the councils of his queen ; but he is great with whose praises the world rings because of the greatness of his
THE GREATEST GRACE 23 love. The rich man is not he whose coffers swell with yellow gold, or whose broad acres fill a countryside. Such an one may be the poorest of all who live on his bounty, or sweat in his fields. But that man is rich indeed, who has gathered to himself the rich endowments of love. He has a treasure which neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and which thieves can not break through to steal. He enjoys the warm glow of heavenly peace in his soul which no chills of adversity can quench, and no assaults of envious pride destroy. The strong man is not he, before whose feet thousands crouch, and at whose word the world trembles. Such an one may be the very weakest of mortals in the lonely silence of his own chamber. But he is strong who, in the love of Grod and man, goes forth to break the captives' chains, and to sanctify the sinner's soul, and to bid the demons depart who stalk through the earth working their wicked will. He is strong who can break the stubborn will of hardened vice, and lift to heaven the despairing eye, and send solace into the mourner's heart, and bring songs of joy into the widow's cheerless garret.
24 QUEEN CHARITY. " Mightier far Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway Of magic potent over sun and star, Is love, though oft to agony distrest, And though its favourite seat be feeble woman's breast."